Wildness and silence disappeared from the countryside, sweetness fell from the air, not because anyone wished them to vanish or fall but because throughways had to floor the meadows with cement to carry the automobiles which advancing technology produced.… Tropical beaches turned into high-priced slums where thousand-room hotels elbowed each other for glimpses of once-famous surf not because those who loved the beaches wanted them there but because enormous jets could bring a million tourists every year—and therefore did.

About Archibald MacLeish

Archibald MacLeish (May 7, 1892 – April 20, 1982) was an American poet and writer, who was associated with the modernist school of poetry. MacLeish studied English at Yale University and law at Harvard University. He enlisted in and saw action during the First World War and lived in Paris...

More quotations from Archibald MacLeish

To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold.

—Archibald MacLeish

More quotations tagged with “wildness”

The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.

—Katherine Mansfield

love mind wildness grass prarie

I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular… but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive.

—Annie Dillard

purity wildness

We must return to nature and nature's god.

—Luther Burbank

God nature wildness return

The continued existence of wildlife and wilderness is important to the quality of life of humans.

—Jim Fowler

life existence conservation wildness wilderness quality of life

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking.

—John Maynard Keynes

words thought wildness

History

12 Apr 2015 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

Wildness and silence disappeared from the countryside, sweetness fell from the air, not because anyone wished them to vanish or fall but because throughways had to floor the meadows with cement to carry the automobiles which advancing technology produced. . . . Tropical beaches turned into high-priced slums where thousand-room hotels elbowed each other for glimpses of once-famous surf not because those who loved the beaches wanted them there but because enormous jets could bring a million tourists every year — and therefore did.