“...man is the animal that moralizes. Man is also the animal that complains about being one, and says that there is an animal, a beast inside him — that he is brother to dragons.”

—  Randall Jarrell

He is certainly a brother to wolves, and to pandas too, but he is father to dragons, not brother: they, like many gods and devils, are inventions of his.

“On the Underside of the Stone”, p. 177
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

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Randall Jarrell 215
poet, critic, novelist, essayist 1914–1965

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“… man is the animal that moralizes. Man is also the animal that complains about being one, and says that there is an animal, a beast inside him—that he is brother to dragons. (He is certainly a brother to wolves, and to pandas too, but he is father to dragons, not brother: they, like many gods and devils, are inventions of his.)”

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