Snail Quotes - Page 3

• The difference between a politician and a snail is that the snail leaves its slime behind. Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.

  Groucho Marx

  Differences, Judging, Slime

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• People often say that I have a child's eye. For example, I stare at ants gathering around sugar, or when I seek shelter from the rain, I gaze upon snails. These are things which you often do when you are a child aren't they? I have a very similar sensibility to that.

  Rinko Kawauchi

  Children, Rain, Eye

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• I measure my life in sentences pressed out, line by line, like the lustrous ooze on the underside of the snail, the snail's secret open seam, its wound, leaking attar.

  Cynthia Ozick

  Writing, Secret, Lines

  Cynthia Ozick (1987). “The Messiah of Stockholm: a novel”, Alfred A. Knopf

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• My body, now close to fifty years of age, has become an old tree that bears bitter peaches, a snail which has lost its shell, a bagworm separated from its bag; it drifts with the winds and clouds that know no destination. Morning and night I have eaten traveler's fare, and have held out for alms a pilgrim's wallet.

  Matsuo Basho

  Morning, Night, Clouds

  "Anthology of Japanese literature". Book by Donald Keene, 1955.

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• I remember I was a child, and when I grew up I was a poet. It all happened at sixty miles an hour and on days when the clock stopped and all of humanity fit into a little chapel, into a pinecone, a shot of ouzo, a snail's shell, a piece of soggy rye on the pavement.

  Mary Ruefle

  Children, Humanity, Pieces

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• In the circle of light on the state in the midst of darkness, you have the sensation of being entirely alone... This is called solitude in public... During a performance, before an audience of thousands, you can always enclose yourself in this circle, like a snail in its shell... You can carry it wherever you go.

  Constantin Stanislavski

  Light, Circles, Darkness

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• Illness isolates; the isolated become invisible; the invisible become forgotten. But the snail....the snail kept my spirit from evaporating.

  Elisabeth Tova Bailey

  Spirit, Forgotten, Illness

  Elisabeth Tova Bailey (2010). “The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating”, p.132, Algonquin Books

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• Scientists are educated from a very early time and a very early age to believe that the greater scientist is the scientist who makes discoveries or theories that apply to the greatest ambit of things in the world. And if you've only made a very good theory about snails, or a very good theory about some planets but not about the universe as a whole, or about all the history of humankind, then you have in some sense accepted a lower position in the hierarchy of the fame of science as it's taught to you as a young student.

  Richard Lewontin

  Believe, Discovery, Age

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• I'm not supposed to talk about the snail. The snail is, well, congratulations to whoever noticed it. It's supposed to be a thing where you gotta look for it in every episode, and it's there three times in every episode.

  Steve Burns

  Congratulations, Three, Looks

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• A man builds a house in England with the expectation of living in it and leaving it to his children; we shed our houses in America as easily as a snail does his shell.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Children, Men, America

  Harriet Beecher Stowe (1854). “Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (Complete)”, p.174, Library of Alexandria

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• Pippa's Song The year's at the spring The day's at the morn Morning's at seven, The Hill side's dew-pearled The lark's on the wing The snail's on the thorn God's in his heaven- All's right with the world

  Robert Browning

  Song, Morning, Spring

  Pippa Passes pt. 1 (1841)

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• Lovers are not snails; they don't have to protrude from their shells and meet each other halfway. Meet me within your own self.

  Jerzy Kosinski

  Self, Shells, Lovers

  Jerzy Kosinski (2007). “Steps”, p.77, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• I’m a sucker for this stuff. The @ is called chiocciola (snail) in Italian! The & was once taught as a letter of the alphabet! The manicule has been with us for a millennium! Thank you, Keith Houston, for bringing these little mysteries out of the shadows of typographic history.

  Constance Hale

  Italian, Shadow, Houston

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• Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek.

  Haruki Murakami

  Like Love, Missing, Phases

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jun 16, 2016

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• It would be rash to conclude that, on balance, the environment of the globe as a whole is either deteriorating or improving, or that the survival of the societies we know depends upon filling a simple set of prescriptions. It is all too complex and dynamic, whether it involves managing greenhouse gases or Nile snails... The future condition of the globe's interlocking natural and social systems depends more on human behavior than on the further investigation of natural processes, however desirable that may be.

  Gilbert F. White

  Simple, Survival, Environmental

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• How dominating is appetite, how enveloping immediate experience! Even the philosophically minded among us capitulate, ultimately, to the narrowest sense of personal need. Political time moves at a snail's pace because it is only with nearly insurmountable difficulty that moral discomfort takes root in the best of people, forcing an imperative out of a complaint; so viscerally repugnant is it for a critical mass to find the prevailing system unbearable, much less prepare to take up arms against it.

  Vivian Gornick

  Moving, Roots, People

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• The lancet fluke (Dicrocoelium) infects the brain of ants by taking control and driving them to climb to the top of a blade of grass where they can be eaten by a cow. The ingested fluke then lays eggs in the cow gut. Eventually, the eggs exit the cow, and hungry snails eat the dung (and fluke eggs). The fluke enters the snail's digestive gland and gets excreted in sticky slime full of a seething mass of flukes to be drunk by ants as a source of moisture.

  Darrel Ray

  Eggs, Drunk, Brain

  "The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture". Book by Darrel Ray, 2009.

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• Apelles used to paint a good housewife on a snail, to import that she home-keeping.

  James Howell

  Home, Paint, Used

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• Shun delays, they breed remorse;Take thy time while time is lent thee;Creeping snails have weakest force,Fly their fault lest thou repent thee.Good is best when soonest wrought,Linger'd labours come to nought.

  Robert Southwell

  Delay, Faults, Force

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• Uncontradicting solitude Supports me on its giant palm; And like a sea-anemone Or simple snail, there cautiously Unfolds, emerges, what I am.

  Philip Larkin

  Simple, Sea, Support

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• What really grabs me is when a reader writes to express her personal story and how a book helped her situation, or her acceptance of a situation she can't change. I read some sad cases in my snail and electronic mail. I respond to all I can, affirming that they are the true heroes of life because they are fighting through adversity and surviving.

  Lurlene McDaniel

  Book, Hero, Adversity

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• Red morning sky - snail, are you glad of it?

  Kobayashi Issa

  Morning, Sky, Red

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• In the sago palms, you'll often find sago beetles which are about the size of your little finger. The Karowai put those on the fire until they're crispy and eat them. They taste a little bit like creamy snails. But compared to sago, the sago beetle is really pretty good.

  Tim Cahill

  Fire, Littles, Taste

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• Will you walk a little faster? said a whiting to a snail, "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail! See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance: They are waiting on the shingle--will you come and join the dance?

  Lewis Carroll

  Turtles, Waiting, Lobster

  Lewis Carroll (2017). “Alice in Wonderland Collection: All Four Books: All Four Books”, p.55, Lulu.com

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• History's political and economic power structures have always abhorred 'idle people' as potential troublemakers. Yet nature never abhors seemingly idle trees, grass, snails, coral reefs, and clouds in the sky.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Clouds, Sky, People

  R. Buckminster Fuller (1982). “Critical Path”, p.54, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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