Dictionary Home » Famous Quotes » creatures

creatures quotes

  • Thesewidows, Sir, arethemost perverse creaturesinthe world.

    -Joseph Addison
      In The Spectator, no.335, 25 Mar.

  • If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.

    -Joseph Addison
      In The Spectator, no.494, 26 Sep.

  • All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all.

    - Cecil Frances Alexander
      'All Things Bright and Beautiful'.

  • These Ibsen creatures are'neither men nor women, they areghouls', vile, unlovable, morbid monsters, and it were well indeed for society if all such went and drowned themselves at once.

    -Anonymous
    In The Gentlewoman. Review of Henrik Ibsen's Rosmersholm.

  • As the births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      Essays, no.24,'Of Innovations'.

  • The feeling individual appeared weakhe felt only his own weakness.But if he accepted his weakness and his separateness and descended into himself, intensifying his loneliness, he discovered his solidarity with other isolated creatures.

    - Saul Bellow
      Nobel prize lecture, Stockholm,12 Dec.

  • God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, One to show a woman when he loves her!

    - Robert Browning
      Men and Women,'One Word More. To E.B.B.', stanza18.

  • Learn then to dance, you that are princes born, And lawful lords of earthly creatures all; Imitate them, and thereof take no scorn, (For this new art to them is natural) And imitate the stars celestial. For when pale death your vital twist shall sever, Your better parts must dance with them forever.

    - SirJohn Davies
      Orchestra, or a Poem of Dancing, stanza 60.

  • That it is at least as difficult to staya moral infection as a physical one; that such a disease will spread with the malignityand rapidity of the Plague; that the contagion, when it has once made head, will spare no pursuit or condition, but will lay hold on people in the soundest health, and become developed inthe most unlikely constitutions; is a fact as firmlyestablished by experience as that we human creatures breathe an atmosphere.

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
    ^7  Little Dorrit, bk.2, ch.13.

  • Webster was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin; And breastless creatures under ground Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      'Whispers of Immortality'.

  • Pity the poor creatures in warmer countries where the seasons never change.Where summer is eternal and they never know the pain of waiting and the joy at last when summer comes.

    - Ray Guy
      That Far Greater Bay,'Catching Conners'.

  • See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole world?

    - Richard Hooker
      Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.

  •   Players, Sir! I look upon them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Letter to  James Macpherson.

  • When I behold, upon the night's starred face Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love;then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness so sink.

    -John Keats
      'When I Have FearsThat I May Cease to Be'.

  • Praise God, from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him, all creatures here below, Praise Him above, ye heavenly host, Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

    -Thomas Ken
      Manual of Prayers for the use of the Scholars of  Winchester College.

  • The bird onthebranch, thelily inthemeadow, thestag in the forest, the fish in the sea, the countless joyful creatures sing,God is Love. But beneath all these sopranos, as it were a sustained bass part, is the De profundis of the Sacrificed,God is Love.

    - So«  ren Aabye Kierkegaard
    Journal entry (translated by Alexander Dru,1938).

  • As for mefor me, the grass grew longer, and more sorrowful, and the trees were surfaced like flesh, and girls were no longer to be treated lightly but were creatures of commanding sadness, and all journeys through the valley were now made alone, with passion in every bush, and the motions of wind and cloud and stars were suddenly for myself alone, and voices elected me of all men living and called me to deliver the world, and I groaned from solitude, blushed when I stumbled, loved strangers and bread and butter, and made long trips through the rain on my bicycle, stared wretchedly through lighted windows, grinned wryly to think how little I was known, and lived in a state of raging excitement.

    - Laurie Lee
      Cider With Rosie,'Last Days'.

  • All creatures give out a smell when aroused, it seems; certainly humans do.

    -James Lees-Milne
    Ancient as the Hills: Diaries,1973^1974 (1997).

  • That rarest of political creaturesa Labor leader who could actually win elections.

    - Robert D(ennis) McFadden
      Of Harold Wilson. In the NewYork Times, 25 May.

  • Morally, spiritually, we are fettered. What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before. To call such activity progress is utter delusion.

    - Henry Valentine Miller
      The World of Sex.

  • O shame to men! Devil with devil damned Firm concord holds, men only disagree Of creatures rational.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.496^8.

  • A race of upstart creatures.

    -John Milton
      Satan speaks to his daughter, Sin, of Man. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.834.

  • Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.4, l.677^8.

  • Heaven is for thee too high To know what passes there; be lowly wise: Think only what concerns thee and thy being. Dream not of other worlds, what creatures there Live, in what state, condition, or degree, Contented that thus far hath been revealed Not of earth only but of highest heav'n.

    -John Milton
      Raphael to  Adam. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.8, l.172^8.

  • God of our Fathers, what is man! That thou towards him with hand so various, Or might I say contrarious, Temperst thy providence through his short course, Not evenly, as thou rul'st The angelic orders and inferior creatures mute, Irrational and brute.

    -John Milton
    Samson  Agonistes, l.667^73.

  • The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

    - George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
      Animal Farm, ch.10.

  • The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      PastorAnderson toJudith Anderson. The Devil's Disciple, act 2.

  • Men are very fragile creatures. Their psyches are so closely tied to their epididymis.

    - Bette Stephenson
      Interviewed by Christina McCall Newman inThe Globe and Mail,12 Jul.The epididymis is the tube carrying sperm out from the testicle.

  • Man is the hunter; woman is his game: The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, We hunt them for the beauty of their skins; They love us for it, and we ride them down.

    -Tennyson
      The Princess, pt.5, l.147^50.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
link/cite print suggestion box