Species Quotes - Page 37

• I mean to say, I know perfectly well that I've got, roughly speaking, half the amount of brain a normal bloke ought to possess. And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the love light in her eyes. I don't know how to account for it, but it is so." "It may be Nature's provision for maintaining the balance of the species, sir.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Girl, Stupid, Mean

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• An average of seventy-four species become extinct every day, which was one good reason but not the only one to hold someone's hand.

  Nicole Krauss

  Average, Hands, Four

  Nicole Krauss (2006). “The History of Love: A Novel”, p.202, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

  John Steinbeck

  Lonely, Art, Philosophy

  "East of Eden". Book by John Steinbeck, 1952.

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• Through my love for you, I want to express my love for the whole cosmos, the whole of humanity, and all beings. By living with you, I want to learn to love everyone and all species. If I succeed in loving you, I will be able to love everyone and all species on Earth... This is the real message of love.

  Nhat Hanh

  Love, Relationship, Buddhist

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2008). “Teachings on Love: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.114, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• It is not only species of animal that die out, but whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did.

  John Fowles

  Wise, Past, Animal

  1965 The Magus, ch.24.

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• If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.

  Charles Darwin

  Music, Mental Health, Week

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Darwin on Evolution: Words of Wisdom from the Father of Evolution”, p.25, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• We take pictures because we can't accept that everything passes, we can't accept that the repetition of a moment is an impossibility. We wage a monotonous war against our own impending deaths, against time that turns children into that other, lesser species: adults. We take pictures because we know we will forget. We will forget the week, the day, the hour. We will forget when we were happiest. We take pictures out of pride, a desire to have the best of ourselve preserved. We fear that we will die and others will not know we lived.

  Michelle Richmond

  Children, War, Pride

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• She was an alien, really - a sort of eating, pooping, tantrum machine - and he didn't understand anything about her species.

  Christopher Moore

  Machines, Tantrums, Aliens

  Christopher Moore (2009). “A Dirty Job: A Novel”, p.36, Harper Collins

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• To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.

  Charles Darwin

  Distance, Believe, Eye

  "The Collapse of Evolution". Book by Scott Huse, p. 73, 1996.

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• My argument has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

  Camille Paglia

  Pushing, Argument, Fit

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• Each of us is several, is many,is a profusion of selves. So that the self who disdains his surroundings is not the same as the self who suffers or takes joy in them. In the vast colony of our being there are many species of people who think and feel in different ways. Livro Do Desassossego

  Fernando Pessoa

  Thinking, Self, People

  Fernando Pessoa, Richard Zenith (2002). “The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa”, p.294, Grove Press

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• This book will prove the following ten facts: 1. A Goon is a being who melts into the foreground and sticks there. 2. Pigs have wings, making them hard to catch. 3. All power corrupts, but we need electricity. 4. When an irresistible force meets an immovable object, the result is a family fight. 5. Music does not always sooth the troubled beast. 6. An Englishman's home is his castle. 7. The female of the species is more deadly than the male. 8. One black eye deserves another. 9. Space is the final frontier, and so is the sewage farm. 10. It pays to increase your word power.

  Diana Wynne Jones

  Book, Home, Eye

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• No matter how you care to define it, I do not identify with the local group. Planet, species, race, nation, state, religion, party, union, club, association, neighborhood improvement committee; I have no interest in any of it. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.

  George Carlin

  Funny, Sarcastic, Witty

  George Carlin (1998). “Brain Droppings”, Hyperion

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• The irresistible proliferation of graphomania shows me that everyone without exception bears a potential writer within him, so that the entire human species has good reason to go down into the streets and shout: we are all writers! for everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an indifferent universe, and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words. one morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived.

  Milan Kundera

  Morning, Age, Unseen

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• The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity.

  Thomas Szasz

  Religious, Men, Roots

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• Gaston was not only a fierce lover, with endless wisdom and imagination, but he was also, perhaps, the first man in the history of the species who had made an emergency landing and had come close to killing himself and his sweetheart simply to make love in a field of violets.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Men, Imagination, Making Love

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• The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Sheep, Needs

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.3, Anchor

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• The female of all species are most dangerous when they appear to retreat.

  Don Marquis

  Female, Retreat, Dangerous

  Don Marquis (1950). “The lives and times of Archy and Mehitabel”, Doubleday Books

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• It's forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would've annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Dream, Art, Love Is

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.327, Macmillan

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• The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical...There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Peace, Hurt, Law

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• Television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.

  Neil Postman

  Mean, Creating, Knowing

  Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.93, Penguin

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• For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have.

  John Steinbeck

  Animal, Want Something, Giving

  John Steinbeck (1993). “The Pearl”, p.31, Penguin

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• Two weevils crept from the crumbs. 'You see those weevils, Stephen?' said Jack solemnly. I do.' Which would you choose?' There is not a scrap of difference. Arcades ambo. They are the same species of curculio, and there is nothing to choose between them.' But suppose you had to choose?' Then I should choose the right-hand weevil; it has a perceptible advantage in both length and breadth.' There I have you,' cried Jack. 'You are bit - you are completely dished. Don't you know that in the Navy you must always choose the lesser of two weevils? Oh ha, ha, ha, ha!

  Patrick O'Brian

  Hands, Two, Differences

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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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• The human species was given dominion over the earth and took the opportunity to exterminate other species and warm the atmosphere and generally ruin things in its own image, but it paid this price for its privileges: that the finite and specific animal body of this species contained a brain capable of conceiving the infinite and wishing to be infinite itself.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Animal, Opportunity, Atmosphere

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