Samuel Butler Quotes

That's what the cat said to the canary when he swallowed him - 'You'll be all right.'

The wolf asketh not how many the sheep may be.

We're interested in things that have big teeth, and you can see the evolutionary value of that, and you can also see the practical consequences by watching 'Animal Planet.' You notice they make very few programs about gerbils. It's mostly about things that have big teeth.

If worms carried pistols, birds wouldn't eat 'em.

I have an odd theory on happiness, and it bothers people. My general theory is that happiness is a reward for an animal doing what it should be doing. So if a horse runs, it feels happy. Or if you are too thin, you can't be happy, because evolution wants you to be tense and anxious, trying to wake up in the morning looking for food.

When the ancestors of the cheetah first began pursuing the ancestors of the gazelle, neither of them could run as fast as they can today.

Life eats life to live.

The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten.

Those who live, live off the dead.

Take, for example, the African jungle, the home of the cheetah. On whom does the cheetah prey? The old, the sick, the wounded, the weak, the very young, but never the strong. Lesson: If you would not be prey, you had better be strong.

It is unfair to blame man too fiercely for being pugnacious; he learned the habit from Nature.

The truth is, everything is eating and being eaten.

Our animal origins are constantly lurking behind, even if they are filtered through complicated social evolution.

These are the animals that are the reason why you don't see old animals in the wild. You don't see sick animals in the wild. You don't see lame animals in the wild, and its all because of the predator: the lion, the tiger, the leopard, all the cats.

I don't think anyone can be more of a predator than a human being.

You're a good example of why some animals eat their young.

I think that's still the most primal fear of all humans: to be eaten.

In all works on Natural History, we constantly find details of the marvellous adaptation of animals to their food, their habits, and the localities in which they are found.

It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.

Lions, wolves, and vultures don't live together in herds, droves or flocks. Of all animals of prey, man is the only sociable one. Every one of us preys upon his neighbor, and yet we herd together.

It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep may be.

When a lion doesn't get its prey, it remains hungry. When the prey saves himself, he has not won, but has saved his life.

Many cats are the death of the mouse.

When the wart-hog looks up at the sky, it gets its throat slit.

Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow.