#animal

If ever you feel like an animal among men, be a lion. ↗

— Criss Jami

#authority #beast #boldness #conquering #courage

Every great day has a story and a song! ↗

— Faith Reese Martin

#courage #fantasy #friendship #historical-fiction #lost-colony

There I was out in the barn playing midwife to a pregnant mare. I remember sitting there, spinning yarn in the light of a little oil lamp, a city girl who knew nothing about farming, sitting on the deel beside that mother in pain, already beginning the birthing process. All around me there was darkness and perfect silence, except for the mother's pain. It was as if the war didn't exist in those hours. ↗

— Diet Eman

#birth #nature #new-life #out-of-body #silence

‎"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#dreams

I never fancied cats much till I found the First Mate," he remarked, to the accompaniment of the Mate's tremendous purrs. "I saved his life, and when you've saved a creature's life you're bound to love it. It's next thing to giving life. ↗

— L.M. Montgomery

#inspirational #dreams

Faith is the surrender of the mind, it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other animals. It's our need to believe and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. ... Out of all the virtues, all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#atheism #faith #mammals #religion #virtue

I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#human-rights

Symbols, for me and for many, of freedom, whether it be from the prison of over-dense communities and the close confines of human relationships, from the less complex incarceration of office walls and hours, or simply freedom from the prison of adult life and an escape into the forgotten world of childhood, of the individual or the race. For I am convinced that man has suffered in his separation from the soil and from the other living creatures of the world; the evolution of his intellect has outrun his needs as an animal, and as yet he must still, for security, look long at some portion of the earth as it was before he tampered with it. ↗

— Gavin Maxwell

#nature #scotland #freedom

<...> I’ve never believed there is any animal more dangerous than a human being. I never will. It’s the intelligence. It’s the mind that makes it so. ↗

— Maggie Shayne

#human-being #intelligence #mind #intelligence

The keepers would give the gorillas an assortment of fruits and vegetables each afternoon, and on this particular occasion, Judy Sievert tossed Nina an apple, which rolled away. Instead of going to get it, Nina just 'sat there sadly,' in Judy's words. Judy continued her rounds, handing out yams and apples to the other gorillas, but Nina sat there looking appleless and downtrodden. Taking pity, Judy tossed her another apple. As soon as Nina had it, she got up and went over to where the first apple had rolled away, taking it too. ↗

— Eugene Linden

#deception #gorillas #intelligence