Edwin Way Teale Quotes

Those who wish to pet and baby wild animals 'love' them. But those who respect their natures and wish to let them live normal lives, love them more.

Our minds, as well as our bodies, have need of the out-of-doors. Our spirits, too, need simple things, elemental things, the sun and the wind and the rain, moonlight and starlight, sunrise and mist and mossy forest trails, the perfumes of dawn and the smell of fresh-turned earth and the ancient music of wind among the trees.

For the mind disturbed, the still beauty of dawn is nature's finest balm.

Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves.

Time and space - time to be alone, space to move about - these may well become the great scarcities of tomorrow.

The difference between utility and utility plus beauty is the difference between telephone wires and the spider web.

Nature is shy and noncommittal in a crowd. To learn her secrets, visit her alone or with a single friend, at most. Everything evades you, everything hides, even your thoughts escape you, when you walk in a crowd.

To the lost man, to the pioneer penetrating a new country, to the naturalist who wishes to see the wild land at its wildest, the advice is always the same - follow a river. The river is the original forest highway. It is nature's own Wilderness Road.

If man can take care of man, nature can take care of the rest.

The long fight to save wild beauty represents democracy at its best. It requires citizens to practice the hardest of virtues—self-restraint. Why cannot I take as many trout as I want from a stream? Why cannot I bring home from the woods a rare wildflower? Because if I do, everybody in this democracy should be able to do the same. My act will be multiplied endlessly. To provide protection for wildlife and wild beauty, everyone has to deny himself proportionately. Special privilege and conservation are ever at odds.