Gerald Durrell Quotes

• There is no first world and third world. There is only one world, for all of us to live and delight in.

  Gerald Durrell

  Delight, World, Firsts

  Introduction by Gerald Durrell to Lee McGeorge Durrell's book "State of the Ark", 1986.

  62 Copy quote

• You cannot begin to preserve any species of animal unless you preserve the habitat in which it dwells. Disturb or destroy that habitat and you will exterminate the species as surely as if you had shot it. So conservation means that we have to preserve forest and grassland, river and lake, even the sea itself. This is vital not only for the preservation of animal life generally, but for the future existence of man himself - a point that seems to escape many people.

  Gerald Durrell

  Mean, Animal, Men

  "Two in the Bush". Book by Gerald Durrell, 1966.

  65 Copy quote

• Remember that the animals and plants have no M.P. they can write to; they can't perform sit-down strikes or, indeed, strikes of any sort; they have nobody to speak for them except us, the human beings who share the world with them but do not own it.

  Gerald Durrell

  Writing, Animal, World

  Gerald Durrell (2011). “Catch Me a Colobus”, p.165, Pan Macmillan

  43 Copy quote

• A house is not a home until it has a dog.

  Gerald Durrell

  Family, Dog, Home

  Gerald Durrell (1995). “Best dog stories”

  69 Copy quote

• All over the world the wildlife that I write about is in grave danger. It is being exterminated by what we call the progress of civilization.

  Gerald Durrell

  Writing, Civilization, Progress

  48 Copy quote

• Until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings.

  Gerald Durrell

  Life, Book, Science

  Gerald Durrell (1970). “Encounters with Animals”

  53 Copy quote

• When man continues to destroy nature, he saws the very branch on which he sits since the rational protection of nature is at the same time the protection of mankind

  Gerald Durrell

  Men, Branches, Saws

  Gerald Durrell (2011). “The Stationary Ark”, p.5, Pan Macmillan

  43 Copy quote

• The great ecosystems are like complex tapestries - a million complicated threads, interwoven, make up the whole picture. Nature can cope with small rents in the fabric; it can even, after a time, cope with major disasters like floods, fires, and earthquakes. What nature cannot cope with is the steady undermining of its fabric by the activities of man.

  Gerald Durrell

  Men, Fire, Ecosystems

  Gerald Durrell (1989). “The Amateur Naturalist”, Alfred A. Knopf

  42 Copy quote

• In conservation, the motto should always be 'never say die'.

  Gerald Durrell

  Conservation, Motto, Should

  Gerald Durrell (1993). “The Aye-aye and I: A Rescue Mission in Madagascar”, p.161, Arcade Publishing

  30 Copy quote

• Animals generally return the love you lavish on them by a swift bite in passing-not unlike friends and wives.

  Gerald Durrell

  Love You, Animal, Wife

  17 Copy quote

• Each day had a tranquility a timelessness about it so that you wished it would never end. But then the dark skin of the night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us glossy and colorful as a child's transfer and with the same tinge of unreality.

  Gerald Durrell

  Children, Dark, Night

  Gerald Durrell, Lee Durrell (1996). “The best of Gerald Durrell”, Harpercollins

  26 Copy quote

• Erosion, desertification, and pollution have become our lot. It is a weird form of suicide, for we are bleeding our planet to death.

  Gerald Durrell

  Suicide, Suicidal, Erosion

  17 Copy quote

• My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood.

  Gerald Durrell

  Children, Giving, Childhood

  21 Copy quote

• By neglecting our garden, we are storing up for ourselves, in the not very distant future, a world catastrophe as bad as any atomic war, and we are doing it with all the bland complacency of an idiot child chopping up a Rembrandt with a pair of scissors.

  Gerald Durrell

  Children, War, Garden

  "Two in the Bush". Book by Gerald Durrell, 1966.

  23 Copy quote

• Gradually the magic of the island [Corfu] settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen.

  Gerald Durrell

  Islands, Magic, Pollen

  17 Copy quote

• If naturalists go to heaven (about which there is considerable ecclesiastical doubt), I hope that I will be furnished with a troop of kakapo to amuse me in the evening instead of television.

  Gerald Durrell

  Heaven, Doubt, Television

  Introduction by Gerald Durrell to David Butler's book "Quest for the Kakapo" (p. 6), 1989.

  24 Copy quote

• Zoos should concentrate more on the preservation side of things.

  Gerald Durrell

  Zoos, Sides, Should

  36 Copy quote

• They were maps that lived, maps that one could study, frown over, and add to; maps, in short, that really meant something.

  Gerald Durrell

  Add, Maps, Study

  21 Copy quote

• Among the myrtles the mantids moved, lightly, carefully, swaying slightly, the quintessence of evil. They were lank and green, with chinless faces and monstrous globular eyes, frosty gold, with an expression of intense, predatory madness in them. The crooked arms, with their fringes of sharp teeth, would be raised in mock supplication to the insect world, so humble, so fervent, trembling slightly when a butterfly flew too close.

  Gerald Durrell

  Humble, Butterfly, Eye

  20 Copy quote

• I said I 'liked' being half-educated; you were so much more 'surprised' at everything when you were ignorant.

  Gerald Durrell

  Knowledge, Ignorant, Half

  "My Family and Other Animals". Book by Gerald Durrell, 1956.

  14 Copy quote

• What fools we are, eh? What fools, sitting here in the sun, singing. And of love, too! I am too old for it and you are too young, and yet we waste our time singing about it. Ah, well, let's have a glass of wine, eh?

  Gerald Durrell

  Wine, Glasses, Singing

  16 Copy quote

• Aspirin is so good for roses, brandy for sweet peas, and a squeeze of lemon-juice for the fleshy flowers, like begonias.

  Gerald Durrell

  Sweet, Flower, Rose

  Gerald Durrell (2006). “My Family and Other Animals”, p.203, Penguin UK

  10 Copy quote

• I can't be expected to produce deathless prose in an atmosphere of gloom and eucalyptus.

  Gerald Durrell

  Atmosphere, Produce, Prose

  6 Copy quote

• Tea would arrive, the cakes squatting on cushions of cream, toast in a melting shawl of butter, cups agleam and a faint wisp of steam rising from the teapot shawl.

  Gerald Durrell

  Cake, Tea, Rising

  Gerald Durrell, Lee Durrell (1996). “The best of Gerald Durrell”, Harpercollins

  5 Copy quote

• Right in the Hart of the Africn Jungel a small wite man lives. Now there is one extraordinary fact about him that he is the frind of all animals.

  Gerald Durrell

  Animal, Men, Hart

  "Gerald Durrell: An Authorized Biography". Book by Douglas Botting, 1999.

  5 Copy quote

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