Animal and Plant 004

You're a lying dog-faced pony soldier.
Remark made to a student at a campaign event, Hampton, New Hampshire, February 9, 2020.
Joe Biden

When a dog bites a man, that isn't news. It often happens. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.
John B. Bogart

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.
Roger Caras

Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. They serve us in return for scraps. It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made.
Roger Caras

I am as confounded by dogs as I am indebted to them.
Roger Caras

Some of our greatest historical and artistic treasures we place with curators in museums; others we take for walks.
Roger Caras

We derive immeasurable good, uncounted pleasures, enormous security and many critical lessons about life by owning dogs.
Roger Caras

Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it Chops
because that was the name of his dog

And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and a gold star
And his mother hung it on the kitchen door
and read it to his aunts
That was the year Father Tracy
took all the kids to the zoo

And he let them sing on the bus
And his little sister was born
with tiny toenails and no hair
And his mother and father kissed a lot
And the girl around the corner sent him a
Valentine signed with a row of X's

and he had to ask his father what the X's meant
And his father always tucked him in bed at night
And was always there to do it

Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it Autumn

because that was the name of the season
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and asked him to write more clearly
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because of its new paint

And the kids told him
that Father Tracy smoked cigars
And left butts on the pews
And sometimes they would burn holes
That was the year his sister got glasses
with thick lenses and black frames
And the girl around the corner laughed

when he asked her to go see Santa Claus
And the kids told him why
his mother and father kissed a lot
And his father never tucked him in bed at night
And his father got mad
when he cried for him to do it.

Once on a paper torn from his notebook
he wrote a poem
And he called it Innocence: A Question
because that was the question about his girl
And that's what it was all about
And his professor gave him an A

and a strange steady look
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because he never showed her
That was the year that Father Tracy died
And he forgot how the end
of the Apostle's Creed went

And he caught his sister
making out on the back porch
And his mother and father never kissed
or even talked
And the girl around the corner
wore too much makeup
That made him cough when he kissed her

but he kissed her anyway
because that was the thing to do
And at three a.m. he tucked himself into bed
his father snoring soundly

That's why on the back of a brown paper bag
he tried another poem
And he called it Absolutely Nothing Because that's what it was really all about
And he gave himself an A
and a slash on each damned wrist
And he hung it on the bathroom door
because this time he didn't think

he could reach the kitchen.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky

Odd things animals. All dogs look up at you. All cats look down at you. Only a pig looks at you as an equal.
Winston Churchill

Girls scream, boys shout; dogs bark, school's out.
W. H. Davies

A Congresswoman must look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man, speak on any given subject with authority and most of all work like a dog.
Florence P. Dwyer

Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails.
Max Eastman

Dogs are such agreeable friends...they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
George Eliot

Until one has loved a dog, a part of one's soul remains unawaken.
Anatole France

He that lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.
Benjamin Franklin

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post how it feels about dogs.
Christopher Hampton

Cat: a pygmy lion who loves mice, hates dogs, and patronizes human beings.
Oliver Herford

Dogs are miracles with paws.
Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy

Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamppost.
H. L. Mencken

A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
Ogden Nash

Men are generally more careful of the breed of their horses and dogs than of their children.
William Penn

The noblest of all dogs is the hot-dog; it feeds the hand that bites it.
Laurence J. Peter

Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.
Tribute dinner to W. C. Fields.
Leo Rosten

Happiness is a warm puppy.
Charles M. Schulz

That indefatigable and unsavoury engine of pollution.
Describing the dog.
John Sparrow

I am because my little dog knows me.
Gertrude Stein

I loathe people who keep dogs. They're cowards who have not got the guts to bite people themselves.
August Strindberg

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
Mark Twain

Leavin' me as happy as a dog with two tails.
Mark Twain

Watch your bark!
Elmer Wheeler

There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.
Bernard Williams

It is a terrible thing for an old woman to outlive her dogs.
Tennessee Williams

Slice him where you like, a hellhound is always a hellhound.
P. G. Wodehouse

I can train any dog in five minutes. It's training the owner that takes longer.
Barbara Woodhouse

Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbour's house, thou shalt not
covet thy neighbour's wife, nor
his manservant, nor his maid-
servant, nor his ox, nor his ass,
nor any thing that is thy neigh-
bour's.
Exodus 20:17, King James Version
Holy Bible

And again I say unto you, It
is easier for a camel to go through
the eye of a needle, than for a
rich man to enter into the king-
dom of God.
Matthew 19:24, King James Version
Holy Bible

I feel overawed by quantity where counting no longer makes sense. By unrepeatability within such a quantity. By creatures of nature gathered in herds, droves, species, in which each individual, while subservient to the mass, retains some distinguishing features. A crowd of people, birds, insects, or leaves is a mysterious assemblage of variants of certain prototype. A riddle of nature's abhorrence of exact repetition or inability to produce it. Just as the human hand cannot repeat its own gesture, I invoke this disturbing law, switching my own immobile herds into that rhythm.
Magdalena Abakanowicz

Piano

At 66 Sandringham Crescent
an upright piano was being eased down
a long flight of stairs by three men
all wearing off-white overalls.
Backward, staccato, two stepped
descending
one
stair
at
a
time
till the taller of the two men
began to collapse in slow

slow slow motion
and the piano
leapt
to the hallway's rising floor
crashing its memories of music:
simple tunes such as 3 Blind Mice,
as well as great meaningful sonatas
of profundity and faraway,
into a scattered anarchic jigsaw
of free-loving volatile
meaningless sounds
fading
till the stricken piano
lost its memory entirely.

After the ambulance arrived (too late)
one removal man lit a cigarette
and sensing the wide-awake stare
of the householder

tapped the grey ash, with great delicacy,
into the cupped hollow of his left hand.
Running Late
Dannie Abse

Books are sharks... because sharks have been around for a very long time. There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark.
Douglas Adams

My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.
Douglas Adams

Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
John Adams

The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.
John Adams

He had been kicked in the head by a mule when young, and believed everything he read in the Sunday papers.
George Ade

Condensed milk is wonderful. I don't see how they can get a cow to sit down on those little cans.
Fred Allen

A wise old owl lived in an oak.
The more he saw the less he spoke.
The less he spoke the more he heard.
Why can't we all be like that wise old bird.
Anonymous

An elephant never forgets.
Anonymous

The codfish lays ten thousand eggs
The homely hen lays one.
The codfish never cackles
To tell you that she's done.
And so we scorn the codfish,
While the humble hen we prize,
Which only goes to show you
That it pays to advertise.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
Anonymous

I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
W. H. Auden

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.
Robert Benchley

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
William Blake

In real life, of course, it is the hare who wins. Every time. Look around you. And in any case it is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market ... Hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game.
Anita Brookner

An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.
Martin Buber

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
The best laid schemes of mice and men
oft go awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
Robert Burns

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter ... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
John Burroughs

All animals except man know that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler (Author)

You can be a murderous tyrant and the world will remember you fondly but fuck one horse and you will be a horse fucker for all of eternity.
Catherine

Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.
Rachel Carson

When a person is born, he can embark on only one of three roads of life: if you go right, the wolves will eat you; if you go left, you'll eat the wolves; if you go straight, you'll eat yourself.
Anton Chekhov

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.
G. K. Chesterton

Heroes are not judged for their prowess in hunting and shooting tigers, but rather for their strength and ability to endure the humiliation of being pigs.
Chin-Ning Chu

Dictators ride to and fro on tigers they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
Winston Churchill

Odd things animals. All dogs look up at you. All cats look down at you. Only a pig looks at you as an equal.
Winston Churchill

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.
Winston Churchill

The dinosaurs disappeared because they could not adapt to their changing environment. We shall disappear if we cannot adapt to an environment that now contains spaceships, computers and thermonuclear weapons.
Arthur C. Clarke

The art of taxation consists in plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.
Jean-Baptiste Colbert

Swans sing before they die; 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I have a memory like an elephant. In fact elephants often consult me.
Noël Coward

Is man an ape or an angel? Now I am on the side of the angels.
Benjamin Disraeli

Must, bid the Morn awake,
Sad Winter now declines,
Each Bird doth choose a mate,
This day's Saint Valentine's;
For that good Bishop's sake
Get up, and let us see
What Beauty it shall be
That Fortune us assigns.
Michael Drayton

I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm, so when I come to Washington, I'll know how to cut pork.
Iowa Senatorial candidate Joni Ernst, campaign advertisement quoted in National Journal, March 25, 2014.
Joni Ernst

I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake - which I also keep handy.
W. C. Fields

A mountain in labour shouted so loud that everyone, summoned by the noise, ran up expecting that she would be delivered of a city bigger than Paris; she brought forth a mouse.
Jean de La Fontaine

A single man has not nearly the value he would have in a state of union. He is an incomplete animal. He resembles the odd half of a pair of scissors.
Benjamin Franklin

Men weren't really the enemy - they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.
Betty Friedan

I am a waning bird encased in a glass sphere; I cannot see my prison, and my cries no one can hear.
An Owl on the Moon: A Journal from the Edge of Darkness
Craig Froman

The rooster makes more racket than the hen that lays the egg.
Joel Chandler Harris

Man is the animal that draws lines which he himself then stumbles over.
Piet Hein

Cat: a pygmy lion who loves mice, hates dogs, and patronizes human beings.
Oliver Herford

Man is the only animal that plays poker.
Don Herold

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Langston Hughes

Beauty for some provides escape,
Who gain a happiness in eyeing
The gorgeous buttocks of the ape
Or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.
Aldous Huxley

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
Samuel Johnson

I don't like to hire consultants. They're like castrated bulls: all they can do is advise.
Victor Kiam

My love, you are driving the entire world mad. The nightingales are committing suicide one by one out of jealousy of your voice. The roses took one glance at your beauty and folded themselves from shame. The trees now only whisper your name and the sky hasn't stopped crying since you looked up. Have pity on us, my love. We have already broken all the mirrors and glass out of fear that you will forget us and fall in love with yourself once you see what we all cannot stop seeing.
Kamand Kojouri

Media people should have long noses like an elephant to smell out politicians, mayors, prime ministers and businessmen. We need to know the reality, the good and the bad, not just the appearance.
Dalai Lama

His argument is as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.
Abraham Lincoln

When I appear in public, people expect me to neigh, grind my teeth, paw the ground, and swish my tail.
Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise

Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty and only the pig enjoys himself.
Mark McCormack

I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
H. L. Mencken

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
John Stuart Mill

Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.
Malcolm Muggeridge

It's easier for a rich man to ride that camel through the eye of a needle directly into the Kingdom of Heaven, than for some of us to give up our cell phone.
Vera Nazarian

I feel these days like a very large flamingo. No matter what way I turn, there is always a very large bill.
Joseph O'Connor

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
George Orwell

Men are generally more careful of the breed of their horses and dogs than of their children.
William Penn

I come from an environment where, if you see a snake, you kill it. At General Motors, if you see a snake, the first thing you do is hire a consultant on snakes.
Ross Perot

Chief executives, who themselves own few shares of their companies, have no more feeling for the average stockholder than they do for baboons in Africa.
T. Boone Pickens

I've been giving back since I was a teen, handing out turkeys at Thanksgiving and handing out toys at toys drives for Christmas. It's very important to give back as a youth. It's as simple as helping an old lady across the street or giving up your seat on the bus for someone who is pregnant.
Queen Latifah

While animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.
Ayn Rand

I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Rumi

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.
John Ruskin

Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare

I think the most ridiculous sight in the world is a man on a bicycle, working away with his feet as hard as he possibly can, and believing that his horse is carrying him, instead of, as anyone can see, he carrying the horse.
George Bernard Shaw

The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.
George Bernard Shaw

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him, he calls it ferocity.
George Bernard Shaw

It's better to be the head of a chicken than the tail of a cow.
Stan Shih

The family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape.
Dodie Smith

There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
Jonathan Swift

We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs.
Publilius Syrus

The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
Lily Tomlin

Top management is supposed to be a tree full of owls ... hooting when management heads into the wrong part of the forest. I'm still unpersuaded they even know where the forest is.
Robert Townsend

I do love you...as the dew loves the flowers;
as the birds love the sunshine;
as the wavelets love the breeze...
as the angels love the pure in heart.
Mark Twain

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.
Mark Twain

Don't sell the steak; sell the sizzle. It is the sizzle that sells the steak and not the cow, although the cow is, of course, mighty important.
Elmer Wheeler

If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish pig.
Woodrow Wilson

I know the colour rose, and it is lovely,
But not when it ripens in a tumour;
And healing greens, leaves and grass, so springlike,
In limbs that fester are not springlike.
Pathology of Colours
Dannie Abse

Praying is another way of singing.
You plant in the tree the soul of lemons.
You plant in the gardens the spirit of roses.
Song for Dov Shamir
Dannie Abse

My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.
Douglas Adams

The difficulty with this conversation is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.
Douglas Adams

Woe betide the man who dares to pay a woman a compliment today ... Forget the flowers, the chocolates, the soft word - rather woo her with a self-defence manual in one hand and a family planning leaflet in the other.
Alan Ayckbourn

Life's too short to stuff a mushroom.
Shirley Conran

Men are like plants; the goodness and flavour of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which they grow.
Jean de Crèvecoeur

Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Stages

As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.

Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slaves of permanence.

Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.
The Glass Bead Game
Hermann Hesse

At every step the child should be allowed to meet the real experiences of life; the thorns should never be plucked from his roses.
Ellen Key

I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Rumi

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.
John Ruskin

The man who accepts the laissez-faire doctrine would allow his garden to grow wild so that roses might fight it out with the weeds and the fittest might survive.
John Ruskin

So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition,
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare

Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
Spoken to a young lady.
Richard Sheridan

If you have an olive, you want an olive tree. You want a little more. You want the whole tree.
Ted Turner

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Now she's on a diet. Coconuts and bananas. She hasn't lost any weight. But she can climb a tree!
Henny Youngman

Animal (132)	Plant (21)
Bird(s) (2)
Cat(s) (14)
Dog(s) (34)
Other (79)
Pet(s) (3)

Send Your Favourite Quotations

The Only Way

IN THE beginning God created the heaven and the earth. ... The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

- Top -