John Burroughs
O bluebird, welcome back again, Thy azure coat and ruddy vest, Are hues that April loveth best.Collection: Hue
In fact, the United States is building up its trident nuclear sub fleet in the Pacific, based at Bangor, Washington to build up its capabilities to wage nuclear war.Collection: War
We've been in a period of relative stability and cooperation since the end of the Cold War among the world's major powers, but that may not always exist. And certainly one could even predict that there will be periods of hostility or tension ahead.Collection: War
For two summers not a blue wing, not a blue warble. I seemed to miss something kindred and precious from my environment--the visible embodiment of the tender sky and wistful soil. What a loss, I said, to coming generations of dwellers in the country--no bluebird in spring!Collection: Summer
All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better. At night I hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it is a sort of complacent purr, as the breezes stroke down its sides; but in winter always the same low, sullen growl.Collection: Summer
The floating vapour is just as true an illustration of the law of gravity as the falling avalanche.Collection: Fall
It doesn't seem to be that huge a commitment that would create, you know, some kind of really powerful constituency. But the history has been for the United States and Russia especially that nuclear weapons have kind of become part of the identity of the countries.Collection: Country
Somewhat by historical happenstance the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China - also were the original five countries to have nuclear weapons.Collection: Country
Especially in the case of India and Pakistan, it's very clear that significant parts of the elites in both countries view having nuclear weapons as a ticket to prestige.Collection: Country
There is an international treaty framework for this. It's the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Most countries in the world are members of the treaty.Collection: Country
Almost all of the governments have agreed that they will not acquire nuclear weapons and that they will allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor their commercial and research nuclear power operations to ensure that nuclear materials - highly enriched uranium and plutonium - are not diverted to use in weapons.Collection: Agency
The five original nuclear weapon states I mentioned - U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia - under the NPT have committed to the achievement of the elimination of their nuclear arsenals through good faith negotiations of nuclear disarmament - that's Article Six of the treaty.Collection: Russia
So the idea about how detonation of a nuclear weapon might happen vary, you know - some people are especially concerned about terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weapons and using them. Some people are worried that there might be a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. Some think the Middle East, were Israel already has nuclear weapons and where other countries may be interested at some point and acquiring them, might be a flash point.Collection: Country
Mounting toward the upland again, I pause reverently, as the hush and stillness of twilight come upon the woods. It is the sweetest, ripest hour of the day. And as the hermit's evening hymn goes up from the deep solitude below me, I experience that serene exaltation of sentiment of which music, literature, and religion are but the faint types and symbols.Collection: Twilight
....success in walking is not to let your right foot know what your left foot doeth. Your heart must furnish such music that in keeping time to it your feet will carry you around the globe without knowing it.Collection: Heart
We have produced some good walkers and saunterers, and some noted climbers; but as a staple recreation, as a daily practice, the mass of the people dislike and despise walking.Collection: Practice
Before the bud swells, before the grass springs, before the plough is started, comes the sugar harvest. It is sequel of the bitter frost; a sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter.Collection: Goodbye
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.Collection: Mother
Science sees the process of evolution from the outside, as one might a train of cars going by, and resolves it into the physical and mechanical elements, without getting any nearer the reason of its going by, or the point of its departure or destination.Collection: Science
The sunbeams are welcome now. They seem like pure electricity—like friendly and recuperating lightning. Are we led to think electricity abounds only in summer, when we see in the storm-clouds as it were, the veins and ore-beds of it? I imagine it is equally abundant in winter, and more equable and better tempered. Who ever breasted a snowstorm without being excited and exhilarated, as if this meteor had come charged with latent auroræ of the North, as doubtless it has? It is like being pelted with sparks from a battery.Collection: Summer
If the October days were a cordial like the sub-acids of fruit, these are a tonic like the wine of iron. Drink deep or be careful how you taste this December vintage. The first sip may chill, but a full draught warms and invigorates.Collection: Wine
One may return to the place of his birth, He cannot go back to his youth.Collection: Past
In New York and New England the sap starts up in the sugar maple the very day the bluebird arrives, and sugar-making begins forthwith. The bird is generally a mere disembodied voice; a rumor in the air for two or three days before it takes visible shape before you.Collection: New York
How readily the bluebirds become our friends and neighbors when we offer them suitable nesting retreats!Collection: Retreat
The rocks are not so close akin to us as the soil; they are one more remove from us; but they lie back of all, and are the final source of all. ... Time, geologic time, looks out at us from the rocks as from no other objects in the landscape.Collection: Lying
Natural history is a matter of observation; it is a harvest which you gather when and where you find it growing. Birds and squirrels and flowers are not always in season, but philosophy we have always with us. It is a crop which we can grow and reap at all times and in all places and it has its own value and brings its own satisfaction.Collection: Philosophy
One can return to their place of birth, but one cannot go back to your youth.Collection: Return
IT is reported of Margaret Fuller that she said she accepted the universe. "Gad, she'd better!" retorted Carlyle. Carlyle himself did not accept the universe in a very whole-hearted manner. Looking up at the midnight stars, he exclaimed: "A sad spectacle! If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly; if they be not inhabited, what a waste of space!"Collection: Stars
The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.Collection: Summer
The court was unable to rule on all circumstances in which nuclear weapons might be used, and it said in view of the problems, the risks posed by nuclear weapons, and in view of the lack of certainty of the law in all circumstances, the best course is fulfilling the obligation of good faith negotiations of nuclear disarmament contained in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.Collection: Views
I think rain is as necessary to the mind as to vegetation. My very thoughts become thirsty, and crave the moisture.Collection: Rain
Here's how the court put it, and all judges agreed to this. The court said: "There exists and obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations under nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control."Collection: Nuclear Disarmament
The overall quantity of nuclear weapons in the world continues to decline slowly.Collection: Nuclear
My group, the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, was one of the principle organizers. So, there was this campaign to support the United Nations General Assembly in asking the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on the legality of threat or use of nuclear weapons.Collection: Justice
The United States says "We're complying. We're following the disarmament obligation. Look at the quantitative reductions that are taking place." But, since '96, there really hasn't been progress on specific commitments that have been made. Perhaps most disturbing is this: that the United States and France in particular, since 1996, have expanded the range of circumstances under which they might use - they say they might use - nuclear weapons.Collection: Commitment
The budget for nuclear forces in the United States is on the order of $25 billion or so. That includes warheads, delivery systems, command and control; does not include environmental clean-up, which is another maybe $10 billion or so. So that's about 5% of the U.S. military budget.Collection: Military
In 2002 the [George] Bush administration effectively put an end to negotiations of an agreement which would have established inspection procedures to ensure or to monitor compliance with the existing legal ban on biological weapons.Collection: Agreement
In the printed page the only real things are the paper and the ink; the white spaces play the same part in aiding the eye to take in the meaning of the print as do the black letters.Collection: Real
[Nuclear weapons] now I think I mentioned around 27,000 and during the Cold War the total global arsenal was on the order of 70,000.Collection: War
Then, again, how annoying to be told it is only five miles to the next place when it is really eight or ten!Collection: Eight
I came from a race of fishers; trout streams gurgled about the roots of my family tree.Collection: Race
The U.S. had about 10,000 nuclear warheads. It is estimated that the U.S. is heading towards having 6,000 nuclear warheads in the year 2012.Collection: Years
You cannot use [nuclear weapons] to target civilians; you cannot use them against military targets if they have indiscriminate effects on civilians in addition to the attack on the military target.Collection: Military
The story goes on in the sense that at a most basic level, the United States ignored, that is violated, the United Nations charter when it invaded Iraq in 2003. This is not wise policy.Collection: Wise
[T]he cold warms me—after a different fashion from that of the kitchen stove.Collection: Fashion
The pleasure and value of every walk or journey we take may be doubled to us by carefully noting down the impressions it makes upon us.Collection: Journey
Nature exists for man no more than she does for monkeys, and is as regardless of his life or pleasure or success as she is of the fleas. Her waves will drown him, her fire burn him, and her earth devour him, her storms and lightning smite him, as if he were only a dog.Collection: Dog
There is a condition or circumstance that has a greater bearing upon the happiness of life than any other. What is it? Something to do; some congenial work. Take away the occupation of all people and what a wretched world it would be.Collection: Work
How much there is in books that one does not want to know, that it would be a mere weariness and burden to the spirit to know.Collection: Book