The Specimen Quotes

#1. Could I have some water?" "I'll get it." Marcus hopped up from his stool. "There's some in the specimen fridge.

Deborah Harkness

#2. When we find a fossil, we mark it. Today, we've got great technology: we have GPS. We mark it with a GPS fix, and we also take a digital photograph of the specimen, so we could essentially put it back on the surface, exactly where we found it.

Louise Leakey

#3. We sometimes freeze the specimen with liquid nitrogen, which is extremely cold, you know. This is another technique we use now - but the specimens are not alive.

Lennart Nilsson

#4. When you do a really good play, the audience and the performers are looking into the same looking glass, the same microscope. And the specimen they are looking at is human life and that's why I do it, that's why I like it.

John Malkovich

#5. You're quite the specimen. Built like a sturdy building.
Are all your Low Born females like you?"
"You've begun to annoy me.

G.A. Aiken

#6. And my real enemy is not to hold the specimen sterile, but it's the lighting. The light is our real enemy. So we have to work with very very poor lighting. But we can increase the light with computers.

Lennart Nilsson

#7. Traditional angling is the antithesis of the modern specimen angling scene.

Fennel Hudson

#8. The more power you use-

-the more detailed the observation of your specimen.

The more power you have, the narrower your field of vision.

Exactly, you say. The more power you have, my friends, the less you see of the whole.

Rosemary Nixon

#9. He would never abandon her, never leave a gaping hole, and even if he died someday, he was preserved like a lab specimen from all the alcohol he imbibed, so he wouldn't look or act much different.

Shannon Hale

#10. Progress and Poverty was the most closely knit, fascinating, and convincing specimen of argumentation that, I believe, ever sprang from the mind of man.

Scott Brooks

#11. I use the word "man" loosely. A better description would be "the most beautiful specimen of Homo sapiens sapiens with a set of XY chromosomes to grace the planet Earth at this moment, or any other era, epoch, or age in history.

Elle Lothlorien

#12. If there should prove to be one real, living Free State Democrat in Kansas, I suggest that it might be well to catch him and stuff and preserve his skin as an interesting specimen of that soon-to-be-extinct variety of the genus Democrat.

Abraham Lincoln

#13. Looking back, one can almost imagine them stalking through the wild with specimen bottles and outsize nets, in determined pursuit of the Ojibwa adverb or the Cherokee pronoun.

Margalit Fox

#14. I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side ... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.

Robert Byrd

#15. The human species is made up of seven billion subspecies each consisting of one specimen.

Robert Breault

#16. It is good to know what you are doing. The man with his pickled fish has set down one truth and has recorded in his experience many lies. The fish is not that color, that texture, that dead, nor does he smell that way.

John Steinbeck

#17. When you hit thirty-five or forty, you know on one level that you are no longer the physical specimen you once were.

Harlan Coben

#18. The idea of defending, as integral parts of our Empire, countries 10,000 miles off, like Australia, which neither pay a shilling to our revenue ... nor afford us any exclusive trade ... is about as quixotic a specimen of national folly as was ever exhibited.

Richard Cobden

#19. The President is no more than a well-meaning baboon. I went to the White House directly after tea, where I found "The Original Gorilla", about as intelligent as ever. What a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now.

George B. McClellan

#20. If I have not the power to put myself in the place of other people, but must be continually burrowing inward, I shall never be the magnanimous creative person I wish to be. Yet I am hypnotized by the workings of the individual, alone, and am continually using myself as a specimen.

Sylvia Plath

#21. There was in my mother's love of me something of the creative spirit of an artist -- it was her wish to produce me as a finished specimen framed in a perfect setting.

Belinda Jones

#22. Masculine observers, if the birth-mark did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness, without the semblance of a flaw.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

#23. The German passion for bureaucracy
for written and signal forms ... to move about, to work, to exist
is like a steel pin pinning each French individual to a sheet of paper, the way an entomologist pins each specimen insect ...

Janet Flanner

#24. [There is an] immense advantage to be gained by ample space and appropriate surroundings in aiding the formation of a just idea of the beauty and interest of each specimen... Nothing detracts so much from the enjoyment ... from a visit to a museum as the overcrowding of the specimens exhibited.

William Henry Flower

#25. I hate when models say 'Oh, plastic surgery is just a wrong thing. What are you talking about? You won the genetic lottery. You look like this specimen that's making people everywhere feel insecure and you're going to ridicule someone for getting plastic surgery?

Tyra Banks

#26. Gregory Johnson is a fine specimen of the male human. Look how large he is!"
"Why don't you make out with him then?"
Raphael laughed. "Abigail Miller, he is not my type. He is a human.

Ashlan Thomas

#27. Personally I think we're over-specialized. Why it's getting so we have experts who concentrate only on the lower section of a specimen's left ear.

Martin Berkeley

#28. Nature in America has always been suspect, on the defensive, cannibalized by progress. In America, every specimen becomes a relic.

Susan Sontag

#29. I found myself confronted with a decision that no woman should ever have to make; do I look upward to assess the face attached to the scrumptious MMA pecs or go downward to find what other gifts God had bestowed on this specimen.

Genna Rulon

#30. It turns out that the distance from head to hand, from wafting butterfly to entomological specimen, is achieved through regular, disciplined practice. What begins as something like a dream will in fact stay a dream forever unless you have the tools and the discipline to bring it out.

Ann Patchett

#31. A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both.

Benjamin Disraeli

#32. I guess that the goddess Venus wasn't on my side with this fine specimen of the male gender!

Adele Rose

#33. After observing mutations in fruit flies for many years, Professes Goldschmidt fell into despair. The changes, he lamented, were so hopelessly micro [insignificant] that if a thousand mutations were combined in one specimen, there would still be no new species.

Norman Macbeth

#34. You know what a supernova is? It's a dead star. And yet, it is the most beautiful specimen in the universe. Lots of people are supernovas but don't know it, they think that they're dead; they don't know that they're beautiful.

C. JoyBell C.

#35. Everyone had taken their places, when I excused myself to visit the bathroom, and there, in the toilet, was the absolute biggest turd I have ever seen in my life - no toilet paper or anything, just this long and coiled specimen, as thick as a burrito.

David Sedaris

#36. He studied her, as if she were some exotic specimen of fish he'd pulled up from the lake depths and he was deciding whether to keep her or throw her back.

Lindsay Buroker

#37. More and more I knew my budding world was ruined if he were free in it. As a specimen Mr. Wallace might be my pride. Glory to him in a jar. But free! Better to release the sweet moving tiger or the delicate snake, the monumental elephant. I was just a castaway to be devoured.

William H Gass

#38. Gerald Boyd was a classic specimen of the self-made man. Born poor, he worked and studied his way up out of poverty under the guidance of his widowed grandmother.

Russell Baker

#39. Melrose is the finest remaining specimen of Gothic architecture in Scotland. Some of the sculptured flowers in the cloister arches are remarkably beautiful and delicate, and the two windows - the south and east oriels - are of a lightness and grace of execution really surprising.

Bayard Taylor

#40. The American girl isn't ANY girl; she's a remarkable specimen in a remarkable species.

Henry James

#41. The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen

Milan Kundera

#42. I've seen men like you in Doris Day films, but I never thought they existed in real life ... The men who can't commit, who can't say 'I love you' even when they want to, who start to cough and sputter and change the subject. But here you are. A living, breathing specimen. Incredible.

Nick Hornby

#43. Seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armor, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.

Raymond Chandler

#44. So far, therefore, as we can draw safe conclusions from a single specimen, there has been no marked change of race in the human population of Switzerland during the periods above considered.

Charles Lyell

#45. I always wanted to be an actor, so part of me is split between the artistic side and the physical side, but then physically I was just born as quite a healthy specimen!

Dave Legeno

#46. He was a typical specimen of the younger son in avid pursuit of mediocrity with which the Theurgist's teemed:

Zen Cho

#47. Select such subjects that your pupils cannot walk out without seeing them. Train your pupils to be observers, and have them provided with the specimens about which you speak. If you can find nothing better, take a house-fly or a cricket, and let each one hold a specimen and examine it as you talk.

Louis Agassiz

#48. Doc! I'd kiss you if you had a mouth, you sexy thing." Ro shouts up to the sky, as if Doc were everywhere in the universe. Which, sometimes, it feels like he is. "And I would exchange data with you if you had a dataport, you exemplary specimen. Analogically speaking. Is that correct?

Margaret Stohl

#49. As much as I admire and value intellectualism and experimentation, I've discovered that unless a book has a throbbing heart as well as a sexy brain, I feel like the story is a specimen in a sealed glass jar and not a living, breathing creature I want to take by the hand and talk to for hours on end.

Myla Goldberg

#50. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex.

Kate Chopin

#51. I thought I was a pretty good physical specimen. But there was a teenager from Brooklyn, who basically wiped the floor with me on the street. He gave me a punch that I didn't even feel. All I knew I was looking up at the sky. I tried to fight him, and I got a number of injuries after that.

Bernhard Goetz

#52. One of the reasons I'm an actor is because I was no physical specimen as a child. I wasn't athletic and didn't have any prowess in that regard. Growing up in Kentucky, most little boys were trying to get into sports, and it was very competitive, so that was not to be. But I did want to do something.

Michael Shannon

#53. If you look up 'Intelligence' in the new volumes of the Encyclopeadia Britannica, you'll find it classified under the following three heads: Intelligence, Human; Intelligence, Animal; Intelligence, Military. My stepfather's a perfect specimen of Intelligence, Military.

Aldous Huxley

#54. The Democratic party is one that I've always observed. I have struggled greatly in life from the day I was born, and I am honored to be a part of something that focuses on working class citizens and molds them into a proud specimen.

Joan Crawford

#55. And in repose one might have admired so fine a specimen of English manhood, until the foppish ways, the affected movements, the perpetual inane laugh, brought one's admiration of Sir Percy Blakeney to an abrupt close.

Emmuska Orczy

#56. I am now the site of an unmistakable sag ... With fancy holographic belt buckles do I attempt to restrain my stampeding softness. In vain ... My only virtues, as a physical specimen, are my sideburns, which are like the pelts of rare woodland animals. My sideburns are not to be ignored.

Rick Moody

#57. Most Tralfamadorians had no way of knowing Billy's body and face were not beautiful. They supposed that he was a splendid specimen. This had a pleasant effect on Billy, who began to enjoy his body for the first time

Kurt Vonnegut

#58. Casting Captain America is really casting two roles ... Steve Rogers before and after the transformation from 98 pound weakling to perfect physical specimen. I can't divulge how we're going to do it, but the performance will be Chris Evans from beginning to end.

Joe Johnston

#59. CHAPTER XI TREATS OF MR. FANG THE POLICE MAGISTRATE; AND FURNISHES A SLIGHT SPECIMEN OF HIS MODE OF ADMINISTERING JUSTICExs

Charles Dickens

#60. The fact is that the British Museum had a complete specimen of a dodo in their collection up until the 18th century - it was actually mummified, skin and all - but in a fit of space-saving zeal, they actually cut off the head and they cut off the feet and they burned the rest in a bonfire.

Adam Savage

#61. The uncandid censurer always picks out the worst man of a class, and then confidently produces him as being a fair specimen of it.

Hannah More

#62. I thought that one was going to hit me," I said, watching the disappointed girl stalk off into the crowd. "Being your girlfriend is dangerous."
"What can I say? I'm a magnificent specimen of manhood. Of course they all want me. But I do appreciate you protecting my honor.

Kylie Scott

#63. She is too perfect to be known by fragments. No mean brick shall be a specimen of the building of my palace.

Elizabeth Gaskell

#64. Business or profession?'
'I guess you'd call me a writer.'
No profession,' said the police car, as if talking to itself. The light held him fixed, like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest.

Ray Bradbury

#65. It's so hard being handsome, isn't it?" I mocked him.
But he nodded and shrugged. "Sometimes I ask God why, but then I realize someone has to show the world the perfect male specimen. Why not me?

Amelia LeFay

#66. Man, considered not merely as an organized being, but as a rational agent and a member of society, is perhaps the most wonderfully contrived, and to us the most interesting specimen of Divine wisdom that we have any knowledge of.

Richard Whately

#67. It is better to have a plain, substantial building, with no extravagance about it, but without a debt, than to have the most splendid specimen of Gothic architecture that is overlaid by a mortgage.

William Mackergo Taylor

#68. Winston [Churchill] is the only remaining specimen of a real Tory.

David Lloyd George

#69. I explain to athletes, you're supposed to be a well-oiled machine. You're supposed to be in better shape than the people watching you. You're supposed to be an unbelievable specimen of a human being. You have to treat your body different while you're performing.

John Salley

#70. I trust that the proposed Constitution afford a genuine specimen of representative government and republican government; and that it will answer, in an eminent degree, all the beneficial purposes of society.

Alexander Hamilton

#71. To Monsieur Eiffel the Engineer, the brave builder of so gigantic and original a specimen of modern Engineering from one who has the greatest respect and admiration for all Engineers including the Great Engineer the Bon Dieu.

Thomas A. Edison

#72. No sacrifice is worth the name unless it is a joy. Sacrifice and a long face go ill together. Sacrifice is 'making sacred'. He must be a poor specimen of humanity who is in need of sympathy for his sacrifice.

Mahatma Gandhi