After scientists broke open the coat of a lotus seed (Nelumbo nucifera) and coddled the embryo into growth, they kept the empty husk. When they radiocarbon-dated this discarded outer shell, they discovered that their seedling had been waiting for them within a peat bog in China for no less than two thousand years. This tiny seed had stubbornly kept up the hope of its own future while entire human civilizations rose and fell. And then one day this little plant's yearning finally burst forth within a laboratory. I wonder where it is right now. Hope Jahren
Some Similar Quotes
  1. They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for. - Tom Bodett
  2. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. - Anonymous
  3. If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him... - Paulo Coelho
  4. Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart. - Unknown
  5. To love life, to love it evenwhen you have no stomach for itand everything you've held dearcrumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heatthickening the air, heavy as watermore fit... - Ellen Bass
More Quotes By Hope Jahren
  1. I have accepted that I don't know all the things that I ought to know, but I do know things that I need to know.
  2. People will tell you that you have to know math to be a scientist, or physics or chemistry. They're wrong.... What comes first is a question, and you're already there. It's not nearly as involved as people make it out to be.
  3. You may have heard that America doesn't have enough scientists and is in danger of "falling behind" (whatever that means) because of it. Tell this to an academic scientist and watch her laugh. For the last thirty years, the amount of the U.S. annual budget...
  4. Our world is falling apart quietly. Human civilization has reduced the plant, a four-million-year-old life form, into three things: food, medicine, and wood. In our relentless and ever-intensifying obsession with obtaining a higher volume, potency, and variety of these three things, we have devastated plant...
  5. Once your baby tree is in the ground, check it daily, because the first three years are critical. Remember that you are your tree's only friend in a hostile world.
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