Gerald Durrell quotes - page 2

And now, ladies and gentlemen, I present the famous escape artists, Krafty Kralefsky and his partner, Slithery Stephanides. (Gerald Durrell)
A sparrow can be as interesting as a bird of paradise, the behaviour of a mouse as interesting as that of a tiger. Our planet is beautifully intricate, brimming over with enigmas to be solved and riddles to be unravelled.
Gerald Durrell
It's all your fault, Mother,' said Larry austerely; 'you shouldn't have brought us up to be so selfish.' 'I like that!' exclaimed Mother. 'I never did anything of the sort!' 'Well, we didn't get as selfish as this without some guidance,' said Larry.
Gerald Durrell
The attitude of the average person to the world they live in is completely selfish.
Gerald Durrell
We now stand so aloof from nature that we think we are God. This has always been a dangerous supposition.
Gerald Durrell
Anyone who has got any pleasure at all from living should try to put something back. Life is like a superlative meal and the world is the maître d'hôtel. What I am doing is the equivalent of leaving a reasonable tip.
Gerald Durrell
Many people think that conservation is just about saving fluffy animals – what they don't realise is that we're trying to prevent the human race from committing suicide ... We have declared war on the biological world, the world that supports us ... At the moment the human race is in the position of a man sawing off the tree branch he is sitting on.
Gerald Durrell
We have inherited an incredibly beautiful and complex garden, but the trouble is that we have been appallingly bad gardeners.
Gerald Durrell
I have known silence: the cold earthy silence at the bottom of a newly dug well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the hot, drugged midday silence when everything is hypnotised and stilled into silence by the eye of the sun; the silence when great music ends.
Gerald Durrell
By and large, by asking the question "what use is it?" you are asking the animal to justify its existence without having justified your own.
Gerald Durrell
I have met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things... but - All this I did without you. This was my loss. All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain. All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of your company, for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips, body, and above all for your sweet, ever surprising mind which is an enchanting quarry in which it is my privilege to delve. (Gerald Durrell)
I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans' feathers.
Gerald Durrell
There would be a dreadful outcry if anyone suggested obliterating, say, the Tower of London, and quite rightly so; yet a unique and wonderful species of animal which has taken hundreds of thousands of years to develop to the stage we see today, can be snuffed out like a candle without more than a handful of people raising a finger or a voice in protest.
Gerald Durrell
"And now, ladies and gentlemen, I present the famous escape artists, Krafty Kralefsky and his partner, Slithery Stephanides." "Dear God," said Larry, "who thought of those names?" "Need you ask?" said Leslie; "Theodore. Kralefsky wanted to call the act 'The Mysterious Escapologist Illusionists' but Margo couldn't be guaranteed to say it properly." "One must be thankful for small mercies," said Larry.
Gerald Durrell