39 Quotes by Henry Williamson

Long ago, when moose roamed in the forest at the mountain of the Two Rivers, otters had followed eels migrating from ponds and swamps to the seas.

With the dried blood stiff on my temples I climbed the hill, cursing the satanic way of men, yet knowing myself vile, for they had not known what they were doing, but I betrayed an innocent; and the tears - weak, whiskey tears - would not wash from my brow the blood of a little brother.

The moose are gone, and their bones lie under the sand in the soft coal which was the forest by the estuary, thousands of years ago.

When the soil's fertility is being conserved instead of raped, when village life is a social unity, when pride of craftsmanship returns, when everyone works for the sake of adding beauty and importance to life, when every river is clean and bright, and the proud words 'I serve' are in everyone's heart and purpose. Then my country will be good enough for me.

The slow rhythm of the body, the insistent rhythm of the wit, were they becoming irreconcilable in modern civilisation? The sedentary life, frustration and irritability; work with the body, fatigue – and peace of mind.

The fundamental love that a man needs in his life, if he is to have steady spiritual ease is the love of place where he was a child, and first became aware of the light, and the objects which the light illumined... It is the hurt child become man that seeks the wilderness, wherein to rebuild himself.

The whole of the Universe is run by God, which is one vast Imagination, struggling against the almost irresistible brute forces of the cosmos.

Would the day come when scientists accepted that the ancients, who gave personalities to all natural phenomena, had divined the actual truth?

Life is big business, fornication, and death. Civilisation is... the sterilising of truth... Civilisation is world-citizenship and freedom from tradition, based on rootless eternal wandering in the mind that had nothing to lose and everything to gain including the whole world.