No prosaic description can portray the grandeur of 40 miles of rugged mountains rising beyond a placid lake in which each shadowy precipice and each purple gorge is reflected with a vividness that rivals the original.
Herbert HooverRead
To drown a river beneath its own impounded water, by damming, is to kill what it was and to settle for something else. When the damming happens without good reason . . . then it's a tragedy of diminishment for the whole planet, a loss of one more wild thing, leaving Earth just a little flatter and tamer and simpler and uglier than before.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Damming a river destroys its essence and leads to a loss of natural beauty.
This quote by David Quammen highlights the negative impact of altering natural landscapes, particularly through damming rivers. It emphasizes that such actions not only change the physical characteristics of the river but also diminish the ecological diversity and beauty of the planet, suggesting that the loss of wild and untamed nature reduces the richness of our environment and experiences.
Themes
DammingRiverNatureEnvironmentConservationEcology
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on environmental conservation, one might quote this to illustrate the consequences of human intervention in nature.
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