Taxonomic Quotes & Sayings

Alice loved in order to make up for her own insufficiencies, she searched in others for qualities she aspired to, respected but lacked. Her emotional needs were like a puzzle incomplete without a segment brought by another but the dimensions of the void altered in response to self-development, the piece which fitted at fifteen would no longer fit at thirty. The gap redrew its contours, and unless the puzzle-person kept up she would be left to divorce or awkwardly force the issue. — Alain De Botton

I don't wear a cross. As a child, I'd had a bad experience with one. Besides, a crucifix was the instrument of Our Lord's death- I don't know why people think a torture device should be a symbol of Christ. Christ was a willing sacrifice, a lamb, not a cross for us to hang ourselves on; or at least that's my interpretation. Maybe other people think of religion and God differently than I do. — Patricia Briggs

Darwin recognized the fact that paleontology then seemed to provide evidence against rather for evolution in general or the gradual origin of taxonomic categories in particular. — George Gaylord Simpson

Yet the Narrator's quest is not only for his own identity and vocation. He seeks an understanding of art, sexuality and worldly and political affairs: he is a snoop and a voyeur; he comments and classifies; his taxonomic impulse makes the novel appear to be a vast compendium, replete with burrowing wasps and bedsteads, military strategies, stereoscopes, asparagus and aeroplanes. — Adam A. Watt

Taxonomy, also called systematics, is the science-based hierarchical classification of the world's species. The area had traditionally been an obscure academic discipline dominated by erudite and professional dons who would memorize and interpret thousands of Latin species names. Advances seldom made the newspapers and caustic disputes lingered in the dust scientific literature for generations. That academic innocence would be lost forever when precise taxonomic recognition of species and subspecies came to be the basis for protection under the Endangered Species Act. — Stephen J. O'Brien

Most of what presents itself to us in the marketplace as a product is in truth a web of relationships, between people, yes, but also between ourselves and all the other species on which we still depend. Eating and drinking especially implicate us in the natural world in ways that the industrial economy, with its long and illegible supply chains, would have us forget. The beer in that bottle, I'm reminded as soon as I brew it myself, ultimately comes not from a factory but from nature - from a field of barley snapping in the wind, from a hops vine clambering over a trellis, from a host of invisible microbes feasting on sugars. It took the carefully orchestrated collaboration of three far-flung taxonomic kingdoms - plants, animals, and fungi - to produce that ale. To make it yourself once in a while, to handle the barley and inhale the aroma of hops and yeast, becomes, among other things, a form of observance, a weekend ritual of remembrance. — Michael Pollan

We pride ourselves as being top, really, on the African ladder ... We feel that we have actually been advancing rather than going backwards. — Robert Mugabe

Those objecting to the concept of race argue that the taxonomic definitions are arbitrary and subjective. — J. Philippe Rushton

At some point my need for a solution was replaced by the poetry of my continuous failure. — Charles Simic

There is no final solution to loneliness until you recognize that you need the resources which are in yourself to enpy, within limits, being alone being the kind of person that you like to be with, and reaching out to others, not in a grasping way, but in an attempt to be meaningful and loving and of service in their lives. — Truman G. Madsen

This leads me to ask how it came to be that Pluto is Mickey's dog, but Mickey is not Pluto's mouse. Something is awry in the taxonomic class of mammals in the Disney universe. I — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Mirrors are ice which do not melt: what melts are those who admire themselves in them. — Paul Morand

A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The trouble with taxonomic boxes is ... that that they tend to be empty, however beautiful they are on the outside. — Kenneth E. Boulding

A species may eat a particular bacterium, phytoplankton, smaller fish, or plant in an area. Lacking a predator, these species/populations will overgrow and alter the area's biology, overwhelming and driving to extinction dozens or hundreds or thousands of other local species. — Thom Hartmann

Many a man who falls in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl. — Evan Esar

My stories are my children. Some are sweet infants that I coddle and care for. Others are old enough now, they need to damn well get a job! — Christy Hall

The beautiful has but one type, the ugly has a thousand. — Victor Hugo

Maybe I really could be one of the greatest of all time. Who doesn't want to be a legend, right? — Kayla Harrison