Anna Sewell Quotes

Self-defence is Nature's eldest law.

Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.

There is not, in my opinion, anything more mysterious in nature than this instinct in animals, which thus rise above reason, and yet fall infinitely short of it.

A hungry dog hunts best. A hungrier dog hunts even better.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

A hungry dog hunts best.

Viewed narrowly, all life is universal hunger and an expression of energy associated with it.

Self-preservation, nature's first great law, all the creatures, except man, doth awe.

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.

The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason.

When I was in Greenough, Montana, I came across a bear cub. I was off this path, and I thought, If there's a bear cub, that means there's a mother bear somewhere nearby. So I doubled back. If I'd kept going, I'm sure they would have eventually found my sneakers, and that's about it.

A lion's work hours are only when he's hungry; once he's satisfied, the predator and prey live peacefully together.

All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost - the most legitimate - passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one.

Death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit.

The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals.

We can't help it. Life looks for life.

It may not be irrelevant to note that even very modest forms of life, like earthworms, dung beetles and fiddler crabs, have no trouble identifying the real problems they must deal with if they are to survive.

Nature drives with a loose rein and vitality of any sort can blunder through many a predicament in which reason would despair.

First be a good animal.

I am the animal at the head of the pack. … I either get eaten, or I get the good grass.

In all of nature, there is no sound more pleasing than that of a hungry animal at its feed. Unless you are the food.

Survival prospects are poor for an animal that is not suspicious of novelty.

He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything.

Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature.