Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness heaven one may never get there.

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization. Wilderness was never a homogenous raw material. It was very diverse. The differences in the product are known as cultures. The rich diversity of the worlds cultures reflects a corresponding diversity. In the wilds that gave them birth.

For us in the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.

The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.

Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators... The land is one organism.

It is part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it.

There are two things that interest me: the relation of people to each other, and the relation of people to land.

Land health is the capacity for self-renewal in the soils, waters, plants, and animals that collectively comprise the land.

What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked.

There is value in any experience that exercises those ethical restraints collectively called sportsmanship.

Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how.

A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct.

The art of land doctoring is being practiced with vigor, but the science of land

health is yet to be born.

I am convinced that most Americans of the new generation have no idea what a decent forest looks like. The only way to tell them is to show them.

The evolution of a land ethic is an intellectual as well as emotional process.

Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a shovel.

There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.

Wilderness, then, assumes unexpected importance as a laboratory for the study of land -- health.

The worthiness of any cause is not measured by its clean record, but by its readiness to see the blots when they are pointed out, and to change its mind.

It is in midwinter that I sometimes glean from my pines... a curious transfusion of courage.