Rachel Carson Quotes

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children 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 as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchant-ments of later years the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial the alienation from the sources of our strength.

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road-the one less traveled by-offers our last our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.

A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.

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

In every out-thrust headland in every curving beach in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.

I am always more interested in what I am about to do than in what I have already done.

Beginnings are apt to be shadowy.

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.