My wife determined that my genius should prevail, and that my final success as an ornithologist should be triumphant.
John James AudubonRead
The Fur Company may be called the exterminating medium of these wild and almost uninhabitable regions, which cupidity or the love of money alone would induce man to venture into. Where can I now go and find nature undisturbed?
Interpretation
What this quote means
Audubon reflects on the destruction of nature driven by greed and the diminishing places where one can find untouched wilderness.
In this quote, John James Audubon expresses a deep concern for the natural world, highlighting how the pursuit of wealth leads to the exploitation and degradation of wild and pristine areas. He laments the loss of untouched landscapes, suggesting that the greed for profit is destroying the beauty and serenity of nature, leaving one to wonder where such untouched environments still exist.
Themes
NatureGreedDestructionWildlifeEnvironment
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on environmental conservation, one might quote Audubon to emphasize the impact of human greed on nature.
More from John James Audubon
All quotes βThe best recommendation I can have is my own talents, and the fruits of my own labors, and what others will not do for me, I will try and do for myself.
John James AudubonRead
As I grew up I was fervently desirous of becoming acquainted with Nature.
John James AudubonRead
But Hopes are Shy Birds flying at a great distance seldom reached by the best of Guns.
John James AudubonRead
Ah! How often when I have been abroad on the mountains has my heart risen in grateful praise to God that it was not my destiny to waste and pine among those noisome congregations of the city.
John James AudubonRead
One day I caught four Dolphins, how much I have gazed at these beautiful creatures... as they changed their hue in twenty varieties of richest arrangement of tints.
John James AudubonRead
Similar quotes
As a child, I was aware of the widely-held attitude that the ocean is so big, so resilient that we could use the sea as the ultimate place to dispose of anything we did not want, from garbage and nuclear wastes to sludge from sewage to entire ships that had reached the end of their useful life.
Sylvia EarleRead
The grass he walked through was new and a sweet smell clung to his clothes. There was blue dye on his hands from the wild irises... that the color of the sky was a shade that could never be replicated in any photograph, just as Heaven could never be seen from the confines of Earth.
Alice HoffmanRead
Like a shadow that does not permit us to jump over it, but moves with us to maintain its proper distance, pollution is nature's answer to culture. When we have learned to recycle pollution into potent information, we will have passed over completely into the new cultural ecology.
William Irwin ThompsonRead
In the world in which we live, it is almost a necessity to be able to regain one's strength of body and spirit, especially for those who live in the city, where the conditions of life, often feverish, leave little room for silence, reflection and relaxed contact with nature.
Pope Benedict XviRead
Nature in her unfathomable designs had mixed us of clay and flame, of brain and mind, that the two things hang indubitably together and determine each other's being but how or why, no mortal may ever know.
William JamesRead
When you pollute a river, it's a supreme injustice to those who are downstream and those who live in the river who are not human beings.
Paul HawkenRead