animal : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English)	by Linux fortune

The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists of "Ten Best". -- H. Allen Smith
Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to be a cat. -- Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London
No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless absolutely certain he can hold his own in conversation. -- Fran Lebowitz
When man calls an animal "vicious", he usually means that it will attempt to defend itself when he tries to kill it.
Small animal kamikaze attack on power supplies
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to. -- Mark Twain
If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever to get a "fix" of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine. -- Rob Stampfli
The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man is and will always be a wild animal. -- Charles Galton Darwin
Pig: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it balks at pig. -- Ambrose Bierce
An Animal that knows who it is, one that has a sense of his own identity, is a discontented creature, doomed to create new problems for himself for the duration of his stay on this planet. Since neither the mouse nor the chimp knows what is, he is spared all the vexing problems that follow this discovery. But as soon as the human animal who asked himself this question emerged, he plunged himself and his descendants into an eternity of doubt and brooding, speculation and truth-seeking that has goaded him through the centures as reelentlessly as hunger or sexual longing. The chimp that does not know that he exists is not driven to discover his origins and is spared the tragic necessity of contemplating his own end. And even if the animal experimenters succeed in teaching a chimp to count one hundred bananas or to play chess, the chimp will develop no science and he will exhibit no appreciation of beauty, for the greatest part of man's wisdom may be traced back to the eternal questions of beginnings and endings, the quest to give meaning to his existence, to life itself. -- Selma Fraiberg, _The Magic Years_, pg. 193
Man is a military animal, glories in gunpowder, and loves parade. -- P.J. Bailey
Man is by nature a political animal. -- Aristotle
Once there was a marine biologist who loved dolphins. He spent his time trying to feed and protect his beloved creatures of the sea. One day, in a fit of inventive genius, he came up with a serum that would make dolphins live forever! Of course he was ecstatic. But he soon realized that in order to mass produce this serum he would need large amounts of a certain compound that was only found in nature in the metabolism of a rare South American bird. Carried away by his love for dolphins, he resolved that he would go to the zoo and steal one of these birds. Unbeknownst to him, as he was arriving at the zoo an elderly lion was escaping from its cage. The zookeepers were alarmed and immediately began combing the zoo for the escaped animal, unaware that it had simply lain down on the sidewalk and had gone to sleep. Meanwhile, the marine biologist arrived at the zoo and procured his bird. He was so excited by the prospect of helping his dolphins that he stepped absentmindedly stepped over the sleeping lion on his way back to his car. Immediately, 1500 policemen converged on him and arrested him for transporting a myna across a staid lion for immortal porpoises.
FORTUNE EXPLAINS WHAT JOB REVIEW CATCH PHRASES MEAN: #4 consistent: Reviewee hasn't gotten anything right yet, and it is anticipated that this pattern will continue throughout the coming year. an excellent sounding board: Present reviewee with any number of alternatives, and implement them in the order precisely opposite of his/her specification. a planner and organizer: Usually manages to put on socks before shoes. Can match the animal tags on his clothing.
Hippogriff, n.: An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle. The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full of surprises. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Renning's Maxim: Man is the highest animal. Man does the classifying.
Unfair animal names: -- tsetse fly -- bullhead -- booby -- duck-billed platypus -- sapsucker -- Clarence -- Gary Larson
Q: What do you call a blind pre-historic animal? A: Diyathinkhesaurus. Q: What do you call a blind pre-historic animal with a dog? A: Diyathinkhesaurus Rex.
"It could be that Walter's horse has wings" does not imply that there is any such animal as Walter's horse, only that there could be; but "Walter's horse is a thing which could have wings" does imply Walter's horse's existence. But the conjunction "Walter's horse exists, and it could be that Walter's horse has wings" still does not imply "Walter's horse is a thing that could have wings", for perhaps it can only be that Walter's horse has wings by Walter having a different horse. Nor does "Walter's horse is a thing which could have wings" conversely imply "It could be that Walter's horse has wings"; for it might be that Walter's horse could only have wings by not being Walter's horse. I would deny, though, that the formula [Necessarily if some x has property P then some x has property P] expresses a logical law, since P(x) could stand for, let us say "x is a better logician than I am", and the statement "It is necessary that if someone is a better logician than I am then someone is a better logician than I am" is false because there need not have been any me. -- A.N. Prior, "Time and Modality"
Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth.
There was an old Indian belief that by making love on the hide of their favorite animal, one could guarantee the health and prosperity of the offspring conceived thereupon. And so it goes that one Indian couple made love on a buffalo hide. Nine months later, they were blessed with a healthy baby son. Yet another couple huddled together on the hide of a deer and they too were blessed with a very healthy baby son. But a third couple, whose favorite animal was a hippopotamus, were blessed with not one, but TWO very healthy baby sons at the conclusion of the nine month interval. All of which proves the old theorem that: The sons of the squaw of the hippopotamus are equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides.
They don't know how the world is shaped. And so they give it a shape, and try to make everything fit it. They separate the right from the left, the man from the woman, the plant from the animal, the sun from the moon. They only want to count to two. -- Emma Bull, "Bone Dance"
We laugh at the Indian philosopher, who to account for the support of the earth, contrived the hypothesis of a huge elephant, and to support the elephant, a huge tortoise. If we will candidly confess the truth, we know as little of the operation of the nerves, as he did of the manner in which the earth is supported: and our hypothesis about animal spirits, or about the tension and vibrations of the nerves, are as like to be true, as his about the support of the earth. His elephant was a hypothesis, and our hypotheses are elephants. Every theory in philosophy, which is built on pure conjecture, is an elephant; and every theory that is supported partly by fact, and partly by conjecture, is like Nebuchadnezzar's image, whose feet were partly of iron, and partly of clay. -- Thomas Reid, "An Inquiry into the Human Mind", 1764
We who revel in nature's diversity and feel instructed by every animal tend to brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous extinction. -- S.J. Gould
Fortune's Contribution of the Month to the Animal Rights Debate: I'll stay out of animals' way if they'll stay out of mine. "Hey you, get off my plate" -- Roger Midnight
The basic menu item, in fact the ONLY menu item, would be a food unit called the "patty," consisting of -- this would be guaranteed in writing -- "100 percent animal matter of some kind." All patties would be heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devices immediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle and a little slip of paper stating: "Inspected by Number 12." The Lunch or Dinner Patty would be any Breakfast Patties that didn't get sold in the morning. The Seafood Lover's Patty would be any patties that were starting to emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood Lover's Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as "Nuggets." -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
Cecil, you're my final hope Of finding out the true Straight Dope For I have been reading of Schrodinger's cat But none of my cats are at all like that. This unusual animal (so it is said) Is simultaneously alive and dead! What I don't understand is just why he Can't be one or the other, unquestionably. My future now hangs in between eigenstates. In one I'm enlightened, in the other I ain't. If you understand, Cecil, then show me the way And rescue my psyche from quantum decay. But if this queer thing has perplexed even you, Then I will ___and I won't see you in Schrodinger's zoo. -- Randy F., Chicago, "The Straight Dope, a compendium of human knowledge" by Cecil Adams
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus, I know the scientific names of beings animalculous; In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-General. -- Gilbert & Sullivan, "Pirates of Penzance"
I've built a better model than the one at Data General For data bases vegetable, animal, and mineral My OS handles CPUs with multiplexed duality; My PL/1 compiler shows impressive functionality. My storage system's better than magnetic core polarity, You never have to bother checking out a bit for parity; There isn't any reason to install non-static floor matting; My disk drive has capacity for variable formatting. I feel compelled to mention what I know to be a gloating point: There's lots of room in memory for variables floating-point, Which shows for input vegetable, animal, and mineral I've built a better model than the one at Data General. -- Steve Levine, "A Computer Song" (To the tune of "Modern Major General", from "Pirates of Penzance", by Gilbert & Sullivan)
George's friend Sam had a dog who could recite the Gettysburg Address. "Let me buy him from you," pleaded George after a demonstration. "Okay," agreed Sam. "All he knows is that Lincoln speech anyway." At his company's Fourth of July picnic, George brought his new pet and announced that the animal could recite the entire Gettysburg Address. No one believed him, and they proceeded to place bets against the dog. George quieted the crowd and said, "Now we'll begin!" Then he looked at the dog. The dog looked back. No sound. "Come on, boy, do your stuff." Nothing. A disappointed George took his dog and went home. "Why did you embarrass me like that in front of everybody?" George yelled at the dog. "Do you realize how much money you lost me?" "Don't be silly, George," replied the dog. "Think of the odds we're gonna get on Labor Day."
A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere. -- Groucho Marx
Jargon Coiner (#13) An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon that we've just made up. * NINETY-NINERS: In 1849, a horde of people ("Forty-niners") headed to California to pan gold and get rich quick. In 1999, a horde of people ("Ninety-niners") headed to California to invest in Linux companies and get rich quick. Some things never change. * ZOO: The ubiquitous shelf of O'Reilly Animal Books that many nerds keep next to their computer * THEY'RE MULTIPLYING LIKE PORTALS: The proliferation of Linux portals that have the latest headlines from Slashdot and LinuxToday but offer little original content. * YOU CAN SPELL EVIL WITHOUT vi: A curse uttered by freshman Computer Science students struggling with vi's insert mode for the first time.
"...A strange enigma is man!" "Someone calls him a soul concealed in an animal," I suggested. "Winwood Reade is good upon the subject," said Holmes. "He remarked that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician." -- Sherlock Holmes, "The Sign of Four"
Animals can be driven crazy by putting too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself. -- Lazarus Long
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. -- Bertrand Russell
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. -- Oscar Wilde
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be. -- William Hazlitt
Some of the most interesting documents from Sweden's middle ages are the old county laws (well, we never had counties but it's the nearest equivalent I can find for "landskap"). These laws were written down sometime in the 13th century, but date back even down into Viking times. The oldest one is the Vastgota law which clearly has pagan influences, thinly covered with some Christian stuff. In this law, we find a page about "lekare", which is the Old Norse word for a performing artist, actor/jester/musician etc. Here is an approximate translation, where I have written "artist" as equivalent of "lekare". "If an artist is beaten, none shall pay fines for it. If an artist is wounded, one such who goes with hurdie-gurdie or travels with fiddle or drum, then the people shall take a wild heifer and bring it out on the hillside. Then they shall shave off all hair from the heifer's tail, and grease the tail. Then the artist shall be given newly greased shoes. Then he shall take hold of the heifer's tail, and a man shall strike it with a sharp whip. If he can hold her, he shall have the animal. If he cannot hold her, he shall endure what he received, shame and wounds."
Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this-- no dog exchanges bones with another. -- Adam Smith
The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up until 5 or 6 PM.
Mmmmmm-MMMMMM!! A plate of STEAMING PIECES of a PIG mixed with the shreds of SEVERAL CHICKENS!! ... Oh BOY!! I'm about to swallow a TORN-OFF section of a COW'S LEFT LEG soaked in COTTONSEED OIL and SUGAR!! ... Let's see ... Next, I'll have the GROUND-UP flesh of CUTE, BABY LAMBS fried in the MELTED, FATTY TISSUES from a warm-blooded animal someone once PETTED!! ... YUM!! That was GOOD!! For DESSERT, I'll have a TOFU BURGER with BEAN SPROUTS on a stone-ground, WHOLE WHEAT BUN!!
The Vet Who Surprised A Cow In the course of his duties in August 1977, a Dutch veterinary surgeon was required to treat an ailing cow. To investigate its internal gases he inserted a tube into that end of the animal not capable of facial expression and struck a match. The jet of flame set fire first to some bales of hay and then to the whole farm causing damage estimate at L45,000. The vet was later fined L140 for starting a fire in a manner surprising to the magistrates. The cow escaped with shock. -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"