Jim Butcher Quotes

...if you fall into a lion's pit, the reason the lion will tear you to pieces is not because it's hungry-be assured, zoo animals are amply fed-or because it's bloodthirsty, but because you've invaded it's territory.

Creatures which, lacking mankind's superior brain power, did not concern themselves with finding someone to blame, and instead tried to find someone to eat.

I always find you go back to an animal; it will always show you the sort of primal aspects of behavior. You always know how to respond if you choose that.

The only animal from which humans have nothing to learn, in fact, is the sheep. Humans have already learned everything the sheep's got to teach.

Animals are born who they are, accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do.

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.

A hungry dog believes in nothing but meat.

The cat is domestic only as far as suits its own ends.

Animals have no unconscious, because they have a territory. Men have only had an unconscious since they lost a territory.

We are the only animals that let our kids come back home.

You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There's an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.

The animals to whom nature has given the faculty we call cunning know always when to use it, and use it wisely; but when man descends to cunning he blunders and betrays.

If one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of his history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he has been afflicted by some built-in mental disorder which drives him towards self-destruction. Murder within the species on an individual or collective scale is a phenomenon unknown in the whole animal kingdom, except for man, and a few varieties of ants and rats.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd, I stand and look at them long and long.

Nice,' I say, realizing only afterward that I've mimicked her, a bad habit of mine; I'm like one of those animals that imitates its predators to survive.

Tam Lin says rabbits give up when they're caught by coyotes [...]. He says they consent to die because their animals and can't understand hope. But humans are different. They fight against death no matter how bad things seem, and sometimes, even when everything's against them, they win.

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.

Though our conduct seems so very different from that of the higher animals, the primary instincts are much alike in them and in us.

The female of all species are most dangerous when they appear to retreat.

Since I’m presuming you don’t mean you finally bought him a leash, let me say simply that there is a big difference between allowing an animal to ravage you and allowing yourself to be ravaged. One is common. The other is art. It is planned. Crafted, even. Only capable of being done by a master.

There is nothing like a man for bringing out the animal in an animal.

I'm not over-fond of animals. I am merely astounded by them.

I find it valid to understand man as an animal before I am prepared to know him as a man.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained, I stand and look at them long and long.