Friday, November 21, 2008

Quotes: Life (21)

Life and the universe 448 The difference between astronomy and botany. "The astronomer can tell where the North Star will be ten thousand years hence; the botanist cannot tell where the dandelion will bloom tomorrow." Joseph Wood Krutch. “The Colloid and the Crystal.” 1950. Gross, ed. Essays.

Life and the universe 448 The difference between life and nonlife. "Life is rebellious and anarchical, always testing the supposed immutability of the rules which the nonliving changelessly accepts." Joseph Wood Krutch. “The Colloid and the Crystal.” 1950. Gross, ed. Essays.

Life and the universe 449 The enemy of life is not death but the nonliving system. "Of us and all we stand for, the enemy is not so much death as the not-living, or rather that great system which succeeds without ever having had the need to be alive." Joseph Wood Krutch. “The Colloid and the Crystal.” 1950. Gross, ed. Essays.

Life and the universe 449 Life could end in exhaustion and in succumbing to the inanimate system. "…the possibility that the snow flake was not, after all, always inanimate, that it merely surrendered at some time impossibly remote the life which once achieved its perfect organization…even if we can imagine such a thing to be true, it serves only to warn us all the more strongly against the possibility that what we call the living might in the end succumb also to the seduction of the immutably fixed." Joseph Wood Krutch. “The Colloid and the Crystal.” 1950. Gross, ed. Essays.

Life and the universe 450 The lure of the inanimate. "And so my eye goes questioningly back to the frosted pane; while I slept the graceful pseudo-fronds crept across the glass, assuming, as life itself does, an intricate organization; ‘why live,’ they seem to say, ‘when we can be beautiful, complicated and orderly without the uncertainty and effort required of a living thing; once we were all that was; perhaps some day we shall be all that is; why not
join us?' " Joseph Wood Krutch. “The Colloid and the Crystal.” 1950. Gross, ed. Essays.

Life and the universe 461 Humans vs. the universe. "The universe throws down a challenge to the human spirit; in spite of his insignificance and abjection, man has taken it up." Aldous Huxley. “Meditation on the Moon.” 1931. Gross, ed. Essays.

Life, death 367 We live thoughtlessly without any concern for death. "Thoughtlessly we live, thinking death will never come." Menander. Greek. Dictionary of Foreign Terms

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