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Statistically the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you would think the mere fact of existence would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.

— Lewis Thomas The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)

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Life

More quotes by Lewis Thomas

Everything here is alive thanks to the living of everything else.

The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)

The future is too interesting and dangerous to be entrusted to any predictable, reliable agency.

The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)

Left to ourselves, mechanistic and autonomic, we hanker for friends.

The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)

Usefulness may turn out to be the hardest test of fitness for survival, more important than aggression, more effective, in the long run, than grabbiness.

The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)

You can’t do this and keep a straight face.

The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)

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To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Bertrand Russell Marriage and Morals (1929)

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

Richard Francis Burton The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.

Cary Grant Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About (1964)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Lewis Thomas (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.