It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility. — Rachel Carson

For the sense of smell, almost more than any other, has the power to recall memories and it is a pity that you use it so little. — Rachel Carson

Knowing what I do, there would be no future peace for me if I kept silent… It is, in the deepest sense, a privilege as well as a duty to speak out to many thousands of people. — Rachel Carson

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in. — Rachel Carson

It is not half so important to know as to feel. — Rachel Carson

One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. — Rachel Carson

In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference. — Rachel Carson

The shore is an ancient world, for as long as there has been an earth and sea there has been this place of the meeting of land and water. — Rachel Carson

The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth–soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife. — Rachel Carson

There is no drop of water in the ocean, not even in the deepest parts of the abyss, that does not know and respond to the mysterious forces that create the tide. — Rachel Carson

The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place. — Rachel Carson

If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry. — Rachel Carson

The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. — Rachel Carson

For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death. — Rachel Carson

For all at last return to the sea–to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the ever–flowing stream of time, the beginning and the end. — Rachel Carson

A rainy day is the perfect time for a walk in the woods. — Rachel Carson

Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species–man–acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world. — Rachel Carson

A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. — Rachel Carson

Unless we have courage to recognize cruelty for what it is–whether its victim is human or animal–we cannot expect things to be much better in the world. — Rachel Carson

Darling––i suppose the world would consider us absolutely crazy, but it is wonderful to feel that way, isn’t it? Sort of a perpetual springtime in our hearts. — Rachel Carson

We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven’t become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe. — Rachel Carson

To understand the living present, and the promise of the future, it is necessary to remember the past. — Rachel Carson

Science is part of the reality of living; it is the what, the how, and the why of everything in our experience. — Rachel Carson

By acquiescing in an act that causes such suffering to a living creature, who among us is not diminished? — Rachel Carson

We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature. — Rachel Carson

When any living thing has come to the end of its cycle, we accept that end as natural. When that intangible cycle has run its course it is a natural and not unhappy thing that a life comes to its end. — Rachel Carson

Life is a miracle beyond our comprehension, and we should reverence it even where we have to struggle against it. . . . — Rachel Carson

I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life–past, present, and future. — Rachel Carson

Beginnings are apt to be shadowy and so it is the Beginnings of the great mother life, the sea. — Rachel Carson

We are not truly civilized if we concern ourselves only with the relation of man to man. What is important is the relation of man to all life. — Rachel Carson

Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life. — Rachel Carson

Even in the vast and mysterious reaches of the sea we are brought back to the fundamental truth that nothing lives to itself. — Rachel Carson

Only as a child’s awareness and reverence for the wholeness of life are developed can his humanity to his own kind reach its full development. — Rachel Carson

There is one quality that characterizes all of us who deal with the sciences of the earth and its life–we are never bored. — Rachel Carson

No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves. — Rachel Carson

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. — Rachel Carson

If I had influence with the good fairy… I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life. — Rachel Carson

The lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world are not reserved for scientists but are available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of earth, sea and sky and their amazing life. — Rachel Carson

As crude a weapon as a cave man’s club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life. — Rachel Carson

The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized. — Rachel Carson

Why would anyone believe it is possible to lay down such barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called insecticides, but biocides. — Rachel Carson

In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth. — Rachel Carson

The most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. — Rachel Carson

And so in my mind’s eye these coastal forms merge and blend in a shifting, kaleidoscopic pattern in which there is no finality, no ultimate and fixed reality–earth becoming fluid as the sea itself. — Rachel Carson

When we go down to the low–tide line, we enter a world that is as old as the earth itself–the primeval meeting place of the elements of earth and water, a place of compromise and conflit and eternal change. — Rachel Carson