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Small World Quotes

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Small World Quotes

“Alma knelt in the tall grass and brought her face as near as she could to the stone. And there, rising no more than an inch above the surface of the boulder, she saw a great and tiny forest. Nothing moved within this mossy world. She peered at it so closely that she could smell it- dank and rich and old. Gently, Alma pressed her hand into this tight little timberland. It compacted itself under her palm and then sprang back to form without complaint. There was something stirring about its response to her. The moss felt warm and spongy, several degrees warmer than the air around it, and far more damp than she had expected. It appeared to have its own weather. Alma put the magnifying lens to her eye and looked again. Now the miniature forest below her gaze sprang into majestic detail. She felt her breath catch. This was a stupefying kingdom. This was the Amazon jungle as seen from the back of a harpy eagle. She rode her eye above the surprising landscape, following its paths in every direction. Here were rich, abundant valleys filled with tiny trees of braided mermaid hair and minuscule, tangled vines. Here were barely visible tributaries running through that jungle, and here was a miniature ocean in a depression in the center of the boulder, where all the water pooled. Just across this ocean- which was half the size of Alma's shawl- she found another continent of moss altogether. On this new continent, everything was different. This corner of the boulder must receive more sunlight than the other, she surmised. Or slightly less rain? In any case, this was a new climate entirely. Here, the moss grew in mountain ranges the length of Alma's arms, in elegant, pine tree-shaped clusters of darker, more somber green. On another quadrant of the same boulder still, she found patches of infinitesimally small deserts, inhabited by some kind of sturdy, dry, flaking moss that had the appearance of cactus. Elsewhere, she found deep, diminutive fjords- so deep that, incredibly, even now in the month of June- the mosses within were still chilled by lingering traces of winter ice. But she also found warm estuaries, miniature cathedrals, and limestone caves the size of her thumb. Then Alma lifted her face and saw what was before her- dozens more such boulders, more than she could count, each one similarly carpeted, each one subtly different. She felt herself growing breathless. 'This was the entire world.' This was bigger than a world. This was the firmament of the universe, as seen through one of William Herschel's mighty telescopes. This was planetary and vast. These were ancient, unexplored galaxies, rolling forth in front of her- and it was all right here!”

MossSmall WorldAlma WhittakerMicroscopicMosses
Book:The Signature of All Things
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“It is easy to say we believe in God as long as we remain in the little world we choose to live in; but get out into the great world of facts, the noisy world where people are absolutely indifferent to you, where your message is nothing more than a crazy tale belonging to a bygone age, can you believe God there?”

PeopleWorldBelieveLittlesLongFactsAgeEasyCrazyMessagesTalesIndifferenceBelongingBelieve In GodIndifferentNoisySmall World
Book:The Quotable Oswald Chambers
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“Fine-art photography is a very small world associated with galleries, museums, and university art programs. It's not like rock music; the products of this world have never been widely seen because the artists are often exploring things that are not already coded in general consciousness. It's not that photographers don't want to be famous, it's just that very few of the views from the edges of culture make the mainstream. Ansel Adams was an exception.”

WorldWantArtArtistCultureViewsConsciousnessRocksThis WorldProductsFinePhotographyProgramPhotographerUniversityEdgesExceptionMuseumsMainstreamExploringGalleryFine ArtsRock MusicSmall WorldArt Photography
Author:Mark Klett
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“I was photographing the photographer Brassaï. He had very prominent eyes, like a frog's. As I focused my lens, he brought his hand up and pretended to focus his eye. It was a joke, but it added mystery to the picture. There's a sense of action in a very small world. Or with Allen Ginsberg there were people smoking cigarettes and in the smoke there's a sense of motion. It makes much out of very little.”

PeopleWorldLittlesHandsEyeActionFocusMysteryJokesPhotographerFocusedSmokeHis EyesSmokingCigaretteLensesFrogsProminentHands UpSmoking CigarettesSmall WorldGinsberg
Author:John Loengard
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“The point I'm trying to make is if these networks of communication technologies are owned, monetized, surveilled, and classified by those with power - very few people, mainly white men in Silicon Valley - then it is a global village build upon the ideas, visions, words, and protocols of the few. So it's not global - it's like Epcot center. It's like Disneyland: a small worldview of the larger world.”

PeopleMenWorldTryingVisionTechnologyCommunicationWorldviewDisneylandSmall World
Author:Ramesh Srinivasan
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“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”

WorldInspirationalI CanWomenWaterChangeLeadershipCreativityThis WorldPositiveStonesCastsHelping OthersLife ChangingChanging The WorldThoughtfulMissionaryCastingLove And KindnessNunRippleFamous WomenWorld LeaderPositive ChangeInspiring LeaderCalcuttaChanging My LifeMotivational LeadershipInspirational ChangeLife Has ChangedSmall ChangesTime For A ChangeSmall WorldTimes Have ChangedCreating ChangeOne Person Can Make A DifferenceLife And ChangeImpact On The WorldCan't Change PeopleYourself And LifeGreatness And LeadershipPermanent ChangeIncrementalism
Author:Mother Teresa
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“The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being.”

KnowsWorldInspirationalHumansMadeLightSciencePurposeUniverseDifficultChanceHuman BeingsDiscoveryWavePatternsPhysicsContradictionParadoxParticlesNothing NewRandomnessSmall WorldScience LifeParticle Physics
Author:Madeleine L'Engle
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“The people who visit the [Lincoln] memorial always look like an advertisement for democracy, so bizarrely, suspiciously diverse that one time I actually saw a man in a cowboy hat standing there reading the Gettysburg Address next to a Hasidic Jew. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had linked arms with a woman in a burka and a Masai warrior, to belt out ‘It’s a Small World After All,’ flanked by a chorus line of nuns and field-tripping, rainbow-skinned schoolchildren”

PeopleIfsMenWorldLooksHas BeensReadingNextLinesDemocracySawsFieldsArmsStandingJewWarriorHatsAddressesOne TimeDiverseRainbowCowboyLinkedBeltsMemorialNunChorusAdvertisementsStanding ThereTrippingGettysburgSmall WorldGettysburg AddressCowboy HatMasaiChorus LineLincoln Memorial
Author:Sarah Vowell
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“The point is, Mrs. MacDonagh, that the universe is exactly the size that your soul can encompass. Some people live in extremely small worlds, and some live in a world of infinite possibility.”

PeopleWorldSoulUniversePossibilityInfiniteSizeYour SoulInfinite PossibilitiesSmall World
Book:The Iron Druid Chronicles 6-Book Bundle: Hounded, Hexed, Hammered, Tricked, Trapped, Hunted
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“But how can you walk away from something and still come back to it?" "Easy," said the cat. "Think of somebody walking around the world. You start out walking away from something and end up coming back to it." "Small world," said Coraline. "It's big enough for her," said the cat. "spiders' webs only have to be large enough to catch flies." Coraline shivered.”

ThinkingWorldSaidStillsEndsEnoughBigsEasyWalksWalkingCatAround The WorldComing BackSpidersWalking AwaySmall WorldCoralineSpider Web
Book:Coraline
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“Science is complex and chilling. The mathematical language of science is understood by very few. The vistas it presents are scary-an enormous universe ruled by chance and impersonal rules, empty and uncaring, ungraspable and vertiginous. How comfortable to turn instead to a small world, only a few thousand years old, and under God's personal; and immediate care; a world in which you are His peculiar concern.”

WorldYearsGodCareScienceReligionTurnsUniverseLanguageChanceThousandComfortableUnderstoodConcernEmptyAccountsMathematicsComplexesScaryEnormousMathematicalPeculiarThousand YearsChillVistasUncaringSmall World
Author:Isaac Asimov
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