Quotes About Stewardship

If it should turn out that we have mishandled our own lives as several civilizations before us have done, it seems a pity that we should involve the violet and the tree frog in our departure.

When man becomes greater than nature, nature, which gave us birth, will respond.

Well, friends, nobody owns nothing in this world. Even your breath is just loaned to you.

It had been my father's way to remove obstructions, to repair washouts in old trails, to leave each trail better than he had found it. Tread lightly on the paths, he had told me. Others will come when you have gone. That was how I would remember my father. There was never a place he walked that was not the better for his having passed. For every tree he cut down he planted two.

Treat the earth kindly, my friends, and it will give you comfort, security, and all a man may need. If you plant a flake of gold in the earth, will anything come of it? But plant a seed and it will repay you many times over.

There was something her father had said. "We do not own the land, Angie. We hold it in trust for tomorrow. We take our living from it, but we must leave it rich for your son and for his sons and for all of those who shall follow.

we hold this land only for a time. Whether we win it in peace or war, we hold it only in trust for other peoples, and other generations.

There was never a place he walked that was not the better for his having passed. For every tree he cut down he planted two.

That was how I would remember my father. There was never a place he walked that was not the better for his having passed. For every tree he cut down he planted two.

Rich people have no right to sit down and enjoy themselves, or let their money accumulate for others to waste. It's not half so sensible to leave legacies when one dies as it is to use the money wisely while alive, and enjoy making one's fellow creatures happy with it.

Rockefeller believed that nonprofit institutions should be even more circumspect with money than business organizations:

Great wealth is a great burden, a great responsibility.

You must distribute it faster than it grows! If you do not, it will crush you and your children and your children's children.

As the Lord's fiduciary, he was responsible for seeing the money well invested.

Led by Gates, these subordinates guaranteed that the Rockefeller millions were donated or invested scrupulously.

Waste neither time nor money" was his favorite motto.

As creatures, you and I are responsible to obey the Creator.

where the preservation of a natural resource like the redwoods is concerned, that there is a common sense limit. I mean, if you've looked at a hundred thousand acres or so of trees — you know, a tree is a tree, how many more do you need to look at?

If civilization is to survive, it must live on the interest, not the capital, of nature.

Our word "lord" comes from the Old English hlaford, or "loafward," he who guarded the bread supply — and was expected to share it.

Money is only as good as the people who possess it. It can be squandered and wasted, or it can be used prudently, to enrich and enhance.

Our present ecological crisis, the biggest single practical threat to our human existence in the middle to long term, has, religious people would say, a great deal to do with our failure to think of the world as existing in relation to the mystery of God, not just as a huge warehouse of stuff to be used for our convenience.

They will come back, come back again, As long as the red earth rolls. He never wasted a leaf or a tree. Do you think he would squander souls?

Is this the same teaching, when Christ says to the rich young man, Sell all that thou hast, and give it to the poor; and when the pastor says, Sell all that thou hast and – give it to me?