George Eliot Quotes

Im thinking of buying a monkey. Then I think, Why stop at one? I don't like being limited in that way. Therefore, I'm considering a platton of monkeys, so that people will look at me and see how mellow and well-adjusted I am compared to these monkeys throwing feces around.

Quadruped lions are said to be savage, only when they are hungry; biped lions are rarely sulky longer than when their appetite for distinction remains unappeased.

There isn't a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. All the time, we find animals doing things that, in our arrogance, we thought were just human.

Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.

I think we learn some of the greatest lessons in life from animals, whether it's love, suffering, or the value of silence.

It's almost as if we're put here on earth to show how silly they aren't.

The world of organisms, of animals and plants, is built up of individuals. I like to think, then, of natural history as the study of life at the level of the individual-of what plants and animals do, how they react to each other and their environment, how they are organized into larger groupings like populations and communities.

I was thinking about comedy and how comedy in many ways opens us up to ideas and really being influenced by Richard Pryor and sort of the way he would use comedy to really speak about larger social issues.

I am sure the man who powders most, perfumes most, embroiders most, and talks most nonsense, is most admired. Though to be candid, there are some who have too much good sense to esteem such monkey-like animals as these, in whose formation, as the saying is, the tailors and barbers go halves with God Almighty.

Among the writers of antiquity there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived than those who have employed themselves in satire, under whatever dress it may appear.

I think comedy is an angry art form; it's an outsider art form.

A certain person may have, as you say, a wonderful presence; I do not know. What I do know is that he has a perfectly delightful absence.

The greatest books in Russian literature are satires. Gogol's Dead Souls, for example, is a very over-the-top satire about life in Russia. I think it's the thing we do best.

Misty [May] and I had something magical, and I think at the basis of that was so much trust. Especially in the really competitive situations where it really felt do-or-die, we were unbreakable. We always stuck together, even if we lost we were together.

I think the job of a comedian is to make people laugh, but also challenge them to laugh at things they didn't know they could until now.

Friendly satire may be compared to a fine lancet, which gently breathes a vein for health's sake.

How do you have a think in pictures? Well, you have to sort the pictures into categories. You know, for example, a dog knows that, you know, there's good people and there's bad people. And I talked to a lady the other day where her dog was afraid of people with white beards because she had adopted him from an animal shelter and somebody with a white beard had abused him. And this dog was now afraid of everybody that had a white beard. That was the bad category.

I think I'll be a clown when I get grown,' said Dill. Jem and I stopped in our tracks. Yes sir, a clown,' he said. 'There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.' You got it backwards, Dill,' said Jem. 'Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them.' Well I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.

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.

No wonder circus animals do what they do: They tortured them. And you know the only ones they can't control? It's the chimpanzees. You can't control them. That's why you never see a gorilla in a movie, because the gorilla may decide there'll be no filming.

I'm trying to think if there was ever the Lenny Bruce-y, observational, George Carlin kind of magician: "You know what I hate is ..." I don't think that ever existed.

No animal shall kill any other animal WITHOUT CAUSE.

I think the lion, besides the elephant, was the one animal that I just started thinking about so much.

I don't think half my stuff would be funny if the audience didn't feel at least a little bit safe that it's not how I truly feel.

If you turn your back on these people, you yourself are an animal. You may be a well-dressed animal, but you are nevertheless an animal.