“One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.”

“Believe me, you will find more lessons in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot learn from masters.”
Experto crede: aliquid amplius invenies in silvis, quam in libris. Ligna et lapides docebunt te, quod a magistris audire non possis.

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French abbot, theologian

“There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

“Earth and Sky, Woods and Fields, Lakes and Rivers, the Mountain and the Sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.”

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury (1834–1913) British banker, Liberal politician, philanthropist, scientist and polymath

“Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

“One single war — we all know — may be productive of more evil, immediate and subsequent, than hundreds of years of the unchecked action of the mutual-aid principle may be productive of good.”

Peter Kropotkin book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

“All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by. They teach it much more effectively than moral precepts and instructions.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

“Moral good is a practical stimulus; it is no sooner seen than it inspires an impulse to practise.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

“To cease from evil, to do good, and to purify the mind yourself, this is the teaching of all the Buddhas.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

“Everything can be taken from you in a second, but the human spirit is so strong. War can teach you so much about evil, and so much about good.”

Zainab Salbi (1969) Iraqi American author, women's rights activist