“It is pure force, forever embodying itself in a succession of watery shapes which vanish on its passing.” — Henry Beston

"One can see the quiet of the Bay — the subdued easterly wind blowing across the fields, the belt of winter weeds, the glint and warmth of the sun; there is a sense of old time dead and a new time beginning.” — Henry Beston

“Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night.”

"Be the answer what it will, to-day's civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night, is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day.” — Henry Beston

“I am drawn to the night. It is when the world is most quiet. This stillness allows the traveler to see and hear more than they would in the same spot under the light of the sun. There is poetry in the night” — Maryalice Eizenberg

"The sound of the wind blowing gently through the tops of the trees and the sound of the water crashing against the bar was an auditory sensation that added to the visual pull of the scene."  — Maryalice Eizenberg

"I am most at peace with myself when I am near the water or surrounded by trees. My mind settles, my breathing becomes relaxed and I can think of things beyond myself. Standing in a natural environment I become more.” "Nature is a part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery man ceases to be man." — Maryalice Eizenberg

"Today, 90 years after the book was first published, Beston is widely acknowledged as the spiritual father of the park. When the outer beaches of Cape Cod were under consideration for National Park status in the 1950s, the Department of the Interior sent representatives to evaluate the area. Quotations from The Outermost House were cited in their reports.

The Cape Cod National Seashore has drawn millions of visitors since it was first established by a decree from President John F. Kennedy in 1961. One of the great influences on the park’s establishment was the Cape Cod nature classic, The Outermost House, by Henry Beston.” — Don Wilding

"The ancient values of dignity, beauty, and poetry which sustain it are of Nature’s inspiration; they are born of the mystery and beauty of the world. Do no dishonour to the earth lest you dishonour the spirit of man. Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places.” — Henry Beston

“In my world of beach and dune these elemental presences lived and had their being, and under their arch there moved an incomparable pageant of nature and the year. The flux and reflux of ocean, the incomings of waves, the gatherings of birds, the pilgrimages of the peoples of the sea, winter and storm, the splendour of autumn and the holiness of spring—all these were part of the great beach.” — Henry Beston

“The dominant note is the great spilling crash made by each arriving wave. It may be hollow and booming, it may be heavy and churning, it may be a tumbling roar. The second fundamental sound is the wild seething cataract roar of the wave’s dissolution and the rush of its foaming waters up the beach—this second sound diminuendo. The third fundamental sound is the endless dissolving hiss of the inmost slides of foam.”— Henry Beston