tiger quotes

He smiled with the spontaneity of a mechanical tiger.

- Dean Gooderham Acheson
  Of Soviet Foreign Minister V M Molotov. Sketches from Life of Men I Have Known.

Once on the tiger's back, we cannot be sure of picking the place to dismount.

- GeorgeWildman Ball
  Memo to Secretary of Defense Robert S McNamara, 5 Oct, on the escalation of the Vietnam War. It became known as'the tiger's back memo'. Quoted in Deborah Shapley Promise and Power (1993).

Mothers of large families (who claim to common sense) Will find aTiger will repay the trouble and expense.

- (Joseph) Hilaire Pierre Belloc
  The Bad Child's Book of Beasts,'The Tiger'.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

-William Blake
  Songs of Experience,'The Tyger'.

Signs are taken for wonders.'We would see a sign!' The word within the word, unable to speak a word, Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year Came Christ the tiger.

-T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
  'Gerontion'.

Warmestclimes but nursethe cruellest fangs: thetigerof Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure.

- Herman Melville
Moby Dick, ch.119.

There was one poor tiger that hadn't got a Christian.

-Punch

In me the tiger sniffs the rose.

- Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
  The Heart'sJourney, pt.7,'In me, past, present, future meet'.

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
  Man and Superman,'Maxims for Revolutionists: Crime and Punishment'.

For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes. For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life. For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him. For he is of the tribe of Tiger.

- Christopher Smart
^63  Of his cat Jeoffry. JubilateAgno, fragment B, l.719^22. (First published1939.)

Being president is like riding a tiger†keep on riding or be swallowed.

- Harry S Truman
Quoted in the NewYorkTimes, 28 Dec1984.