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The life of every river sings its own song, but in most the song is long marred by the discords of misuse.

Aldo Leopold

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Aldo Leopold
Age: 60 †
Born: 1887
Born: January 1
Died: 1948
Died: January 1
Academic
Author
Botanical Collector
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Forestry Scientist
Naturalist
Philosopher
University Teacher
Burlington
Iowa
Aldo Starker Leopold
Rand Aldo Leopold
Sings
River
Rivers
Song
Discords
Every
Marred
Long
Eco
Life
Misuse
Discord

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Like all real treasures of the mind, perception can be split into infinitely small fractions without losing its quality. The weeds in a city lot convey the same lesson as the redwoods the farmer may see in his cow-pasture what may not be vouchsafed to the scientist adventuring in the South Seas.
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We stand guard over works of art, but species representing the work of aeons are stolen from under our noses
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One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring.
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It must be poor life that achieves freedom from fear.
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The real jewel of my disease-ridden woodlot is the prothonotary warbler. ... The flash of his gold-and-blue plumage amid the dank decay of the June woods is in itself proof that dead trees are transmuted into living animals, and vice versa.
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I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush and it is the same river who before I can bring my friends to view his work erases it forever from human view. After that it exists only in my mind's eye.
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. . . perhaps our grandsons, having never seen a wild river, will never miss the chance to set a canoe in singing waters . . . glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.
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Wildflower corners are easy to maintain, but once gone, they are hard to rebuild.
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In that year [1865] John Muir offered to buy from his brother ... a sanctuary for the wildflowers that had gladdened his youth. His brother declined to part with the land, but he could not suppress the idea: 1865 still stands in Wisconsin history as the birth-year of mercy for things natural, wild, and free.
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The whole conflict thus boils down to a question of degree. We of the minority see a law of diminishing returns in progress our opponents do not.
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If we lose our wilderness, we have nothing left worth fighting for.
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Land health is the capacity for self-renewal in the soils, waters, plants, and animals that collectively comprise the land.
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If in a city we had six vacant lots available to the youngsters of a certain neighborhood for playing ball, it might be development to build houses on the first, and the second, and the third, and the fourth, and even the fifth, but when we build houses on the last one, we forget what houses are for.
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A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of his land.
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Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?
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Six days shalt thou paddle and pack, but on the seventh thou shall wash thy socks.
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Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness heaven one may never get there.
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The landscape of any farm is the owner's portrait of himself.
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Our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides, but they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history, to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.
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Man brings all things to the test of himself, and this is notably true of lightning.
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