Gerald Durrell Quotes

28 quotes in 552 categories

• Erosion, desertification, and pollution have become our lot. It is a weird form of suicide, for we are bleeding our planet to death.
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• The great ecosystems are like complex tapestries - a million complicated threads, interwoven, make up the whole picture. Nature can cope with small rents in…
• Animals generally return the love you lavish on them by a swift bite in passing-not unlike friends and wives.
• As I watched the pulsing fire among the trees and heard the beat of the drum merge and tremble with the voices, forming an intricate…
• 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…
• Aspirin is so good for roses, brandy for sweet peas, and a squeeze of lemon-juice for the fleshy flowers, like begonias.
• Zoos should concentrate more on the preservation side of things.
• 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…
• There is no first world and third world. There is only one world, for all of us to live and delight in.
• 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…
• Right in the Hart of the Africn Jungel a small wite man lives. Now there is one xtrordenry fackt about him that he is the…
• I do wish you wouldn't argue with me when I'm knitting.
• I said I *liked* being half-educated; you were so much more *surprised* at everything when you were ignorant.
• Gradually the magic of the island [Corfu] settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen.
• 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…
• They were maps that lived, maps that one could study, frown over, and add to; maps, in short, that really meant something.
• My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood.

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