Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most of us take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and the task that makes philosophy a worthwhile activity.
A man wasn't equal to an animal, not one particle of him. Human life was stinking corrupt, and meanwhile there were beautiful creatures who lived with delicacy on the earth without doing anyone harm. "We should be dying." the judge almost wept.
There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or I could not live.
You don't believe in Nature anymore. It's too isolated from you. You've abstracted it. It's so messy and damaged and sad. Your eyes glaze as you travel life's highway past all the crushed animals and the Big Gulp cups.
It is a well known fact that even among highly cultured peoples the belief in animism prevails generally. Even the scholar may kick the chair against which he accidentally stumbles, and derive great satisfaction from thus 'getting even' with the perv...
Not a single bird makes its first leap from a tree without faith, and not a single animal in the jungle begins its day without faith. Faith is the flame that eliminates fear, and faith is the emperor of dreams.
I feel claimed and bonded to him like animals do. I feel like I've already been caught and trapped and he's merely priming me, leaving me to simmer in my juices, anxiously waiting for the moment when he takes his first bite of me.
We are mortals all, human and nonhuman, bound in one fellowship of love and travail. No one escapes the fate of death. But we can, with caring, make our good-byes less tormented. If we broaden the circle of our compassion, life can be less cruel.
The room was full of magical objects, animals, photographs, paintings, strange looking plants and many flying books. I only found this room a few days ago and it seems that it keeps changing every time I come.
It is a difficult matter to gain the affection of a cat. He is a philosophical, methodical animal, tenacious of his own habits, fond of order and neatness, and disinclined to extravagant sentiment. He will be your friend, if he finds you worthy of fr...
The trees are a thousand times taller than me, and hundreds of years older, and the rocks and leaves and plants and animals never do anything silly like kill each other or fall in love or grow up.
His men had begun gathering the wounded or stunned into a small group some distance back up the slope. Here and there an animal or human stirred, but not many. There were few cries of pain or fear now. Mostly, it was eerily quiet. Even the insects ha...
There we were, filled with pure animal need, as he pinned me to the wooden table, and cruelly whipped my naked bottom; the two of us sweaty and panting, me screaming, him grunting, our primal sexual natures overprinting the tea room’s pretence at g...
Let me be clear: I don’t want to make love to a mannequin—I want to make love like a mannequin. Oh, if only I were that animated in bed.
All live and die believing that they have known love, thinking it is a common thing, because they confuse it with animal satisfaction; but love is a privilege, love is a lottery of fate, like wealth, like beauty, which only a small minority enjoy....
Ly-di-ah! I sit beneath your window, laaaass, singing ’cause I loooove your a—” “For the love of St. Francis of Assisi, someone call a vet. There is an injured animal screaming in pain outside,” Charlotte interrupted the flow of music in il...
Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species.
In such a beast as this..." (he means the army)"...it was the collective power that went, collapsing like a long-exhausted animal, at once falling under its own weight as much as that of its enemy. It was a collective death and not a matter of braver...
He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die!
Frost interviewing Noel Coward and Margaret Mead. Sir Noel's view of life is Sir Noel. Mead's mind is large and open, like Buckminster Fuller's. She found thoughts dull that suggest that men are superior to animals or plants.
And now, because of a song, Vimes, a simple piece of music, Vimes, soft as a breath, stranger than a mountain, some very powerful states have agreed to work together to heal the problems of another autonomous state and, almost as collateral, turn som...