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.

- Пикник в Англия?! – възкликна Лари. – Мисля, че няма да мога да го понеса. Нали си спомням това приключение от младостта си: очарованието на мравките и пясъка в храната, паленето на огън с мокри дърва, ревящите бури, лекия сняг, който се сипе върху теб, докато дъвчеш първия си сандвич…

His clothes were such elegant confections, beautifully hand-stitched and of such exquisite materials, that Margo was torn between envy at his wardrobe and disgust

People who are car-sick are never sea-sick,’ explained Mother.

Air! Air!" croaked Kralefsky, "Give me air!" "Interesting," said Colonel Ribbindane. "Saw a pygmy like that once in the Congo... been trapped in an elephant's stomach. The elephant is the largest African quadruped.." "Do get him out," said Mother agitatedly. "Get some brandy." "Fan him! Blow on him!" shrilled Margo, and burst into tears. "He's dying, he's dying, and he never finished his trick.

You are not necessarily depriving him of his liberty, for territory is a form of natural cage and the word "liberty" does not have the same connotation for an animal as it does for a chest-beating liberal homo sapiens, who can afford the luxury of abstract ideas. What you are, in fact, doing is much more important, you are taking away his territory, so you must take great care to provide him with an adequate substitute, or you will get a bored, sick or dead animal on your hands. The thing that turns a cage into a territory may be something quite slight, but it need not be size. It might be the shape of the cage, the number of branches or the lack of them, the absence or presence of a pond, a patch of sand, a chunk of log, which could make all the difference. Such a detail, trivial to the uninformed visitor, can help the animal consider this area his territory, rather than simply a place where he ekes out his existence. As I say it is not necessarily size which is of prime importance. This is where people who criticise zoos go wrong, for they generally have little idea what circumscribed lives most animals lead.

The phosphorescence was particularly good that night. By plunging your hand into the water and dragging it along you could draw a wide golden-green ribbon of cold fire across the sea, and when you dived as you hit the surface it seemed as though you had plunged into a frosty furnace of glinting light. When we were tired we waded out of the sea, the water running off our bodies so that we seemed to be on fire, and lay on the sand to eat. Then, as the wine was opened at the end of the meal, as if by arrangement, a few fireflies appeared in the olives behind us – a sort of overture to the show.

First of all there were just two or three green specks, sliding smoothly through the trees, winking regularly. But gradually more and more appeared, until parts of the olive-grove were lit with a weird green glow. Never had we seen so many fireflies congregated in one spot; they flicked through the trees in swarms, they crawled on the grass, the bushes and olive-trunks, they drifted in swarms over our heads and landed on the rocks, like green embers. Glittering streams of them flew out over the bay, swirling over the water, and then, right on cue, the porpoises appeared, swimming in line into the bay, rocking rhythmically through the water, their backs as if painted with phosphorus. In the centre of the bay they swam around, diving and rolling, occasionally leaping high in the air and falling back into a conflagration of light. With the fireflies above and illuminated porpoises below it was a fantastic sight. We could even see the luminous trails beneath the surface where the porpoises swam in fiery patterns across the sandy bottom, and when they leapt high in the air drops of emerald glowing water flicked from them, and you could not tell if it was phosphorescence or fireflies you were looking at. For an hour or so we watched this pageant, and then slowly the fireflies drifted back inland farther down the coast. Then the porpoises lined up and sped out to sea, leaving a flamin

— Estos unicornios son todos iguales — comentó Loro con tristeza — ­, más vanidosos que un pavo. Dales un espejo, o simplemente cualquier cosa en la que puedan verse reflejados, y se quedan como hipnotizados. — Pero éste no es más que un niño — dijó Penélope — , y hay que reconocer que es realmente guapo.

Why keep in touch with them? That's what I want to know,' asked Larry despairingly. 'What satisfaction does it give you? They're all either fossilized or mental.'
'Indeed, they're not mental,' said Mother indignantly.
'Nonsense, Mother... Look at Aunt Bertha, keeping flocks of imaginary cats... and there's Great-Uncle Patrick, who wanders about nude and tells complete strangers how he killed whales with a penknife...They're all bats.

‎'All we need is a book,' roared Leslie; 'don't panic, hit 'em with a book.

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?

It was the hottest hour of the day when even the cicadas seem to slow down and falter occasionally in their song. The black ants moved busily across the cloth, gathering the crumbs of our food.

The uncivilized behavior of some human beings in a zoo has to be seen to be believed.

Right in the Heart of the African Jungle a small white man lives. Now there is one extraordinary fact about him that he is the friend of all animals.

The Daffodil-Yellow Villa

The new villa was enormous, a tall, square Venetian mansion, with faded daffodil-yellow walls, green shutters, and a fox-red roof. It stood on a hill overlooking the sea, surrounded by unkempt olive groves and silent orchards of lemon and orange trees.

... the little walled and sunken garden that ran along one side of the house, its wrought-iron gates scabby with rust, had roses, anemones and geraniums sprawling across the weed-grown paths ...

... there were fifteen acres of garden to explore, a vast new paradise sloping down to the shallow, tepid sea.