Joseph Wood Krutch (born in Knoxville, Tennessee, died in Tucson) was a writer, literary critic and naturalist.
He initially studied at the University of Tennessee, and his Ph.D. at Columbia University. After serving in the Navy in 1918, traveled around Europe for a year with his friend Mark Van Doren. Then he taught at Brooklyn Polytechnic center.
His first book of importance was a study of Edgar Allan Poe: Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius (1926), originally cut psychologistic. There was drama critic for The Nation and wrote several books, achieving notoriety for work critical to the environmental impact of science and technology: The Modern Temper (1929). He also wrote biographies of Samuel Johnson and Henry David Thoreau in the 40's, plus a dozen books of literary biographies and theatrical history. Throughout his life, wrote 35 books in total.
He worked as a professor at Columbia University from 1937 to 1953.
He moved to Arizona in 1952, where he wrote books on ecology, on the southwest desert environment and the natural history of the Grand Canyon, achieving fame as a naturalist and conservationist. His writings from this period express a longing for a simpler life and contemplative. "If you drive a car at 120 km / h, you can not do anything but keep the monster under control," he wrote.
Many of the manuscripts preserved in the Krutch University of Arizona, where, in 1980, got its name from a cactus garden in his honor: Joseph Wood Krutch Cactus Garden.
Our collection contains 18 quotes who is written / told by Joseph, under the main topics: Environmental - Pet.
"When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal. When he destroys one of the works of god we call him a sportsman"
"What a man knows is everywhere at war with what he wants"
"Though many have tried, no one has ever yet explained away the decisive fact that science, which can do so much, cannot decide what it ought to do"
"There is no such thing as a dangerous woman; there are only susceptible men"
"The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only"
"The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February"
"Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without"
"Only those within whose own consciousness the sun rise and set, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware of what living is"
"It is sometimes easier to head an institute for the study of child guidance than it is to turn one brat into a decent human being"
"It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder"
"If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either"
"If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers"
"Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude"
"Few people have ever seriously wished to be exclusively rational. The good life which most desire is a life warmed by passions and touched with that ceremonial grace which is impossible without some affectionate loyalty to traditional form and ceremonies"
"Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want"
"Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are subject to a good many different ailments, but I have never heard of one who suffered from insomnia"
"Both the cockroach and the bird would get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most"
"Any euphemism ceases to be euphemistic after a time and the true meaning begins to show through. It's a losing game, but we keep on trying"
