Species Quotes - Page 17

• Genius detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, the constant individual; through countless individuals the fixed species; through many species the genus; through all genera the steadfast type; through all the kingdoms of organized life the eternal unity. Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Eggs, Clouds

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.106, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It would be doing cunning too much honor to call it an inferior species of true discernment.

  Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

  Honor, Would Be, Too Much

  4 Copy quote

• A profound knowledge of life is the least enviable of all species of knowledge, because it can only be acquired by trials that make us regret the loss of our ignorance.

  Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

  Regret, Ignorance, Loss

  Marguerite Countess of Blessington, Marguerite GARDINER (Countess of Blessington.) (1839). “Desultory Thoughts and Reflections”, p.1

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For millennia the two-million acre redwood ecosystem thrived and sheltered myriad species of life. In the last 150 years, 97 percent of the original redwood forests have been destroyed by timber corporations. ... Big business cut-and-run logging operations have instilled a false dichotomy: jobs versus the environment.

  Julia Hill

  Running, Jobs, Cutting

  11 Copy quote

• A man does not please long when he has only species of wit.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Men, Long, Doe

  4 Copy quote

• I am provoked at the contempt which most historians show for humanity in general; one would think by them, that the whole human species consisted but of about a hundred and fifty people, called and dignified (commonly very undeservedly too) by the titles of Emperors, Kings, Popes, Generals, and Ministers.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Kings, Thinking, People

  4 Copy quote

• As kings are begotten and born like other men, it is to be presumed that they are of the human species; and perhaps, had they thesame education, they might prove like other men. But, flattered from their cradles, their hearts are corrupted, and their heads are turned, so that they seem to be a species by themselves.... Flattery cannot be too strong for them; drunk with it from their infancy, like old drinkers, they require dreams.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Dream, Strong, Kings

  Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.621

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The French manner of hunting is gentlemanlike; ours is only for bumpkins and bodies. The poor beasts here are pursued and run downby much greater beasts than themselves; and the true British fox-hunter is most undoubtedly a species appropriated and peculiar to this country, which no other part of the globe produces.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Running, Country, Hunting

  4 Copy quote

• Antiquity is a species of aristocracy with which it is not easy to be on visiting terms.

  Sophie Swetchine

  Aristocracy, Easy, Visiting

  5 Copy quote

• The immense majority of our species are candidates for humanity, and nothing more.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Humanity, Majority, Immense

  5 Copy quote

• The evolutionary vision is agnostic in regard to systems in the universe of greater complexity than those of which human beings have clear knowledge. It recognizes aesthetic, moral, and religious ideas and experiences as a species, in this case of mental structures or of images, which clearly interacts with other species in the world's great' ecosystem.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Religious, Ecosystems, Ideas

  "Ecodynamics: A New Theory Of Societal Evolution". Book by Kenneth Boulding, 1978.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• A somewhat casual observer from outer space might well deduce that the course of evolution in this planet had produced a species of large four-wheeled bugs with detachable brains; peculiar animals which rested when they sent their brains away from them but performed in rather predictable manner when their brains were recalled.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Animal, Space, Brain

  "Economics and Ecology". Book by Kenneth Boulding, p. 225, 1966.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
  A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.
  Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man;
  But it takes a very clever woman to manage a fool.
  I never made a mistake in my life;
  At least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards

  Rudyard Kipling

  Clever, Mistake, Men

  9 Copy quote

• The principle of avoiding the unnecessary expenditure of energy has enabled the species to survive in a world full of stimuli; but it prevents the survival of the aristocracy.

  Rebecca West

  Survival, Energy, Principles

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.146, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled "a contemplative man's recreation," introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist's observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Good Luck, Men, Fishing

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.459, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We stand guard over works of art, but species representing the work of aeons are stolen from under our noses

  Aldo Leopold

  Art, Noses, Stolen

  Aldo Leopold (1987). “Game Management”, p.31, Univ of Wisconsin Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Through sources, we have obtained the following alien assessment of the human species: The male wants to be valued for what he pretends to be. The female wants to be overvalued for what she truly is.

  Robert Breault

  Assessment, Males, Female

  5 Copy quote

• Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others.

  M. Scott Peck

  Life, Philosophical, Unique

  M. Scott Peck (2002). “The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nobody is here without a reason. I always had a different sensibility. I like a huge range of comedy - from broad and farcical, the most sensitive, the most understated - but I always wanted my comedy to be more embracing of the species rather than debasing of it.

  Lily Tomlin

  Different, Comedy, Reason

  Interview with Randy Shulman, www.metroweekly.com. April 26, 2006.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... why are so many religious people arguing about the origin of the species but so few concerned about the extinction of the species?

  Brian D. McLaren

  Religious, People, Environmental

  14 Copy quote

• We recognize that our progress as a species does not have to be defined in terms of wealth or material and physical growth any more than our progress as individuals has to be defined in terms of physical growth. Physical growth of the body reaches a limit, but the character and the soul of the individual continues to grow, or at least has a chance to continue, often to our last breath. It is simple minded to define our well being in material terms, when that well-being has an aesthetic dimension, and intellectual dimension, a moral dimension.

  Wes Jackson

  Character, Simple, Soul

  10 Copy quote

• When we conduct agriculture, we are, therefore, altering the ecological arrangement that was responsible for our genesis as a species. I think that this is the reason that this alienation has allowed us to see and regard land mostly as a resource. So we have created a problem for ourselves from the word "go," for land is not a resource any more than humans are resources.

  Wes Jackson

  Thinking, Land, Agriculture

  10 Copy quote

• A billion homo sapiens are added every 11 years to the planet. The hypertrophy of a single species pushes other life-forms out of bed and into extinction. The decline of biological diversity is real and severe. The alarming loss of soil fertility, forest cover, and coral reef viability and the release of fossilized CO2 that nature put away 300 million years ago in its march toward greater diversity - all these "losses" and many others are the result of one life-form annihilating other life-forms in its immoral confusion of "dominion" with "domination."

  Leonard Sweet

  Real, Loss, Years

  14 Copy quote

• We discover too late that we have turned a blind eye to the extinction of a species that is essential to the balance of life in a particular context. Or we discover too late that the importation of a foreign life-form, animal or vegetable, has upset local ecosystems, damaging soil or neighbouring life-forms. We discover that we have come near the end of supplies-of fossil-fuels for example -on which we have built immense structures of routine expectation.

  Rowan Williams

  Eye, Animal, Ecosystems

  Rowan Williams (2012). “Faith in the Public Square”, p.188, A&C Black

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our problem with limited resources is not primarily overpopulation; it is greed. Our problem with pollution is not the invention of fluorocarbons or mass transport; it is irresponsibility. The loss of an acre of forest every second, the mass slaughter of elephants for their ivory, the extinction of entire species of plants, insects and animals all over the world is not something that "just happens" because there are more of us human beings. It happens because the race of ruling beings put in charge has almost wholly lost its sense of stewardship. We have turned away from God.

  Winkie Pratney

  Loss, Animal, Race

  10 Copy quote