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Gerald Durrell Biography

Gerald Malcolm Durrell, OBE (7 January 1925 – 30 January 1995) was a British naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter. He founded what is now called the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Durrell Wildlife Park on the Channel Island of Jersey in 1959. He wrote a number of books based on his life as an animal collector and enthusiast. The most famous is "My Family and Other Animals". He was the youngest brother of novelist Lawrence Durrell.

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Gerald Durrell Quotes

Each day had a tranquility a timelessness about it so that you wished it would never end. But then the dark skin of the night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us glossy and colorful as a child's transfer and with the same tinge of unreality.

Children, Dark, Day, Night, Skin, Unreality

I can't be expected to produce deathless prose in an atmosphere of gloom and eucalyptus.

Atmosphere, Deathless, Eucalyptus, Produce, Prose

My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood.

Childhood, Children, Give, Giving, Life

Erosion, desertification, and pollution have become our lot. It is a weird form of suicide, for we are bleeding our planet to death.

Become, Erosion, Pollution, Suicidal, Suicide, Weird

What fools we are, eh? What fools, sitting here in the sun, singing. And of love, too! I am too old for it and you are too young, and yet we waste our time singing about it. Ah, well, let's have a glass of wine, eh?

Glass, Glasses, Singing, Sitting, Waste, Wine

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 civilization.

Civilization, Grave, Progress, Wildlife, Write, Writing

Zoos should concentrate more on the preservation side of things.

Preservation, Should, Sides, Things, Zoos

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 frind of all animals.

Animal, Fackt, Hart, Lives, Men

A house is not a home until it has a dog.

Dog, Family, Home, House

Gradually the magic of the island [Corfu] settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen.

Corfu, Islands, Magic, Pollen, Settled

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 rising from the teapot shawl.

Arrive, Cake, Cups, Rising, Tea, Wisp

By neglecting our garden, we are storing up for ourselves, in the not very distant future, a world catastrophe as bad as any atomic war, and we are doing it with all the bland complacency of an idiot child chopping up a Rembrandt with a pair of scissors.

Catastrophe, Children, Garden, Storing, War

I do wish you wouldn't argue with me when I'm knitting.

Argue, Arguing, Knitting, Wish

Aspirin is so good for roses, brandy for sweet peas, and a squeeze of lemon-juice for the fleshy flowers, like begonias.

Aspirin, Brandy, Flower, Rose, Roses, Sweet

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 always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings.

Book, Charity, Human, Life, Pictures, Science

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 will exterminate the species as surely as if you had shot it. So conservation means that we have to preserve forest and grassland, river and lake, even the sea itself. This is vital not only for the preservation of animal life generally, but for the future existence of man himself-a point that seems to escape many people.

Animal, Destroy, Mean, Men, River, Unless

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 eyes, frosty gold, with an expression of intense, predatory madness in them. The crooked arms, with their fringes of sharp teeth, would be raised in mock supplication to the insect world, so humble, so fervent, trembling slightly when a butterfly flew too close.

Butterfly, Eye, Humble, Lightly, Madness, Quintessence

Animals generally return the love you lavish on them by a swift bite in passing-not unlike friends and wives.

Animal, Bite, Friends, Lavish, Love You, Wife

There is no first world and third world. There is only one world, for all of us to live and delight in.

Delight, Firsts, Live, World

The great ecosystems are like complex tapestries - a million complicated threads, interwoven, make up the whole picture. Nature can cope with small rents in the fabric; it can even, after a time, cope with major disasters like floods, fires, and earthquakes. What nature cannot cope with is the steady undermining of its fabric by the activities of man.

Activities, Ecosystems, Fire, Men, Nature, Steady

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