Audubon Quotes

My drawings at first were made altogether in watercolors, but they wanted softness and a great deal of finish. ~ John James Audubon

But Hopes are Shy Birds flying at a great distance seldom reached by the best of Guns. ~ John James Audubon

The nature of the place ... whether high or low, moist or dry, whether sloping north or south, or bearing tall trees or low shrubs ... generally gives hint as to its inhabitants. ~ John James Audubon

Travelling through the breeding places of our species is far from being as interesting to me as it is to inspect the breeding places of the feathery tribes of our country. ~ John James Audubon

[Audubon's works are] the most splendid monuments which art has erected in honor of ornithology. ~ Georges Cuvier

A Mocking Bird regularly resorts to the south angle of a chimney top and salutes us with sweetest notes from the rising of the moon until about midnight. ~ John James Audubon

Mathematics was hard, dull work. Geography pleased me more. For dancing I was quite enthusiastic. ~ John James Audubon

A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children. ~ John James Audubon

I never for a day gave up listening to the songs of our birds, or watching their peculiar habits, or delineating them in the best way I could. ~ John James Audubon

There is but one kind of love; God is love, and all his creatures derive theirs from his; only it is modified by the different degrees of intelligence in different beings and creatures. ~ John James Audubon

I can scarcely manage to scribble a tolerable English letter. I know that I am not a scholar, but meantime I am aware that no man living knows better than I do the habits of our birds. ~ John James Audubon

I waged war against my feelings. ~ John James Audubon

To repay evils with kindness is the religion I was taught to practise, and this will forever be my rule. ~ John James Audubon

From the top of a high rock, I obtained a good few of the most extensive and dreary wilderness I ever beheld. It chilled the heart to gaze on these barrens of Labrador. Indeed, I now dread every change of harbor, so horridly rugged and dangerous is the whole coast and country to the eye, and to the experienced man either of the sea or the land. ~ John James Audubon

But the moment a bird was dead, no matter how beautiful it had been in life, the pleasure of possession became blunted for me. ~ John James Audubon

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 Audubon

The mercantile business did not suit me. ~ John James Audubon

I discover that my friends think only of my apparel, and those upon whom I have conferred acts of kindness prefer to remind me of my errors. ~ John James Audubon

I cannot help but think a curious event is this life of mine. ~ John James Audubon

It is a wonderful honor to receive the Audubon Medal from the National Audubon Society, which for more than a century has fought tirelessly to protect and preserve our natural resources and environment for future generations. ~ Louis Bacon

A few days of idleness have completely sickened me, and given me what is called the blue-devils so severely, that I feel that the sooner I go to work and drive them off, the better. ~ John James Audubon

Many of the birds Audubon painted are now extinct, and still we go on killing them, more or less casually, with our pesticides and wires and machinery. ~ John Burnside

In my deepest troubles, I frequently would wrench myself from the persons around me and retire to some secluded part of our noble forests. ~ John James Audubon

How could I make a little book, when I have seen enough to make a dozen large books? ~ John James Audubon

The gay bunting erects his white crest, and gives utterance to the joy he feels in the presence of his brooding mate; the willow grouse on the rock crows his challenge aloud; each floweret, chilled by the night air, expands its pure petals; the gentle breeze shakes from the blades of grass the heavy dewdrops. ~ John James Audubon

Audubon considered it a bad day if he didn't shoot a hundred birds. "It's amazing that his name has become synonymous with conservation. ~ Meryl Sawyer

[Drawing should be] a journey of pleasure. Each step must present to the travellers' view objects that are eminently interesting, varied in their appearances, and attracting to such a degree as to excite in each individual thus happily employed the desire of knowing all respecting all he sees. ~ John James Audubon

The Troubadours Etc."

Just for this evening, let's not mock them.
Not their curtsies or cross-garters
or ever-recurring pepper trees in their gardens
promising, promising.

At least they had ideas about love.

All day we've driven past cornfields, past cows poking their heads
through metal contraptions to eat.
We've followed West 84, and what else?
Irrigation sprinklers fly past us, huge wooden spools in the fields,
lounging sheep, telephone wires,
yellowing flowering shrubs.

Before us, above us, the clouds swell, layers of them,
the violet underneath of clouds.
Every idea I have is nostalgia. Look up:
there is the sky that passenger pigeons darkened and filled -
darkened for days, eclipsing sun, eclipsing all other sound
with the thunder of their wings.
After a while, it must have seemed that they followed
not instinct or pattern but only
one another.

When they stopped, Audubon observed,
they broke the limbs of stout trees by the weight of the numbers.

And when we stop we'll follow - what?
Our hearts?

The Puritans thought that we are granted the ability to love
only through miracle,
but the troubadours knew how to burn themselves through,
how to make themselves shrines to their own longing.
The spectacular was never behind them.

Think of days of those scarlet-breasted, blue-winged ~ Mary Szybist

During all these years there existed within me a tendency to follow Nature in her walks. ~ John James Audubon

Great men show politeness in a particular way; a smile suffices to assure you that you are welcome, and keep about their avocations as if you were a member of the family. ~ John James Audubon

I'm not really a bird person or an Audubon guy who studies them, but as I was around them, they interested me. ~ Gordon Lightfoot

Patiently and with industry did I apply myself to study, for although I felt the impossibility of giving life to my productions, I did not abandon the idea of representing nature. ~ John James Audubon

I wish I had eight pairs of hands, and another body to shoot the specimens. ~ John James Audubon

On one hand the Christian missionaries sought to convert the heathen, by fire and sword if need be, to the gospel of peace, brotherhood, and heavenly beatitude; on the other, the more venturesome spirits wished to throw off the constraining traditions and customs, and begin life afresh, levelling distinctions of class, eliminating superfluities and luxuries, privileges and distinctions, and hierarchical rank. In short, to go back to the Stone Ages, before the institutions of Bronze Age civilization had crystallized. Though the Western hemisphere was indeed inhabited, and many parts of it were artfully cultivated, so much of it was so sparsely occupied that the European thought of it as a virgin continent against whose wildness he pitted his manly strength. In one mood the European invaders preached the Christian gospel to the native idolaters, subverted them with strong liquors, forced them to cover their nakedness with clothes, and worked them to an early death in mines; in another, the pioneer himself took on the ways of the North American Indian, adopted his leather costume, and reverted to the ancient paleolithic economy: hunting, fishing, gathering shellfish and berries, revelling in the wilderness and its solitude, defying orthodox law and order, and yet, under pressure, improvising brutal substitutes. The beauty of that free life still haunted Audubon in his old age. ~ Lewis Mumford

My entrance into the courtyard caused a small stir among the lookouts. I could tell because in the middle of February, in the dark of night, Baxter Terrace suddenly sounded like an Audubon Society refuge - birdcalls being the latest in urban drug - selling counterintelligence...

Birdcalls allowed much more information to be imparted to other members of the operation, without the visitor being aware of what was being communicated. So while a crow's harsh cry could harken the arrival of a member of the city narcotics unit - a significant threat - the sweet song of a chickadee might signal an officer who was merely escorting a social worker to an appointment allowing business to continue in guarded fashion. Someone like me, a stranger on unknown business, might warrant a whipporwill's call.

Where exactly a city kid learned what a whipporwill sounded like, I have no idea. But these kids were nothing if not resourceful. It makes you wonder what they could have accomplished under different circumstances. ~ Brad Parks

In America, business is the first object in view at all times, and rightly it should be so. ~ John James Audubon

The Golden Eagle, which has universally been considered as a bird of most extraordinary powers of flight, is in my estimation little more than a sluggard, though its wings are long and ample. ~ John James Audubon

The fact is I am growing old too fast, alas! I feel it, and yet work I will, and may God grant me life to see the last plate of my mammoth work finished. ~ John James Audubon

As I grew up I was fervently desirous of becoming acquainted with Nature. ~ John James Audubon

Thank God it has rained all day. I say thank God, though rain is no rarity, because it is the duty of every man to be thankful for whatever happens by the will of the Omnipotent Creator; yet it was not so agreeable to any of my party as a fine day would have been. ~ John James Audubon

Because my father was often absent on naval duty, my mother suffered me to do much as I pleased. ~ John James Audubon

Poor France, thy fine climate, rich vineyards, and the wishes of the learned avail nothing; thou art a destitute beggar, and not the powerful friend thou wert represented to me. ~ John James Audubon

The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those who sang the best. ~ John James Audubon

Reader, persons who have never witnessed a hurricane, such as not unfrequently desolates the sultry climates of the south, can scarcely form an idea of their terrific grandeur. One would think that, not content with laying waste all on land, it must needs sweep the waters of the shallows quite dry to quench its thirst. ~ John James Audubon

When the bird and the book disagree, believe the bird. ~ John James Audubon

I was a reasonably good student in college ... My chief interests were scientific. When I entered college, I was devoted to out-of-doors natural history, and my ambition was to be a scientific man of the Audubon, or Wilson, or Baird, or Coues type-a man like Hart Merriam, or Frank Chapman, or Hornaday, to-day. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

My heart swelled with uncontrollable delight ... ~ John James Audubon

My wife determined that my genius should prevail, and that my final success as an ornithologist should be triumphant. ~ John James Audubon

The eggers destroy all the eggs that are sat upon, to force the birds to lay fresh eggs, and by robbing them regularly compel them to lay until nature is exhausted, and so but few young ones are raised. ~ John James Audubon

The worse my drawings were, the more beautiful did the originals appear. ~ John James Audubon

Nature indifferently copied is far superior to the best idealities. ~ John James Audubon

On the 17th of May, the Delos put out to sea. I was immediately affected with sea-sickness, which, however, lasted but a short time. I remained on deck constantly, forcing myself to exercise. ~ John James Audubon