Marshes Quotes

• To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.

  Rachel Carson

  Running, Moving, Years

  Paul Brooks, Rachel Carson (1972). “The house of life: Rachel Carson at work”

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• Today, we must realize that nature is revealed in the simplest meadow, wood lot, marsh, stream, or tidepool, as well as in the remote grandeur of our parks and wilderness areas.

  Ansel Adams

  Nature, Woods, Today

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• The marsh, to him who enters it in a receptive mood, holds, besides mosquitoes and stagnation, melody, the mystery of unknown waters, and the sweetness of Nature undisturbed by man.

  William Beebe

  Men, Rivers, Water

  William Beebe (1927). “The Log of the Sun”, p.139, Lulu.com

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• Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free, Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea.

  Sidney Lanier

  Simple, Sea, Sky

  Sidney Lanier (1999). “Poems of Sidney Lanier”, p.16, University of Georgia Press

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• Magic birds were dancing in the mystic marsh. The grass swayed with them, and the shallow waters, and the earth fluttered under them. The earth was dancing with the cranes, and the low sun, and the wind and sky.

  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

  Wind, Sky, Dancing

  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1985). “The Yearling”, p.88, Simon and Schuster

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• We need the tonic of the wilderness, to wade sometimes in the marsh where the bitten and the meadow hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Adventure, Smell, Needs

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• To describe our growing up in the lowcountry of South Carolina, I would have to take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation, scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open an oyster with a pocketknife and feed it to you from the shell and say, 'There. That taste. That's the taste of my childhood.'

  Pat Conroy

  Growing Up, Memories, Spring

  Pat Conroy (2010). “The Prince of Tides: A Novel”, p.9, Open Road Media

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• On the way I stood a moment looking out across the marshes with tall cattails, a patch of water, more marsh, then the woods with a few birch trees shining white at the edge on beyond. In the darkness it all looked just like I felt. Wet and swampy and gloomy, very gloomy. In the morning I painted it. My memory of it is that it was probably my best painting that summer.

  Georgia O'Keeffe

  Summer, Morning, Memories

  "Some Memories of Drawings". Book by Georgia O'Keeffe, 1974.

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• The world is like a little marsh filled with mint and white hawthorn.

  Mary MacLane

  White, World, Littles

  Mary MacLane (2013). “I Await the Devil's Coming”, p.14, Melville House

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• From this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest guesswork.

  J. K. Rowling

  Memories, Leaving, Together

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• Books - the best antidote against the marsh-gas of boredom and vacuity

  George Steiner

  Book, Reading, Boredom

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• I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies,
  In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies.

  Sidney Lanier

  Greatness, Sky, Space

  Sidney Lanier (1999). “Poems of Sidney Lanier”, p.17, University of Georgia Press

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• One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation.

  Walter Scott

  Mean, Men, Years

  Sir Walter Scott (189?). “the bride of Lammermoor”

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• On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of sky, and settle in clangorous descending spirals to their feeding grounds. A new day has begun on the crane marsh.

  Aldo Leopold

  Sky, Wings, New Day

  Aldo Leopold (1968). “A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There”, p.91, Oxford University Press

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• There are few places in England where you can get so much wildness and desolation of sea and sandhills, wood, green marsh and grey saltings as at Wells in Norfolk.

  William Henry Hudson

  Sea, Green, Woods

  William Henry Hudson (1964). “Birds and Green Places: A Selection from the Writings of W.H. Hudson”

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• It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh... Even the streams were now lifeless... No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.

  Rachel Carson

  Morning, Spring, Voice

  Rachel Carson (2002). “Silent Spring”, p.2, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We grow up hearing so often that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points that we end up thinking it is also the best way to get there. A river knows better-:it has to do with how it dissipates the energy of its flow most efficiently; and how, in its bends, the sediment deposited soon turns into marshes and swampy islands, harboring all manner of interesting life, imparting charm and character to the whole waterway. I would defy you to find a river on this planet that prefers to run straight, unless it has been taught so by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

  Thomas W. Horton

  Running, Growing Up, Distance

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• Each horizon, each place holds its own evolutionary power be it the prairie or the plateaus, the mountains or the marshes at Great Salt Lake. For me, this is the nature of peace. Our task is to learn how to see it, feel it, hear it, and care for these places as our own home ground.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Home, Lakes, Mountain

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a frosty mist; and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to black substances; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes behind dark masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on fire.

  Charles Dickens

  Nature, Winter, Dark

  Charles Dickens (2016). “Our Mutual Friend”, p.74, Xist Publishing

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• Nevertheless, in this sea of human wretchedness and malice there bloomed at times compassion, as a pale flower blooms in a putrid marsh.

  Henryk Sienkiewicz

  Flower, Compassion, Sea

  Henryk Sienkiewicz (1912). “In Desert and Wilderness”, p.138, Library of Alexandria

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• High horns, low horns, silence, and finally a pandemonium of trumpets, rattles, croaks, and cries that almost shakes the bog with its nearness ... A new day has begun on the crane marsh. A sense of time lies thick and heavy on such a place ... Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.

  Aldo Leopold

  Beautiful, Art, Nature

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• You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since-on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with.

  Charles Dickens

  Heart, Boys, Clouds

  Great Expectations ch. 44 (1861)

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• And I needed a rock. Something to hold onto, to stand on. Something solid. Because everything was going soft, turning into mush, into marsh, into fog. Fog closing in on all sides. I didn't know where I was at all.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Rocks, Fog, Sides

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2004). “Very Far Away from Anywhere Else”, p.36, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Water can be a blessing or a curse. Too often we make conservation about saving a whale, a coral reef or a marsh. But we don't make it about saving life. The one thing that every single human being has in common is our need for water.

  Alexandra Cousteau

  Blessing, Whales, Water

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• Power! Did you ever hear of men being asked whether other souls should have power or not? It is born in them.

  Olive Schreiner

  Men, Should Have, Soul

  Olive Schreiner (2013). “The Story of an African Farm”, p.172, Courier Corporation

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