“When people call this beast to mind,
They marvel more and more
At such a LITTLE tail behind,
So LARGE a trunk before.”
"The Elephant"
The Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896)
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Hilaire Belloc91
writer 1870–1953Related quotes
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker
in a letter to de:Gustav Schiefler from Dresden, 27 June, 1911; as quoted in German Expressionist Sculpture, ed. Stephanie Barron, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1983, p. 114
1905 - 1915
Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer
"The Hue and Cry," The Writing on the Wall (1970)
Context: Calling someone a monster does not make him more guilty; it makes him less so by classing him with beasts and devils (“a person of inhuman and horrible cruelty or wickedness,” OED, Sense 4). Such an unnatural being is more horrible to contemplate than an Eichmann — that is, aesthetically worse — but morally an Ilse Koch was surely less culpable than Eichmann since she seems to have had no trace of human feeling and therefore was impassable to conscience.
Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author
Source: Mysteries (1978), p. 125
Context: No matter how honest scientists think they are, they are still influenced by various unconscious assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. Expressed in a sentence, Fort's principle goes something like this: People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.
Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer
Source: This is Where I Leave You
Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 89.
“Open eyes are of little use when the mind behind them is closed.”
Codex Alera, Princeps' Fury (2008)
Ray Bradbury book The Golden Apples of the Sun
The Murderer (1953)
The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)
Context: Then I went in and shot the televisor, that insidious beast, that Medusa, which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little, but myself always going back, going back hoping and waiting until—bang!
