Barry Lopez Quotes

Animals of all classes, old and young, shrink with instinctive fear from any strange object approaching them.

The Deer don't dineWhen a Wolf's about,And the PorcupineSticks his quill-points out.

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.

And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down.

I want to reconnect to my animal life.

Just like an animal, when you want to survive, you don't think anymore.

Every man has a wild animal in him.

The first inclination which an animal has is to protect itself

I think the default position of humans is to be terrible, and we have to train it out of our children. That's just part of survival, right? Predator animals don't survive by being nice; humans are basically predator animals.

I don't have any irrational fears. Obviously, if I was walking through the outback, and I saw a snake, I wouldn't go up and stroke it, but I wouldn't run screaming from it, either.

Death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit.

Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals

Wolves ate even mighty hunters, for there was no honor or code among predators, and everyone's guts steam the same way when torn open on a cold night.

No woman wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg.

There are some dogs which, when you meet them, remind you that, despite thousands of years of manmade evolution, every dog is still only two meals away from being a wolf.

Dogs bark at what they don't understand.

Love in an animal sense is an illness, but a necessity which one has to overcome.

I think we’re like farm animals before an earthquake.

The policy of man consists, at first, in endeavoring to arrive at a state equal to that of animals, whom nature has furnished with food, clothing, and shelter.

First be a good animal.

Dogs will eat till they die. Cats will leave food in the dish, incomprehensible to a dog.

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.

God had given men reason, by which they could find out things for themselves, but He had given animals knowledge which did not depend on reason, and which was much more prompt and perfect in its way, and by which they had often saved the lives of men.

An animal is not cruel; it lives wholly in the instant leap on its prey, in the present taste of marrow or blood. Cruelty begins with the memory, and the pleasures of the memory are impure; they draw their strength along levels where no sun has reached.

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