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Creatures Quotes

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Creatures Quotes

“If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their character by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them.”

Source: American Institutions and Their Influence

“Therefore, we know about God that He loves and shows pity on His creatures, and also that He is the source of wisdom and knows how to govern everything concerning us. Nothing is impossible for Him, but everything is subject to His will. We must also realize that everything He does is for our benefit and we must accept it with thankfulness...as from a benefactor and a good lord even if is troublesome. For everything is done with right judgment, and God, Who is merciful, does not overlook even the smallest sadness that we suffer.”

“Leaving the complications of the human breakfast-table out of account, in an elemental sense, the egg only exists to produce the chicken. But the chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist. Being a conscious life, he is, or may be, valuable in himself.”

Humans May Doe Ideas Order Animal Produce Creatures Conscious Accounts Praise Tables Leaving Valuable Eggs Chickens Breakfast Complication Elementals Praise God

Book:The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton

Source: The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton

“Man was appointed by God to have dominion over the beasts, and everything a man does to an animal is either a lawful exercise or a sacrilegious abuse of an authority by divine right.”

Men Doe Animal Divine Exercise Creatures Authority Abuse Beast Dominion Divine Right Sacrilegious

Author:C. S. Lewis

“Cupidity...takes created things for ends in themselves, which they are not. The will that seeks rest in creatures for their own sake stops on the way to its true end, terminates in a value which does not exist, and thus frustrates all its deepest capacities for happiness and peace.”

Way Doe Ends Values Creatures Capacity Sake Consumerism Overconsumption

Author:Thomas Merton

“Indeed, so far from being humorous, the male American is the most abnormally serious creature who ever existed.. It is only fair to admit that he can exaggerate, but even his exaggeration has a rational basis. It is not founded on wit or fancy; it does not spring from any poetic imagination.”

Doe Imagination Serious Creatures Spring Humorous Fairs Bases Males Wit Rational Fancy Poetic Exaggeration Abnormal

Author:Oscar Wilde

“A mob is usually a creature of very mysterious existence, particularly in a large city. Where it comes from, or whither it goes, few men can tell. Assembling and dispersing with equal suddenness, it is as difficult to follow to its various sources as the sea itself; nor does the parallel stop here, for the ocean is not more fickle and uncertain, more terrible when roused, more unreasonable or more cruel.”

Source: Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].

“A very young painter is seldom alone. If he is an art student, he is in an art school with other students. He does not yet know that one day he will have to face himself as a solitary creature enclosed in a space of four walls... and that he will have to be a self-propelled being, with no one at is side.”

Ifs Knows Doe Art Self School Faces Young Sides Space Four Students Wall One Day Solitude Creatures Painter Solitary Art School Four Walls Art Students

Author:Pierre Alechinsky

“If a man does not have an ideal and try to live up to it, then he becomes a mean, base and sordid creature, no matter how successful.”

Ifs Men Trying Mean Doe Matter Successful Creatures Ideals Toughness

Book:In the Words of Theodore Roosevelt: Quotations from the Man in the Arena

Source: In the Words of Theodore Roosevelt: Quotations from the Man in the Arena

“A man is not dependent upon his fellow creature, when he does not fear death.”

Men Doe Creatures Fellows Dependent Fear Of Death

Author:Napoleon Bonaparte

“Intelligence alone does not get us where we need to go or even necessarily where we want to go. For that, the human creature must exercise harder-won capacities of wisdom, and wise action.”

Way Want Needs Humans Doe Wisdom Action Wise Exercise Creatures Capacity Harder Method Intelligence Intellect

Author:Krista Tippett

“What greater weakness can there be than not to know what is the source of one's being, of one's life, of one's senses, of one's knowledge, and what is to be their end? What can be more deeply disheartening than to wonder whether one's soul is, perhaps, a material thing, like a stone or a reptile, corruptible like these base creatures? Is there not more strength and greatness of mind in admitting the idea of a being superior to all other beings, who has made them all and to whom all owe their existence; of a being supremely perfect, who is pure, who had no beginning and can have no ending, of whom our soul is the image and, so to speak, a portion, being a spiritual and immortal thing?”

“Happiness has to be installed in each person as a state of affairs completely cut off from the process that brought it about and, in particular, from the real situation. Man has to be affected with happiness. It is a tonality given to him. Contradiction: if one does take care to give him happiness, it is because he is a free creature--but in order to give it to him, one turns him into an object.”

Ifs Men Giving Persons Doe Real States Care Order Turns Given Process Situation Cutting Objects Particular Creatures Affair Take Care Contradiction Affected

Book:Notebooks for an Ethics

Source: Notebooks for an Ethics

“Why pray? Evidently, God likes to be asked. God certainly does not need our wisdom or our knowledge, nor even the information contained in our prayers ("your Father knows what you need before you ask him"). But by inviting us into the partnership of creation, God also invites us into relationship. God is love, said the apostle John. God does not merely have love or feel love. God is love and cannot not love. As such, God yearns for relationship with the creatures made in his image.”

Knows Needs Feels Doe Made Said Asks Father Prayer Information Creation Praying Creatures Likes God Love Invites Partnership Our Prayers Apostles Inviting God Is Love

Author:Philip Yancey

“Whatever was in the human nature of Christ was moved at the bidding of the divine will; yet it does not follow that in Christ there was no movement of the will proper to human nature, for the good wills of other saints are moved by God's will... For although the will cannot be inwardly moved by any creature, yet it can be moved inwardly by God.”

Humans Doe Christ Human Nature Movement Divine Creatures Moved Saint Gods Will Good Will Bidding Divine Will

Book:Summa Theologica, Volume 4 (Part III, First Section)

Source: Summa Theologica, Volume 4 (Part III, First Section)

“Every artist knows that there is no such thing as "freedom" in art. The first thing an artist does when he begins a new work is to lay down the barriers and limitations; he decides upon a certain composition, a certain key, a certain relation of creatures or objects to each other. He is never free, and the more splendid his imagination, the more intense his feeling, the farther he goes from general truth and general emotion.”

Source: Willa Cather on Writing: Critical Studies on Writing as an Art

“No sooner does a divine gift reveal itself in youth or maid than its market value becomes the decisive consideration, and the poor young creatures are offered for sale, as we might sell angels who had strayed among us.”

Doe Might Young Values Poor Youth Divine Creatures Angel Sells Consideration Maids

Book:Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion

“The pleasures of love are for those who are hopelessly addicted to another living creature. The reasons for such addiction are so many that I suspect they are never the same in any two cases. It includes passion but does not survive by passion; it has its whiffs of the agreeable vertigo of young love, but it is stable more often than dizzy; it is a growing, changing thing, and it is tactful enough to give the addicted parties occasional rests from strong and exhausting feeling of any kind.”

“There are such beings in the world -- perhaps one in a thousand -- as the creature you and I should think perfection; where grace and spirit are united to worth, where the manners are equal to the heart and understanding; but such a person may not come in your way, or, if he does, he may not be the eldest son of a man of fortune, the near relation of your particular friend, and belonging to your own county.”

Source: Jane Austen's correspondence and letters: The complete and definitive edition

“The 20th century mind is nostalgic for the paradise that once existed on the mushroom dotted plains of Africa where the plant-human symbiosis occurred that pulled us out of the animal body and into the tool-using, culture-making, imagination-exploring creature that we are. And why does this matter? It matters because it shows that the way out is back and that the future is a forward escape into the past. This is what the psychedelic experience means. Its a doorway out of history and into the wiring under the board in eternity.”

“Woman is a most charming creature, who changes her heart as easily as she does her gloves.”

Heart Doe Creatures Charming Gloves Inconsistency

Author:Honore de Balzac

“I know that I have still before me a difficult path to traverse. I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.”

Knows Men Long Doe Stills Lasts Difficult Path Humility Creatures Limits Fellows Salvation Free Will Zero Ahimsa Traverse

Book:All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections

Source: All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections

“It is given to us to live for the most part under the guidance of mathematics ... It is impossible to distinguish from other living creatures anyone who does not understand how to quantify.”

Doe Given History Impossible Creatures Mathematics Guidance Living Creatures

Author:Cassiodorus

“Whenever you pray, make sure you do it at school assemblies and football games, like the demonstrative creatures who pray before large television audiences. That is the real goal of the thing. But do not, I urge you, pray all alone in your home where no one can see. That does not get you ratings.”

Doe Real Home School Religion Games Politics Goal Prayer Audience Television Football Praying Creatures Urges Assembly Rating All Alone Football Game

Author:Garry Wills

“Parents sometimes think of newborns as helpless creatures, but in fact parents' behavior is much more under the infant's control than the reverse. Does he come running when you cry?”

Thinking Doe Sometimes Facts Running Parent Cry Creatures Behavior Reverse Helpless Infant

Author:Sandra Scarr

“I ask you ... to recognize that AIDS virus is not a political creature. It does not care whether you are Democrat or Republican; it does not ask whether you are black or white, male or female, gay or straight, young or old.”

Doe Care Young Political Asks Black White Health Republican Gay Creatures Female Democrat Males Aids Viruses Black Or White

Author:Mary Fisher

“All my desires are born of my dreams. And I have proven my love with words. To what fantastic creatures have I entrusted myself, in what dolorous and ravishing world has my imagination enclosed me? I am sure of having been loved in the most mysterious of domains, my own. The language of my love does not belong to human language, my human body does not touch the flesh of my love. My amorous imagination has always been constant and high enough so that nothing could attempt to convince me of error.”

“Though no participator in the joy of more vehement sport, I have a pleasure that I cannot reconcile to my abstract notions of the tenderness due to dumb creatures in the tranquil cruelty of angling. I can only palliate the wanton destructiveness of my amusement by trying to assure myself that my pleasure does not spring from the success of the treachery I practise toward a poor little fish, but rather from that innocent revelry in the luxuriance of summer life which only anglers enjoy to the utmost.”

“Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between 'things' and 'God' as if God were another thing and as if creatures were His rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God.”

Ifs Mean Doe Use Spiritual Order Creatures All Things Setting Settings Contradiction Rivals Detachment Detached

Book:New Seeds of Contemplation

Source: New Seeds of Contemplation

“A human being without the proper empathy or feeling is the same as an android built so as to lack it, either by design or mistake. We mean, basically, someone who does not care about the fate which his fellow living creatures fall victim to; he stands detached, a spectator, acting out by his indifference John Donne's theorem that "No man is an island," but giving that theorem a twist: that which is a mental and a moral island is not a man.”

“The first thing Islam does is to destroy the self image of the believers. It convinces them that without Islam they are worthless creatures only fit for hellfire. It tells them that their culture is jahelyyah (ignorance) and their ancestral religion was taaghoti (satanic). They are made to despise their identity and selfhood and seek their glory in their submission to Islam and slavery to its deity who was Muhammad's own alter ego.”

Firsts Doe Made Self Culture Identity Ignorance Fit Creatures Ego Glory Slavery Islam Believer Convince Despise Worthless Submission Deities Muhammad Satanic Alter Ego

Author:Ali Sina

“I ask you to try something. If someone grieves you, or dishonors you, or takes something of yours, then pray like this: "Lord, we are all your creatures. Pity your servants, and turn them to repentance," and then you will perceptibly bear grace in your soul. Induce your heart to love your enemies, and the Lord, seeing your good will, shall help you in all things, and will Himself show you experience. But whoever thinks evil of his enemies does not have love for God and has not known God.”

“It does not require great art, or magnificently trained eloquence, to prove that Christians should tolerate each other. I, however, am going further: I say that we should regard all men as our brothers. What? The Turk my brother? The Chinaman my brother? The Jew? The Siam? Yes, without doubt; are we not all children of the same father and creatures of the same God?”

Men Should Children Doe Art Christian Father Doubt Brother Prove Creatures Regard Jew My Brother Tolerate Great Art Eloquence

Book:Candide

Source: Candide

“The machine not only does it relieve us mechanically of a crushing weight of physical and mental labor; but by the miraculous enhancing of our senses, through its powers of enlargement, penetration and exact measurement, it constantly increases the scope and clarity of our perceptions. It fulfills the dream of all living creatures by satisfying our instinctive craving for the maximum of consciousness with a minimum of effort! Having embarked upon so profitable a path, how can Mankind fail to pursue it?”

“The owl is one of the most curious creatures. A bird that stays awake when the rest of the world sleeps. They can see in the dark. I find that so interesting, to be mired in reality when the rest of the world is dreaming. What does he see and what does he know that the rest of the world is missing?”

Knows World Doe Dream Reality Dark Sleep Interesting Missing Creatures Bird Curious Awake Owl

Book:Seduction: A Novel of Suspense

Source: Seduction: A Novel of Suspense

“Nobody knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature does what he does. In fact there is no explanation - or better there is only one explanation: the person in question is stupid.”

Knows Persons Doe Facts Stupid Creatures Explanation Nobody Knows

Author:Carlo M. Cipolla

“Just supposing for the sake of the argument that there is a being of such a kind as that He may with any propriety be called "God", it does seem antecedently very improbable that weak and limited creatures of a day, such as we are, should discover Him by our own efforts.... who could be discovered in that way would hardly be worth discovering. I think we ought to stick to that principle rather firmly. I think we ought to be rather sure that we cannot know God unless God has been pleased to reveal Himself to us.”

Thinking Knows Way Should Kind May Doe Has Beens Seems Effort Principles Ought Creatures Argument Weak Sticks Sake Discovering Knowing God Improbable Propriety Supposing

Author:John Gresham Machen

“When you're kissing on camera, it becomes an issue visually. It looks like a skinny dinosaur creature is trying to kiss someone. It doesn't look good. It does not look like the classic romance kisses. If an actress is 5'3" and I don't bend down to kiss her, she would probably be kissing my lower sternum.”

Ifs Trying Looks Doe Romance Issues Creatures Kissing Cameras Actresses Classic Skinny Dinosaurs

Author:David Walton

“The theory of natural selection reduces to a banal truth: if a kind of creature flourishes in a kind of situation, then there must be something about such creatures (or about such situations, or about both) in virtue of which it does so.”

Ifs Kind Doe Natural Situation Virtue Theory Creatures Selection Natural Selection

Author:Jerry Fodor

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.”

Source: Animal Farm and 1984

“I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.”

Men May Doe Ends Hard Social Work Hard Work Creatures Regard Scales Pity Admire Unemployment Teddy Hardwork And Determination Leadership Courage

Book:Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century

Source: Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century

“Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.”

Source: A Selection of Writings of and about Albert Schweitzer

“There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham.”

People Ifs Men Kind May Doe Religion Animal Teach Kindness Creatures Be Good Beast Pet Animal Rights Without Love Animal Love Animal Ethics Black Beauty

Book:Black Beauty: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Source: Black Beauty: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

“In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say 'See!' to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply 'Here!' to a body's cry of 'Where?' till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome outworn game.”

Men Wells Doe Body Games Hours Poor Plans Seeing Cry Produce Creatures Ill Judged Execution Hide And Seek Loving Nature

Book:Tess of the D'urbervilles

Source: Tess of the D'urbervilles

“...What does the blessing of heaven mean? We know the kirin is just an animal, not a mythical creature." It has become a symbol now.... That is the way human beings deal with the world.”

Knows World Way Humans Mean Doe Heaven Human Beings Animal Deals Blessing Creatures Symbols Mythical Creatures

Author:Lian Hearn

“It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't.”

Ifs Looks Doe Facts Pleasure One Thing Creatures Interviews Rhinoceros

Book:The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton

Source: The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton

“What is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of any creature? To know the answer to this question means to be religious. You ask: Does it make any sense, then, to pose this question? I answer: The man who regards his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life.”

Knows Men Humans Mean Doe Matter Asks Religious Answers Fit Creatures Regard Fellows Unhappy Human Life Meaningless What Is The Meaning

Book:The Ultimate Quotable Einstein

Source: The Ultimate Quotable Einstein

“Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is took weak and fuddled to shake off.”

“Eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living in a mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.”

World Doe Pleasure Mystery Food Ignorance Depends Gratitude Creatures Eating Connections Dependence

Book:What Are People For?: Essays

Source: What Are People For?: Essays

“Does the open wound in another's breast soften the pain of the gaping wound in our own? Or does the blood which is welling from another man's side staunch that which is pouring from our own? Does the general anguish of our fellow creatures lessen our own private and particular anguish? No, no, each suffers on his own account, each struggles with his own grief, each sheds his own tears.”

Men Doe Pain Suffering Sides Grief Struggle Blood Tears Particular Creatures Accounts Fellows Wounds Breasts Shed Anguish Another Man Pouring

Book:The Man in the Iron Mask

Source: The Man in the Iron Mask