I never suffer any of my family to kill those
little innocent animals called striped snakes,
for they do me much service in destroying grasshoppers and other troublesome
insects.
Toads are of essential service, especially in a garden, to eat up
cabbage worms, caterpillars, etc..
- Farmer's Almanac
Since we humans have the better brain, isn't
it our responsibility
to protect our fellow creatures from, oddly enough, ourselves?
- Joy Adamson
The dog is the only animal that has
seen his god.
- Author Unknown
Here Skugg
Lies snug
As a bug
In a rug.
- Benjamin Franklin
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder
for a moment, while I was hoeing
in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance
that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
- Henry David Thoreau
The greatest pleasure of a dog is
that you may make
a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not
scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
- Samuel Butler.
If your heart is straight with God,
then every creature will be to you
a mirror of life
and a book of holy doctrine.
- Thomas à Kempis
Of the 2,400 species of snakes, some 270
species have venom that is harmful,
but not necessarily fatal, to humans. ... However, experiments have
demonstrated
that people from all corners of the planet have adverse physiological responses
to sudden sightings of snakes.
- Sharon Lovejoy
I think I could turn and live with
animals, they are
so placid and self-contained, I stand and look at them
long and long.
- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 1855
He may look just the same to you,
And he may be just as fine,
But the next-door dog is the next-door dog,
And mine - is - mine.
- Dixie Wilson
I have found the link between animal and
civilized man;
it is us.
- Konrad Lorenz
I love cats because I love my home
and after a
while they become its visible soul.
- Jean Cocteau
I value my garden more for being full of
blackbirds than of cherries,
and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
- Joseph Addison
Not the cry, but the flight of the
wild duck,
leads the flock to fly and follow.
- Chinese Proverb
A cow is a very good animal in the
field;
but we turn her out of a garden.
- Samuel Johnson
When a man does not admit that he is
an animal,
he is less than an animal.
Not more but less.
- Michael
McClure
Dog: A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity
to catch
the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.
- Ambrose Bierce
The dog was created especially for
children.
He is the god of frolic.
- Henry Ward Beecher
If dogs are not there, it is not
heaven.
- Elisabeth M. Thomas
Rabbits have a habit of
coming for breakfast and staying for lunch.
Now there's one leaf instead of a bunch.
- Gerry Krueger
Insects - Quotes for Gardeners
Dogs lives are too short.
Their only fault, really.
- Carlotta Monterey O'Neill
I hope you love birds too. It
is economical. It saves going to heaven.
- Emily Dickinson
All animals but men know that the
principle business of life
is to enjoy it - and they do enjoy it as much as man
and other circumstances will allow it.
- Samuel Butler
Quotes for Gardeners
A Collection Growing to Over 2,700 Quotes Arranged by 130 Topics
Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips, Clichés, Adages
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo
A study of animal communities has
this advantage: they are merely
what they are, for anyone to see who will and can look clearly;
they cannot complicate the picture by worded idealisms, by saying
one thing and being another; here the struggle is unmasked and
the beauty is unmasked.
- John Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts, from Cannery Row.
From a dog's point of view his master
is an
elongated and abnormally cunning dog.
- Mabel L. Robinson
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Door: What a dog is perpetually on
the wrong side of.
- Ogden Nash
A handsome smokey-colored brown bear
standing on his hind
legs, showing that he is aroused and watchful.
Bearing in his right paw the shovel that digs to the truth beneath
appearances, cut the roots of useless attachments, and flings
damp sand on the fires of greed and war;
His left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display - indicating
that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and
that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards
all grow in the realm of the Dharma...
- Gary Snyder, Smokey The Bear Sutra
When I play with my cat, who knows if
I am
not more of a pastime to her than she is to me?
- Montaigne
I guess cows aren't into the four
food groups,
especially when they are two of them.
- Anthony Clark
If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he
is fond of you;
but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
- Alfred North Whitehead
I am indebted to the cat for a
particular kind of honorable deceit, for
a greater control over myself, for a characteristic aversion to brutal sounds,
and for the need to keep silent for long periods of time.
- Colette
The world has different owners at
sunrise ... Even your own garden does not belong
to you. Rabbits and blackbirds have the lawns; a tortoise-shell cat who never
appears
in daytime patrols the brick walls, and a golden-tailed pheasant
glints his way through the iris spears.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
A dog thinks: Hey, these people I live with
feed me, love me, provide me with
a nice warm, dry house, pet me, and take good care of me... They must be Gods!
A cat thinks: Hey, these people I live with feed me, love me, provide me with
a nice warm, dry house, pet me, and take good care of me... I must be a God!
- Author Unknown
When a dog barks at the moon, then it
is religion;
but when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism!
- David Starr Jordan
The fact that man knows right from
wrong proves his
intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that
he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority
to any creature that cannot.
- Mark Twain, What Is Man
The toad has indeed no superior as a
destroyer of noxious insects,
and he possesses no bad habits and is entirely inoffensive himself,
every owner of a garden should treat him with utmost hospitality.
- Celia Thaxter, An Island Garden, 1894
The great charm of cats is their
rampant egotism, their devil may care attitude
toward responsibility, and their disinclination to earn an honest dollar.
- Robertson Davies
Odd things animals. All dogs look up
to you. All cats look down to you.
Only the pig looks at you as an equal.
- Winston Churchill
The time comes to every dog when it ceases to
care for people merely for
biscuits or bones, or even for caresses, and walks out of
doors. When a
dog really loves, it prefers the person who gives it nothing, and perhaps
is too ill ever to take it out for exercise, to all the liberal cooks and active
dog-boys in the world.
- Frances P. Cobbe
It is just like man's vanity and
impertinence to call an animal dumb
because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.
- Mark Twain
Cats don't adopt people.
They adopt refrigerators.
- Solomon Short
I think we are drawn to dogs because
they are the uninhibited creatures
we might be if we weren't certain we knew better.
- George Bird Evans
furuike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
- Basho
Animals are such agreeable friends -
they ask no questions;
they pass no criticisms.
- George Eliot
An animal's eyes have the power to
speak a great language.
- Martin Buber
I care not much for a man's religion
whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
- Abraham Lincoln
Cats seem to go on the principle that it
never does
any harm to ask for what you want.
- Joseph Wood Krutch
Poor indeed is the garden in which
birds find no homes.
- Abram L. Urban
When a man has pity on all
living creatures then only is he noble.
- The Buddha
We must fight against the spirit of
unconscious cruelty with which
we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True
humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them.
It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we
extend our circle of compassion to all living things,
humanity will not find peace.
- Albert Schweitzer, The Philosophy of Civilization
To the ass, or the sow, their own
offspring
appears the fairest in creation.
- Latin Proverb
A cat is a pygmy lion who loves mice, hates
dogs,
and patronizes human beings.
- Oliver Herford
Toads are conservative animals, I
think, and not much given
to expecting the best from fortune. Some weeks ago, well before
the end of October, I accidentally dug up one while turning over
some garden earth. I was surprised, naturally, when one of the
clods heaved over on its die and there, in some annoyance,
sat at toad.
- Henry Mitchell
A prudent man does not make the goat
his gardener.
Hungarian Proverb
It seems to me the worst of all the
plagues is the slug, the snail
without a shell. He is beyond description repulsive, a mass of
sooty, shapeless slime, and he devours everything.
- Celia Thaxter, An Island Garden, 1894
It's not easy being green.
- Kermit the Frog
My little old dog, a heartbeat at my
feet.
- Edith Wharton
They smell, they snarl and they
scratch; they have a singular aptitude
for shredding rugs, drapes and upholstery; they're sneaky, selfish and
not at all smart; they are disloyal, condescending and totally useless
in any rodent free environment.
- Jean Michel Chapereau
If you have men who will exclude any
of God's creatures
from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have
men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.
- St. Francis of Assisi,
He who is cruel to animals becomes
hard also in his dealings with men.
We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.
- Immanuel Kant
Anyone who has accustomed himself to
regard the life of any living creature
as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human lives.
- Albert Schweitzer
Ecology - Quotes for Gardeners
Animals, whom we have made our
slaves,
we do not like to consider our equals.
- Charles Darwin
When a man wantonly destroys one of
the works of man
we call him a vandal. When he destroys one of the
works of god we call him a sportsman.
- Joseph Wood Krutch
I envy animals for two things - their
ignorance of evil to come,
and their ignorance of what is said about them.
- Voltaire
To a coon, six feet of wire fence is
merely a jungle gym upon which
it can work up an appetite before raiding the corn.
- Roy Barette
From the oyster to the eagle, from
the swine to the tiger,
all animals are to be found in men and each of them
exists in some man, sometimes several at the time.
Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues
and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible
reflections of our souls. God displays them
to us to give us food for thought.
- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
The partridge loves peas, but not
those that go into the pot with it.
- African Proverb
Remember that gophers also need to make a
living; preferably in somebody else's garden.
When you can't fight on and drop to die; your just a big tasty feast for the crows, ants,
buzzards and flies.
Your dog will always shit near your favorite garden seat.
Your wet and smelly dog always likes to cozy up real close while your weeding.
If dogs and cats craved raw vegetables, they would have never become pets.
Mother Nature is always pregnant.
Gardens are demanding pets.
- Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions
Some people are uncomfortable with the idea
that humans belong to the same
class of animals as cats and cows and raccoons. They're like the people who
become successful and then don't want to be reminded of the old neighborhood.
- Phil Donahue
O to be self balanced for
contingencies!
O to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule,
accidents, rebuffs as trees and animals do!
- Walt Whitman
Any man that hates dogs and babies can't be
all bad.
- Leo C. Rosten
Bats are in serious decline nearly everywhere. Worldwide, there are
almost a thousand
different kinds of bats which comprise nearly one fourth of all mammal species. Of
the 43
species living in the U.S. and Canada, nearly 40 percent are endangered or are
candidates for
such status. ... Bats may eat their own weight in insects in a single night.
They also
control such garden pests such as ants, beetles and disease carrying mosquitoes. As
the primary predator of night-flying insects, bats play an important role in this
balance of nature.
Texas Bat and Bird House
Products
Every man is sociable until a cow
invades his garden
- Irish toast
Dogs come when they're called.
Cats take a message and get back to you.
- Mary Bly
Early in April, as I was vigorously
hoeing in a corner, I unearthed a huge toad,
to my perfect delight and satisfaction; he had lived all winter, he had
doubtless fed on slugs all the autumn. I could have kissed him on the spot.
- Celia Thaxter
A garden without cats, it will be
generally agreed,
can scarcely deserve to be called a garden at all.
- Beverly Nichols, Garden Open Tomorrow, 1968
In my next life I want to come back
as one of my cats. They basically pretend
we don't exist. They sit like two bumps on a log and watch us work for hours
in the yard. They're probably wondering, along with the entire neighborhood,
why we work so hard in our garden and it still looks like hell.
- Annie Spiegelman, Annie's Garden Journal, 1996
"I have studied
many philosophers and many cats.
The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior."
- Hippolyte Taine
Oh, John the Rabbit
Traditional American Folksong
This cat in my lap
Purring, eyes closed, ears back -
Fur on my fingers
- Mike Garofalo, Cuttings
We know what the animals do, what are
the needs of the beaver,
the bear, the salmon, and other creatures, because long ago
men married them and acquired this knowledge
from their animal wives.
- The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River
As far as our noblest hardwood
forests are concerned, the animals,
especially squirrels and jays, are our greatest and almost only
benefactors. It is to them that we owe this gift. It is not in vain
that the squirrels live in or about every forest tree, or hollow log,
and every wall and heap of stones.
- Henry David Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1860
Evolutionary biology is now uttering
and seeking those forces that
link us with all those that have being. If we can discover the meaning
in the trilling of a frog, perhaps we may understand why it is for us
not merely noise but a song of poetry and emotion.
- Adrian Forsyth, A Natural History of Sex, 1986
Links and References
Farm and Barnyard Animals - Amerispeak
My Deer Garden
Ideas for gardening in areas with browsing deer. By Rebecca
Green.
More Quotes
for
Gardeners
Spirituality and Concerns of the Soul
Simplicity
and the Simple Life
Pulling Onions
Quips and Observations of a Gardener
Haiku Poetry - Links and References
Clichés for Gardeners and Farmers
The History of Gardening
Timeline
From Ancient Times to the 20th Century
Quotes
for Gardeners
Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips,
Clichés, Adages, Wisdom
A Collection Growing to Over 2,700 Quotes, Arranged by 130 Topics
Many of the Documents Include Recommended Readings and Internet Links.
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo
Distributed on the Internet by Michael P. Garofalo
I Welcome Your Comments, Ideas, Contributions, and Suggestions
E-mail Mike Garofalo in Red Bluff, California
A Short Biography of Mike Garofalo
Animals - Quotes for Gardeners. Version 4.6
Cuttings by Michael P. Garofalo
The History of Gardening Timeline
Cloud Hands: Taijiquan and Qigong
Valley Spirit Journal by Michael P. Garofalo
Pulling Onions by Michael P. Garofalo
Valley Spirit Photography Gallery