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Tropics Quotes

“Back home, Huxley drew from this experience to compose a series of audacious attacks against the Romantic love of wilderness. The worship of nature, he wrote, is "a modern, artificial, and somewhat precarious invention of refined minds." Byron and Wordsworth could only rhapsodize about their love of nature because the English countryside had already been "enslaved to man." In the tropics, he observed, where forests dripped with venom and vines, Romantic poets were notably absent. Tropical peoples knew something Englishmen didn't. "Nature," Huxley wrote, "is always alien and inhuman, and occasionally diabolic." And he meant always: Even in the gentle woods of Westermain, the Romantics were naive in assuming that the environment was humane, that it would not callously snuff out their lives with a bolt of lightning or a sudden cold snap. After three days amid the Tuckamore, I was inclined to agree.”

PoetryNatureEnvironmentRomanticTropicsEngish
Book:On Trails: An Exploration
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“We know that there are many animals on this continent not found in the Old World. These must have been carried from here to the ark, and then brought back afterwards. Were the peccary, armadillo, ant-eater, sloth, agouti, vampire-bat, marmoset, howling and prehensile-tailed monkey, the raccoon and muskrat carried by the angels from America to Asia? How did they get there? Did the polar bear leave his field of ice and journey toward the tropics? How did he know where the ark was? Did the kangaroo swim or jump from Australia to Asia? Did the giraffe, hippopotamus, antelope and orang-outang journey from Africa in search of the ark? Can absurdities go farther than this?”

HumorFunnyAmericaKnowledgeFantasyJourneyBibleMythIceAustraliaSwimFloodAbsurdityAngelsAfricaAsiaSlothOld WorldArkGiraffeThe BibleFableTropicsJumpHippopotamusNoah S ArkHowlingKangarooMuskratPolar BearAntelopeArmadilloOrangutanThe FloodAnteaterAgoutiFlood MythMarmosetPrehensile Tailed MonkeyRacoonVampire Bat
Book:Some Mistakes of Moses
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“The West Indian is not exactly hostile to change, but he is not much inclined to believe in it. This comes from a piece of wisdom that his climate of eternal summer teaches him. It is that, under all the parade of human effort and noise, today is like yesterday, and tomorrow will be like today; that existence is a wheel of recurring patterns from which no one escapes; that all anybody does in this life is live for a while and then die for good, without finding out much; and that therefore the idea is to take things easy and enjoy the passing time under the sun. The white people charging hopefully around the islands these days in the noon glare, making deals, bulldozing airstrips, hammering up hotels, laying out marinas, opening new banks, night clubs, and gift shops, are to him merely a passing plague. They have come before and gone before.”

LifeExistenceSummerModernityCaribbeanTropicsWest Indies
Book:Don't Stop the Carnival
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“The vegetation grew so dense the road looked like a square slice of cake taken out clean with a knife. Although the wet tropics covers less than one percent of Australia, it contains almost half of our bird species, a third of our mammal species, more than half of our butterfly species, and over seven hundred plant species endemic to the area. The rain forest seemed to inhale and exhale in a sweaty tangle of heaving bio matter.”

AustraliaBirdsMammalsQueenslandRainforestTropicsNative SpeciesDaintree
Book:Stranger Country
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“A finer body of men has never been gathered by any nation than the men who have done the work of building the Panama Canal; the conditions under which they have lived and have done their work have been better than in any similar work ever undertaken in the tropics; they have all felt an eager pride in their work; and they have made not only America but the whole world their debtors by what they have accomplished.”

MenWorldHas BeensMadeDoneWholeBodyAmericaNationsFeltConditionsBuildingHe ManPrideWhole WorldAccomplishedCanalsDebtorsTropicsPanamaPanama Canal
Book:Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
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“True, when you behold Damascus from the Salahiyeh, the last slope of the Anti-Lebanon, it is the realization of all that you have dreamed of Oriental splendor; the world has no picture more dazzling. It is Beauty carried to the Sublime, as I have felt when overlooking some boundless forest of palms within the tropics.”

WorldLastsFeltForestsRealizationSublimePalmsBoundlessSplendorSlopesDazzlingLebanonOverlookingTropics
Book:The Lands of the Saracen, Or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain
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“These European White Men, then, with civilization in their blood and in their destiny, crossed the Atlantic and set up a new civilization on a bleak and rock bound coast. It was the White Men who drove north to Alaska and west to California; the men who opened up the tropics and subdued the Arctics; the men who mastered the African Veldts; the men who peopled Australia and seized the gates of the world at Suez, Gibraltar and Panama.”

MenWorldWhiteDestinyBloodRocksHe ManCivilizationWestBoundsCaliforniaAustraliaGatesCoastWhite ManAlaskaBleakTropicsPanama
Author:Ben Klassen
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“Moss grows where nothing else can grow. It grows on bricks. It grows on tree bark and roofing slate. It grows in the Arctic Circle and in the balmiest tropics; it also grows on the fur of sloths, on the backs of snails, on decaying human bones. ... It is a resurrection engine. A single clump of mosses can lie dormant and dry for forty years at a stretch, and then vault back again into life with a mere soaking of water.”

YearsHumansLyingGrowsWaterTreeMereBonesCirclesDryFortyBiologyEnginesResurrectionBricksFurBarkBack AgainSlothMossSlateArcticDormantSnailVaultsSoakingTropicsRoofing
Book:The Signature of All Things
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“...the need for a garden of rare palms and vines and ornamental trees and shrubs which would be near enough to a growing city to form a quiet place where children with their elders could peer, as it were, into those fascinating jungles and palm glades of the tropics which have for generations stimulated the imaginations of American youth.”

NeedsChildrenEnoughWould BeFormImaginationCitiesGrowingGenerationsTreeYouthQuietGardenFascinatingPeersPalmsJungleEldersVinesQuiet PlaceTropicsShrubsHorticultureAmerican Youth
Author:David Fairchild
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“Children, as well as grown-ups, in their individual, glorified, drudgery-proof homes of Labrador, the tropics, the Orient, or where you will, to which they can pass with pleasure and expedition by means of ever-improving transportation, will be able to tune in their television and radio to the moving picture lecture of, let us say, President Lowell of Harvard; the professor of Mathematics of Oxford; of the doctor of Indian antiquities of Delhi, etc.”

WellsMeanChildrenHomeAbleMovingIndividualPresidentPleasureTelevisionDoctorsMathematicsRadioProofIndianEtcTunesProfessorsImprovingLecturesHarvardTransportationAntiquityOxfordDrudgeryExpeditionsDelhiTropicsLabradorsTelevision And Radio
Author:R. Buckminster Fuller
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“Who when examining in the cabinet of the entomologist the gay and exotic butterflies, and singular cicadas, will associate with these lifeless objects, the ceaseless harsh music of the latter, and the lazy flight of the former - the sure accompaniments of the still, glowing noonday of the tropics.”

StillsObjectsGayFlightFormerLazyLatterButterflyHarshAssociatesGlowingCabinetsExoticExaminingLifelessTropicsCicadas
Book:Journal of Researches Into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World: Under the Command of Capt. Fitz Roy
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“Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, and arises out of sex and beauty, is intuition." "And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages on the depths of the seven seas, and through the salt they reel with drunken delight and in the tropics tremble they with love and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods.”

AgeDesireStrongSexConsciousnessSeaRocksDepthSevenDelightIntuitionAriseSensualMassiveSaltInseparableAgelessTropicsStrong Desire
Author:D. H. Lawrence
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