Quotes About Adaptation

guardatevi da tutte le imprese che richiedono abiti nuovi, invece che nuovi «indossatori». Se non c'è l'uomo nuovo, come si potranno fare abiti che gli si adattino? Se dovete intraprendere qualche cosa di nuovo, fatelo nei vostri abiti vecchi.

When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me gravely, "They do not make them so now," not emphasizing the "They" at all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates

One large bundle held their all—bed, coffee-mill, looking-glass, hens—all but the cat; she took to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I learned afterward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last.

Things do not change: we change.

For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.

It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret in the woods, and still sustain themselves in the neighborhood of towns, suspected by hunters only. How retired the otter manages to live here! He grows to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps without any human being getting a glimpse of him. I

Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives.

It is as foolish to try to preserve obsolescent industries as to try to preserve obsolescent methods of production: this is often, in fact, merely two ways of describing the same thing.

You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.

Living as he now lived was like reading a good book in a poor translation...

Things are always different from what they might be.

Besides, he was a philosopher; he smoked a good many cigars over his disappointment, and in the fulness of time he got used to it.

What saved me, as I now see, was that it turned to something else altogether. It didn't last as suspense - it was superseded by horrible proofs.

Nevertheless, he had offered her a home under his own roof, which Lavinia accepted with the alacrity of a woman who had spent the ten years of her married life in the town of Poughkeepsie.

Everything he wanted was comprised moreover in a single boon--the common unattainable art of taking things as they came. He appeared to himself to have given his best years to an active appreciation of the way they didn't come; but perhaps--as they would seemingly here be things quite other--this long ache might at last drop to rest.

Even iron sometimes melts.

Well, said Winterbourne, when you deal with natives you must go by the custom of the place. Flirting is a purely American custom; it doesn't exist here. So when you show yourself in public with Mr. Giovanelli, and without your mother— Gracious!

What we often take to be the new is simply the old under some novel form.

It takes a great deal to make a successful American, but to make a happy Venetian takes only a handful of quick sensibility. The

she would have been as smooth to his general need of her as handled ivory to the palm.

I'm rather ashamed of my plans; I make a new one every day.

Ah, things are always different from what they might be," said the old man. "If you wait for them to change you'll never do anything.

Le cose non sono mai come dovrebbero essere, - osservò il vecchio. - Se aspetti che cambino non combinerai mai nulla.

this fashioning of a wife to order.