No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd, No arborett with painted blossoms drest And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al arownd.
Edmund SpenserRead
To drown a river beneath its own impounded water, by damming, is to kill what it was and to settle for something else. When the damming happens without good reason . . . then it's a tragedy of diminishment for the whole planet, a loss of one more wild thing, leaving Earth just a little flatter and tamer and simpler and uglier than before.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Damming a river destroys its essence and leads to a loss of natural beauty.
This quote by David Quammen highlights the negative impact of altering natural landscapes, particularly through damming rivers. It emphasizes that such actions not only change the physical characteristics of the river but also diminish the ecological diversity and beauty of the planet, suggesting that the loss of wild and untamed nature reduces the richness of our environment and experiences.
Themes
DammingRiverNatureEnvironmentConservationEcology
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on environmental conservation, one might quote this to illustrate the consequences of human intervention in nature.
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