List of Hal Borland Quotes

The Most Unhappy Thing About Conservation Is That It Is Never Permanent. Save A Priceless Woodland Or An Irreplaceable Mountain Today, And Tomorrow It Is Threatened From Another Quarter.

Some People Are Like Ants. Give Them A Warm Day And A Piece Of Ground And They Start Digging. There The Similarity Ends. Ants Keepon Digging. Most People Don't. They Establish Contact With The Soil, Absorb So Much Vernal Vigor That They Can't Stay In One Place, And Desert The Fork Or Spade To See How The Rhubarb Is Coming And Whether The Asparagus Is Yet In Sight.

He Who Travels West Travels Not Only With The Sun But With History.

Nature Seems To Look After Her Own Only Up To A Certain Point; Beyond That They Are Supposed To Fend For Themselves.

In A Painful Time Of My Life I Went Often To A Wooded Hillside Where May Apples Grew By The Hundreds, And I Thought The Sourness Of Their Fruit Had A Symbolism For Me. Instead, I Was To Find Both Love And Happiness Soon Thereafter. So To Me [the May Apple] Is The Mandrake, The Love Symbol, Of The Old Dealers In Plant Restoratives.

[the Christmas Story] Is As Simple As Was The Man Himself And His Teaching. Sa Simple As The Sermon On The Mount Which Still Remains As The Ultimate Basis ... Of The Belief Of Free Men Of Good Will Everywhere.

Here And There One Sees The Blush Of Wild Rose Haws Or The Warmth Of Orange Fruit On The Bittersweet, And Back In The Woods Is The Occasional Twinkle Of Partridgeberries. But They Are The Gem Stones, The Rare Decorations Which Make The Grays, The Browns And The Greens Seem Even More Quiet, More Completely At Rest.

If The Voice Of The Brook Was Not The First Song Of Celebration, It Must Have Been At Least An Obbligato For That Event.

There Are No Limits To Either Time Or Distance, Except As Man Himself May Make Them. I Have But To Touch The Wind To Know These Things.

Of All The Everyday Plants Of The Earth, Grass Is The Least Pretentious And The Most Important To Mankind. It Clothes The Earth Is An Unmistakable Way. Directly Or Indirectly It Provides The Bulk Of Man's Food, His Meat, His Bread, Every Scrap Of His Cereal Diet. Without Grass We Would All Starve, We And All Our Animals. And What A Dismal Place This World Would Be!

Consider The Wheelbarrow. It May Lack The Grace Of An Airplane, The Speed Of An Automobile, The Initial Capacity Of A Freight Car, But Its Humble Wheel Marked Out The Path Of What Civilization We Still Have.

For Anyone Who Lives In The Oak-and-maple Area Of New England, There Is A Perennial Temptation To Plunge Into A Purple Sea Of Adjectives About October.