Edward Hoagland Quotes

We are certainly in a common class with the beasts; every action of animal life is concerned with seeking bodily pleasure and avoiding pain.

Be a good animal, true to your animal instincts.

The first inclination which an animal has is to protect itself

Such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.

The squirrel hoards nuts and the bee gathers honey, without knowing what they do, and they are thus provided for without selfishness or disgrace.

Animals teach us about the animals in ourselves. We need their spirits.

One of the things I like best about animals in the wild is that they're always off on some errand. They have appointments to keep. It's only we humans who wonder what we're here for.

Man is too near all kinds of beasts,--a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture.

When I watch species other than my own, their instinct's wisdom is what most impresses and disturbs me.

Almost everybody can be imagined as either a cat or a dog.

The fly ought to be used as the symbol of impertinence and audacity; for whilst all other animals shun man more than anything else, and run away even before he comes near them, the fly lights upon his very nose.

Beasts, birds, and insects, even to the minutest and meanest of their kind, act with the unerring providence of instinct; man, the while, who possesses a higher faculty, abuses it, and therefore goes blundering on.

The wild bird that flies so lone and far has somewhere its nest and brood. A little fluttering heart of love impels its wings, and points its course. There is nothing so solitary as a solitary man.

Often people who are wonderful with animals aren't always terribly good with human beings.

Cats don't need to be possessed; they're evil on their own.

It was only when Shona, in sheer fury, turned the carnivorous sheep among them that they moved. They ran, some of them with charming little white sheep attached to their legs or backsides and the rest shouting about monsters.

I think we give human beings too much credit. We're primates, you know.

Just because we think we're so wonderful doesn't mean we really are. We could be really terrible animals and just never admit it because it would hurt so much.

If you feel dirty, insignificant or unloved, then rats are a good role model. They exist without permission, they have no respect for the hierarchy of society, and they have sex 50 times a day.

Look, Chief, you can't go off half-cocked looking for vengeance against a fish. That shark isn't evil. It's not a murderer. It's just obeying its own instincts. Trying to get retribution against a fish is crazy.

Well, I quite like animals, but theyre unpredictable. I mean, look at old whats-his-name in Vegas. Tiger dragged him off the stage, you know? The guy brought up tigers. Theyre quite unpredictable.

The dove loves when it quarrels; the wolf hates when it flatters.

Do you think pandas know they're Chinese and they're taking the one child policy a bit too seriously?

A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from snares, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves.

Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.