The collection / 18 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01Undated

Sharks have everything a scientist dreams of. They're beautiful―God, how beautiful they are! They're like an impossibly perfect piece of machinery. They're as graceful as any bird. They're as mysterious as any animal on earth. No one knows for sure how long they live or what impulses―except for hunger―they respond to. There are more than two hundred and fifty species of shark, and everyone is different from every other one.

Peter Benchley / quote

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02Undated

There's nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things. That's their instinct. But this fish doesn't run from anything. He doesn't fear.

Peter Benchley / quote

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03Undated

God isn't going to scribble across the sky. "The shark is gone.

Peter Benchley / quote

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04Undated

The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future.

Peter Benchley / quote

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05Undated

The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future. It's depressing if you spend too much time reliving old joys. You think you'll never have anything as good again.

Peter Benchley / quote

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06Undated

Any weapon's only as good as the man using it, and a good man can make a good weapon out of most anything.

Peter Benchley / quote

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07Undated

What was it? What could it--His last thought was surprise.

Peter Benchley / quote

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08Undated

He felt at once betrayed and betrayer, deceived and deceiver. He was a criminal forced into crime, an unwilling whore.

Peter Benchley / quote

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09Undated

Life's full of chances to hurt yourself or someone else.

Peter Benchley / quote

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10Undated

It is not that I don't have a fear of sharks, it is that I have a respect for them, so that I know any more than if I were to go into the jungle, I would have a fear of tigers, that I would try to lower the odds.

Peter Benchley / quote

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11Undated

If man doesn't learn to treat the oceans and the rain forest with respect, man will become extinct.

Peter Benchley / quote

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12Undated

In a deeply tribal sense, we love our monsters, and I think that is the key to it right there. It is monsters; it is learning about them: it is both thrill and safety. You can think of them without being desperately afraid because they are not going to come into your living room and eat you. That is 'Jaws.'

Peter Benchley / quote

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13Undated

Without sharks, you take away the apex predator of the ocean, and you destroy the entire food chain.

Peter Benchley / quote

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14Undated

We are already perilously close to killing off the top of the oceanic food chain - with catastrophic consequences that we can't begin to imagine. Let us not, in the heat of anger, reduce the already devastated population of great white sharks by one more member.

Peter Benchley / quote

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15Undated

We provoke a shark every time we enter the water where sharks happen to be, for we forget: The ocean is not our territory - it's theirs.

Peter Benchley / quote

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16Undated

If we choose to walk into a forest where a tiger lives, we are taking a chance. If we swim in a river where crocodiles live, we are taking a chance. If we visit the desert or climb a mountain or enter a swamp where snakes have managed to survive, we are taking a chance.

Peter Benchley / quote

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17Undated

We do not just fear our predators, we are transfixed by them. We are prone to weave stories and fables and chat endlessly about them.

Peter Benchley / quote

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18Undated

Without the oceans there would be no life on Earth.

Peter Benchley / quote

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