Animals and Nature

The frog’s life is most jolly, my lads; he has no care Who shall fill up his cup; for he has drink enough to spare.

Cicala to cicala is dear, and ant to ant, And kestrels dear to kestrels, but to me the Muse and song.

Sweet is the whispering music of yonder pine that sings.

Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax.

Halcyon days. 4

Bringing owls to Athens.

[On the nightingale:] Lord Zeus, listen to the little bird’s voice; he has filled the whole thicket with honeyed song.

Haven’t you sometimes seen a cloud that looked like a centaur? Or a leopard perhaps? Or a wolf? Or a bull? 2

A poet ought not to pick nature’s pocket: let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to your imagination than to your memory.

We ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household belongings, which when worn with use we throw away.

Nature is wont to hide herself.

Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature's way.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise.

For all the talk you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instinct is worth forty of it for real unerringness.

Rise early. It is the early bird that catches the worm. Don't be fooled by this absurd law; I once knew a man who tried it. He got up at sunrise and a horse bit him.

Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn't any. But this wrongs the jackass.

A home without a cat — and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat — may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat .

Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity - these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing. They are not ashamed.