1. “A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.”
2. “Beginnings are apt to be shadowy and so it is the beginnings of the great mother life, the sea."
3. “Every mystery solved brings us to the threshold of a greater one.”
4. “For the sense of smell, almost more than any other, has the power to recall memories and it is a pity that we use it so little.”
5. "If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in."
6. “If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. Once the emotions have been aroused - a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love - then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response.”
7. “In every out thrust headland,in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is a story of the earth.”
8. “It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.”
9. ”One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be see many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will.”
10. “The discipline of the writer is to learn to be still and listen to what his subject has to tell him.”
11. “The ocean is a place of paradoxes.”
12. “Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”
13. “Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.”
14. “Under the philosophy that now seems to guide our destinies, nothing must get in the way of the man with the spray gun.”
