Anthony Trollope Quotes

Both the cockroach and the bird would get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most.

Trees are our closest relatives. What trees exhale, we inhale; what we exhale, they inhale. They are half our respiratory system.

Am I simply a vehicle for numerous bacteria that inhabit my microbiome? Or are they hosting me?

The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.

There's a theory that says that life is based on a competition and the struggle and the fight for survival, and it's interesting because when you look at the fractal character of evolution, it's totally different. It's based on cooperation among the elements in the geometry and not competition.

Nature is an incredible cooperative. When things operate outside of that cooperative, they die off. It's a very simple rule that nature operates under.

Because of my medical and ideological training, I am accustomed to saying that life is adaptation and symbiosis.

It has become evident that the primary lesson of the study of evolution is that all evolution is coevolution: every organism is evolving in tandem with the organisms around it.

It is only of life on Earth, however, that one can speak with any certainty. It seems to me that all life on Earth, the sum total of life upon the Earth, has purpose.

A long time ago, I became aware that many of us have a tendency to lump nature into simplistic categories, such as what we consider beautiful or ugly, important or unimportant. As human a thing as that is to do, I think it often leads us to misunderstand the respective roles of life forms and their interconnectedness.

Nature promotes mutualism. The flower nourishes the bee. The river waters quench the thirst of all living beings. And trees provide a welcoming home to so many birds and animals. There is a rhythm to this togetherness.

The strong need the weak as much as the weak need the strong

What a marvelous cooperative arrangement - plants and animals each inhaling each other's exhalations, a kind of planet-wide mutual mouth-to-stoma resuscitation, the entire elegant cycle powered by a star 150 million kilometers away.

One mouth doth nothing without another.

Come into our home, daughters of Earth; dwell in our tunnels, harvest our fields; what we cannot do, you are now our hands to do for us. Blossom, trees; ripen, fields; be warm for them, suns; be fertile for them, planets: they are our adopted daughters, and they have come home.

There's an interdependence between flowers and bees. Where there are no flowers there are no bees, and where there are no bees, there are no flowers. They are really one organism. And so in the same way, everything in nature depends on everything else.

Dogs and humans are symbiotic species. We need each other.

The body and mind are dependent.

Over the long term, symbiosis is more useful than parasitism. More fun, too. Ask any mitochondria.

The bee and the serpent often sip from the selfsame flower.

Now I have a cat. Well, that's not quite accurate. A cat and I have each other.

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

Leaves are usually looked upon as the children of the tree. Yes, they are children of the tree, born from the tree, but they are also mothers of the tree. The leaves combine raw sap, water, and minerals, with sunshine and gas, and convert it into a variegated sap that can nourish the tree. In this way, the leaves become the mother of the tree. We are all children of society, but we are also mothers. We have to nourish society. If we are uprooted from society, we can not trasform it into a more liveable place for us and our children.

The more you rely on what you need, the more you become that which you rely on.

The plants look up to heaven, from whence they have their nourishment.