“Many refined people will not kill a fly, but eat an ox.”

Taanis Gedanken, 1896. Alle Verk, xii. 77.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Many refined people will not kill a fly, but eat an ox." by Isaac Leib Peretz?
Isaac Leib Peretz photo
Isaac Leib Peretz 61
Yiddish language author and playwright 1852–1915

Related quotes

Pino Caruso photo

“People eat meat and think they will become strong as an ox, forgetting that the ox eats grass.
Eating an animal with gusto is premeditated lust murder, and digesting it is concealment of corpse.”

Pino Caruso (1934–2019) Italian actor

La gente mangia carne e pensa: "Diventerò forte come un bue".
Dimenticando che il bue mangia erba.
Mangiarsi con gusto un animale è assassinio premeditato a scopo di libidine. Digerirlo, occultamento di cadavere.
Il diluvio universale: acqua passata https://books.google.it/books?hl=it&id=9WIhAQAAIAAJ (Palermo: Novecento, 1993), p. 179.

Dejan Stojanovic photo

“If unjustified, ambition kills value, eats its own life, kills someone else's desire to fly, cuts their wings, sucks their air.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Silent Equality http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21405/Silent_Equality
From the poems written in English

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: 1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836), Ch. 8, Prospects

Henry Ward Beecher photo

“The common schools are the stomachs of the country in which all people that come to us are assimilated within a generation. When a lion eats an ox, the lion does not become an ox but the ox becomes a lion. So the immigrants of all races and nations become Americans, and it is a disgrace to our institutions and a shame to our policy to abuse them or drive them away.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

The Red Man, Volume X, No. 6 (July-August 1890)
The origin remains unclear. Gen. R. H. Pratt, "The Fathers of the Republic on Indian Transformation and Redemption" https://books.google.com/books?id=WMARAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA129&lpg=PA129&dq=%22schools+are+the+stomachs+of+the+country%22&source=bl&ots=Jcl8GbwmVC&sig=R-frEgg-6ZUZrx_UqCh1cqH4yb8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjPkOyV7a_PAhVC5iYKHajpD1sQ6AEINTAE#v=onepage&q=%22schools%20are%20the%20stomachs%20of%20the%20country%22&f=false, The Quarterly Journal of the Society of American Indians, Vol. 2, No.2 (April–June 1914), p. 129 cites "the columns of a little newspaper printed at one of the Indian schools during and prior to 1885". The Educational Weekly https://books.google.com/books?id=nWY0AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA519&lpg=PA519&dq=%22schools+are+the+stomachs+of+the+country%22&source=bl&ots=hTHXz7Q2AZ&sig=K_egMYGg8RNaVLKxEPiYt3w25mM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjPkOyV7a_PAhVC5iYKHajpD1sQ6AEISzAJ#v=onepage&q=%22schools%20are%20the%20stomachs%20of%20the%20country%22&f=false, Vol. 11, No. 222 (1 December 1881), p. 187 cites "a lecture referring to the maltreatment of the Chinese".
Other Sourced

“Flying daggers don't kill people, Chloe thought, leaping sidewise at the last minute to avoid one, grabbing the pedestrian rail. People kill people.”

Celia Thomson (1950) American writer of fiction for children and young adults

Source: The Fallen

Thomas Carlyle photo

“"The people may eat grass": hasty words, which fly abroad irrevocable—and will send back tidings.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Pt. I, Bk. III, ch. 9.
1830s, The French Revolution. A History (1837)

Richard Bach photo
Yagyū Munenori photo

“It is bias to think that the art of war is just for killing people. It is not to kill people, it is to kill evil. It is a stratagem to give life to many people by killing the evil of one person.”

Yagyū Munenori (1571–1646) samurai and daimyo of the early Edo period

As quoted in The Japanese Art of War (1991) by Thomas Cleary

Barbara Walters photo

“A great many people think that polysyllables are a sign of intelligence and refinement so they think they will impress others with their command of obscure words.”

Barbara Walters (1929) American broadcast journalist, author, and television personality

How to Talk With Practically Anybody About Practically Anything (1970), p. 136.

Abbie Hoffman photo

“I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.”

Abbie Hoffman (1936–1989) American political and social activist

Source: Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), p. 187.

Related topics