Quotes About Adaptation

Seven years of this and I'll have lost whatever edge I once had, I said. I'll have turned into one of those well-fed countrywomen who pride themselves on making better preserves then their neighbors, and give all their chickens names.

I often tell myself, there is no point in wishing certain things had not happened. We can't change what has been, only do our best with what is to come.

But, the true reason for the success of such new expositions [translated Eastern religious texts] is to be found where they are the most accommodating, least rigid, least severe, most vague, and ready to come to easy terms with the prejudices and weaknesses of the modern world. Let everyone have the courage to look deeply into himself and to see what it is that he really wants.

Cixi's style was not to force through drastic change, but to bring it about gradually through perseverence.

Muitas camponesas que vinham para a cidade mudavam de trajes para não parecer caipiras. Mas ela era inteiramente descontraída com suas roupas, o que mostrava a força de seu caráter.

In China, one was accustomed to a certain amount of injustice

I guess it's true what they say: if you wait long enough everything changes.

Cry me a river, build a bridge, and get over it.

Jay-Z told me once that one of his buddies from the Marcy Projects, in Brooklyn, said to him, Man, you've changed. And he replied, You're goddamn right. You act like I've been busting my ass to stay the same.

It would seem that marsupials are poor imitations of full-fledged mammals. Their inadequacy gives them a certain appeal; we're touched by it.

Rather than run aimlessly away, it would be best, I suppose, to face the situation squarely and get used to it once and for all.

Only man has turned away from the law of survival of the fittest, taken up the weak and ailing, and guaranteed their right to survival. So heroes perish, but the weak live on. One measure of a civilisation, in fact, is the percentage of misfits in its society. There's even a political scientist (anonymous) who claims that our modern age is an age of the patient, by the patient, for the patient.

Ar fi greu s? înfrunÅ£i natura încercînd s? prefaci o pant? blînd? într-una abrupt?.

If I made nothing of it, then surely no one else would either. ... To accustom others to my face was the best short cut to getting used to it myself.

Olmamas?na raz?y?m. Oluyormu? gibi olmas?n yeter.

Things change, Briony. You can't stop them, and you'll drive yourself crazy if you try.

We had for so long accepted her obedience to our will that when it ceased to be given naturally, it came as a considerable chock; yet there was no option but to accept the change, strange and bewildering as it was, for obedience cannot be extorted.

each generation has to create the image of God that works for it.

We should probably all pause to confront our past from time to time, because it changes its meaning as our circumstances alter.

People would continue to adopt a particular conception of the divine because it worked for them, not because it was scientifically or philosophically sound.

The rationalism of Plato and Aristotle is also important because Jews, Christians and Muslims all drew upon their ideas and tried to adapt them to their own religious experience, even though the Greek God was very different from their own.

people are finding that in their dramatically transformed circumstances, the old forms of faith no longer work for them: they cannot provide the enlightenment and consolation that human beings seem to need.

We should also make ourselves aware that our cultural, ethical, religious, and intellectual traditions have all been profoundly affected by other peoples'.

As we have seen, so many of the things we once took for granted have proved unreliable that we may have to "forget" old ways of thought in order to meet the current challenges.