Habitat Quotes

“Problem is (follow me closely here, the science is pretty complicated), if I cut a hole in the Hab, the air won't stay inside anymore.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“David had been photographing endangered species in the Hawaiian rainforest and elsewhere for years, and his collections of photographs and Suzie's tarot cards seemed somehow related. Because species disappear when their habitat does, he photographed them against the nowhere of a black backdrop (which sometimes meant propping up a black velvet cloth in the most unlikely places and discouraging climates), and so each creature, each plant, stood as though for a formal portrait alone against the darkness. The photographs looked like cards too, card from the deck of the world in which each creature describes a history, a way of being in the world, a set of possibilities, a deck from which cards are being thrown away, one after another. Plants and animals are a language, even in our reduced, domesticated English, where children grow like weeds or come out smelling like roses, the market is made up of bulls and bears, politics of hawks and doves. Like cards, flora and fauna could be read again and again, not only alone but in combination, in the endlessly shifting combinations of a nature that tells its own stories and colors ours, a nature we are losing without even knowing the extent of that loss.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

“We forget, in a world completely transformed by man, that what we’re looking at is not necessarily the environment wildlife prefer, but the depleted remnant that wildlife is having to cope with: what it has is not necessarily what it wants.”
― Isabella Tree, Wilding

“Neatness makes me feel like I have to be on my best behavior. Clutter is my natural habitat.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Scorpio Races

“A climate's changes are tough to quantify. Butterflies can help. Entomologists prefer "junk species--" the kind of butterflies too common for most collections-- to keep up with what's going on in the insect's world. They're easy to find and observe. When do something unusual, something's changed in the area.

Art Shapiro's team at UC Davis monitors ten local study sites, some since the 1970s. The ubiquitous species are the study's go-tos, helping distinguish between lasting changes (climate warming, habitat loss) and ones that will right themselves (one cold winter, droughts like last year's). Consistency is key; they collect details year after year, no empty data sets between.

A few species have disappeared from parts of the study area altogether, probably a lasting change. On the other hand, seemingly big news in 2012 might be just a year's aberration. Two butterflies came back to the city of Davis last year, the umber skipper after 30 years, the woodland skipper after 20-- both likely a result of a dry winter with near-perfect breeding conditions of sunny afternoons and cool nights.”
― Johnson Rizzo National Geographic Feb. 2013

“I should like my house to be similar to that of the ocean wind, all quivering with gulls.”
― Rene Cazelles, De terre et d'envolée

“If God so precisely and carefully and lovingly and amazingly constructed a mind-boggling habitat for His creatures, then it would be natural for Him to want them to explore it, to measure it, to investigate it, to appreciate it, to be inspired by it--and ultimately, and most importantly, to find Him through it.”
― Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God

“Steve Thomas Rooney embraces a simple concept of providing a hand up versus a hand out to families in need. We are deeply grateful to volunteers, donors and other supporters around the world who help us with this life-changing work”
― Steve Thomas, This Old House Guide to American Houses

“He found it puzzling that so many rural people were hostile to, even terrified of, the place where they lived. It wasn't just that hard-working country folk had no time for the precious concerns of the effete urban environmentalists, what amazed Rice was how you could spend your whole life physically immersed in a particular ecological system and yet remain blinded to it by superstition, tradition, prejudice. Out west, it was ranchers' holy war on predators and their veneration of Indo-European domestic animals they husbanded on land too dry to support them. Here in the Appalachians, you saw rugged country men who refused to walk in the woods all summer because they were scared of snakes.”
― James A. McLaughlin, Bearskin

“Zulu, we do this quick and easy,” Ray said. “No ripping his chest apart, taking out his heart, and painting his blood across the pavement.”
“Come on. I did that once, and you still won’t leave it alone.” I shrugged my shoulders and leaned back in the van’s backseat.”
― Kenya Wright, Caged View

“As long as the wetland looks pretty and also attracts ducks from time to time, it is regarded as a complete success. An attractive appearance is fine and is of considerable concern in urban developments.

It is the pretense that such wetlands also create rich habitats which is objectionable, when urban development is the primary cause of loss of diversity in a wide range of ecosystems around cities including wetlands.

The one ecologically positive thing that most created wetlands do a reasonable job of is water treatment, because the limited range of plants likely to survive the semi-toxic soils and waters of newly created wetlands are invariably colonisers that will also use up a wide range of nutrients.”
― Nick Romanowski, Wetland Habitats [OP]: A Practical Guide to Restoration and Management

“In Art i have found my habitat. A place to be alone somewhere no one knows.”
― Efrat Cybulkiewicz

“It’ll be a blunder to ‘transplant’ those you should leave at their distant habitat of acquaintance to the vicinity of friendship. If you naively embrace a slimy, slippery, serpent, you will nonetheless get bitten.”
― Vincent Okay Nwachukwu, Weighty 'n' Worthy African Proverbs - Volume 1

“I think a bird’s being extends beyond entertaining, wit, its outstretched wingtips: its identity is knotted up in its habitat, in the world that has shaped it, and continues to shape it.”
― Richard Smyth, An Indifference of Birds

“We will spend billions making inhospitable distant planets habitable. And yet we spend trillions destroying the abundant ingredients for life on our home planet.”
― Freequill

“The snail is a compact design combining organism and habitat. The snail is incredibly powerful, so powerful that it carries its house wherever it goes. Ever tried carrying your room on your shoulders?”
― Vincent Okay Nwachukwu, Weighty 'n' Worthy African Proverbs - Volume 1

“Because feeding grains to farmed animals is wasteful, only 37% of current croplands are needed if we shift to a vegan diet”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice

“...a ship is a habitat before being a means of transport.”
― Roland Barthes, Mythologies

“Room temperature for one, may not be room temperature for another. It's easier to stay warm, when we are cold, as camouflage for other senses.

Circumstance.”
― Monaristw

“A house, however humble, is a habitat. It has a direct impact on its occupants. [...] It soaks up the light as the sun passes over it; it absorbs the night, with or without the moon.”
― Rick Pryll

“Find some grass, or some wetlands, a pond, a lake, a stream, etc. Move some rocks, some branches, some vines, some leaves. It’s easier to spot [frogs] when they hop, otherwise they just blend into their habitat, so a little disturbance goes a long way.”
― Aesop Rock