The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
William Blake2 quotes
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire? — William Blake · 1794Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life and bid the feed
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, wooly, bright. — William Blake · 1789Carl Sagan1 quote
A sharp distinction between humans and "animals" is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them—without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret... Humans—who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals—have had an understandable penchant for pretending that animals do not feel pain... It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer... The behavior of other animals, especially the chimps and bonobos, renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us. — Carl Sagan · 1992Charles Darwin1 quote
Animals whom we have made our slaves we do not like to consider our equals. — Charles Darwin · 1838David Attenborough1 quote
I'm not over-fond of animals. I am merely astounded by them. — David Attenborough · 1995Douglas Adams1 quote
It was none the less a perfectly ordinary horse, such as convergent evolution has produced in many of the places that life is to be found. They have always understood a great deal more than they let on. It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion about them. — Douglas Adams · 1987Herman Melville1 quote
And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. — Herman Melville · 1851Jack Byrnes1 quote
He can't lift the seat, Greg. He lacks the strength in the opposable thumbs. — Jack Byrnes · 2000John Donne1 quote
Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant,
The only harmless great thing. — John Donne · 1633Ogden Nash1 quote
The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other, milk. — Ogden Nash · 1931Pliny the Elder1 quote
When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it. — Pliny the Elder · 77Quintus Ennius1 quote
The ape, vilest of beasts, how like to us. — Quintus Ennius · 45 BCSocrates1 quote
Will you not allow that I have as much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans? For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more lustily than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are going to the god they serve. — Socrates · 360 BCSt. Jerome1 quote
Even brute beasts and wandering birds do not fall into the same traps or nets twice. — St. Jerome · 394W.G. Sebald1 quote
If you look at a dog following the advice of his nose, he traverses a patch of land in a completely unplottable manner. And he invariably finds what he's looking for. — W.G. Sebald · 2001Walt Whitman1 quote
I think I could turn and live ahile with te animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied...not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth. — Walt Whitman · 1855William Cuppy1 quote
The Dodo never had a chance. He seems to have been invented for the sole purpose of becoming extinct and that was all he was good for. — William Cuppy · 1941