Adaptation Quotes

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
― Albert Einstein

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“In youth, it was a way I had,
To do my best to please.
And change, with every passing lad
To suit his theories.

But now I know the things I know
And do the things I do,
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

“Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another!”
― Douglas McGrath

“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.”
― Bruce Lee

“A young outcast will often feel that there is something wrong with himself, but as he gets older, grows more confident in who he is, he will adapt, he will begin to feel that there is something wrong with everyone else.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“You are what you love, not what loves you.”
― Charlie Kaufman

“We first make our habits, then our habits make us.”
― John Dryden

“Suicide is a form of murder— premeditated murder. It isn’t something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes some getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.

It’s important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying. If there’s a window, you must imagine your body falling out the window. If there’s a knife, you must imagine the knife piercing your skin. If there’s a train coming, you must imagine your torso flattened under its wheels. These exercises are necessary to achieving the proper distance.

The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark—why not kill myself? Missed the bus—better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movie—maybe I shouldn’t kill myself.

In reality, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.”
― Susanna Kaysen

“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have a huge variety of needs and dangers.”
― H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

“We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity.”
― H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

“It is not a failure to readjust my sails to fit the waters I find myself in.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy

“Life is neither static nor unchanging. With no individuality, there can be no change, no adaptation and, in an inherently changing world, any species unable to adapt is also doomed.”
― Jean M. Auel

“People seem to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to attachment.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got.”
― James P. Lewis, Working Together: 12 Principles for Achieving Excellence in Managing Projects, Teams, and Organizations

“Writing is a journey into the unknown.”
― Charlie Kaufman

“As he paid the hansom and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge in the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the most difficult in marriage. 'After that I suppose we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbing off each other’s angles,' he reflected; but the worst of it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the very angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“Spiritual love is when you see new faces as the oldest.”
― michael bassey johnson

“#Cats are marvelous creatures - they either adapt to circumstances, or decide to make circumstances adapt to them. Either way - they win.”
― Will Advise, Nothing is here...

“For him the word 'horror' had become obsolete.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts the inhabitants of each country only in relation to the degree of perfection of their associates; so that we need feel no surprise at the inhabitants of any one country, although on the ordinary view supposed to have been specially created and adapted for that country, being beaten and supplanted by the naturalised productions from another land.”
― Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

“It's too late to be studying Hebrew; it's more important to understand even the slang of today.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walking

“A surfeiting of terror soon made terror a cliché.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“What brings us anywhere? You take one turn instead of another, you meet one woman instead of another, you have good health or you don't, luck vies with misfortune, you break down and arrive at Bellevue in your bathrobe on a Saturday morning or - what was his father's antique phrase - you pulled up your socks and got on with things. Your heart adapted to changing times. Your body did. Or it did not and you passed your days in a muffler of regret. And that was what they called intelligent design.”
― Ward Just, Forgetfulness

“Hugh Laurie (playing Mr. Palmer) felt the line 'Don't palm all your abuses [of language upon me]' was possibly too rude. 'It's in the book,' I said. He didn't hit me.”
― Emma Thompson, The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film

“[F]or all its reputation for conservatism, cricket in its history has demonstrated a remarkable capacity for innovation. What game has survived subjection to such extraordinary manipulations, having been prolonged to 10 days (in Durban 70 years ago), truncated to as few as 60 balls (in Hong Kong every year), and remained recognisable in each instance?”
― Gideon Haigh

“The oak is the strongest tree in the forest, but the willow bends and adapts. When the fires and storms hit, it is the willow that survives.”
― Kara Barbieri, White Stag

“To have a solid foundation of skepticism, -that is to say, the faculty of changing at any moment, of turning back, of facing successively the metamorphoses of life.”
― Remy de Gourmont, Philosophic Nights in Paris

“His special gift was the ability to see the essence of a worthwhile suggestion and to relate it to what was already in existence or planned. Then he would encourage and shape the new project, repeatedly redesigning the curriculum so that a new department or course could have a comfortable place in which to grow and offer it benefits.”
― Charles Bracelen Flood, Lee: The Last Years

“Adapt yourself to the needs of the people”
― Sunday Adelaja