The sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain. This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.

He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, for that is what he will know.

I'd seen a great many partial eclipses, but a partial eclipse has the same relation to a total eclipse as flirting with a man does to marrying him. It's completely different.

[Insects] are not only cold-blooded, and green- and yellow-blooded, but are also cased in a clacking horn. They have rigid eyes and brains strung down their backs. But they make up the bulk of our comrades-at-life, so I look to them for a glimmer of companionship.

We live in all we seek.

There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been.

I saw in a blue haze all the world poured flat and pale between the mountains