Joseph Wood Krutch

Custom has furnished the only basis which ethics have ever had.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Happiness is a kind of gratitude and vice versa.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

August creates as she slumbers, replete and satisfied.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

The cockroach and the bird were both here long before we were. Both could.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Life is very persistent and very ingenious in seizing every opportunity.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

There is no such thing as a dangerous woman; there are only susceptible men.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Nature takes no account of even the most reasonable of human excuses.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

The human mind can appreciate the One only by seeing it first in the Many.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Civilizations die from philosophical calm, irony, and a sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Nature, in her blind thirst for life has filled every possible cranny of the rotting earth with some sort of fantastic creature.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Any euphemism ceases to be euphemistic after a time and the true meaning begins to show through. It's a losing game, but…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

There is no conceivable human action which custom has not at one time justified and at another condemned.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Being the inventor of sex would seem to be a sufficient distinction for a creature just barely large enough to be seen…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal. When he destroys one of the…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Man is the only one in whom the instinct of life falters long enough to enable it to ask the question "Why?

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Long before I ever saw the desert I was aware of the mystical overtones which the observation of nature made audible to…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

We have not merely escaped from something but into something... We have joined the greatest of all communities, which is not that…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

And the thing which is missing is love, some feeling for, as well as some understanding of, the inclusive community of rocks…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Few people have ever seriously wished to be exclusively rational. The good life which most desire is a life warmed by passions…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Custom has furnished the only basis which ethics have ever had, and there is no conceivable human action which custom has not…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

We need some contact with the things we sprang from. We need nature at least as a part of the context of…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

To those who study her, Nature reveals herself as extraordinarily fertile and ingenious in devising means, but she has no ends which…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

The most important part of our lives-our sensations, emotions, desires, and aspirations-takes place in a universe of illusions which science can attenuate…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

“For a real glimpse into an almost vanished world, one should look...at a scorpion who so obviously has no business lingering into…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

“I have drawn from books written by learned experts and also upon my observation of living creatures in whom I have long…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Is it wholly fantastic to admit the possibility that Nature herself strove toward what we call beauty? Face to face with any…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

A tragic writer does not have to believe in God, but he must believe in man.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

What a man knows is everywhere at war with what he wants.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

In the long run our boasted control of nature is a delusion.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

The famous balance of nature is the most extraordinary of all cybernetic systems. Left to itself, it is always self-regulated.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

It is sometimes easier to head an institute for the study of child guidance than it is to turn one brat into…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Both the cockroach and the bird would get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Only those within whose own consciousness the sun rise and set, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

If we are deprived of hope as well as fear, we are compensated by being given an almost endless patience for enduring…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

An abundance of some good things is perfectly compatible with the scarcity of others; that life is everywhere precarious, man everywhere small.

— Joseph Wood Krutch

Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are subject to a good many ailments, but I never heard of one who suffered…

— Joseph Wood Krutch

The rare moment is not the moment when there is something worth looking at, but the moment when we are capable of…

— Joseph Wood Krutch