Description:
John A. Murray, author or editor of 30 other books on nature, edited this slim book of quotations for The Nature Conservancy, which will benefit from its sales. Murray provides brief essays introducing the 10 chapters that comprise it: "Beauty," "Seasons," "Solitude," "Community," etc. All the usual suspects are here: Aldo Leopold, Henry David Thoreau, Rachel Carson, Shakespeare, and nearly 200 others. Their most famous wisdoms are here too: "As soon as we take one thing by itself, we find it hitched to everything in the universe" (John Muir), "The land was ours before we were the land's" (Robert Frost). Other quotations are less familiar and, in some cases, perhaps should have remained so. This book, when at its best, lives up to its billing and provides pithy quotations that quicken and inspire thought. Others are short on pith and tend to ramble on. The 35 quotations in the "Beauty" chapter, for example, are fairly evenly divided between the provocative and the prosaic. Perhaps this pot should have simmered longer on the stove. The stew might have been more hearty. --Pete Holloran
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