"And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it."
— William Shakespeare

"If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich."
— John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)

"The land is so much more than its analysis."
— John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"This old world keeps spinnin’ round; It’s a wonder tall trees ain’t layin’ down."
— Neil Young

"We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act."
— Charles Darwin

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
— Mark Twain

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by frost."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."
— Douglas Adams

"Stupid f***ing white man."
— Jim Jarmusch

"Now Jesus don't like killin'/No matter what the reason's for."
— John Prine (John Prine)

"Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car."
— Garrison Keillor

"The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook."
— Julia Child

"The most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history."
— George Orwell

"There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace."
— Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac)

"The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering."
— Aldo Leopold (Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold)

"A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of the land."
— Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac)

"The problem, then, is how to bring about a striving for harmony with land among a people many of whom have forgotten there is any such thing as land, among whom education and culture have become almost synonymous with landlessness. This is the problem of conservation education."
— Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac)

"The modern dogma is comfort at any cost."
— Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac)

"The rule, acknowledged or not, seems to be that if we have great power we must use it. We would use a steam shovel to pick up a dime. We have experts who can prove there is no other way to do it."
— Wendell Berry (The Long-Legged House)

"It ain’t dying I’m talking about, it’s living. I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live.” ~spoken by Augustus McCrae"
— Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove)

"When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning."
— Neil Gaiman (Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions)

"Fairy tales, are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated."
— G.K. Chesterton

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."
— Winston S. Churchill

"Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet."
— Dave Barry

"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind."
— Aristotle