"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." -- Joseph Wood Krutch
Joseph Wood Krutch (pronounced krootch) (November 25, 1893 – May 22, 1970) was an American writer, critic, and naturalist.
Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, he initially studied at the University of Tennessee and received a masters degree and Ph.D. from Columbia University. After serving in the army in 1918, he travelled in Europe for a year with friend Mark Van Doren. Afterwards, he worked as teacher at Brooklyn Polytechnic.
He became a theater critic for The Nation and wrote several books, gaining acclaim through a work critical of the impact of science and technology, The Modern Temper (1929). He also wrote biographies of Samuel Johnson and Henry David Thoreau in the 1940s, altogether completing a dozen volumes of literary biography and theatrical history. Throughout his life he wrote thirty-five books altogether.
He worked as a professor at Columbia University from 1937 to 1953.
Moving to Arizona in 1952, he wrote books about natural issues of ecology, the southwestern desert environment, and the natural history of the Grand Canyon, winning renown as a naturalist and conservationist. These writings expressed a yearning for a simpler, more contemplative life. "If you drive a car at 70 m.p.h. , you can't do anything but keep the monster under control," he expressed.
He died in Tucson at age 76 from colon cancer in 1970. One of the last interviews with Krutch before his death was conducted by Edward Abbey and appears in Abbey's 1988 book One Life at a Time, Please (ISBN 0-8050-0603-6).
Many of Krutch's manuscripts and typescripts are held by the University of Arizona, where the Joseph Wood Krutch Cactus Garden was named in his honor in 1980.
"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.""Both the cockroach and the bird would get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most.""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.""Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.""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.""Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude.""If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers.""If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.""It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder.""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.""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.""Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without.""The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.""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.""There is no such thing as a dangerous woman; there are only susceptible men.""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.""What a man knows is everywhere at war with what he wants."