Contact
Privacy
Category: plants
Quotes of Category: plants
TOP TAGS :prophecyscoutquarrelphonedisgustingpseudo-sciencecreative-processmultitasking

  1. Elizabeth Gilbert _ The Signature of All Things

    Boehme makes such leaps, such contradictions, such confusions of thought. It is as though he wishes to vault directly into heaven upon the strength of his logic, but his logic is deeply impaired." She reached across the table for a book and flung it open. "In this chapter here, for instance, he is trying to find keys to God's secrets hidden inside the plants of the Bible- but what are we to make of it, when his information is simply incorrect? He spends a full chapter interpreting 'the lilies of the field' as mentioned in the book of Matthew, dissecting every letter of the word 'lilies,' looking for revelation within the syllables... but Ambrose, 'the lilies of the field' itself is a mistranslation. It would not have 'been' lilies that Christ discussed in his Sermon on the Mount. There are only two varieties of lily native to Palestine, and both are exceedingly rare. They would not have flowered in such abundance as to have ever filled a meadow. They would not have been familiar enough to the common man. Christ, tailoring his lesson to the widest possible audience, would more likely have referred to a ubiquitous flower, in order that his listeners would comprehend his metaphor. For that reason, it is exceedingly probable that Christ was talking about the anemones of the field- probably 'Anemone coronaria'- though we cannot be certain...
    book-quotetheoriesnew-testamentmysticism

  2. Victor Hugo _ Les Misérables

    With the exercise of a little care, the nettle could be made useful; it is neglected and it becomes hurtful. It is exterminated. How many men resemble the nettle!" He added with a pause: "Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.
    book-quotewisdommencompassion

  3. Stephanie Laurens _ A Rake's Vow

    Dazed, she glanced around; the dark shapes of huge leaves reared above the denser dark of heavy pots, grouped upon a tiled floor. Moonlight streamed through walls of long windows and panes in the ceiling, silvering paths wending between sends of palms and exotic blooms. The rich scents of earth and the warm humidity of growing things hung on the heavy air.
    book-quoteplantsmoonlight

  4. Michael Pollan _ The Botany of Desire: A

    Plants are nature's alchemists, expert at transforming water, soil and sunlight into an array of precious substances, many of them beyond the ability of human beings to conceive, much less manufacture.
    book-quoteplantsmetabolismsecondary-metabolites

  5. Michael Pollan _ The Omnivore's Dilemma: A

    Originally, the atoms of carbon from which we're made were floating in the air, part of a carbon dioxide molecule. The only way to recruit these carbon atoms for the molecules necessary to support life-the carbohydrates, amino acids, proteins, and lipids-is by means of photosynthesis. Using sunlight as a catalyst the green cells of plants combine carbon atoms taken from the air with water and elements drawn from the soil to form the simple organic compounds that stand at the base of every food chain. It is more than a figure of speech to say that plants create life out of thin air.
    book-quotesciencefoodplants

  6. Michael Pollan _ The Botany of Desire: A

    Darwin called such a process artificial, as opposed to natural, selection, but from the flower's point of view, this is a distinction without a difference: individual plants in which a trait desired by either bees or Turks occurred wound up with more offspring.
    book-quoteplantshumansnatural-selection

  7. Michael Pollan _ The Botany of Desire: A

    In the wild a plant and its pests are continually coevolving, in a dance of resistance and conquest that can have no ultimate victor. But coevolution ceases in an orchard of grafted trees, since they are genetically identical from generation to generation. The problem very simply is that the apple trees no longer reproduce sexually, as they do when they're grown from seed, and sex is nature's way of creating fresh genetic combinations. At the same time the viruses, bacteria, fungi, and insects keep very much at it, reproducing sexually and continuing to evolve until eventually they hit on the precise genetic combination that allows them to overcome whatever resistance the apples may have once possessed. Suddenly total victory is in the pests' sight-unless, that is, people come to the tree's rescue, wielding the tools of modern chemistry.
    book-quoteresistanceplantspesticides

  8. Michael Pollan _ The Botany of Desire: A

    How did these organs of plant sex manage to get themselves cross-wired with human ideas of value and status and Eros? And what might our ancient attraction for flowers have to teach us about the deeper mysteries of beauty - what one poet has called "this grace wholly gratuitous"? Is that what it is? Or does beauty have a purpose? {64}
    book-quoteflowersplants

  9. Michael Pollan _ In Defense of Food: An Eater's

    Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
    book-quoteeatingfoodplants

  10. Ursula K. Le Guin _ A Wizard of Earthsea

    You want to work spells,' Ogion said presently, striding along. 'You've drawn too much water from that well. Wait. Manhood is patience. Mastery is nine times patience. What is that herb by the path?''Strawflower.''And that?''I don't know.''Fourfoil, they call it.' Ogion had halted, the coppershod foot of his staff near the little weed, so Ged looked closely at the plant, and plucked a dry seedpod from it, and finally asked, since Ogion said nothing more, 'What is its use, Master?''None I know of.'Ged kept the seedpod a while as they went on, then tossed it away. 'When you know the fourfoil in all its seasons root and leaf and flower, by sight and scent and seed, then you may learn its true name, knowing its being: which is more than its use. What, after all, is the use of you? or of myself? Is Gont Mountain useful, or the Open Sea?' Ogion went on a half mile or so, and said at last, 'To hear, one must be silent.
    book-quotemagicpatiencemastery

  11. Jack Weatherford _ Indian Givers: How the Indians

    Even in this high-tech age, the low-tech plant continues to be the key to nutrition and health.
    book-quotescienceplants

  12. John Steinbeck _ East of Eden

    I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer -- and what trees and seasons smelled like -- how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.
    book-quotetimememorylandscape
Categories