Literary notes about cells (AI summary)
The word “cells” in literature demonstrates remarkable versatility, serving both as a precise biological term and a potent metaphor. In scientific and technical contexts, authors refer to cells as the smallest functional units of life—be it the guard cells on the epicarp of a coffee bean [1, 2, 3] or specialized tissue cells with designated functions [4, 5, 6, 7]. At the same time, “cells” becomes emblematic of compartmentalization and confinement. Prison cells appear in narratives to evoke isolation or control [8, 9, 10, 11, 12], while logical texts and sociological treatises use “cells” to denote structured units within a larger system [13, 14, 15, 16, 17]. Moreover, some authors employ the term in more poetic or symbolic ways, as when it suggests sanctuaries in Gothic settings [18] or serves as a metaphor for the building blocks of life and thought [19]. Through these varied examples, literature shows that “cells” can articulate both concrete scientific ideas and abstract social or existential conditions.
- At intervals along the surface of the epicarp are stomata, or breathing pores, surrounded by guard cells.
— from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers - The cells of the epicarp are broad and polygonal, sometimes regularly four-sided, about 15–35 µ broad.
— from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers - These pictures serve to demonstrate that the coffee bean is made up of minute cells that are not broken down to any extent by the roasting process.
— from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers - Scurvy reduces the nutritional state of probably all the cells and tissues of the body.
— from Scurvy, Past and Present by Alfred F. Hess - Gland cells are developed to secrete, muscle cells to contract, bone cells to withstand mechanical stresses, etc.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - Platelets and other blood cells in scurvy 209 5.
— from Scurvy, Past and Present by Alfred F. Hess - Not the organs, so much as their constituent cells, say the histologists; not the cells, but their molecules, say in turn the chemists.
— from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James - The guards who were there were delighted, and said they would take care only to sweep the cells of those prisoners who had angered them.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova - All the cells are numbered, and the prisoners are numbered the same as the cells they occupy.
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney - The passage to the Conciergerie was short and dark; the night in its vermin-haunted cells was long and cold.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens - These conditions agreed upon, and he still remaining in the same mind, he was conducted to the prison, and shut up in one of the cells.
— from American Notes by Charles Dickens - “He doesn’t look a credit to the Bow Street cells, does he?”
— from Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle - We have now got 128 Cells.
— from Symbolic Logic by Lewis Carroll - Compartments, or Cells, assigned to them.
— from Symbolic Logic by Lewis Carroll - Hence a Grey one would merely mean “At least one of these two Cells is empty: possibly both are”.
— from Symbolic Logic by Lewis Carroll - Attributes of Classes, and Compartments, or Cells, assigned to them 42 V. do.
— from Symbolic Logic by Lewis Carroll - Society consists of individual persons and nothing but individual persons, just as the body consists of cells and the product of cells.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - heaven ejects us—whither can we fly, but to yon holy cells that yet offer us a retreat.”
— from The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole - Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
