Brutes Quotes
More Brutes Quotes
I didn't see it, but it sounds barbaric. It's become like cock-fighting: poor dumb brutes being set upon each other by conniving television producers.
Boris Johnson— David Smith, "Focus: Big Brother brawl", Observer, 20 June 2004, p. 17.
— On Big Brother.
O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee To temper man: we had been brutes without you. Angels are painted fair, to look like you: There ’s in you all that we believe of heaven, Amazing brightness, purity, and truth, Eternal joy, and everlasting love.
thomas otway— Venice Preserv'd (1682), Act i. Sc. 1. Compare: "Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes; Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart", Thomas Gray, The Bard, part i. stanza 3.
I didn't see it, but it sounds barbaric. It's become like cock-fighting: poor dumb brutes being set upon each other by conniving television producers.
— Boris Johnson, reported in David Smith, "Focus: Big Brother brawl", Observer, 20 June 2004, p. 17; referring to the TV series, Big Brother.
No, Arbiter! The Great Journey has begun, and the brutes, not the Elites, shall be the Prophets' escort!
— Who: Tartarus
— Notes: Killed by the Arbiter after he had refused to belive the truth of the Halos.
Sunset and silence! A man: around him earth savage, earth broken; Beside him two horsesa plough! Earth savage, earth broken, the brutes, the dawn-man there in the sunset, And the Plough that is twin to the Sword, that is founder of cities!
Padraic Colum— 1907 Wild Earth,'The Plougher'.
We are apt to be kinder to the brutes that love us than to the women that love us. Is it because the brutes are dumb?
— 1859 Adam Bede, ch.4.
Exterminate all the brutes!
Korzeniowski— 1899 Heart of Darkness, pt.2 (first published in Blackwood's Magazine, collected inYouth: A Narrative, and Two Other Stories, 1902).
Had Kala lived, Tarzan would have sacrificed all else to remain near her, but now that she was dead, and the playful friends of his childhood grown into fierce and surly brutes he felt that he much preferred the peace and solitude of his cabin to the irksome duties of leadership amongst a horde of wild beasts.
Edgar Rice Burroughs— Ch. 12 : Man's Reason
Ah, wasteful woman, she who mayOn her sweet self set her own price,Knowing man cannot choose but pay,How has she cheapen'd paradise;How given for nought her priceless gift,How spoil'd the bread and spill'd the wine,Which, spent with due, respective thrift,Had made brutes men, and men divine.
coventry patmore— Book I, Canto III, III Unthrift.
It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man.
gilbert keith chesterton— Ch. 1: The Man in the Cave
How right politicians are to look upon their constituents as cattle! Anyone who has any experience of dealing with any class as such knows the futility of appealing to intelligence, indeed to any other qualities than those of brutes.
aleister crowley— Ch LXXIII (Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929))
If Man be separated by no greater structural barrier from the brutes than they are from one another then it seems to follow that if any process of physical causation can be discovered by which the genera and families of ordinary animals have been produced, that process of causation is amply sufficient to account for the origin of Man.
thomas henry huxley— Ch.2, p.125
Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities his preeminence over them simply and solely in the number and in the fantastic and unnecessary character of his wants, physical, moral, aesthetic, and intellectual. Had his whole life not been a quest for the superfluous, he would never have established himself as inexpugnably as he has done in the necessary.
william james— "Reflex Action and Theism"
Religion , which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts.
john locke— Book IV, Ch. 18
Those who desire to be men in truth, and not brutes, having only the appearance and shape of men, must constantly endeavor to reduce the wants of the body, such as eating, love, drinking, anger, and all manners originating in lust and passion; they must feel ashamed of them and set limits to them for themselves.
maimonides— Ch.8 (Part III)
"How divine is utterance!" she said. "As we to the brutes, poets are to us."
George Meredith— Ch. 16. (Diana of the Crossways (1885))
You may set the Negro free, but you cannot make him otherwise than an alien to the European. Nor is this all we scarcely acknowledge the common features of humanity in this stranger whom slavery has brought among us. His physiognomy is to our eyes hideous, his understanding weak, his tastes low; and we are almost inclined to look upon him as a being intermediate between man and the brutes.
alexis de tocqueville— Chapter XVIII
In consequence of the sensibility with which they are endowed, they ought to partake of natural right; so that mankind is subjected to a kind of obligation even toward the brutes. It appears, in fact, that if I am bound to do no injury to my fellow-creatures, this is less because they are rational than because they are sentient beings: and this quality, being common both to men and beasts, ought to entitle the latter at least to the privilege of not being wantonly ill-treated by the former.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau— Discourse on Inequality (1754), preface.
The Lord of Learning who upraised mankind from being silent brutes to singing men.
charles godfrey leland— Charles Godfrey Leland, The Music-lesson of Confucius.
Reason is the glory of human nature, and one of the chief eminences whereby we are raised above our fellow-creatures, the brutes, in this lower world.
Isaac Watts— Isaac Watts, Logic: or The Right Use of Reason in the Inquiry after Truth (1724), Introduction
Yesterday the wisest man holding a lit lantern in daylight was searching around town saying I am tired of all these beasts and brutes I seek a true human We have all looked for one but no one could be found they said Yes he replied but my search is for the one who cannot be found.
— Rumi, in Divani Shams Ghazal #441, translated by Nader Khalili in Rumi, Fountain of Fire
Next to God's unity the most essential and characteristic doctrine of Judaism is that concerning God's relation to man. Heathenism degraded man by making him kneel before brutes and the works of his hand: Judaism declared man to be made in the image of God, the crown and culmination of God's creation, the appointed ruler of the earth, and vicegerent of God
— Kaufman Kohler, Jewish Encyclopedia (1904)
Why should we kill the best of passions, love? It aids the hero, bids ambition rise to nobler heights, inspires immortal deeds, even softens brutes, and adds a grace to virtue.
james thomson— Sophonisba, Act V, scene 2.
Society is as needful to us as air or food. A child doomed to utter loneliness, growing up without sight or sound of human beings, would not put forth equal power with many brutes; and a man, never brought into contact with minds superior to his own, will probably run one and the same dull round of thought and action to the end of llfe.
— William Ellery Channing, in "Self-Culture", an address in Boston (September 1838)
The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced — that without intelligence we should be brutes — but it is the tendency of our gaping, wondering dispositions to give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in the world.
george henry lewes— Rose, Blanche, and Violet (London: Smith, Elder, 1848) vol. 1, pp. viii-ix
