A list of quotations for animal and nature lovers . . .

 

Life adapting. Spotted on a riverside walk. (Photo from personal collection)

What's the difference between bantz, bruv, and witty conversation?

As nature lovers, as friends of the animals, illuminate your exchanges with some of these quotations, gathered here, just for the lulz . . .

1. "There is no beast without cruelty." - Friedrich Nietzsche

2. "I suppose nobody has ever been struck a direct blow by a rabbit. At least, not deliberately." - Sir William Connor, journalist

3. "Did you know that squirrels are the Devil's oven mitts?" - Miss Piggy

Muppet, Miss Piggy (Image source: Wikipedia)

4. "Laws of Nature are human inventions, like ghosts." - Robert M. Pirsig

5. "To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall." - T. H. Huxley

6. "I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulette I could have worn." - Henry David Thoreau

7. "Of all the things that oppress me, this sense of the evil working of nature herself - my disgust at her barbarity - clumsiness - darkness - bitter mockery of herself - is the most desolating." - John Ruskin

8. "I do not believe Nature has a heart: and I suspect that, like many another beauty, she has been credited with a heart because of her face." - Francis Thompson

Francis Thompson, poet

9. I think that I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd;

    I stand and look at them long and 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 by 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

10. "What differentiates man from other animals is perhaps feeling rather than reason. I have seen a cat reason more often than laugh or weep. Perhaps it laughs or reasons within itself - but then perhaps within itself a crab solves equations of the second degree." - Miguel de Unamuno

11. "The fox knows many things; the hedgehog, one big thing." - Erasmus, referencing an ancient Greek poetry fragment

Erasmus, philosopher (Image source: Wikipedia)

12. "There is nothing useless in nature; not even uselessness itself." - Michel de Montaigne

13. It's surely our responsibility to do everything within our power to create a planet that provides a home not just for us, but for all life on Earth." - Sir David Attenborough

14. "Unfortunately this earth is not a fairy-land, but a struggle for life, perfectly natural and therefore extremely harsh." - Martin Bormann

15. "Repetition is the only form of permanence that nature can achieve." - George Santayana

16. "Of all the mammals in Britain, it is the fox that has cast its spell on me. I find it, as one of the largest predators left in our islands, a captivating creature: a comfortably familiar figure in our country landscapes; an intriguing flash of bright-eyed wildness in our towns." - Lucy Jones, nature writer

17. My heart leaps up when I behold

               A rainbow in the sky:

      So was it when my life began;

      So is it now I am a man;

      So be it when I shall grow old,

               Or let me die!

      The Child is father of the Man;

      And I could wish my days to be

      Bound each to each by natural piety.

      - William Wordsworth

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