Living Things Quotes - Page 11

• Disassemble the cells of a sponge (by passing them through a sieve, for instance), then dump them into a solution, and they will find their way back together and build themselves into a sponge again. You can do this to them over and over, and they will doggedly reassemble because, like you and me and every other living thing, they have one overwhelming impulse: to continue to be.

  Bill Bryson

  Cells, Together, Way

  "A Short History of Nearly Everything". Book by Bill Bryson, 2003.

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• When the last living thing Has died on account of us, How poetical it would be If Earth could say, In a voice floating up Perhaps From the floor Of the Grand Canyon, "It is done." People did not like it here.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Voice, People, Would Be

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “A Man Without a Country”, p.137, Seven Stories Press

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• I would never kill a living thing, although I probably have inadvertently while driving automobiles.

  Don Van Vliet

  Ghana, Car, Driving

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• A living thing is distinguished from a dead thing by the multiplicity of the changes at any moment taking place in it.

  Herbert Spencer

  Life, Change, Moments

  Principles of Biology Pt I, Ch. 4, Sect. 25

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• Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Love, Life, Peace

  "Kulturphilosophie". Book by Albert Schweitzer, 1923.

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• The human capacity for compassion is not a reflex that is triggered automatically by the presence of another living thing.

  Steven Pinker

  Compassion, Capacity, Reflexes

  Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.203, Penguin

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• It is not accidental that all phenomena of human life are dominated by the search for daily bread - the oldest link connecting all living things, man included, with the surrounding nature.

  Ivan Pavlov

  Men, Links, Bread

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• I do not knowingly kill any living thing - including insects or rodents - and I thank my food for sustaining me.

  Joan Jett

  Rodents, Insects, Sustaining

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• A stricken tree, a living thing, so beautiful, so dignified, so admirable in its potential longevity, is, next to man, perhaps the most touching of wounded objects.

  Edna Ferber

  Beautiful, Men, Tree

  Edna Ferber (1963). “A Kind of Magic”

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• On this ancient and miraculous world, where such beautiful natural and living things have evolved, something has gone wrong when life itself is used as a manufacturing process.

  Roger Ebert

  Beautiful, Gone, World

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• At the deepest level, all living things that have ever been looked at have the same DNA code. And many of the same genes.

  Richard Dawkins

  Dna, Levels, Genes

  "Richard Dawkins on the Truth of Evolution". "NOW with Bill Moyers", billmoyers.com. 2004.

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• I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

  e. e. cummings

  Life, Imagination, Imagine

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• Night is not something to endure until dawn. It is an element, like wind or fire. Darkness is its own kingdom; it moves to its own laws, and many living things dwell in it.

  Patricia A. McKillip

  Moving, Night, Fire

  Patricia A. McKillip (1979). “Riddle of Stars”

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• From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Wise, Eye, Animal

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2012). “A Wizard of Earthsea”, p.98, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Tiny-perhaps." Rovender kept his eyes fixed on the rings. "Insignificant-never, Eva Nine. No living thing is insignificant.

  Tony DiTerlizzi

  Eye, Nine, Tiny

  Tony DiTerlizzi (2010). “The Search for WondLa”, p.381, Simon and Schuster

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• The atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars that manufactured them in their cores and exploded these enriched ingredients across our galaxy, billions of years ago. For this reason, we are biologically connected to every other living thing in the world. We are chemically connected to all molecules on Earth. And we are atomically connected to all atoms in the universe. We are not figuratively, but literally stardust.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Stars, Years, Molecules

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• One of the oldest secrets of alchemy is that every living thing, from the most complex creatures right down to the simplest leaf, carries the seeds of its creation within itself.

  Michael Scott

  Dna, Secret, Creation

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• That's the way it is when you love. It makes you suffer, and I have suffered much in the years since. But it matters little that you suffer, so long as you feel alive with a sense of the close bond that connects all living things, so long as love does not die!

  Hermann Hesse

  Life, Years, Long

  "Peter Camenzind". Book by Hermann Hesse, 1904.

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• Nothing can stop a living thing that wants to be free

  Aravind Adiga

  Want

  Aravind Adiga (2011). “Last Man in Tower”, p.419, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Did you think that rats do not have hearts? Wrong. All living things have a heart. And the heart of any living thing can be broken.

  Kate DiCamillo

  Heart, Thinking, Broken

  Kate DiCamillo (2013). “The Essential Kate DiCamillo Collection”, Candlewick Press

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• There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven together here, one with one another and with the place and all the living things.

  Wendell Berry

  Heart, Together, Woven

  Wendell Berry (2000). “Jayber Crow: A Novel”, Counterpoint LLC

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• "Clear-cutting" was the word for what the Rusties had done to the old forests: felling every tree, killing every living thing, turning entire countries into grazing land. Whole rain forests had been consumed, reduced from millions of interlocking species to a bunch of cows eating grass, a vast web of life traded for cheap hamburgers. "Look, we're not clear-cutting. All we're doing is pulling out the garbage that the Rusties left behind,” David said. "It just takes a little surgery to do it."

  Scott Westerfeld

  Country, Rain, Cutting

  "Uglies". Book by Scott Westerfeld, 2005.

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• What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, not warm breath, not a 'spark of life.' It is information, words, instructions... If you want to understand life, don't think about vibrant, throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology.

  Richard Dawkins

  Lying, Heart, Technology

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.115, W. W. Norton & Company

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• My mother named me after a miracle of nature: Waris means desert flower. The desert flower blooms in a barren environment where few living things can survive.

  Waris Dirie

  Mother, Flower, Mean

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• She may know a little, may think of herself, face and body, as ‘pretty’…but he could never tell her all the rest, how many other living things, birds, nights smelling of grass and rain, sunlit moments of simple peace, also gather in what she is to him.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Love, Romantic, Rain

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Gravity's Rainbow”, p.489, Penguin

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