Quotes About Survival

Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on 'The Survival of the Fittest.' These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.

After a long time and many questions, Satan said, The spider kills the fly, and eats it; the bird kills the spider and eats it; the wildcat kills the goose; the -- well, they all kill each other. It is murder all along the line. Here are countless multitudes of creatures, and they all kill, kill, kill, they are all murderers. And they are not to blame, Divine One?

If you should rear a duck in the heart of the Sahara, no doubt it would swim if you brought it to the Nile.

All the first years, their only question had been -- asked with beseechings and tears that might have moved stone, in time, perhaps, but hearts are not stones: Is he alive? Is she alive?

There isn't anything you can't stand, if you are only born and bred to it.

I 'uz mos' to de foot er de islan' b'fo' I found' a good place. I went into de woods en jedged I wouldn' fool wid raffs no mo', long as dey move de lantern roun' so. I had my pipe en a plug er dog-leg, en some matches in my cap, en dey warn't wet, so I 'uz all right.

The expeditions were often out of meat, and scant of clothes, but they always had the furniture and other requisites for the mass; they were always prepared, as one of the quaint chroniclers of the time phrased it, to 'explain hell to the savages.

The waves most washed me off the raft sometimes

wish you were with the cannibals and it was dinner-time.

A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives them

looking into the muzzle of Slade's pistol. "And the next instant," added my informant, impressively, "he was one of the deadest men that ever lived.

The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry.

It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that wild, free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited island

Pap he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for me; I didn't want to see him no more. He used to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around.

The principal difference between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives.

And if you're lucky enough to survive going crazy and get back to the point where you can pass for normal, it builds a question into the rest of your life. You have to forgive people for wondering, 'How all right can he be?

the most ancient parts of the brain make no distinction between the external threat of the tiger and internal "threats" such as worries about the future or memories from the past.

Back on shore everyone was pretty messed up, but the owner/captain was by far the worst off. He ended up drunk for a week, though the only thing he ever said was So? The boat's gone. So? Your mate's dead. So? Hey at least you're alive. So? An awful word but it does harden you. It hardened me.

If we desire to live, we can only do so in the margins of that place.

This is what it feels like to be really afraid. Though of course it doesn't. None of this can truly approach the reality of that fear, there in the midst of all that bedlam, like the sound of a heart or some other unholy blast, desperate & dying, slamming, no banging into the thin wall of my inner ear, paper thin in fact, attempting to shatter inside what had already been shattered long ago. I should be dead. Why am I still here?

He is clearly exhausted, dehydrated, and perhaps a little unable to believe he has actually escaped the maze.

We all create stories to protect ourselves

I climbed aboard and took it in my hand, not realizing that I would keep it and view it several thousand times over the years. I would watch the places where we intersect, and marvel at what the girl saw and how she survived. That is the best I can do- watch it fall into line with everything else I spectated during that time.

If they killed him tonight, at least he would die alive.