If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.

Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction. {<i>Speech accepting the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/43560.John_Burroughs" title="John Burroughs" rel="nofollow noopener">John Burroughs</a> Medal</i>}

It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.

The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.

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

The winds, the sea, and the moving tides are what they are. If there is wonder and beauty and majesty in them, science will discover these qualities 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.

Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is we cannot expect things to be much better in this world We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity.

I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life — past, present, and future. To understand biology is to understand that all life is linked to the earth from which it came; it is to understand that the stream of life, flowing out of the dim past into the uncertain future, is in reality a unified force, though composed of an infinite number and variety of separate lives.