Living Things Quotes - Page 15

• The Earth we evolved to inhabit is turning into something more turbulent and unreliable at a pace too fast for most living things to adapt to.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Pace, Earth, Unreliable

  "Rebecca Solnit: 2013 Will Be Year Zero In Our Climate Battle" by Rebecca Solnit, www.motherjones.com. December 31, 2012.

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• Vegetables, which are the lowest in the scale of living things, are fed by roots, which, implanted in the native soil, select by the action of a peculiar mechanism, different subjects, which serve to increase and to nourish them.

  Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

  Vegetables, Roots, Different

  Brillat Savarin (2015). “The Physyology of Taste”, p.56, Editorial MAXTOR

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• war is, in some not yet entirely defined sense, a self-replicating pattern of behavior, possessed of a dynamism not unlike that of living things.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  War, Self, Patterns

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2011). “Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War”, p.225, Granta Books

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• In Islam, all living things have souls. We are made pure by the fire of the lord compassion.

  John Speed

  Compassion, Fire, Soul

  John Speed (2007). “The Temple Dancer: A Novel of India”, p.38, Macmillan

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• Nowhere on the shore is the relation of a creature to its surroundings a matter of a single cause and effect; each living thing is bound to its world by many threads, weaving the intricate design of the fabric of life.

  Rachel Carson

  Ocean, Fabric Of Life, Design

  Rachel Carson, Sue Hubbell (1998). “The Edge of the Sea”, p.14, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The ocean is a place of paradoxes. It is the home of the great white shark, two-thousand-pound killer of the seas, and of the hundred-foot blue whale, the largest animal that ever lived. It is also the home of living things so small that your two hands might scoop up as many of them as there are stars in the Milky Way.

  Rachel Carson

  Stars, Ocean, Home

  Rachel Carson (2011). “Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson”, p.6, Beacon Press

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• He who feels contempt for any living thing hath faculties that he hath never used, and thought with him is in its infancy.

  William Wordsworth

  Used, Faculty, Infancy

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• Every living thing was shunning him. Poor little Peter Pan, he sat down and cried, and even then he did not know that, for a bird, he was sitting on his wrong part. It is a blessing that he did not know, for otherwise he would have lost faith in his power to fly, and the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it. The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.

  James M. Barrie

  Blessing, Wings, Perfect

  James M. Barrie (2013). “The Little White Bird (Annotated Edition)”, p.85, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Never forget that every living thing has a particular and needed job to do in the universal Plan and Purpose.

  J. Boone

  Jobs, Attitude, Purpose

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• If atom stocks are inexhaustible, Greater than power of living things to count, If Nature's same creative power were present too To throw the atoms into unions - exactly as united now, Why then confess you must That other worlds exist in other regions of the sky, And different tribes of men, kinds of wild beasts.

  Lucretius

  Men, Moon, Sky

  Titus Lucretius Carus, Alban Dewes Winspear (1956). “De Rerum Natura”, New York : Harbor Press

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• I can't paint. I can't write. I can't sing. But I can decorate and run a house, and light it, and heat it, and have it like a living thing.

  Elsie de Wolfe

  Running, Writing, Light

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• Even the best weapon is an unhappy tool, hateful to living things. So the follower of the Way stays away from it. Weapons are unhappy tools, not chosen by thoughtful people, to be used only when there is no choice, and with a calm, still mind, without enjoyment. To enjoy using weapons is to enjoy killing people, and to enjoy killing people is to lose your share in the common good. It is right that the murder of many people be mourned and lamented. It is right that a victor in war be received with funeral ceremonies.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  War, Thoughtful, People

  Ursula K. Le Guin, Jerome P. Seaton (2009). “Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way”, p.48, Shambhala Publications

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• Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Thinking, Self, Instinct

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.211, Modern Library

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• All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.

  Yann Martel

  Inspirational, Moving, Saving

  Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.67, Canongate Books

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• I have been a lucky man. To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvelous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses – that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.

  Pablo Neruda

  Beautiful, Brother, Sleep

  Pablo Neruda, Mikis Theodorakis (1985). “Canto general: a song of the people”

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• A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Faith, Moral, Sanity

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• What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can't stand still. It must grow or perish.

  Ayn Rand

  Life, Money, Novelists

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.1834, Penguin

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• You were born into a state of grace. It is impossible for you to leave it. You will die in a state of grace whether or not special words are spoken for you, or water or oil is poured upon your head. You share this blessing with the animals and all other living things. You cannot fall out of grace, nor can it be taken from you. You can ignore it. You can hold beliefs that blind you to its existence. You will still be graced but unable to perceive you own uniqueness and integrity, and blind also to other attributes with which you are automatically gifted.

  Jane Roberts

  Integrity, Fall, Taken

  Jane Roberts (2011). “The Nature of Personal Reality (A Seth Book): Specific, Practical Techniques for Solving Everyday Problems and Enriching the Life You Know”, p.203, Amber-Allen Publishing

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• Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treausre of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.

  Umberto Eco

  Lying, Book, Reflection

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• Maybe I'll go where I can see stars, he said to himself as the car gained velocity and altitude; it headed away from San Francisco, toward the uninhabited desolation to the north. To the place where no living thing would go. Not unless it felt that the end had come.

  Philip K. Dick

  Stars, San Francisco, Car

  Philip K. Dick (2008). “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, p.227, Ballantine Books

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• Life was a swarm of accidents waiting in the treetops, descending upon any living thing that passed, ready to eat them alive. You swam in a river of chance and coincidence. You clung to the happiest accidents- the rest you let float by.

  David Wroblewski

  Life, Rivers, Waiting

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• People were so naive about plants, Ellie thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction---and defense.

  Michael Crichton

  Wall, People, Defense

  Michael Crichton (1997). “Michael Crichton's Jurassic World”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• What a dull universe it would be if everything in it conformed to our expectations, if it held nothing to surprise or baffle us or confound our common sense. A century ago no one foresaw the existence of black holes, an expanding universe, oceans on Jupiter's moons, or DNA. What could be more enriching than to know that we share a common origin with all living things, that we are kin to chimpanzees, redwoods and mollusks? And isn't it a source of wonder to realize that the iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones were created in the bellies of supernovas?

  Steven Pinker

  Ocean, Moon, Dna

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• Language is a living thing. It must survive in men's minds and on their tongues if it survives at all.

  Charlton Laird

  Men, Mind, Tongue

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• The Bible makes clear a basic truth that we self-centered humans find difficult to accept, namely, that the natural universe was not created primarily for us. There is no doubt that God wants us to enjoy it and even use its resources to optimize a good life for ourselves. But the ultimate purpose of creation is worship. Nature and all living things were created to glorify God.

  Tony Campolo

  Good Life, Self, Doubt

  Tony Campolo (1995). “Carpe Diem: Seize the Day”, Thomas Nelson

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