Philip wooed me with all the patience of someone trying to coax a half-wild animal into the house and, like many a stray, I found myself domesticated before I thought to resist.
Stories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.
Like most Americans of my age, I was very impressed by the dynamic capacities of the law, demonstrated by the Civil Rights Movement and then Watergate, animated by Sam Ervin's mantra that no person is above the law.
The best days I have are usually days where I'm out in the woods and something happens, like I see an amazing animal like a fox, or I get a glimpse of a wild pig or something that I never see. Or crazy things happen.
I love books, I love art, I'm a fanatic nature and wildlife person. People assume I'm a political animal, power hungry, wanting to run for office. And anyone who knows me knows that none of that's true.
When I was a freshman in high school, I read a book about the making of Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty' called 'The Art of Animation.' It was this weird revelation for me, because I hadn't considered that people actually get paid to make cartoons.
As a species, we are most animated when our days and nights on Earth are touched by the natural world. We can find immeasurable joy in the birth of a child, a great work of art, or falling in love.
It is a fundamental misperception," Fouts says to me, "to think human life has more value than any other life form.
I didn't know then that the mind, like the earth, has several layers: a crust, a mantle, a boiling core.
I never said to myself, I am longing; that feeling lived at a level below language.
You can’t replace people you love with other people…But you can trust that you’re not going to run out of people to love.
Man is a moral animal abandoned in an amoral universe and condemned to a finite existence with no other prupose than to perpetuate the natural cycle of the species.
The prescription of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how we should treat human beings.
Those who don't return become a part of the clouds, a part of the animals that hide in the ravines and of the water that comes from the earth. They become a part of everything... they become the Soul of the World.
And all of the scientific data, statistical facts and empirical evidence can't compete with the indefinable heart's desire. For if in the end, she loves you, and she chooses you…none of the rest of this will matter.
Zoos are becoming facsimiles - or perhaps caricatures - of how animals once were in their natural habitat. If the right policies toward nature were pursued, we would need no zoos at all.
Friendship is a strange animal. It only thrives in voluntary enjoyment of each other's company, in the pleasure of nonobligatory connection. I repeat: You owe me nothing.
May I never, I say, become that abnormal, merciless animal, that deformed monstrosity— a virtuous woman. Anything, Devil, but that.
My definition of man is a cooking animal. The beasts have memory, judgement, and the faculties and passions of our minds in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook.
Like us, animals feel love, joy, fear and pain, but they cannot grasp the spoken word. It is our obligation to speak on their behalf ensuring their well-being and lives are respected and protected.
I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.
