Quotes About Survival

You can live as free men, but if you choose not to, your society will surely die.

Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.

Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.

Under my spine, the sycamore roots suck watery salts. Root tips thrust and squirm between particles of soil, probing minutely; from their roving, burgeoning tissues spring infinitesimal root hairs, transparent and hollow, which affix themselves to specks of grit and sip. These runnels run silent and deep; the whole earth trembles, rent and fissured, hurled and drained. I wonder what happens to root systems when trees die. Do those spread blind networks starve, starve in the midst

Is this what it's like, I thought then, and think now: a little blood here, a chomp there, and still we live, trampling the grass? Must everything whole be nibbled? Here was a new light on the intricate texture of things in the world, the actual plot of the present moment in time after the fall: the ways we living are nibbled and nibbling- not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land.

Fish gotta swim and bird gotta sly; insects, it seems, gotta do one horrible thing after another.

It is hard to understand how the same tree could thrive both choking along Pittsburgh's Penn Avenue and slogging knee-deep in Tinker Creek. Of course, come to think of it, I've done the same thing myself.

Form follows function in the created world, so far as I know, and the creature that functions, however bizarre, survives to perpetuate its form.

although we hear the buzz in our ears and the crashing of jaws at our heels, we can look around as those who are nibbled but unbroken, from the shimmering vantage of the living. Here may not be the cleanest, newest place, but that clean timeless place that vaults on either side of this one is no place at all.

The mating rites of mantises are well known: a chemical produced in the head of the male insect says in effect, 'No, I don't go near her, you fool, she'll eat you alive.' At the same time a chemical in his abdomen says, 'Yes, by all means, now and forever yes.

Frances is a diamond, passed from filthy paw to paw but never diminished. The men who handle her can leave no mark because her worth is far above them. (page 361)

Frances learns something in this moment that will allow her to survive and function for the rest of her life. She finds out that one thing can look like another. That the facts of a situation don't necessarily indicate anything about the truth of a situation. In this moment, fact and truth become separated and commence to wander like twins in a fairy-tale, waiting to be reunited by that special someone who possesses the secret of telling them apart.

Jetzt bleibt ihm nur noch er Tod, doch der lässt auf sich warten, weil Mahmoud ein Gewohnheitstier ist und sich daran ewöhnt hat, am Leben zu sein.

James could do all this because he had made a bargain with himself: he wouldn't try to get killed, nor would he try to survive. He could do all this because he felt terribly sorry for the men he rescued. They harbored the saddest and most foolish desire of all. The desire to go on living.

Anger is a good example of a negative emotion whose benefits have been diminishing in evolution.

Only one in four has a chance at making it.... And right there, I knew that if one of us was getting off dope, and staying off dope, it was going to be me . I was going to live. I was the guy.

How do you instruct a woman who's already survived incredible hardship, who's worked hard all her life, on how to live 'properly', when your life is, by contrast, a carefree wonderland of excess, sloth and caprice?

life keeps kicking out extra points regardless of how I play it.

next thing you know, the Russian tanks are rolling through the suburbs, misusing your womenfolk, and Mr Restaurant Genius is holed up in the bunker thinking about eating his gun.

Everything was different now. Everything. I'd not only survived - I'd enjoyed.

That was never my problem. When they're yanking a fender out of my chest cavity, I will decidedly not be regretting missed opportunities for a good time. My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted and advantages squandered. I'm still here. And I'm surprised by that. Every day.

I wrapped the cord around my neck, leaned forward with my full body weight, and ended my life. That thought was what got me through.

I believe that the human animal evolved as it did—with eyes in the front of its head, long legs, fingernails, eyeteeth—so that it could better chase down slower, stupider creatures, kill them, and eat them; that we are designed to find and eat meat—and only became better as a species when we learned to cook it.

I'm still here, I tell myself. I'm still here.