Quotes about wolves

A collection of quotes on the topic of wolf, likeness, doing, thing.

Best quotes about wolves

Hayao Miyazaki photo

“Cut off a wolf's head and it still has the power to bite.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

Source: もののけ姫 [Mononoke hime]

Ted Hughes photo

“The wolf is living for the earth.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

“Yes, wolf, I see all. And by all, I mean some.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: MacRieve

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“We're the culture that cried wolf.”

Source: Lullaby

“Read like a wolf eats.”

Gary Paulsen (1939) American writer and musher
Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas photo

“Dog, ounce, bear, and bull,
Wolfe, lion, horse.”

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–1590) French writer

Second Week, First Day, Part iii. Compare: "Lion, bear, or wolf, or bull", William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, act ii. sc. 1.
La Seconde Semaine (1584)

George Herbert photo

“[ The wolfe eats oft of the sheep that have been warn'd. ]”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Robert Jordan photo
Terence photo

“As the saying is, I have got a wolf by the ears.”

Act III, scene 2, line 21 (506).
Phormio

Quotes about wolves

George Raymond Richard Martin photo
Louis Sachar photo
Louis Sachar photo
Béla Lugosi photo
Adolfo Bioy Casares photo

“Even the wolf has its moments of weakness, in which it sides with the lamb and thinks: I hope it runs away.”

Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914–1999) Argentine novelist

"El mismo lobo tiene momentos de debilidad, en que se pone del lado del cordero y piensa: Ojalá que huya."
Guirnaldas con amores, 1959.

Irenaeus photo
Jeremy Clarkson photo

“Let's be perfectly clear, shall we. The fox is not a little orange puppy dog with doe eyes and a waggly tail. It's a disease-ridden wolf with the morals of a psychopath and the teeth of a great white shark.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

A Murderous Fox Has Made Me Shoot David Beckham, p. 161
The World According to Clarkson (2005)

Sia (musician) photo

“A shot in the dark
A past lost in space
Where do I start?
The past and the chase
You hunted me down
Like a wolf, a predator
I felt like a deer in the lights”

Sia (musician) (1975) Australian singer

She Wolf (Falling to Pieces), Nothing But the Beat 2.0 (2012). Cowritten with David Guetta, Chris Braide and Giorgio Tuinfort.
Songs

Aldo Leopold photo
Saul Bellow photo

“Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.”

Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970) [Penguin Classics, 2004, ISBN 0-142-43783-2], p. 156
General sources

Vladimir Nabokov photo
Eric Clapton photo
Aldo Leopold photo
Aurelius Augustinus photo

“The dove loves even when it attacks; the wolf hates even when it flatters.”
Columba amat et quando caedit. Lupus odit et quando blanditur.

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

64
Sermons

Malcolm X photo
John Lennon photo
Maria Callas photo

“[Serafin was] an extraordinary coach, sharp as a vecchio lupo [old wolfe]. He opened a world to me, showed me there was a reason for everything, that even fiorature and trills… have a reason in the composer's mind, that they are the expression of the stato d'animo [state of mind] of the character — that is, the way he feels at the moment, the passing emotions that take hold of him. He would coach us for every little detail, every movement, every word, every breath. One of the things he told me — and this is the basis of bel canto — is never to attack a note from underneath or from above, but always to prepare it in the face. He taught me that pauses are often more important than the music. He explained that there was a rhythm — these are the things you get only from that man! — a measure for the human ear, and that if a note was too long, it was no good after a while. A fermata always must be measured, and if there are two fermate close to one another in the score, you ignore one of them. He taught me the proportions of recitative — how it is elastic, the proportions altering so slightly that only you can understand it…. But in performance he left you on your own. "When I am in the pit, I am there to serve you, because I have to save my performance." he would say. We would look down and feel we had a friend there. He was helping you all the way. He would mouth all the words. If you were not well, he would speed up the tempo, and if you were in top form, he would slow it down to let you breathe, to give you room. He was breathing with you, living the music with you, loving it with you. It was elastic, growing, living.”

Maria Callas (1923–1977) American-born Greek operatic soprano

Callas : The Art and the Life (1974)

Bertrand Russell photo

“When I was 4 years old … I dreamt that I'd been eaten by a wolf, and to my great surprise I was in the wolf's stomach and not in heaven.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

BBC interview on "Face to Face" (1959); The Listener, Vol. 61 (1959), p. 503
1950s

Malcolm X photo
Ovid photo

“The greater a man is, the more can his wrath be appeased; a noble spirit is capable of kindly impulses. For the noble lion 'tis enough to have overthrown his enemy; the fight is at an end when his foe is fallen. But the wolf, the ignoble bears harry the dying and so with every beast of less nobility. At Troy what have we mightier than brave Achilles? But the tears of the aged Dardanian he could not endure.”
Quo quisque est maior, magis est placabilis irae, et faciles motus mens generosa capit. corpora magnanimo satis est prostrasse leoni, pugna suum finem, cum iacet hostis, habet: at lupus et turpes instant morientibus ursi et quaecumque minor nobilitate fera. maius apud Troiam forti quid habemus Achille? Dardanii lacrimas non tulit ille senis.

Ovid book Tristia

III, v, 33; translation by Arthur Leslie Wheeler
"the aged Dardanian" here refers to Priam
Tristia (Sorrows)

Sennacherib photo

“The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold”

Sennacherib (-740–-681 BC) King of Assyria

Lord Byron, The Destruction of Sennacherib
About

Otto von Bismarck photo

“Hit the Poles so hard that they despair of their life; I have full sympathy with their condition, but if we want to survive, we can only exterminate them; the wolf, too, cannot help having been created by God as he is, but people shoot him for it if they can.”

Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) German statesman, Chancellor of Germany

Haut doch die Polen, daß sie am Leben verzagen; ich habe alles Mitgefühl für ihre Lage, aber wir können, wenn wir bestehn wollen, nichts andres tun, als sie ausrotten; der Wolf kann auch nicht dafür, daß er von Gott geschaffen ist, wie er ist, und man schießt ihn doch dafür totd, wenn man kann.
Letter to his sister Malwine (26/14 March 1861), published in Bismarck-Briefe (Second edition Göttingen 1955), edited by Hans Rothfels, p. 276 http://books.google.de/books?id=oIkkkcUIfqMC&pg=PA276; as quoted in Hajo Holborn: A History of Modern Germany 1840-1945 (1969), p. 165 http://books.google.de/books?id=rUgOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA165
1860s

W.B. Yeats photo
Malcolm X photo

“Wolves eat cats for dinner. By God, I wanna be a wolf.

~Kane Tyler~”

Lora Leigh (1965) American writer

Source: Elizabeth's Wolf

Ogden Nash photo

“either you get eaten by a wolf today or else the shepherd saves you from the wolf so he can sell you to the butcher tomorrow”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Source: I'm a Stranger Here Myself

Janet Evanovich photo
Richelle Mead photo
Charlie Higson photo
Eoin Colfer photo

“What's that supposed to mean? A wolf's head on a stick. Big wolf barbecue tonight? Bring your own wolf?”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Lost Colony

Ezra Taft Benson photo
Annette Curtis Klause photo
Farley Mowat photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Elizabeth Wurtzel photo
James Patterson photo

“Ari felt like, Hellooo, I have wings! I turn into a wolf! Blending is out is out of the question!”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

Farley Mowat photo
Roald Dahl photo
Kelley Armstrong photo
Kim Harrison photo
Maxine Kumin photo
Cormac McCarthy photo

“When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter V
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

Robert Jordan photo
Robert Jordan photo
Richelle Mead photo
Arthur Rimbaud photo
Kelley Armstrong photo
Mark Rowlands photo

“In the end, it is our defiance that redeems us. If wolves had a religion – if there was a religion of the wolf – that it is what it would tell us.”

Mark Rowlands (1962) British philosopher

Source: The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness

Robert M. Pirsig photo

“When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.”

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 30
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Suzanne Collins photo
James Joyce photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Laurie Halse Anderson photo
Richelle Mead photo

“Before he can become a wolf, the lycanthrope strips naked. If you spy a naked man among the pines, you must run as if the Devil were after you.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Source: Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories

Rudyard Kipling photo

“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”

The Law of the Jungle, Stanzas 1 and 2.
The Second Jungle Book (1895)
Source: The Jungle Book
Context: p>Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the Law runneth forward and back;
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.</p

Hélène Cixous photo

“There is no greater love than the love the wolf feels for the lamb-it-doesn’t-eat.”

Hélène Cixous (1937) French philosopher and writer

Source: Stigmata: Escaping Texts

Russell T. Davies photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Mercedes Lackey photo
Jasper Fforde photo
L. David Mech photo
John Davidson photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Statius photo

“Like is he to a wolf that has forced an entrance to a rich fold of sheep, and now, his breast all clotted with foul corruption and his gaping bristly mouth unsightly with blood-stained wool, hies him from the pens, turning this way and that his troubled gaze, should the angry shepherds find out their loss and follow in pursuit, and flees all conscious of his bold deed.”
Ille velut pecoris lupus expugnator opimi, pectora tabenti sanie grauis hirtaque saetis ora cruentata deformis hiantia lana, decedit stabulis huc illuc turbida versans lumina, si duri comperta clade sequantur pastores, magnique fugit non inscius ausi.

Source: Thebaid, Book IV, Line 363 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

Donald J. Trump photo
Tanith Lee photo

“On the September 26, 2008 broadcast of CNN's "Situation Room", while sitting next to Wolf Blitzer, Cafferty directly highlighted Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's abysmal interview performance with Katie Couric earlier in the week. Cafferty stated, prior to playing a particularly embarrassing segment of the interview in which Palin stumbles across a murky, confused, ambiguous answer to Couric's query regarding the pending economic bailout package, "There's a reason the McCain campaign keeps Sarah Palin away from the press." After the clip's conclusion, he then went on to say, "…Did you get that? If John McCain wins, this woman will be one 72 year-old's heartbeat away from being president of the United States, and if that doesn't scare the Hell out of you, it should…I'm 65 and have been covering politics as you have [addressing Blitzer] for a long time, and that is one of the most pathetic pieces of tape I have ever seen for someone aspiring to one of the highest offices in this country. That's all I have to say." Blitzer responded in a light-hearted, seemingly forced defense of Palin, stating, "Yeah, but she's cramming a lot of information…" Cafferty interrupted, "There's no excuse for that. She's supposed to know a little bit of this, you know. Don't make excuses for her - that's pathetic."”

Jack Cafferty (1942) American journalist

Blitzer replied, "It was not her best answer. I agree with you on that," and the segment came to a close.
[CNN, Jack Cafferty on Sarah Palin, 26 September 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8__aXxXPVc]
2008

Hermann Hesse photo
L. David Mech photo
George Washington Plunkitt photo

“You can’t be patriotic on a salary that just keeps the wolf from the door. p. 56”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 13, On Municipal Ownership

Statius photo

“So in the dark of night a dense crowd of shepherds wards off a wolf from the steer he has caught.”
Sic densa lupum jam nocte sub atra arcet ab apprenso pastorum turba juvenco.

Source: Thebaid, Book VIII, Line 691

André Maurois photo