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Animal Quotes

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Animal Quotes

“Nature attains perfection, but man never does. There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished. He is both an unfinished animal and an unfinished man. It is this incurable unfinishedness which sets man apart from other living things. For, in the attempt to finish himself, man becomes a creator. Moreover, the incurable unfinishedness keeps man perpetually immature, perpetually capable of learning and growing.”

Men Doe Perfect Animal Growing Capable Perfection Creator Bees Living Things Ants Immature Unfinished Learning And Growing

Book:Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer

Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer

“In the Bhagavad-Gita, a book that I revere and respect, it's indicated that even women, along with animals, are capable of attaining enlightenment.”

Book Women Animal Capable Enlightenment Gita

Author:Frederick Lenz

“It may be broadly stated that.....of all animals kept for the recreation of mankind the horse is alone capable of exciting a passion that shall be absolutely hopeless.”

May Passion Animal Mankind Capable Exciting Horse Hopeless Recreation

Author:Bret Harte

“I know animals more gallant than the African warthog, but none more courageous. He is the peasant of the plains - the drab and dowdy digger in the earth. He is the uncomely but intrepid defender of family, home, and bourgeois convention, and he will fight anything of any size that intrudes upon his smug existence. ... His eyes are small and lightless and capable of but one expression - suspicion. What he does not understand, he suspects, and what he suspects, he fights.”

Knows Doe Home Eye Earth Fighting Animal Existence Expression Capable Size His Eyes Courageous Suspects Conventions Suspicion Peasants Bourgeois Defenders Gallant Family Home

Book:West with the Night

Source: West with the Night

“All are agreed that the various moral qualities are in a sense bestowed by nature: we are just, and capable of temperance, and brave, and possessed of the other virtues from the moment of our birth. But nevertheless we expect to find that true goodness is something different, and that the virtues in the true sense come to belong to us in another way. For even children and wild animals possess the natural dispositions, yet without Intelligence these may manifestly be harmful.”

Source: The Nicomachean ethics

“The virtue of a faculty is related to the special function which that faculty performs. Now there are three elements in the soul which control action and the attainment of truth: namely, Sensation, Intellect, and Desire. Of these, Sensation never originates action, as is shown by the fact that animals have sensation but are not capable of action.”

Soul Facts Action Desire Three Animal Virtue Special Elements Capable Function Intellect Related Faculty Sensations Attainment

Book:The Nicomachean ethics

Source: The Nicomachean ethics

“The saying, "The Magyar is much too lazy to be bored," is worth thinking about. Only the most subtle and active animals are capable of boredom.--A theme for a great poet would be God's boredom on the seventh day of creation.”

Thinking Would Be Animal Creation Poet Capable Active Bored Boredom Theme Lazy Subtle Maxims Great Poet

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“The child begins life as a pleasure-seeking animal; his infantile personality is organized around his own appetites and his own body. In the course of his rearing the goal of exclusive pleasure seeking must be modified drastically, the fundamental urges must be subject to the dictates of conscience and society, urges must be capable of postponement and in some instances of renunciation completely.”

Source: The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood

“Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table. We come to it freshly, in the dewy youth of the day, and when our spiritual and sensual elements are in better accord than at a later period; so that the material delights of the morning meal are capable of being fully enjoyed, without any very grievous reproaches, whether gastric or conscientious, for yielding even a trifle overmuch to the animal department of our nature.”

Source: Complete Novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition): Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun, The Dolliver Romance, Septimius Felton, Grimshawe's Secret and Biography

“The average man is what his environment and his superstitions have made him; and their function is to make him an ass. He can't add up three or four new circumstances together and perceive what they mean; it is beyond him. He is not capable of observing for himself; he has to get everything at second-hand. If what are miscalled the lower animals were as silly as man is, they would all perish from the earth in a year.”

Source: In defense of Harriet Shelley