Quotes About Adaptation

Normal people can become very annoying if put in annoying situations.

Her mind circled and darted like a bird whose nest has been destroyed.

Ozzy Osbourne had it built when he lived there before me. He was so sweet, but let's just say we have a different design aesthetic. The studio was all black and scary when I moved in. I made it mine, lightening the room and overlapping pretty rugs to create a sound cocoon.

I just feel like I'm going through so many changes," I said to Johnny one night over scotch. "It's hard." "Nah, change is easy," he said. "Staying the same is a lot harder on you.

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." It's a quote from Joseph Campbell, who studied mythology to describe what it takes to be a hero. I probably got it from one of the many, many self-help books I devoured back then, underlining points and dog-earing the pages that seemed to tell me a way out. I repeated that quote to myself for weeks, in the shower, on a red carpet, driving in my car.

This is why I prefer Queens to any other place. The borough of my parents and small business owners is populated by people who know how to work around the system when it tries to fuck you.

That's the thing about a great book. Every time you read it, it's different, because you're different. You've changed since the last time you picked it up, things have happened to you.

Human existence begins when the lack of fixation of action by instincts exceeds a certain point; when the adaptation to nature loses its coercive character; when the way to act is no longer fixed by hereditarily given mechanisms. In other words, human existence and freedom are from the beginning inseparable. Freedom is here used not in its positive sense of freedom to but in its negative sense of freedom from, namely freedom from instinctual determination of his actions.

Das Wesentliche an der Existenz des Menschen ist ja, dass er sich über das Tierreich und seine instiktive Anpassung erhoben hat, dass er die Natur transzendiert hat, wenn er sie auch nie ganz verlässt.

Indeed, to one for whom having is the main form of relatedness to the world, ideas that cannot easily be pinned down (or penned down) are frightening–like everything else that grows and changes, and thus is not controllable.

Living structures can be only if they become; they can exist only if they change. Change and growth are inherent qualities of the life process.

Though there is no fixed human nature, we cannot regard human nature as being infinitely malleable and able to adapt itself to any kind of conditions without developing a psychological dynamism of its own

We had fancied our task would be different, only to find we were to be trained for heroism as though we were circus-ponies. But we soon accustomed ourselves to it. We learned in fact that some of these things were necessary, but the rest merely show. Soldiers have a fine nose for such distinctions.

Nobody taught us at school how to light a cigarette in a rainstorm, or how it is still possible to make a fire even with soaking wet wood – or that the best place to stick a bayonet is into the belly, because it can't get jammed in there, the way it can in the ribs.

It makes very little difference where one lives, Kate. Some places are more comfortable than others, but it is never important. The only important thing is what one makes of it.

It is as though formerly we were coins of different provinces; and now we are melted down, and all bear the same stamp.

After three weeks it was no longer incomprehensible to us that a braided postman should have more authority over us than had formerly our parents, our teachers, and the whole gamut of culture from Plato to Goethe.

This habit of getting used to things is the reason that we seem to forget so quickly.

He it is still and yet it is not he any longer.

Only thus were we prepared for what awaited us. We did not break down, but adapted ourselves; our twenty years, which made many another thing so grievous, helped us in this. But by far the most important result was that it awakened in us a strong, practical sense of esprit de corps, which in the field developed into the finest thing that arose out of the war—comradeship.

ALREADY KNOW the camp on the moors. It was here that Himmelstoss gave Tjaden his education. But now I know hardly anyone here; as ever, all is altered. There are only a few people that I have occasionally met before. I go through the routine mechanically. In the evenings I generally

we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals.

We became hard, suspicious, pitiless, vicious, tough—and that was good; for these attributes were just what we lacked.

We became hard, suspicious, pitiless, vicious, tough-- and that was good; for these attributes were just what we lacked. Had we gone into the trenches without this period of training most of us would certainly have gone mad. Only thus were we prepared for what awaited us.