Quotes about orchid

A collection of quotes on the topic of orchid, likeness, life, god.

Quotes about orchid

Tony Kushner photo

“One wants to move through life with elegance and grace, blossoming infrequently but with exquisite taste, and perfect timing, like a rare bloom, a zebra orchid… One wants… But one so seldom gets what one wants, does one?”

Tony Kushner Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

Source: Angels in America

Life , Time , Perfection
Scott Westerfeld photo

“She thought of the orchids spreading across the plains below, choking the life out of other plants, out of the soil itself, selfish and unstoppable. Tally Youngblood was a weed. And, unlike the orchids, she wasn't even a pretty one.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

Life , Selfishness
Karen Marie Moning photo

“If he’d been any other man and i'd been any other girl, I’d have called the narrowing of his heavy-lidded dark eyes lust. But he was Barrons and I was Mac, and a blossoming of lust was about as likely as orchids blooming in Antarctica”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

Girl

“I hated roses. I hated them for being so trite, so clichéd, a default, all-purpose flower that said I love you, I'm sorry, and get well soon. Give me peonies and tulips, orchids or gardenia. Those were flowers with character.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

Love , Hate , Flowers
Sheri-D Wilson photo

“Did you know orchids
employ trickery to attract insects?
They spray a deceptive scent
resembling insect pheromones.
Bad flower! Bad flower!
Liar! Liar! Petals on fire!”

Sheri-D Wilson (1958) Canadian Spoken Word Poet

"Heart"
Goddess Gone Fishing for a Map of the Universe (2012)

Flowers
Tom Robbins photo

“So this, then, is the chamber of the hootchy-kootch. Its bathtub full of orchids. Its closet full of smoke.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994)

Najib Razak photo

“Malaysia-Singapore bilateral relations can blossom beautifully if cultivated and nurtured like an orchid plant.”

Najib Razak (1953) Malaysian politician

Addressing a state banquet during a visit to Singapore on 23 May 2009.
Quotable quotes from Najib, NST, 11 Jul 2009 http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/articles/6kon/Article/index_html,

Andy Partridge photo

“I had a dream where the car is reduced to a fossil
I had a dream where the car is reduced to a fossil
Take a packet of seeds, take yourself out to play
I want to see a river of orchids where we had a motorway”

Andy Partridge (1953) British musician

"River of Orchids.
Apple Venus Volume 1 (1999)

Dreams , Cars

“The Darwinians have coined the terms pseudoteleology and teleonomy to designate the finality which they at the same time deny. Appearances are deceptive, they say; the materials of life are always the work of chance. What some take for finality is only the result of the ordering of random materials bynatural selection. Even were this to be true, as it is not, the demon of finility would still not have been exorcized. For natural selection is, in essence and function, the supreme finilizing agent. Actually, the terms pseudoteleology and teleonomy are the homage paid to finality, as hypocrisy pays homage to virtue. Giard (1905), himself a shrewd scholar but blinded by a foolish anticlericalism, went so far as to abjure Lamarckism and write, "To account for the wondrous adaptations such as those we observe between orchids and the insects that fertilize them, we have hardly any choice but the bare alternative hypotheses: the intervention of a sovereignly intelligent being, and selection." He cannot have seriously subjected his supposed dilemma to critical scrutiny or he would have seen that he was substituting for the dethroned divinity just such another, a sorting and finalizing, in sum transcendental, agent, natural selection. Paul Wintrebert, a convinced and even intractable atheist, did not fall into the same trap but realized perfectly that Giard's alternative involves, whatever opinion be held, recognizing the intervention of a purposive guiding agent. Giard's concept, which is that held by many atheists and "freethinkers", gives a singular and belittling idea of God. The Almighty, obliged to remodel and retouch His own handiwork.”

Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985) French zoologist

Grassé, Pierre Paul (1977); Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation. Academic Press, p. 165
Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation (1977)

Life , God , Intelligence , Idea

“Thus, we have three principles for increasing adequacy of data: if you must work with a single object, look for imperfections that record historical descent; if several objects are available, try to render them as stages of a single historical process; if processes can be directly observed, sum up their effects through time. One may discuss these principles directly or recognize the “little problems” that Darwin used to exemplify them: orchids, coral reefs, and worms—the middle book, the first, and the last.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes

"Worm for a Century, and All Seasons", p. 132
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983)

Books , Problem , Time
David Attenborough photo

“I often get letters, quite frequently, from people who say how they like the programmes a lot, but I never give credit to the almighty power that created nature. To which I reply and say, "Well, it's funny that the people, when they say that this is evidence of the Almighty, always quote beautiful things. They always quote orchids and hummingbirds and butterflies and roses." But I always have to think too of a little boy sitting on the banks of a river in west Africa who has a worm boring through his eyeball, turning him blind before he's five years old. And I reply and say, "Well, presumably the God you speak about created the worm as well," and now, I find that baffling to credit a merciful God with that action. And therefore it seems to me safer to show things that I know to be truth, truthful and factual, and allow people to make up their own minds about the moralities of this thing, or indeed the theology of this thing.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

From the BBC documentary Life on Air (2002)

God , People , Truth , Beauty
Thich Nhat Hanh photo

“We should bow deeply before the orchid and the snail and join our palms reverently before the monarch butterfly and the magnolia tree. The feeling of respect for all species will help us recognize the noblest nature in ourselves.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

The Sun My Heart (1996)

Feeling , Nature , Tree , Help

“So rare,
You're like the sparkle of old champagne;
Orchids in cellophane
Couldn't compare to you.”

Gus Arnheim (1897–1955) American musician

Song So Rare

Bill Bailey photo

“I'm amazed by how compliant people are in this country. They go into service stations - 'cathedrals of despair', as I call them - where baseball-capped ghouls of the night lord it over their congealed bean kingdoms, their fried-bread twilights, their neon demi-mondes, tempting you to enter to become them, undead. "Ooh, beans on toast, £18.95, very reasonable. Oh no, I'm not going to complain. They probably pump them up from London in special tubes." God, £18.95? If that was the price, for my money, each bean would have to be carried over in a heron's beak and laid on an orchid and then placed on a very rare train set and carried all the way to my table on the train set and then pinged off by a tiny little rare vole and it rolls onto a beautiful silk leaf and I eat it with a Fabergé egg. Then you'd get your money's worth.
Ch. 16, 26:40”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Bewilderness (DVD, 2001)

Money , God , People , Beauty