“Oswald Cabal: Little animals. And if we’re no more than animals, we must snatch each little scrap of happiness, and live, and suffer, and pass, mattering no more than all the other animals do or have done. It is this, or that. All the universe or nothing. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?”

— H. G. Wells, book The Shape of Things to Come

Things to Come (1936)

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 "Oswald Cabal: Little animals. And if we’re no more than animals, we must snatch each little scrap of happiness, and liv…" by H. G. Wells?

H. G. Wells142

English writer 1866–1946

Related quotes

“When we have passed beyond humanity, then we shall be the Man. The Animal was the helper; the Animal is the bar.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

“Raymond Passworthy: But… we're such little creatures. Poor humanity's so fragile, so weak. Little… little animals.”

H. G. Wells book The Shape of Things to Come

Things to Come (1936)

“Four legs good, two legs better! All Animals Are Equal. But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Variant: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Source: Animal Farm

“There's nothing more embarrassing than to have earned the disfavor of a perceptive animal.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Source: Wonder Boys (1995)

“Men think it right to eat animals, because they are led to believe that God sanctions it. This is untrue. No matter in what books it may be written that it is not sinful to slay animals and to eat them, it is more clearly written in the heart of man than in any books that animals are to be pitied and should not be slain any more than human beings. We all know this if we do not choke the voice of our conscience.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

The Pathway of Life: Teaching Love and Wisdom (posthumous), Part I, International Book Publishing Company, New York, 1919, p. 68

“What, then, is the animal? First of all, a system of plant-souls. The unity of those plant-souls, which unity nature itself produces, is the soul of the animal. Its world is therefore partly that of the plants — its nourishment, for instance, it receives partly through synthesis from vegetable, and through analysis from animal nature — and partly that of the animals, whereof we shall speak directly. Each product of nature is an organically in-itself completed totality in space, like the plant. Hence, the unknown x which we are looking for must also be such a whole or totality, and in so far it must also have a principle of organization, a sphere and central point of this organization; in short, the same which we have called the soul of the plant, which thus remains common to both. … The animal is a system of plant-souls, and the plant is a separated, isolated part of an animal. Both reciprocally affect each other.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Science of Rights 1796, P. 502, 503, 504

“Nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond. They scan mechanically. … That look between animal and man, which may have played a crucial role in the development of human society, and with which, in any case, all men had always lived until less than a century ago, has been extinguished. Looking at each animal, the unaccompanied zoo visitor is alone.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Source: About Looking (1980), Chapter "Why Look at Animals?"

“There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.”

Henry Fielding book Amelia

Book IX, Ch. 10
Amelia (1751)

“Philosophers have always tried to show that we are not like other animals, sniffing their way uncertainly through the world. Yet after all the work of Plato and Spinoza, Descartes and Bertrand Russell we have no more reason than other animals do for believing that the sun will rise tomorrow.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Deception: Animal Faith (p. 55)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“Perhaps no philosopher is more correct than the cynic. The happiness of the animal, that thorough cynic, is the living proof of cynicism.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

§ 2.1, cited in Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason (1987), p. ix
Untimely Meditations (1876)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

H. G. Wells142

Related quotes

Related topics