Microbes Quotes - Page 2

• An asteroid could hit us at any moment. This is not - and also, the most successful kind of life on this planet is not us, it's microbes. They're the ones who greatly outnumber us, and may eventually destroy us.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Successful, May, Asteroids

  "The Tavis Smiley show", www.pbs.org. April 24, 2014.

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• All the suns labor to kindle your flame and a microbe puts it out.

  Antonio Porchia

  Flames, Perspective, Sun

  "Voices". Book by Antonio Porchia, 1943.

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• Dead men may envy living mites in cheese,
  Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys,
  And subdivide, and never come to death.

  Wilfred Owen

  Death, Men, Envy

  Wilfred Owen (1965). “The Collected poems of Wilfred Owen”, p.65, New Directions Publishing

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• The vast majority of terrestrial species are in fact microbes, and scientists have only begun scratching the surface of the microbial realm. It is entirely possible that examples of life as we don't know it have so far been overlooked.

  Paul Davies

  Majority, Example, Facts

  "Life, but not as we know it" by Paul Davies, www.theguardian.com. March 14, 2010.

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• Fortunately, our immune system can be improved and empowered to such a point that not only can the harmful microbes be halted and the chemicals detoxified, but also a "stress defense shield" may be built up, which can even drive off the effects of daily stress.

  David Wolfe

  Stress, Defense, May

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• The highly complex, almost mathematical, nature of music creates for it an ironclad protection against the microbes of dilletantism, which penetrate much more easily into the fields of painting, literature, and the theater.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Literature

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• One can't help thinking, Daddy, what a colourless life a man is forced to lead, when one reflects that chiffon and Venetian point and hand embroidery and Irish crochet are to him mere empty words. Whereas a woman- whether she is interested in babies or microbes or husbands or poetry or servants or parallelograms or gardens or Plato or bridge- is fundamentally and always interested in clothes.

  Jean Webster

  Baby, Plato, Husband

  Jean Webster (2002). “Daddy-Long-Legs”, p.97, Courier Corporation

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• There are hundreds of thousands of microbes surrounding us, but they cannot harm us unless we become weak, until the body is ready and predisposed to receive them.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Body, Weak, Harm

  Source: tamilandvedas.com

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• It is a pity that there are no big creatures to prey on humanity. If there were enough dragons and rocs, perhaps mankind would turn its might against them. Unfortunately man is preyed upon by microbes, which are too small to be appreciated.

  T. H. White

  Men, Dragons, Humanity

  T.H. White (1988). “The Book of Merlyn: The Unpublished Conclusion to The Once and Future King”, p.82, University of Texas Press

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• It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them, and the same thing has occasionally happened in the body. The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops. Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.

  Alexander Fleming

  Men, Drug, Ignorant

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• To feel the anguish of waiting for the next moment and of taking part in the complex current (of affairs) not knowing that we are headed toward ourselves, through millions of stone beings - of bird beings - of star beings - of microbe beings - of fountain beings toward ourselves.

  Frida Kahlo

  Stars, Knowing, Bird

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• There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world. Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.

  Alan Bennett

  Mean, Science, Space

  Alan Bennett (2009). “Alan Bennett Plays 2: Kafka's Dick; Insurance Man; Old Country; Englishman Abroad; Question of Attribution”, p.212, Faber & Faber

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• If there is life, then I believe we should do nothing to disturb that life.
  Mars then, belongs to the Martians, even if they are microbes.

  Carl Sagan

  Believe, Mars, Should

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• All it takes,” said Crake, “is the elimination of one generation. One generation of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.

  Margaret Atwood

  Games, Tree, Forever

  Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.223, Anchor

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• There may be a million microbes of misery floating about us. Never mind! They dare not approach us, they have no power to get a hold on us, until the mind is weakened.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Mind, Floating, May

  Source: tamilandvedas.com

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• Our physical senses and our embodied brains allow us to perceive only a small fraction of reality. We cannot see microbes or untraviolet light, for example. We can hear only a small range of sounds. When we try to describe the otherworld of energies and spirits, we are limited not only by our bodily constraints but by the expectations, assumptions, and language patterns ingrained in us by the culture we were raised in.

  Starhawk

  Reality, Light, Expectations

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• For theories and schools, like microbes and corpuscles, devour one another and by their strife ensure the continuity of life.

  Marcel Proust

  School, Continuity Of Life, Strife

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.266, Modern Library

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• If Darwin could see what we now see, what we now know about the ocean, about the atmosphere, about the nature of life, as we now understand it, about the importance of microbes - I think he would just beam with joy that many of the thoughts and the glimpses of the majesty of life on Earth that he had during his life, now magnified many times over.

  Sylvia Earle

  Ocean, Thinking, Joy

  "Big Thinkers on Evolution". "NOVA" Interview, www.pbs.org. October 6, 2009.

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• We don't even know what species are out there, for the most part, particularly when you get down to the microbes and very small invertebrates. They make up the mass of the organisms around us, including the soil we depend on, the soil of cornfields as well as hardwood forests. We haven't taken ecology to the point where we can even make a crude prediction of what's going to happen when we've reduced the living world down to a certain level.

  E. O. Wilson

  Taken, Levels, Soil

  Source: blog.cleveland.com

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• In gardens it's not just plants and insects and microbes that grow. People grow too, and the best bit is that they don't realise it's happening. It just happens.

  Costa Georgiadis

  Garden, People, Plant

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• When it comes to acid rain or oil spills or depleted fisheries or tainted groundwater or fluorocarbon propellants or radiation leaks or sexually transmitted diseases, national frontiers are simple irrelevant. Toxins don't stop for customs inspections and microbes don't carry passports. North America became a water and free-trade zone long before NAFTA loosened up the market in goods.

  Benjamin Barber

  Rain, Simple, Trade Zone

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• Then I realized what separated us: what I thought about him could not reach him; it was psychology, the kind they write about in books. But his judgment went through me like a sword and questioned my very right to exist. And it was true, I had always realized it; I hadn't the right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant or a microbe. My life put out feelers towards small pleasures in every direction. Sometimes it sent out vague signals; at other times I felt nothing more than a harmless buzzing.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Book, Writing, Psychology

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• The first telescope opened the heavens; the first microscope opened the world of the microbes; radioisotopic methodology, as exemplified by RIA, has shown the potential for opening new vistas in science and medicine.

  Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

  Science, Medicine, Heaven

  "A Probe for Fine Structure of Biologic Systems". Rosalyn Sussman Yalow's Nobel Lecture in Stockholm, Sweden, December 8, 1977.

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• My immune system has always been overly welcoming of germs. It's far too polite, the biological equivalent of a southern hostess inviting y'all nice microbes to stay awhile and have some artichoke dip.

  A. J. Jacobs

  Nice, Health, Southern

  A. J. Jacobs (2012). “Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection”, p.72, Simon and Schuster

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• What's natural is the microbe. All the rest-heath, integrity, purity (if you like)-is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention.

  Albert Camus

  Integrity, Men, Good Man

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