Rachel Carson

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.

If a child is too 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.

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.

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies 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.

It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons

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.

The next time you stand on a beach at night, watching the moon__ bright path across the water, and the conscious of the moon-drawn tides, remember that the moon itself may have been born of a great tidal wave of earthly substance, torn off into space. And remember if the moon was formed in this fashion, the event may have had much to do with shaping the ocean basins and the continents as we know them.

Eventually man, too, found his way back to the sea. Standing on its shores, he must have looked out upon it with wonder and curiosity, compounded with an unconscious recognition of his lineage. He could not physically re-enter the ocean as the seals and whales had done. But over the centuries, with all the skill and ingenuity and reasoning powers of his mind, he has sought to explore and investigate even its most remote parts, so that he might re-enter it mentally and imaginatively.

Only within the 20th Century has biological thought been focused on ecology, or the relation of the living creature to its environment. Awareness of ecological relationships is _ or should be _ the basis of modern conservation programs, for it is useless to attempt to preserve a living species unless the kind of land or water it requires is also preserved. So delicately interwoven are the relationships that when we disturb one thread of the community fabric we alter it all _ perhaps almost imperceptibly, perhaps so drastically that destruction fol

We are accustomed to look for the gross and immediate effects and to ignore all else. Unless this appears promptly and in such obvious form that it cannot be ignored, we deny the existence of hazard. Even research men suffer from the handicap of inadequate methods of detecting the beginnings of injury. The lack of sufficiently delicate methods to detect injury before symptoms appear is one of the great unsolved problems in medicine.

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe, 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?

Those who dwell , as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations and concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature--the reassurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.