„Then swiftly, neatly, with the grace of the young man on the trapeze, he was gone from his body.
For an eternal moment he was still all things at once: the bird, the fish, the rodent, the reptile, and man.“
William Saroyan
1908 - 1981Citações relacionadas
„Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to cycle and he will realize fishing is stupid and boring.“
— Desmond Tutu South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner 1931
„Now that man can fly through the air like a bird... and swim in the sea like a fish, wouldn't it be wonderful if he could just walk the earth like a man?“
— Jack Paar American author, radio and television comedian and talk show host 1918 - 2004
My Saber is Bent http://books.google.com/books?id=MO-mqER9TrsC&q=%22Now+that+man+can+fly+through+the+air+like+a+bird%22+%22and+swim+in+the+sea+like+a+fish+wouldn't+it+be+wonderful+if+he+could+just+walk+the+earth+like+a+man%22&pg=PA79#v=onepage (1961)
„Fishes next took the lead, then Reptiles“
— Charles Lyell British lawyer and geologist 1797 - 1875
Context: The doctrine of progression... was thus given twelve years ago by Professor Sedgwick, in the preface to his Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge. 'There are traces,' he says, 'among the old deposits of the earth of an organic progression among the successive forms of life. They are to be seen in the absence of mammalia in the older, and their very rare appearance in the newer secondary groups; in the diffusion of warm blooded quadrupeds (frequently of unknown genera) in the older tertiary system, and in their great abundance (and frequently of known genera) in the upper portions of the same series; and lastly, in the recent appearance of Man on the surface of the earth.' 'This historical development,' continues the same author, 'of the forms and functions of organic life during successive epochs, seems to mark a gradual evolution of creative power, manifested by a gradual ascent towards a higher type of being.' 'But the elevation of the fauna of successive periods was not made by transmutation, but by creative additions; and it is by watching these additions that we get some insight into Nature's true historical progress, and learn that there was a time when Cephalopoda were the highest types of animal life, the primates of this world; that Fishes next took the lead, then Reptiles; and that during the secondary period they were anatomically raised far above any forms of the reptile class now living in the world. Mammals were added next, until Nature became what she now is, by the addition of Man.... the generalisation, as laid down by the Woodwardian Professor, still holds good in all essential particulars.
Ch.20, p. 395-396
„Yet, even did it be ever proved that Man once to be a fish, I to have no cause to abate the first part of mine argument; but to have the more need of the thought, that I gain power to accept the Fact; for I still then to have no occasion that I think Man to have been truly a Fish, or aught truly different from a Man; but only that he did be once Modified physically to his need, and to be still possessed of the Man-Spirit, though all lackt of development. Yet, truly, I to be less offend in my Reason, if that it be shown that Man did be ever somewise in his present shape, though mayhap so brutish as the Humpt Men; but yet I do be ready to consider all matters, and do build no Walls about my Reason. Yet, neither I to have an over-ready acceptance of aught, but to need that my Reason shall approve.“
— William Hope Hodgson British writer 1877 - 1918
Chapter 15
„I hadn't heard the door open, but the man was on the spot once more. My private belief, as I think I have mentioned before, is that Jeeves doesn't have to open doors. He's like one of those birds in India who bung their astral bodies about--the chaps, I mean, who having gone into thin air in Bombay, reassemble the parts and appear two minutes later in Calcutta. Only some such theory will account for the fact that he's not there one moment and is there the next. He just seems to float from Spot A to Spot B like some form of gas.“
— P.G. Wodehouse English author 1881 - 1975
„He doesn't know birds live
In another time than man.
He doesn't know a tree lives
In another time than birds“
— Czeslaw Milosz Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator 1911 - 2004
Context: He doesn't know birds live
In another time than man.
He doesn't know a tree lives
In another time than birds
And will grow slowly
Upward in a gray column
Thinking with its roots
Of the silver of underworld kingdoms.
"Birth" (1947), trans. Peter Dale Scott
„The old man … received the Sabbath with sweet song and chanted the hallowing tunefully over raisin wine; while it was still day he hallowed and the sun came to gaze at his glass. … The table was well spread with all manner of fruit, beans, greenstuffs and good pies, plum water tasting like wine, but of flesh and of fish there was never a sign. … in truth it is in no way obligatory to eat flesh and fish … He and she, meaning the old man and the old woman, had never tasted flesh since growing to maturity.“
— Shmuel Yosef Agnon Israeli Hebrew writer, Nobel laureate in Literature 1887 - 1970
The Bridal Canopy https://books.google.it/books?id=wg4WAAAAMAAJ, translated by I. M. Lask, New York: Literary Guild of America, 1937, p. 222.
„You know, everything about these feathered dinosaurs has been proven baloney. But guess what, they're still teaching it. [... ] All this feathered dinosaur stuff is baloney. It's all baloney. [... ] they say, "Birds are descendants of dinosaurs." Well, kids, in case you don't know, there are a few differences between a dinosaur and a bird. You don't just put a few feathers on them and say, "Come on, man, give it a try. It won't hurt too bad." It's just not that easy. See, reptiles have four perfectly good legs. Birds have two legs and two wings. So if his front legs are going to change to wings, somewhere along the line, they're going to be half-leg and half-wing. Which means, on that particular day, he can't run anymore, and he still can't fly yet, so he's got a real problem. A serious problem.“
— Kent Hovind American young Earth creationist 1953
„Zoos mislead their visitors by the way the species are housed. Birds are in the Bird House, of course, and crocodiles are always segregated to the Reptile House with the other naked-skinned, scale-covered brutes. So the average visitor leaves the zoo firmly persuaded that crocodilians are reptiles while birds are an entirely different group defined by "unreptilian" characteristics - feathers and flight. But a turkey's body and a croc's body laid out on a lab bench would present startling evidence of how wrong the zoos are once the two stomachs were cut into. The anatomy of their gizzards is strong evidence that crocodilians and birds are closely related and should be housed together in zoological classification, if not in zoo buildings.“
— Robert T. Bakker American paleontologist 1945
The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 127
„A man watches a bird flying, and wishes to fly himself, but he cannot, because he has no wings. Even so the will is present with a man to be pure, and blameless, and without spot, and to have no wickedness in him, but to be always with God; but he has not the power. To fly into the air of God and the liberty of the Holy Ghost may be his wish, but unless wings are given him, he cannot. Let us then beseech God to bestow upon us the wings of a dove, even of the Holy Ghost, that we may fly to Him and be at rest, and that He would separate and make to cease from our souls and bodies, that evil wind, which is the sin that dwelleth in the members of our souls and bodies. None but He can do it.“
— Macarius of Egypt Egyptian Christian monk and hermit 300 - 391
Homily 2. Fifty Spiritual Homilies of Saint Macarius the Egyptian, trans. Arthur J. Mason.
