Rivers Quotes - Page 32

• . . . perhaps our grandsons, having never seen a wild river, will never miss the chance to set a canoe in singing waters . . . glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.

  Aldo Leopold

  Country, Water, Missing

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• I sat there and forgot and forgot, until what remained was the river that went by and I who watched. On the river the heat mirages danced with each other and then they danced through each other and then they joined hands and danced around each other. Eventually the water joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.

  Norman Maclean

  Believe, Hands, Water

  Norman Maclean (2009). “A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition”, p.61, University of Chicago Press

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• Ancient rock paintings remind us that there are no unclaimed lands, that people have always lived here. They are wayposts along the river journey to the interior of the mind and heart.

  Lynn Culbreath Noel

  Heart, Journey, Rocks

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• The ancient Irish bards knew the Salmon of Knowledge as the giver of all life's wisdom. In the salmon's leap of understanding like a leap of faith, we can see ourselves "in our element," immersed in the river of life. The cycle of the salmon's journey reminds us that all rivers flow to the same sea.

  Lynn Culbreath Noel

  Journey, Sea, Understanding

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• We are deep at the bottom of this river of time, caught up in the current of the moment where all the rivers rendezvous.

  Lynn Culbreath Noel

  Environmental, Moments, Currents

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• As long as there are young men with the light of adventure in their eyes and a touch of wildness in their souls, rapids will be run.

  Sigurd F. Olson

  Running, Adventure, Eye

  "Singing Wilderness".

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• Rivers are highways that move on and bear us whither we wish to go.

  Blaise Pascal

  Moving, Wish, Environmental

  Blaise Pascal, Henry Rogers, Victor Cousin, Charles Louandre (1859). “The Thoughts, Letters and Opuscules of Blaise Pascal”, p.241

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• To drown a river beneath its own impounded water, by damming, is to kill what it was and to settle for something else. When the damming happens without good reason . . . then it's a tragedy of diminishment for the whole planet, a loss of one more wild thing, leaving Earth just a little flatter and tamer and simpler and uglier than before.

  David Quammen

  Loss, Water, Leaving

  David Quammen (2012). “Wild Thoughts from Wild Places”, p.73, Simon and Schuster

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• Rivers are the primal highways of life. From the crack of time, they had borne men's dreams, and in their lovely rush to elsewhere, fed our wanderlust, mimicked our arteries, and charmed our imaginations in a way the static pond or vast and savage ocean never could.

  Tom Robbins

  Dream, Ocean, Men

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates”, p.62, Bantam

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• There is no music like a little river's . . . It takes the mind out-of-doors . . . and . . . it quiets a man down like saying his prayers.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Prayer, Men, Doors

  Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “Prince Otto”, p.19, Robert Louis Stevenson

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• The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks where the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Years, Land

  Henry David Thoreau (1995). “Walden: An Annotated Edition”, p.323, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• After the doctor's departure Koznyshev felt inclined to go to the river with his fishing rod. He was fond of angling, and seemed proud of being able to like such a stupid occupation.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Stupid, Doctors, Fishing

  Leo Tolstoy (1998). “Anna Karenina”, p.240, Oxford Paperbacks

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• In the 19th century, we devoted our best minds to exploring nature. In the 20th century, we devoted ourselves to controlling and harnessing it. In the 21st century, we must devote ourselves to restoring it.

  Stephen Ambrose

  Mind, Environmental, Century

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• If I live to be old enough, I may sit down under some bush, the last left in the utilitarian world, and feel thankful that intellect in its march has spared one vestige of the ancient forest for me to die by.

  Thomas Cole

  Environmental, World, May

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• In our attempt to make conservation easy, we have made it trivial.

  Aldo Leopold

  Environmental, Easy, Conservation

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.210, Oxford University Press, USA

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• We realize the indivisibility of the earth - its soil, mountains, rivers, forests, climate, plants, and animals - and respect it collectively not only as a useful servant but as a living being, vastly less alive than ourselves in degree, but vastly greater than ourselves in time and space - a being that was old when the morning stars sang together, and when the last of us has been gathered unto his fathers, will still be young.

  Aldo Leopold

  Morning, Stars, Father

  "The River of the Mother of God: and other Essays by Aldo Leopold".

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• Thus far we have considered the problem of conservation of land purely as an economic issue. A false front of exclusively economic determinism is so habitual to Americans in discussing public questions that one must speak in the language of compound interest to get a hearing.

  Aldo Leopold

  Land, Issues, Environmental

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.315, Library of America

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• We console ourselves with the comfortable fallacy that a single museum piece will do, ignoring the clear dictum of history that a species must be saved in many places if it is to be saved at all.

  Aldo Leopold

  Museums, Environmental, Pieces

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.559, Library of America

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• Have we come all this way, I wondered, only to be dismantled by our own technologies, to be betrayed by political connivance or the impersonal avarice of a corporation?

  Barry Lopez

  Technology, Political, Environmental

  Barry Lopez (2013). “Arctic Dreams”, p.65, Open Road Media

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• While progress should never come to a halt, there are many places it should never come to at all.

  Paul Newman

  Environmental, Progress, Halt

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• The wilderness does not make you forget your normal life so much as it removes the distractions for proper remembering.

  Jim Harrison

  Inspirational, Travel, Lakes

  Jim Harrison (2007). “The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand”, p.91, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Kunlun Mountain Over the earth the greenblue monster Kunlun who has seen all spring color and passion of men. Three million dragons of white jade soar and freeze the whole sky with snow. When a summer sun heats the globe rivers flood and men turn into fish and turtles. Who can judge a thousand years of accomplishments or failures?

  Mao Zedong

  Summer, Spring, Passion

  Zedong Mao (2008). “The Poems of Mao Zedong”, p.65, Univ of California Press

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• It is time to extend planning to a wider field, in this instance comprehending in one great project many states directly concerned with the basin of one of our greatest rivers.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Memorial, Political, Fields

  Franklin D. Roosevelt (1995). “The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt”, Gramercy

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• Celebration is without any cause. Celebration is simply because we are. We are made out of the stuff called celebration.That's our natural state - to celebrate - as natural as it is for the trees to bloom, for birds to sing, for rivers to flow to the ocean. Celebration is a natural state.

  Rajneesh

  Ocean, Bird, Tree

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• This is what I mean by becoming religious: no guilt, no ego, no trip of any kind...just being herenow...being with the trees and the birds and the rivers and the mountains and the stars.

  Rajneesh

  Religious, Stars, Mean

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