Quotes about paw

A collection of quotes on the topic of paw, likeness, cats, cat.

Quotes about paw

“You cannot live with a paw in each world.”

Erin Hunter

Source: Into the Wild

World

“Cats will amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw.”

Terry Pratchett book Men at Arms

Source: Men at Arms

Cats

“(Cartoon title) A cat being cured of hairballs through a television ministry. (Voice on television) Place your right paw on the screen.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 120

Cats

“When I appear in public, people expect me to neigh, grind my teeth, paw the ground, and swish my tail.”

Anne, Princess Royal (1950) daughter of Elizabeth II

Susan Ratcliffe (2010) Oxford Dictionary of Quotations by Subject. p. 411: On her "horsey" reputation

People, Appearance

“Stones are raw, they blunt my paw,
but words will never hurt me.”

David Clement-Davies book The Sight

Source: The Sight

Hurt

“I'm a freaking princess when it comes to other people's feelings. Yo dogbreath, get your paws of the everglades. -Max”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

People, Feeling, Princess

“Of course when you were running with the bottom dogs, what you mostly saw were paws, claws, and assholes.”

Stephen King book Doctor Sleep

Source: Doctor Sleep

Dogs

“The only thing a cat worries about is what's happening right now. As we tell the kittens, you can only wash one paw at a time.”

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

Source: Time Cat

Cats, Time

“Shake paws, count your claws,
You steal mine, I'll borrow yours.
Watch my whiskers, check both ears.
Robber foxes have no fears.”

Brian Jacques (1939–2011) British fiction writer known for Redwall animal fantasy novels

Fear

“When Jace opened the greenhouse door, the scent hit Clary, soft as the padded blow of a cat's paw…”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Cats

“She can sit up and beg, and
she can give her paw —
I don't say she will, but she can.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

“She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
"Pooh!" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you.”

A.A. Milne book The House at Pooh Corner

Source: The House at Pooh Corner (1928), Chapter Seven.
Context: "Lucky we know the forest so well, or we might get lost," said Rabbit half an hour later, and he gave the careless laugh which you give when you know the Forest so well that you can't get lost.
Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
"Pooh!" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you."

For Friend

“People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit for any other station. Their right hand has to earn them a livelihood; one might say they lie down like bears in winter and seek sustenance from their paws.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

B 41
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)

People, Lie, Winter

“My familiar spirit is like an old wild turkey that forsakes a feeding ground as soon as it sees tracks of people-especially if the people are readers, book-buyers. It's a crafty bird and it wants to go where there aint no readers That's the truth: they go and paw a place all up and spoil it for me. It isn't my secret anymore.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

Letter to Dorothy Canfield Fisher (27 February 1924), published in The Selected Letters of Willa Cather (2013), edited by Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout

People, Truth, Secret, Books

“We lunched in Fregene: grilled sardines sprinkled with parsley and lemon. Federico ate daintily, like someone with no appetite. The beach was deserted, the wind brisk. In the distance stood the abandoned lighthouse he filmed for 8 1/2. Like someone about to propose a toast, he stood up and "recited" from King Lear :
Hark! Have you heard the news? The king fell off a cliff.
O horrible! Were you very close to him?
Indeed, sir. Close enough to push.
We laughed until he brusquely sat down again, scraping the fish scales off his fingers, staring at the age spots that covered his hands. The beautiful adolescent waitress asked for his autograph. He drew himself as a man-lion in a hat and scarf with huge paws chasing her, and signed it "Féfé." We spent the afternoon visiting Ostia and returned to Rome in a sweltering twilight. He asked to be driven home for a change of clothes. We invited Giulietta, who wore a green velvet turban, to join us for dinner. (Had she already lost her hair from chemotherapy?) Graciously, she declined while smoking cigarette after cigarette. At Cesarina's, Federico drew hilarious, pornographic sketches on the table napkin saying, "If you have not made love today then you have lost a day!"”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

The entire restaurant was at his feet. He was twenty years old now and as thin as Kafka. He was Rome. He had adopted us the way Rome adopts everyone, and we loved him.
On Fellini's final years
Federico Fellini: Sou um Grande Mentiroso (2008)

Love, Age, Beauty, Way

“Pesotsky had an immense house with columns and lions, off which the stucco was peeling, and with a footman in swallow-tails at the entrance. The old park, laid out in the English style, gloomy and severe, stretched for almost three-quarters of a mile to the river, and there ended in a steep, precipitous clay bank, where pines grew with bare roots that looked like shaggy paws; the water shone below with an unfriendly gleam, and the peewits flew up with a plaintive cry, and there one always felt that one must sit down and write a ballad.”

Anton Chekhov book The Black Monk

The Black Monk (1894)

Water, Housing, Cry

“You like the Earth, Man, and you — pawing the ground — think of God, the little nursling will recognize you, and will think of you with love, because God lives even in it also. Give nourishment to the developing little creatures, either to plant or to animal, and it will develop for your sweet amazement. Give food for the wild animal starving, and it will slick to you.”

Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka (1853–1919) painter from Hungary

The Authority

Love, God, Food, Thinking

“My own experience of mescalin is described in the appendix of Beyond the Outsider. My 'trip' was pleasant enough, although I experienced none of the visual effects described by Huxley; I was plunged into an agreeable but sluggish dreaminess. In this torpid state, I became aware of the problem mentioned by Huxley: 'How was this cleansed perception to be reconciled with a proper concern with human relations…?' -- in my case, with my concern for my wife and three-year-old daughter? Although I personally felt nothing but a sense of relaxation and trustfulness, I was aware that, in practice, the world is full of dangers, and in this state, I was incapable of the necessary vigilance; it made me feel guilty. I was neglecting my job of looking after them. Moreover, my ability to think was impaired. Huxley remarks that he found his own ability to remember and 'think straight' to be little, if at all, reduced. I could 'think straight', but I could not think to any purpose. Even the feeling of universal love was not particularly pleasant; I compared it to having a large alsation dog who puts his paws on your shoulder and licks your face.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Frankenstein's Castle (1980), p. 59-60

Love, World, Dogs, Feeling

“Self-love, my friend, bewitches parents to give too much indulgence to infantine foibles;- the constant cry is, "Poor little soul, it knows no better!" If it swears, that's a sign of wit and spirit; if it fibs, it's so cunning and comical; if it steals, 'tis only a paw trick- and the mother exultingly cries, "My Jacky is so sharp, we can keep nothing from him!"”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 1, letter 28: 4 Oct 1775, to Miss L___ ).

Love, Soul, Parent, Cry

“Hey, you!
Heaven!
Off with your hat!
I am coming!

Not a sound.

The universe sleeps,
its huge paw curled
upon a star-infested ear.”

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor

Page 109.
The Cloud in Trousers (1915)

Star, Sleep, Universe

“Your face had become dark, and, upon the day's awakening, your ashes will disperse themselves throughout the garden.
Your ashes will fly to the sky, to make love with the stars.
Sandy, Sandy, your ashes caress the rainbow flowers that tickle the blue of the sky.
[short poem of Miro, on the death of his good old art-paw, the inventor of the 'mobile', Sandy Calder ]”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

1961 and later
Source: his 'Foreword', Barcelona 1977; as quoted in Calder Miro, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner / Oliver Wick; Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2004, p. 309

Love, Death, Making love, Art

“To pull the chestnuts out of the fire with the cat's paw.”

Molière (1622–1673) French playwright and actor

Tirer les marrons du feu avec la patte du chat.
L'Étourdi (1655), Act III, sc. v

Cats

“There can be no question but that Christianity was originally a Jewish promotion, and it is noteworthy that the Christians who try to make their cult respectable in the Third Century claim that they repudiate the Jews. One of the earliest to do this was Tertullian, a Carthaginian shyster, whose Apologeticum, a defense of Christianity, was written at the very beginning of the Third Century. He asserts that Christianity is not a conspiracy of revolutionaries and degenerates, as was commonly believed, and claims that it is an association of loving brothers who have preserved the faith that the Jews forsook – which has been the common story ever since. Our holy men salvage Tertullian by claiming that he was "orthodox" in his early writings, but then, alas! became a Montanist heretic, poor fellow. Tertullian is the author of the famous dictum that he believes the impossible because it is absurd (credo quia absurdum), so he is naturally dear to the heart of the pious. How much Jerome and other saints have tampered with the facts to make Tertullian seem "orthodox" in his early works has been most fully shown by Timothy Barnes in his Tertullian (Oxford, 1971), but even he spends a hundred pages pawing over chronological difficulties that can be reconciled by what seems to me the simple and obvious solution: Tertullian, who was evidently a pettifogging lawyer before he got into the Gospel-business, had sense enough to eliminate from his brief for the Christians facts that would have displeased the pagans whom he was trying to convince that Christians represented no threat to civilized society; he accordingly concealed in his apologetic works the peculiar doctrines of the Christian sect to which he had been originally "converted," but he naturally expounded those doctrines in writings intended, not for the eyes of wicked pagans, but for other brands of Christians, whom he wished to convert to his own sect, which was that of Montanus, a very Holy Prophet (divinely inspired, of course) who was a Phrygian, not a Jew, and who had learned from chats with God that since the Jews had muffed their big opportunity at the time of the Crucifixion, Jesus, when he returned next year or the year after that, was going to set up his New Jerusalem in Phrygia after he had raised hell with the pagans and tormented and butchered them in all of the delightful ways so lovingly described in the Apocalypse, the Hymn of Hate that still soothes the souls of "fundamentalist" Christians today. If, in his Apologeticum and similar works, Tertullian had told the stupid pagans that they were going to be tortured and exterminated in a year or two, they might have doubted that Christians were the innocent little lambs that Tertullian claimed they were.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Jewish Strategy, Chapter 12 "Christianity"
1990s, The Jewish Strategy (2001)

Love, Men, God, Hate

“Pooh looked at his two paws. He knew that one of them was the right, and he knew that when you had decided which one of them was the right, then the other one was the left, but he never could remember how to begin.”

A.A. Milne book The House at Pooh Corner

Source: The House at Pooh Corner (1928), Chapter Seven.

“Animals of the MONKEY class are furnished with hands instead of paws; their ears, eyes, eye-lids, lips, and breasts, are like those of mankind; their internal conformation also bears some distant likeness; and the whole offers a picture that may mortify the pride of such as make their persons the principal objects of their admiration.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation; Or A Compendium of Natural Philosophy New York: Bangs and T. Mason, 1823, Part the Second, Chapter I, volume 1, pages 147-148. Wesley Center Online http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/a-compendium-of-natural-philosophy/chapter-1-of-beasts/ <br class="br">General sources

Distant, Animals, Personality

“The sum of evolutionary evidence is thoroughly damning. In nearly every modification of the evolutionary process made in the duckbills as they developed from their dryosaur ancestors, the duckbills suffered a diminution of their swimming potential. Their fore- and hind paws became shorter and more compact, not longer and more widely spread. Their tails got weaker and stiffer. Far from being the best, the duckbills must have been the clumsiest and slowest swimmers in all the Dinosauria. If pressed, they probably could paddle slowly from one riverbanck to another. The central theme of their bodily evolution was indeed specialized - orthodox theory was right on that point - but the direction of specialization was landward. These dinosaurs were specialized for a totally terrestrial existence.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 154-155
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Suffering

“All organic. No chemicals here, no way. The red globe grapes, $8.99 a kilo. I take a pawful, pop em, one at a time. They crunch. This is my only wine. This is my Sunday sacrament…sweet and honest and decent. No lies from chemists, or from priests.
You wanna heal your soul? Step one is healing your soil.”

Malcolm Azania book The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad

Source: The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004), Chapter 44 “The Long, Long Drive to Nowhere” (p. 250)

Way, Soul, Wine, Time

“It's the story of a place called Mouseland. Mouseland was a place where all the little mice lived and played, were born and died. And they lived much the same as you and I do. They even had a Parliament. And every four years they had an election. Used to walk to the polls and cast their ballots. Some of them even got a ride to the polls. And got a ride for the next four years afterwards too. Just like you and me. And every time on election day all the little mice used to go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government made up of big, fat, black cats. Now if you think it strange that mice should elect a government made up of cats, you just look at the history of Canada for last 90 years and maybe you'll see that they weren't any stupider than we are. Now I'm not saying anything against the cats. They were nice fellows. They conducted their government with dignity. They passed good laws--that is, laws that were good for cats. But the laws that were good for cats weren't very good for mice. One of the laws said that mouseholes had to be big enough so a cat could get his paw in. Another law said that mice could only travel at certain speeds--so that a cat could get his breakfast without too much physical effort. All the laws were good laws. For cats. But, oh, they were hard on the mice. And life was getting harder and harder. And when the mice couldn't put up with it any more, they decided something had to be done about it. So they went en masse to the polls. They voted the black cats out. They put in the white cats. Now the white cats had put up a terrific campaign. They said: "All that Mouseland needs is more vision." They said:"The trouble with Mouseland is those round mouseholes we got. If you put us in we'll establish square mouseholes." And they did. And the square mouseholes were twice as big as the round mouseholes, and now the cat could get both his paws in. And life was tougher than ever. And when they couldn't take that anymore, they voted the white cats out and put the black ones in again. Then they went back to the white cats. Then to the black cats. They even tried half black cats and half white cats. And they called that coalition. They even got one government made up of cats with spots on them: they were cats that tried to make a noise like a mouse but ate like a cat. You see, my friends, the trouble wasn't with the colour of the cat. The trouble was that they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after cats instead of mice. Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea. My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea. And he said to the other mice, "Look fellows, why do we keep on electing a government made up of cats? Why don't we elect a government made up of mice?" "Oh," they said, "he's a Bolshevik. Lock him up!"”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

So they put him in jail. But I want to remind you: that you can lock up a mouse or a man but you can't lock up an idea!
http://www.cbc.ca/player/Digital+Archives/Politics/Parties+and+Leaders/Tommy+Douglas/ID/1409090169/?sort=MostPopular

Life, Stupidity, Law, Travel

“Logician: A cat has four paws.
Old Gentleman: My dog had four paws.
Logician: Then it's a cat.
Old Gentleman: So my dog is a cat?
Logician: And the contrary is also true.”

Eugéne Ionesco Rhinoceros

Rhinoceros (1959)

Dogs, Cats

“Presently, however, we came to a small clearing and there, squatting at the mouth of its burrow was the musician responsible for the ringing, flute-like cry — a fat ground squirrel, wearing a tasteful suit of rust-red and grey fur. He sat as upright as a guardsman at the entrance to his home and his ribcage pumped in and out as he gave his musical warning cry. His big, liquid eyes stared at us with that intense, slightly inane expression that most squirrels wear, and his little paws trembled with his vocal efforts.”

Gerald Durrell (1925–1995) naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter

How to Shoot an Amateur Naturalist (1984)

Music, Home, Effort, Cry

“So with 'is 'ead down in a corner,
On 'is front paws 'e started to walk,
And 'e coughed and 'e sneezed and 'e gargled,
Till Albert shot out like a cork.

Old Wallace felt better direc'ly,
And 'is figure once more became lean,
But the only difference with Albert
Was 'is face and 'is 'ands were quite clean.”

Marriott Edgar (1880–1951) British poet

"The Return of Albert", line 21.
Albert, 'Arold and Others (1938)

“In French there is an old expression, 'la patte', meaning the artist's touch, his personal style, his 'paw'. I wanted to get away from la patte and all that retinal painting.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

posthumous

Painting, Personality

“The war hung over us like a storm cloud. […] They told us how the animals escaped from the zoo after the bombing raid and rushed about the streets. They fled not from people, but to people, and, let's say, the bear roared and shook its paw, the ostrich waved a burnt wing, and the elephant knelt, lifted its trunk and trumpeted plaintively. But what could people do when the earth was burning beneath them? A coral aspid, a very venomous and beautiful snake, slithered up to the sixth floor and meekly curled up under someone's bed. And in these stories about the ruins of great cities, about streets where African reptiles creep and dying elephants trumpet, there was something from Wells and from the Apocalypse — more generally from legends about the end of the world and the total destruction of humanity.”

Yury Dombrovsky (1909–1978) Soviet writer

Russian text
The Monkey Comes for His Skull (1943)

War, People, World, Beauty

“The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said;
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 123

Wolf, Drawing

“I kid the Republicans, with love. I feel bad for them. They got nobody for next time. Who are they gonna run? Sarah Palin, reading off her hand. Did you see that? You saw this? She wrote "tax cuts" on her hand. A Republican so stupid she has to be reminded of the one thing– Tax cuts! This is like if you saw the coyote's paw and it said "Road Runner".”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

But I'm Not Wrong (2010)

Love, Stupidity, Feeling, Time

“One of the side-effects of having your work appear in a public forum such as this is that people often email me asking for advice on how to break into writing, presumably figuring that if a drooling gum-brain like me can scrape a living witlessly pawing at a keyboard, there's hope for anyone.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

Guardian columns

People, Hope, Appearance

“In touch! There’s a slimy phrase. Touch, hell. Gripped! Pawed, rather. Mauled and massaged and pounded by FM voices.”

Ray Bradbury book The Golden Apples of the Sun

The Murderer (1953)
The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)

Hell

“In his malodorous brain what slugs and mire,
Lanthorned in his oblique eyes, guttering burned!
His body lodged a rat where men nursed souls
The world flashed grape-green eyes of a foiled cat
To him. On fragments of an old shrunk power,
On shy and maimed, on women wrung awry
He lay, a bullying hulk, to crush them more.
But when one, fearless, turned and clawed like bronze,
Cringing was easy to blunt these stern paws,
And he would weigh the heavier on those after.
Who rests in God's mean flattery now? Your wealth
Is but his cunning to make death more hard.
Your iron sinews take more pain in breaking.
And he has made the market for your beauty
Too poor to buy, although you die to sell.
Only that he has never heard of sleep;
And when the cats come out the rats are sly.
Here we are safe till he slinks in at dawn.
But he has gnawed a fibre from strange roots,
And in the morning some pale wonder ceases.
Things are not strange and strange things are forgetful.
Ah! if the day were arid, somehow lost
Out of us, but it is as hair of us,
And only in the hush no wind stirs it.
And in the light vague trouble lifts and breathes,
And restlessness still shadows the lost ways.
The fingers shut on voices that pass through,
Where blind farewells are taken easily...
Ah! this miasma of a rotting God!”

Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918) English poet

written 1916 or before
On Receiving News of the War (1914), God

Death, Women, Men, God

“I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Quoted in Blood Sport: The President and His Adversaries (p. 368), James B. Stewart, December 1993
White House years (1993–2000)

“The EU is deeply harmful, it is an anti-democratic monster. I want to prevent it from becoming fatter, from continuing to breathe, from grabbing everything with its paws and from extending its tentacles into all areas of our legislation. In our glorious history, millions have died to ensure that our country remains free. Today, we are simply allowing our right to self-determination to be stolen from us.”

Marine Le Pen (1968) French lawyer and politician

Interview with Marine Le Pen: 'I Don't Want this European Soviet Union', Spiegel (3 June 2014) http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-french-front-national-leader-marine-le-pen-a-972925.html

History, Country

“Not unlike the bear which bringeth forth
In the end of thirty dayes a shapeless birth;
But after licking, it in shape she drawes,
And by degrees she fashions out the pawes,
The head, and neck, and finally doth bring
To a perfect beast that first deformed thing.”

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

First Week, First Day. Compare: "I had not time to lick it into form, as a bear doth her young ones", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader.
La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578)

Fashion, Birth, Drawing, Perfection

“(Sylvia to blindfolded cat) Just put your paw on the map, and that's where we'll go for our vacation. It's a big country, and yet you picked Cleveland.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 36

Cats, Country

“The House of Lords have only been tolerated all these years because they were thought to be in a comatose condition which preceded dissolution. They have got to dissolution now. That this body, utterly unrepresentative, utterly unreformed, should come forward and claim the right to make and unmake Governments, should lay one greedy paw on the prerogatives of the sovereign and another upon the established and most fundamental privileges of the House of Commons is a spectacle which a year ago no one would have believed could happen; which fifty years ago no Peer would have dared suggest; and which two hundred years ago would not have been discussed in the amiable though active manner of a political campaign, but would have been settled by charges of cavalry and the steady advance of iron-clad pikemen.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), p. 46
Early career years (1898–1929)

Housing

“Tis evident, that sympathy, or the communication of passions, takes place among animals, no less than among men. Fear, anger, courage and other affections are frequently communicated from one animal to another […] And 'tis remarkable, that tho' almost all animals use in play the same member, and nearly the same action as in fighting; a lion, a tyger, a cat their paws; an ox his homs; a dog his teeth; a horse his heels: Yet they most carefully avoid harming their companion, even tho' they have nothing to fear from his resentment; which is an evident proof of the sense brutes have of each other's pain and pleasure.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 2, Section 12
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 2: Of the passions

Men, Pain, Pleasure, Fear

“11. We shall sing the great masses shaken with work, pleasure, or rebellion: we shall sing the multicolored and polyphonic tidal waves of revolution in the modern metropolis; shall sing the vibrating nocturnal fervor of factories and shipyards burning under violent electrical moons; bloated railroad stations that devour smoking serpents; factories hanging from the sky by the twisting threads of spiraling smoke; bridges like gigantic gymnasts who span rivers, flashing at the sun with the gleam of a knife; adventurous steamships that scent the horizon, locomotives with their swollen chest, pawing the tracks like massive steel horses bridled with pipes, and the oscillating flight of airplanes, whose propeller flaps at the wind like a flag and seems to applaud like a delirious crowd.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

Original Italian text:
Noi canteremo le grandi folle agitate dal lavoro, dal piacere o dalla sommossa: canteremo le maree multicolori e polifoniche delle rivoluzioni nelle capitali moderne; canteremo il vibrante fervore notturno degli arsenali e dei cantieri incendiati da violente lune elettriche; le stazioni ingorde, divoratrici di serpi che fumano; le officine appese alle nuvole pei contorti fili dei loro fumi; i ponti simili a ginnasti giganti che scavalcano i fiumi, balenanti al sole con un luccichio di coltelli; i piroscafi avventurosi che fiutano l'orizzonte, le locomotive dall'ampio petto, che scalpitano sulle rotaie, come enormi cavalli d'acciaio imbrigliati di tubi, e il volo scivolante degli aereoplani, la cui elica garrisce al vento come una bandiera e sembra applaudire come una folla entusiasta.
Source: 1900's, The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism' 1909, p. 52 : Last bullet-item in THE MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM

Pleasure, Singing, Sun, Horse

“The chief activities of beings, both human and non-human, are put forth, directly or indirectly, for the purpose of procuring food. The suppression, entire or partial, of one being by another for nutritive purposes is, therefore, the form of the most frequent and excessive egoism. The lowly forms of life—the worms, echinoderms, mollusks, and the like—are, for the most part, vegetarians. So, also, are prevalently the insects, birds, rodents, and ungulates. These creatures are not, as a rule, aggressively harmful to each other, chiefly indifferent. But upon these inoffensive races feed with remorseless maw the reptilia, the insectivora, and the carnivora. These being-eaters cause to the earth-world its bloodiest experiences. It is their nature (established organically by long selection, or, as in the case of man, acquired tentatively) to subsist, not on the kingdom of the plant, the natural and primal storehouse of animal energy, but on the skeletons and sensibilities of their neighbors and friends. The serpent dines on the sparrow and the sparrow ingulfs the gnat; the tiger slays the jungle-fowl and the coyote plunders the lamb; the seal subsists on fish and the ursus maritimus subsists on seal; the ant enslaves the aphidae and man eats and enslaves what can not get away from him. Life riots on life—tooth and talon, beak and paw. It is a sickening contemplation, But life everywhere, in its aspect of activity, is largely made up of the struggle by one being against another for existence—of the effort by one being to circumvent, subjugate, or destroy another, and of the counter effort to reciprocate or escape.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Preponderance of Egoism, pp. 123–125

Food, Indifference, Nature, Animals

“I wanted to paint crows in a big spot of lonely black with a digger head and paws. But stronger was nature which forced me to make a beast, sparkling of blue and purple, a subdued pleasure for the eyes.”

Jan Mankes (1889–1920) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek

(original Dutch: citaat van Jan Mankes, in het Nederlands:) Ik wou kraaien schilderen in een groote plek van eenzaam zwart met doodgraverskop en pooten. Maar sterker was de natuur, die me een beest deed maken flonkerend van blauw en paars, een ingetogen oogenlust.

In a letter of Mankes to Annie van Beuningen-Eschauzier, 30 Nov. 1919; in particular collection; as cited Jan Mankes – in woord en beeld, ed. Sjoerd van Faassen; Museum Bèlvédère, Heerenveen, 2015 ISBN 1877-0983, n. 22, pp. 49-50
1915 - 1920

Pleasure, Nature, Painting, Making love