Joseph Wood Krutch
Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without.Collection: Finance
It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder.Collection: Knowledge
Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.Collection: Pet
Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are subject to a good many different ailments, but I have never heard of one who suffered from insomnia.Collection: Pet
If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.Collection: Environmental
Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude.Collection: Happiness
The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only.Collection: Nature
If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers.Collection: Environmental
Both the cockroach and the bird would get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most.
When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal. When he destroys one of the works of god we call him a sportsman.
The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.
What a man knows is everywhere at war with what he wants.
Only those within whose own consciousness the sun rise and set, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware of what living is.
Few people have ever seriously wished to be exclusively rational. The good life which most desire is a life warmed by passions and touched with that ceremonial grace which is impossible without some affectionate loyalty to traditional form and ceremonies.
There is no such thing as a dangerous woman; there are only susceptible men.
Any euphemism ceases to be euphemistic after a time and the true meaning begins to show through. It's a losing game, but we keep on trying.
It is sometimes easier to head an institute for the study of child guidance than it is to turn one brat into a decent human being.
Though many have tried, no one has ever yet explained away the decisive fact that science, which can do so much, cannot decide what it ought to do.
The rare moment is not the moment when there is something worth looking at, but the moment when we are capable of seeing.Collection: Attitude
Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.Collection: Confidence
To have passed through life and never experienced solitude is to have never known oneself. To have never known oneself is to have never known anyone.Collection: Loneliness
Technology made large populations possible; large populations now make technology indispensable.Collection: Technology
The impulse to mar and to destroy is as ancient and almost as nearly universal as the impulse to create. The one is an easier way than the other of demonstrating power.Collection: Mars
The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism, but February.... Spring is too far away to comfort even by anticipation, and winter long ago lost the charm of novelty. This is the very three a.m. of the calendar.Collection: Spring
Whenever man forgets that man is an animal, the result is always to make him less humane.Collection: Animal
In a cat's eye, all things belong to cats.Collection: Cat
Perhaps we are wiser, less foolish and more far-seeing than we were two hundred years ago. But we are still imperfect in all these things, and since the turn of the century it has been remarked that neither wisdom nor virtue have increased as rapidly as the need for both.Collection: Two
We need some contact with the things we sprang from. We need nature at least as a part of the context of our lives. Without cities we cannot be civilized. Without nature, without wilderness even, we are compelled to renounce an important part of our heritage.Collection: Cities
Nothing is too great or too good to be true. Do not believe that we can imagine things better than they are. In the long run, in the ultimate outlook, in the eye of the Creator, the possibilities of existence, the possibilities open to us, are beyond our imagination.Collection: Running
It is not a sentimental, but a grimly literal fact that unless we share this terrestrial globe with creatures other than ourselves, we shall not be able to live on it for long.Collection: Long
Anxiety and distress, interrupted occasionally by pleasure, is the normal course of man's existence.Collection: Short Life
The wilderness and the idea of wilderness is one of the permanent homes of the human spirit.Collection: Nature
Long before I ever saw the desert I was aware of the mystical overtones which the observation of nature made audible to me. But I have never been more frequently or more vividly aware of them than in connection with the desert phenomena.Collection: Nature
The human mind can appreciate the One only by seeing it first in the Many.Collection: Appreciate
A book ... unlike a television program, moving picture or any other 'modern means of communication' ... can wait for years, yet be available at any moment when it happens to be needed.Collection: Moving
A tragic writer does not have to believe in God, but he must believe in man.Collection: Believe
It is disastrous to own more of anything than you can possess, and it is one of the most fundamental laws of human nature that our power actually to possess is limited.Collection: Law
August creates as she slumbers, replete and satisfied.Collection: Summer
There are some optimists who search eagerly for the skunk cabbage which in February sometimes pushes itself up through the ice, and who call it a sign of spring. I wish that I could feel that way about it, but I do not. The truth of the matter, to me, is simply that skunk cabbage blooms in the winter time.Collection: Spring
When, in the present world, men behave well, that is no doubt sometimes because they are creatures of habit as well as, sometimes, because they are reasonable.Collection: Men
The typical American believes that no necessity of the soul is free and that there are precious few, if any, which cannot be bought.Collection: Believe
The cockroach and the bird were both here long before we were. Both could.Collection: Long
Every time a value is born, existence takes on a new meaning; every time one dies, some part of that meaning passes away.Collection: Time
Man is, perhaps, no more prone to war than he used to be and no more inclined to commit other evil deeds. But a given amount of ill will or folly will go further than it used to.Collection: War
Custom has furnished the only basis which ethics have ever had.Collection: Ethics
The flowers never waste their sweetness on the desert air or, for that matter, on the jungle air. In fact, they waste it only when nobody except a human being is there to smell it. It is for the bugs and a few birds, not for men, that they dye their petals or waft their scents.Collection: Nature
True tragedy may be defined as a dramatic work in which the outward failure of the principal personage is compensated for by the dignity and greatness of his character.Collection: Drama
To be individually righteous is the first of all duties, come what may to ones self, to one's country, to society, and to civilization itself.Collection: Country
In the long run our boasted control of nature is a delusion.Collection: Running