Germ Quotes

The idea of stopping is not unmeaningful to me. I think there might be a time when, in theory at least, you’d say, ‘Well I’ve mostly done what I want to do.’ But how could you ever prevent a few years down the line some germ of an idea getting at you and you’ve got to do it again?

The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both.

I tend to develop my rambling anecdotes by actually getting up and performing them. That’s the joy/horror of stand up – if you have the germ of an idea that you think might be funny, there is a way of finding out if it’s funny very quickly.

Germ theory, which secularized infectious disease, had a side effect: it sacralized epidemiology.

Anyway, that was the germ of the idea and of course… you know this was early days of sociology and whatever, especially on television.

Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

There’s always a germ of truth in just about everything.

There is in us a lyric germ or nucleus which deserves respect; it bids a man to ponder or create; and in this dim corner of himself he can take refuge and find consolations which the society of his fellow creatures does not provide.

The private sector can go forward, if it must, with destruction of embryos for questionable and ethically challenged science. But spend the people’s money on proven blood cord, bone marrow, germ cell, and adult cell research.

Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement. Discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint.

It’s obviously unfair to paint with a broad brush here, but the germ of an idea for a breakthrough in technology doesn’t come out of a business school curriculum. It comes out of a laboratory or a math lecture or a physics tutorial.

I’m kind of a germ freak. When I get on a plane, I spray my seat and everything with Lysol Disinfectant Spray.

Upon the union of the male germ cell with the female egg cell, a new cell is created which almost immediately splits into two parts. One of these grows rapidly, creating the human body of the individual with all its organs, and dies only with the individual.

The point of theatre is transformation: to make an extraordinary event out of ordinary material right in front of an audience’s eyes. Where the germ of the idea came from is pretty much irrelevant. What matters to every theatre maker I know is speaking clearly to the audience ‘right now.’

To gastroenterologists, the concept of a germ causing ulcers was like saying that the Earth is flat.

The little dissatisfaction which every artist feels at the completion of a work forms the germ of a new work.

Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.

As soon as you get off stage, that’s the most dangerous time for a singer to kiss people because your vocal chords are receptive to any kind of germ.

In the week before a race, I try to stay away from germ areas. I keep disinfectant wipes in my bag for when I have to use a supermarket trolley or something like that.

Art has a double visage: it looks before and after. Romance is its forward-looking face. The germ of growth is in romanticism. Formalism, on the other hand, consolidates tradition; gleans what has been gained and makes it facile to the hand or the mind; economizes the energy of genius.

Puritanism, in whatever expression, is a poisonous germ. On the surface everything may look strong and vigorous; yet the poison works its way persistently, until the entire fabric is doomed.

Replacing white flour with whole wheat generally makes baked goods denser, drier, and more crumbly because the germ and bran in whole wheat absorbs more water.

To write, I think one must sit in one place and be bored. Boredom is a very good state for writers to be. Things cook away in your head when you’re bored, and suddenly one day, you have a book or a germ of a book.

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.

A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system.

In the Arab Spring, that obviously came to a head in Syria. I found myself arguing for intervention, mainly just because I wanted things to get better, and I had this germ of liberal humanitarian interventionism.

A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.

There are words which are worth as much as the best actions, for they contain the germ of them all.

Many a trace, and many a germ of this infantile disease, to which without a doubt, I also am a victim, has been chased away by your brochure, or will yet be eradicated by it.

The difference between brown and white rice is that the former is not milled. With the outer bran and germ intact, the rice is therefore chewier and nuttier.

For an Apple is in it self a little Universe; the Seed, hotter than the other parts thereof, is its Sun, which diffuses about it self that natural Heat which preserves its Globe: And in the Onion, the Germ is the little Sun of that little World, which vivifies and nourishes the vegetative Salt of that little mass.

I don’t think in genres. Once I get a germ of an idea I wait for it to die! And if it refuses to die and keeps coming back, I start thinking more about it. Then come the world and the characters. I wait to get bored and if I don’t get bored- then I start building on them.

It happens a lot that a name actor will be signed on to a project in its germ stage.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.