Sometimes attributed to Audubon in recent years, there are no occurrences of this statement that have been located prior to 1997, and it is probably derived from the remarks of Wendell Berry:
I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children; whose work serves the earth he lives on and from and with, and is therefore pleasurable and meaningful and unending; whose rewards are not deferred until "retirement," but arrive daily and seasonally out of the details of the life of their place; whose goal is the continuance of the life of the world, which for a while animates and contains them, and which they know they can never compass with their understanding or desire.
The Unforeseen Wilderness : An Essay on Kentucky's Red River Gorge (1971), p. 33
Misattributed
Jean-Jacques Audubon: Citations en anglais
Source: The Life and Adventures of John James Audubon, the Naturalist (1868), Ch. X, p. 139
Contexte: Captain Hall expressed some doubts as to my views respecting the affection and love of pigeons, as if I made it human, and raised the possessors quite above the brutes. I presume the love of the mothers for their young is much the same as the love of woman for her offspring. There is but one kind of love; God is love, and all his creatures derive theirs from his; only it is modified by the different degrees of intelligence in different beings and creatures.
Journal entry in Audubon and His Journals (1897), edited by Maria R. Audubon, Vol. I, "The European Journals 1826 - 1829", p. 184
“Thank God it has rained all day.”
Source: The Life and Adventures of John James Audubon, the Naturalist (1868), Ch. XXIX, p. 348
Contexte: Thank God it has rained all day. I say thank God, though rain is no rarity, because it is the duty of every man to be thankful for whatever happens by the will of the Omnipotent Creator; yet it was not so agreeable to any of my party as a fine day would have been.
On a meeting with a young artist, Mr. J. B. Kidd, Ch. X, p. 140
The Life and Adventures of John James Audubon, the Naturalist (1868)
On his life at Mill Grove, in Pennsylvania http://pa.audubon.org/centers_mill_grove.html in "Audubon's Story of His Youth" edited by Maria R. Audubon, in Scribner's Magazine Vol. XIII, No. 3, (March 1893), p. 278
