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1 " The two friends went on and on toward the sierra, at times keeping the highway, at times. deviating from it.Whenever they passed through a town or a hamlet, the slow peal of bells tolling the death-knell announced to our hero that the Angel of Death was not losing his time; that his arm reached to every part of the world, and that, though Gil felt it now weighing upon his breast like a mountain of ice, none the less did it scatter ruin and desolation over the entire surface of the earth.As they went, the Angel of Death related many strange and wonderful things to his protege.The foe of history, he took pleasure in scoffing at its pretended utility, in disproof of which he narrated many facts as they had actually occurred, and not as they are recorded on monuments and in chronicles.The abysses of the past opened before the entranced imagination of Gil Gil, revealing to him facts of transcendent importance concerning the fate of man and of empires, disclosing to him the great mystery of the origin of life and the no less great and terrible mystery of the end to which we, wrongly called mortals, are progressing, and causing him, finally, to comprehend, by the light of this sublime philosophy, the laws which preside at the evolution of cosmic matter, and its various manifestations in those ephemeral and transitory forms which are called minerals, plants,animals, stars, constellations, nebula, and worlds. (" The Friend Of The Death" ) "
2 " A newly formed planet appeared on the large screen. its surface was till red-hot, like a piece of charcoal fresh out of the furnace. Time passed at the rate of geological eras, and the planet gradually cooled. The color and patterns on the surface slowly shifted in a hypnotic manner. A few minutes later, an orange planet appeared on the screen, indicating the end of the simulation run." The computations were done at the coarsest level; to do it with more precision would require over a month." Green Glasses moved the mouse and zoomed in on the surface of the planet. The view swept over a broad desert, over a cluster of strangely shaped, towering mountain peaks, over a circular depression like an impact crater." What are we looking at?" Yang Dong asked." Earth. Without life, this is what the surface of the planet would look like now." " But . . . where are the oceans?" " There are no oceans. No rivers either. The entire surface is dry." " Your'e saying that without life, liquid water would not exist on Earth?" " The reality would probably be even more shocking. Remember, this is only a coarse simulation, but at least you can see how much of an impact life had in the present state of the Earth." " But--" " Do you think life is nothing but a fragile, thin, soft shell clinging to the surface of this planet?" " Isn't it?" " Only if you neglect the power of time. If a colony of ants continue to move clods the size of grains of rice, they could remove all of Mount Tai in a billion years. As long as you give it enough time, life is stronger than metal and stone, more powerful than typhoons and volcanoes. "
3 " Evolution is no linear family tree, but change in the single multidimensional being that has grown to cover the entire surface of Earth. "
― Lynn Margulis , What Is Life?
4 " Where would I find enough leatherTo cover the entire surface of the earth?But with leather soles beneath my feet,It’s as if the whole world has been covered. "