Quotes About Adaptation

What do you believe in? — In this: that the weight of all things must be determined anew

Our eyes find it easier on a given occasion to produce a picture already often produced, than to seize upon the divergence and novelty of an impression: the latter requires more force, more "morality." It is difficult and painful for the ear to listen to anything new; we hear strange music badly. When we hear another language spoken, we involuntarily attempt to form the sounds into words with which we are more familiar and conversant—

Only those who continue to change remain my kin

It is important to accept that the world is not in any way striving toward a stable condition, equilibrium or eternal sunshine.

Just as the decay of last year's fallen leaves provides nutrients for new growth this spring, some institutions must be allowed to decline and decay, so that their capital and human talents can be released and recycled to create new organizations.

Reduce man to a single type and he is certain to succumb, sooner or later, to the inevitable disaster that his one type cannot cope with.

Learning another cuisine is like learning a language. In the beginning, you know nothing about its most basic rules of grammar. You experience it as a flood of words, or dishes, without system or structure.

In England we agonised over the demolition of every old shack; in Sichuan, they just went ahead and flattened whole cities! You had to admire the brazen confidence of it, the conviction that the future would be better than the past.

university textbooks I'd encountered in my few weeks of class were deathly dull and totally impractical. Instead of introducing us to useful words like 'stir-fry' and 'braise', 'bamboo shoot' and 'quail', they had required us to learn by rote long lists of largely irrelevant Chinese characters:

The Church knows too that to marry the present age and its spirit is to become a widow in the next.

religious leaders have agreed not to disagree and those beliefs for which some of our ancestors would have died they have melted into a spineless Humanism.

a petri dish in the ocean of life.

I can't think of any film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of many good films that came from very bad novels.

la pauvreté est comme un mal qu'on endort en soi et qui ne donne pas trop de douleur, à condition de ne pas trop bouger. On s'y habitue, on finit par ne plus y prendre garde tant qu'on reste avec elle tapie dans l'obscurité; mais qu'on s'avise de la sortir au grand jour, et on s'effraie, on la voit enfin, si sordide qu'on hésite à l'exposer au soleil. (Ch. XIII)

I made my way to one of the giant pillows that lined the walls of the dining hall—couches for humans, elves, and gnomes. I would watch the crowd while I dined. The silverware was too big. I looked around to see how others were managing. Some struggled with knives and forks the size of axes and shovels, some stared at their meal in perplexity. And some dug in with bare hands.

Sometimes troubles make us stronger. We put things in perspective and find priorities.

La Sagrada Escritura y la naturaleza proceden ambas del Verbo Divino, pero en tanto que la palabra de Dios ha debido adaptarse al limitado entendimiento de los hombres a los cuales se dirigía, la naturaleza es inexorable e inmutable y que no se cuida de sus recónditas razones sea o no comprendidas por los hombres.

You do not defend a world that is already lost.

You have to change on the fly. You have to adapt. It's what I do. It's what wins for me.

It's a mystery coming out each and every game to try and figure out how a team is going to guard me and how I'm going to dictate how my team wins.

Evolutionary science kind of bears that out: When species are rivals and competing for space and resources, the superior one wins. Nature has no compunction about that; it just is.

What wins still goes back to who you are as a player and what you do well. If you're a great 3-point shooter, you try to get as many of those shots as you can. If you're a good driver, get in the restricted area.

We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.

I think there's something charming about incorporating summer clothes into winter, like pairing a summery skirt with a massive sweater. I'm also really into layering during the winter!