Longer Organisms Quotes

Anxiety prepares the organism badly for an ordeal which even under more favorable circumstances would not be an easy thing to bear. ~ Henryk Sienkiewicz

The longer people receive economic assistance, the worse their social condition and behavior. ~ James Cook

The place that you gain the most power is within your own mind. Stopping thought generates power. That is why people meditate. The longer you can stop thought, the more power you gain. ~ Frederick Lenz

I was in a coma for five days - I was dead longer than Jesus before he was raised from the dead. ~ Rik Mayall

Art no longer cares to serve the state and religion, it no longer wishes to illustrate the history of manners, it wants to have nothing further to do with the object, as such, and believes that it can exist, in and for itself, without "things" (that is, the "time-tested well-spring of life"). ~ Kazimir Malevich

That until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned: That until there are no longer first-class and second class citizens of any nation; That until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; That until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained. ~ Haile Selassie

There are things we do automatically, our body, acting on its own, avoids inconvenience whenever possible, that is why we sleep on the eve of battle or execution, and why ultimately we die when we can no longer bear the harsh light of existence. ~ Jose Saramago

At some point as I sat with him, there was no longer anything to feel. I realized it later. He could not feel my touch, as if I were the one who was suddenly absent. His absence felt like a lump growing inside me, making me suffocate. ~ Jens Christian Grøndahl

Ash and Rusty were both objectively better-looking than he was; she remembered knowing that, even though it no longer felt true. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in ... ~ Nick Hornby

Maybe we have lost the ability, that sixth sense that allows us to see miracles and have visions and understand that we are something other, larger than what we have been told. Maybe evolution has been going on in reverse longer than I suspect, and we are already sad, dumb fish. ~ Richard Flanagan

how often do we forget that there is hope as well, and that we seldom think about hope? We are ready to despair too soon, we are ready to say, 'What's the good of doing anything?' Hope is the virtue we should cultivate most in this present day and age. We have made ourselves a Welfare State, which has given us freedom from fear, security, our daily bread and a little more than our daily bread; and yet it seems to me that now, in this Welfare State, every year it becomes more difficult for anybody to look forward to the future. Nothing is worth-while. Why? Is it because we no longer have to fight for existence? Is living not even interesting any more? We cannot appreciate the fact of being alive. Perhaps we need the difficulties of space, of new worlds opening up, of a different kind of hardship and agony, of illness and pain, and a wild yearning for survival? Oh ~ Agatha Christie

Her heart was breaking a little bit, because she felt something changing in Myrnin, and she knew that she would no longer be the center of his gravity. He'd always be there for her, and he'd always be her friend, but there was something in the way he held Jesse, stroked her hair, whispered to her in a way that Claire couldn't ever see him doing with her. ~ Rachel Caine

A mathematician ... has no material to work with but ideas, and so his patterns are likely to last longer, since ideas wear less with time than words. ~ G.H. Hardy

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. ~ Moshe Dayan

Listen up, pal, the moon is way up in the sky. Aren't you scared? The helplessness that comes from nature. That moonlight, think about it, that moonlight, paler than a corpse's face, so silent and far away, that moonlight witnessed the cries of the first monsters to walk the earth, surveyed the peaceful waters after the deluges and the floods, illuminated centuries of nights and went out at dawns throughout centuries . . . Think about it, my friend, that moonlight will be the same tranquil ghost when the last traces of your great-grandsons' grandsons no longer exist. Prostrate yourself before it. You've shown up for an instant and it is forever. Don't you suffer, pal? I . . . I myself can't stand it. It hits me right here, in the center of my heart, having to die one day and, thousands of centuries later, undistinguished in humus, eyeless for all eternity, I, I!, for all eternity . . . and the indifferent, triumphant moon, its pale hands outstretched over new men, new things, different beings. And I Dead! Think about it, my friend. It's shining over the cemetery right now. The cemetery, where all lie sleeping who once were and never more shall be. There, where the slightest whisper makes the living shudder in terror and where the tranquility of the stars muffles our cries and brings terror to our eyes. There, where there are neither tears nor thoughts to express the profound misery of coming to an end. ~ Clarice Lispector

The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. Yet this destination cannot any longer be personal: the reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted…Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is the only person in literature…we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author. [Final passage in "The Death of the Author," in Image-Music-Text, by Roland Barthes, Trans. Stephen Heath (1977)] ~ Roland Barthes

By maturity, he meant that he learned to control those more youthful impulses, not that he was no longer stung or hurt or angry. It is not that you always know what to do or how to do it, it is that you are able to tamp down the emotions and anxieties that get in the way of seeing the world as it is. You can see through them, and that will see you through. ~ Richard Stengel

He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha, instead he saw other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and renewed themselves, and which were still all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, a carp, with an infinitely painfully opened mouth, the face of a dying fish, with fading eyes - he saw the face of a new-born child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying - he saw the face of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person - he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his sword - he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love - he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void - he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds - he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni - he saw all of these figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of transitoriness, and yet none of them died, each one only transformed, was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time having passed between the one and the other face - and all of these figures and faces res ~ Hermann Hesse

Man is not an organism; he is an intelligence served by organs. ~ W. D. Hamilton

I'm not interested in Botox or getting a facelift. There comes a point where you have to let go and accept that you are no longer the youngest and that you have other things to offer. ~ Jade Jagger

A murmur ran through the crowd, and I looked around to see what all the fuss was about. Then I saw him, walking past table after table as if everybody weren't stopping to stare at him.
Loki had ventured down from where he'd been hiding in the servants' quarters. Since I'd granted him amnesty, he was no longer being guarded and was free to roman as he pleased, but I hadn't exactly invited him to the wedding.
As Tove and I danced, I didn't take my eyes off Loki. He walked around the dance floor toward the refreshments, but he kept watching me. He got a glass of champagne from the table, and even as he drank his eyes never left me.
Another Markis came over and cut in to dance with me, but I barely noticed when I switched partners. I tried to focus on the person I was dancing with. But there was something about the way Loki looked at me, and I couldn't shake it.
The song had switched to something contemporary, probably the sheet music that Willa had slipped the orchestra. She'd insisted the whole thing would be far too dull if they only played classical.
The murmur died down, and people returned to dancing and talking. Loki took another swig of his champagne, then set the glass down and walked across the dance floor. Everyone parted around him, and I wasn't sure if it was out of fear or respect.
He wore all black, even his shirt. I had no idea where he'd gotten the clothes, but he did look debonair.
"May I have this dance?" Loki asked my dance p ~ Amanda Hocking

Whatever actions may have been appropriate for your survival when you were a child, are probably no longer necessary. However, the ego cannot know that. It is like a computer program, reacting to life robotically; doing what it deems is most applicable in the present circumstance, according to past experience. The problem is, it often blocks you from feeling what is appropriate in the present moment, through its preconceived notions of what worked best in the past, and may not necessarily pertain any longer. For example you may resist intimacy now by pushing others away, in effect shut them out, because as a five year old you did the same in order to protect your vulnerability. ~ Paula Horan

The worse thing that can happen to anyone, worse than death itself, and the worst thing one can make others do, is to return from the place from which no one returns, to come back to life at the wrong time, when you are no longer expected, when it's too late and inappropriate, when the living have assumed you are over and done with and have continued or taken up their lives again, leaving no room for you at all. ~ Javier Marias

It is no longer a question of killing, of devouring or seducing the Other, of facing him, of competing with him, of loving or hating the Other. It is first of all a matter of producing the Other. The Other is no longer an object of passion but an object of production. Maybe it is because the Other, in his radical otherness, or in his irreducible singularity, has become dangerous or unbearable. ~ Jean Baudrillard

I've always been dissatisfied, I know that. But lately I find that I reek of discontentment. It fills my throat, and it floods my brain. And sometimes I fear there is no longer a dream, but only the discontentment. ~ David McCullough

So I make one phone call, and just like that, we're eating pizza at 6:30. What is this world? You tap seven abstract figures onto a piece of plastic thin as a billfold, hold that plastic device to your head, use your lungs and vocal cords to indicate more abstractions, and in thirty minutes, a guy pulls up in a 2,000-pound machine made on an island on the other side of the world, fueled by viscous liquid made from the rotting corpses of dead organisms pulled from the desert on yet another side of the world and you give this man a few sheets of green paper representing the abstract wealth of your home nation, and he gives you a perfectly reasonable facsimile of one of the staples of the diet of a people from yet another faraway nation.
And the mushrooms are fresh. ~ Jess Walter

Those who survive are those who do not defy the gravity of others. And those who desire even a moment of freedom, find themselves hurled into space, doomed to crash with some unknown force. I no longer desire that freedom. I move, just move. Without meaning. ~ Mahesh Dattani

You know I am done lying. Obscuring the truth is no longer something I have any interest in doing. I want it all to come out. The good, the bad, the ugly. ~ Jayson Blair

I soon discovered, after I became chairman of the NEH, that, for a number of academics, the truth was not merely irrelevant - it no longer existed. ~ Lynne Cheney

What? Want to see her? You saw her. Christ, Bill, she was attacked and beaten and dumped at the curb like garbage. She's hanging on by a thread." She was doing a hell of a lot better than that, but Jane's emotional state was no longer Bill's business.
Bill's eyes dipped down to Dallas's crotch. "Is that what she was hanging on to? ~ J. Kenner

In the cramped confines of the toilet I had trouble getting out of my wet trousers, which clung to my legs like a drowning man. The new ones were quite complicated too in that they had more legs than a spider; either that or they didn't have enough legs to get mine into. The numbers failed to add up. Always there was one trouser leg too many or one of my legs was left over. From the outside it may have looked like a simple toilet, but once you were locked in here the most basic rules of arithmetic no longer held true. ~ Geoff Dyer

Once the words of a book appear onscreen, they are no longer simply themselves; they have become a part of something else. They now occupy the same space, not only as every other digital text, but as every other medium, too. ~ Tom Chatfield

Then you may have to leave."
Hans felt the blood drain from his face, and Boris added, "I am not saying it is all your fault. I have fallen in love with you. I am to blame for that. But I do not know how Thomas will react."
"You still love Thomas, don't you?"
"Of course."
"So do I!"
Boris sighed and shook his head. "I do not think he will understand, puppy. Not right away."
Boris hadn't been willing to talk about it further. He'd retreated to his study and left Hans to fret about it the rest of the afternoon. Would Thomas actually send him away because he'd fallen in love with Boris?
But I love him too! I love them both.
Did it matter? Maybe Thomas wasn't willing to share that much of Boris. Maybe Hans had finally gone too far. Boris had, too, of course, but Thomas wouldn't send Boris away. He might think getting Hans out of the house would be enough to make Boris forget him.
When Thomas came home, Hans ran to the door like a faithful dog, terrified he'd be punished but unable to endure the agony of not knowing for one minute longer.
"Well, hello, puppy!" Thomas said, amused. He looked more closely at Hans's face and cocked an eyebrow. "Is something wrong?"
"I…."
"We have something to talk about," Boris said behind him ~ Jamie Fessenden

It had been, in other words, our family home, and I had stayed to watch it become the grave of something I could no longer definitively call either a reality or an illusion. ~ Rachel Cusk

Female sexual turn on begins, ironically, with a brain turn off. The impulses can rush to the pleasure centers and trigger orgasm only if the amygdala- the fear and anxiety center of the brain- has been deactivated.
The fact that a woman requires this extra neurological step may account for why it takes her on average three to ten times longer than the typical man to reach orgasm. ~ Louann Brizendine

I'm very hairy, and men in film and TV are no longer allowed to be hairy. ~ Nick Offerman

No, you're not free," he said. "The string you're tied to is perhaps no longer than other people's. That's all. You're on a long piece of string, boss; you come and go, and think you're free, but you never cut the string in two. And when people don't cut that string . . ."
"I'll cut it some day!" I said defiantly, because Zorba's words had touched an open wound in me and hurt.
"It's difficult, boss, very difficult. You need a touch of folly to do that; folly, d'you see? You have to risk everything! But you've got such a strong head, it'll always get the better of you. A man's head is like a grocer; it keeps accounts: I've paid so much and earned so much and that means a profit of this much or a loss of that much! The head's a careful little shopkeeper; it never risks all it has, always keeps something in reserve. It never breaks the string. Ah no! It hangs on tight to it, the bastard! If the string slips out of its grasp, the head, poor devil, is lost, finished! But if a man doesn't break the string, tell me, what flavor is left in life? The flavor of camomile, weak camomile tea! Nothing like rum-that makes you see life inside out! ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

I was no longer a vacant mind, an abstracted gaze, but the turbulent fragrance of the waving grain, the intimate smell of the heather moors, the dense heat of noon or the shiver of twilight; I was heavy; yet I was as vapour in the blue airs of summer and knew no bounds. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

I am no longer a curmudgeon. I am a curmudgeon emeritus. ~ James Gibbons

We are keeping healthier and living longer and I am a good example of someone who is in the Age Concern bracket but is still working and keeping active. ~ Susan Hampshire

This is me finally taking control of my life. For the first time in a very long time, I am doing something that I want to. For the first time, I am in the driver's seat. I am the captain. And I am proudly going down with the ship.

I know what must be done and I am not afraid
.
I AM NO LONGER AFRAID. ~ D.L. Dotstry

The Selection was no longer something that was simply happening to me, but something I was actively a part of. I was an Elite. ~ Kiera Cass