Animals In Our Lives Quotes

What the new science of anthrozoology reveals is that our attitudes, behaviors, and relationships with the animals in our lives- the ones we love, the ones we hate, and the ones we eat- are, likewise, more complicated than we thought. ~ Hal Herzog

Our earliest ancestors were descended from primates who thrived for millions of years in a treetop environment, and who in the process had evolved one of the most remarkable visual systems in nature. To move quickly and efficiently in such a world, they developed extremely sophisticated eye and muscle coordination. Their eyes slowly evolved into a full-frontal position on the face, giving them binocular, stereoscopic vision. This system provides the brain a highly accurate three-dimensional and detailed perspective, but is rather narrow. Animals that possess such vision - as opposed to eyes on the side or half side - are generally efficient predators like owls or cats. They use this powerful sight to home in on prey in the distance. Tree-living primates evolved this vision for a different purpose - to navigate branches, and to spot fruits, berries, and insects with greater effectiveness. They also evolved elaborate color vision. ~ Robert Greene

I grew up in Sierra Leone, in a small village where as a boy my imagination was sparked by the oral tradition of storytelling. At a very young age I learned the importance of telling stories - I saw that stories are the most potent way of seeing anything we encounter in our lives, and how we can deal with living. ~ Ishmael Beah

Stronghold is anything that exalts itself in our minds, "pretending" to be bigger or more powerful than our God. It steals much of our focus and causes us to feel overpowered. Controlled. Mastered. Whether the stronghold is an addiction, unforgiveness toward a person who has hurt us, or despair over a loss, it is something that consumes so much of our emotional and mental energy that abundant life is strangled - our callings remain largely unfulfilled and our believing lives are virtually ineffective. Needless to say, these are the enemy's precise goals. ~ Beth Moore

We must remember that the test of our religious principles lies not just in what we say, not only in our prayers, not even in living blameless lives - but in what we do for others ~ Harry Truman

People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness. ~ E. M. Forster

What would our lives be like if our days and nights were as immersed in nature as they are in technology? ~ Richard Louv

Outside I hopped into our vehicle, the taint of vampiric magic clinging to me like greasy smoke.
"I feel soiled."
"Like walking into a room after a day of work, falling into bed, and realizing the sheets are covered in cold K-Y jelly," Raphael said.
I just stared at him.
"With a funky smell," he added.
My Order conditioning failed me. "Ew."
Raphael grinned.
"I‟m not even going to ask if that‟s happened to you."
I started the vehicle. "Has that happened to you?"
"Yes."
Ew. "Where?"
"In the bouda house. I was really tired and you‟ve seen that place: everything smells like sex . . ."
"I don‟t want to know." I peeled out of the parking lot.
"So where are we going?"
"To Spider Lynn‟s house. We‟re going to dig through her trash, and if that doesn‟t work, we‟ll do some breaking and entering."
Raphael frowned. "Do you know where she lives?"
"Yes. I memorized the addresses of all the Masters of the Dead in the city. I have a lot of time on my hands."
He squinted at me, looking remarkably like a gentleman pirate from my favorite romance
novels. "What else do you store in your head?"
"This and that. I remember the first thing you ever said to me. You know, when you carried me from the cart into the tub so your mother could fix me."
"I imagine it was something very romantic," he said. "Something along the lines of „I‟ve got you‟ or „I won‟t let you die.‟
"I was ble ~ Ilona Andrews

But you will not spare a drop of pity because I am rich? We have death in our gilded courts, too. We have disease and cruelty, and not a breath of air or freedom. You cannot say our lives are easy, any more than I can say yours is. They are lives, and so they are HORRID! ~ Stefan Bachmann

He wants people to become true Christians by following him, not just doing what he said but letting him live in our lives. ~ Jerry B. Jenkins

I think it's time to go ahead and start, don't you? We don't want them to have enough time to make a trip back to shore with her."
Galen swims to within an inch of my face. His lazy grin sends a thousand butterflies whipping up a tornado in my stomach. "Start what? The rescue, or the rest of our lives together?"
Just the words make my heart jump, let alone the look he gives me when he says it. We haven't had much time to talk about what all this means for us, but at least I know we can be together. On our own terms, in our own time. Finally. "Both," I breathe.
"This is not the time to be all mushy," Rayna calls from below us. "I swear you two are expert time wasters. So inconsiderate."
Galen winks at me and dives to his sister.
"Wait," I call to him. He stops. "I just wanted to say, I like your big fin. I think it's sexy." Which is the truth. Now t's more than double the size of any other Syrena. I know he's self-conscious about it; he thinks it makes him stand out more. What Galen doesn't realize is that he already stood out. He was already special. This new fin doesn't change anything. Well, except for making me hotter for him than I already was.
"Really?" Galen says.
I nod and blow him a kiss. By his confused expression, he has no idea what I'm doing. My Syrena human ambassador still has a lot to learn about the intimate details of the human world. And I'll be happy to assist him with that. ~ Anna Banks

Nature compels us to recognize the fact of mutual dependence, each life necessarily helping the other lives who are linked to it. In the very fibers of our being, we bear within ourselves the fact of the solidarity of life. ~ Albert Schweitzer

We all carry around baskets of eggs, and these eggs are precious, they represent information about us, our concerns, our needs, our lives, our downfalls, everything. As we meet people and become more comfortable with them, we toss some of our eggs to these people and they, in turn, place those eggs in their baskets. But, there are times, when out of desperation, or immaturity, or whatever, we throw too many eggs at once, and the recipient can't catch them all, and a few get broken, and we then find out that this other person knows too much about us, or at least more than they wanted to know, and that then destroys the ability to truly be friends. ~ Julie Wright

Life is not linear, it is organic. We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relation to the circumstances they help create for us ~ Ken Robinson

Science provides us with the methods we need to discover the truth. However it is only by developing wisdom through spirituality that provides the force we need to generate meaning in our lives. ~ Ray Mancini

The preservation of our free society in the years and decades to come will depend ultimately on whether we succeed or fail in directing the enormous power of human knowledge to the enrichment of our own lives and the shaping of a rational and civilized world order ... It is the task of education, more than any other instrument of foreign policy to help close the dangerous gap between the economic and technological interdependence of the people of the world and their psychological, political and spiritual alienation. ~ J. William Fulbright

As we grow up in more technology-enriched environments filled with laptops and smart phones, technology is not just becoming a part of our daily lives - it's becoming a part of each and every one of us. ~ Adora Svitak

Because we have suffered, and we are not afraid to suffer in order to survive, we are ready to give up everything - even our lives - in our struggle for justice. ~ Cesar Chavez

When we decide to embark in the service of God, great things begin to happen in our life and the lives of people around us. We learn of Him. We come unto Him. ~ Neill F. Marriott

I think the biggest, saddest thing that happens in our lives is that we just don't embrace the things that could make it better because they don't seem to make it better at any given moment or we can't decide how to get across the aisle to that person. ~ Adam Duritz

You remember how you were taught to write. Your mother put a pencil in your hand, took your hand in hers, and began to move it. Since you did not know at all what she meant to do, you left your hand completely free in hers. This is like the power of God in our lives. ~ Anthony Of Sourozh

And I was to find out then, as I found out so many times, over and over again, that women especially are social beings, who are not content with just husband and family, but must have a community, a group, an exchange with others. A child is not enough. A husband and children, no matter how busy one may be kept by them, are not enough. Young and old, even in the busiest years of our lives, we women especially are victims of the long loneliness. ~ Dorothy Day

For me, I don't like it when there is too much interference in our lives. We're not children. It is our own life in our hands. ~ Eric Cantona

So often the most meaningful moments in our lives are those that we share with our families. Treasured memories are created by celebrating, sharing and embracing the moments of life with the people we love. ~ Sandra Magsamen

God's Grace is greater than all our sins. Repentance is one of the Christian's highest privileges. A repentant Christian focuses on God's mercy and God's grace. Any moment in our lives when we bask in God's mercy and grace is our highest moment. Higher than when we feel smug in our decent performance and cannot think of anything we need to confess ... That is potentially a glorious moment. For we could at that moment accept God's abundant Mercy and Grace and go forth with nothing to boast of except Christ Himself, or else we struggle with our shame, focusing on that as well as our track record. We fail because we have shifted our attention from Grace and Mercy. One who draws on God's Mercy and Grace is quick to repent, but also slow to sin. ~ Jerry Bridges

There is not one certain future, that much i know. Each of our lives creates what is to come. The universe is not a clock that has been set to run in one direction. It is a maze, a giant puzzle that changes and grows each time a player takes one path over another. Every time you make a choice, you make the future. ~ Brittney Ryan

It is in the face of this radical revisioning of ourselves as the community of Christ that our relationship to "the least of these" is formed. They don't represent a threat to our lives, both physically (in their demands on our resources, in the loss of safety) and existentially (in how they expose our pretense, our privilege), but they actually can be seen as Christ Himself. Not in some romantic, shallow way in which we take in the homeless beggar only to have him later throw off his rags to reveal himself as Jesus, rewarding us for our righteousness. No, we encounter Christ in them because the process we have gone through has demonstrated to us that in the other - in those most different from us - our own inadequacy is exposed, offering us the opportunity to embrace the gift of the transforming cross. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

in our lives, the best results come from the worst mistakes. We ~ Melody Anne

We change people's lives, at the risk of our own. We change countries, governments, history, gravity. After gravity, culture is the thing that holds humanity in place, in an otherwise constantly shifting and, let's face it, tiny outcrop in the middle of an infinity of nowhere. ~ Cate Blanchett

There were giants striding the screen in the 1930s and '40s: four actresses so talented, hardworking and versatile that they became laws unto themselves. Joan Crawford and Bette Davis have also become high-camp figures of fun, as they both had such wildly theatrical offscreen lives, and their performances could sometimes veer into self-parody. But Barbara Stanwyck and Claudette Colbert stand the test of time in each and every film: our memories of them are not overshadowed by scandals or vituperative daughters. One rarely sees a Stanwyck or Colbert drag queen. But these ladies were fully the equal - sometimes the superior - of Davis and Crawford. ~ Eve Golden

By creating a new mythos - that is, a change in the way we perceive reality, the way we see ourselves, and the ways we behave - la mestiza creates a new consciousness. The work of mestiza consciousness is to break down the subject/object duality that keeps her prisoner and to show in the flesh and through the images in her work how duality is transcended. The answer to the problem between the white race and the colored, between males and females, lies in healing the split that originates in the very foundation of our lives, our culture, our languages, our thoughts. A massive uprooting of dualistic thinking in the individual and collective consciousness is the beginning of a long struggle, but one that could, in our best hopes, bring us to the end of rape, of violence, of war. ~ Gloria E Anzaldua

That's what's so gorgeous about humanity. It doesn't matter how bleak our daily lives are, we still fight for the light. I think that's our divinity. We lean into love, even in the most hideous circumstances. We manage to hope. ~ Mary Karr

We are the living Scripture being written in our time, and it is in the grit of our lives that god writes His Eternal Love Story. ~ Johanna

Aspiring only to second-place goals is a first-rate way to hedge our bets. Among the least appreciated reasons for doing superficial, second-rate work of any kind is the comfort of knowing that it's not our best that's on the line. Far more is at risk when we do what we really want to do rather than something less. I don't think we'll ever fully appreciate the role of not daring to risk a shattered dream in limiting people to second-choice careers and third-choice lives. ~ Ralph Keyes

We brood about what we should have done differently or better or what we should not have done, because we are doomed to do so, but it does not lead anywhere. The disaster was inevitable, is what we then say and for a while, if only a short while, we are quiet. Then we start all over again asking questions and probing and probing until we have gone half crazy. We constantly look for someone responsible, or for several persons responsible, in order to make things bearable for ourselves at least for a moment, and naturally, if we are honest, we invariably end up with ourselves. We have reconciled ourselves to the fact that we have to exist, even though most of the time against our will, because we have no other choice, and only because we have again and again reconciled ourselves to this fact, every day and every moment anew, can we progress at all. And where we are progressing to, we have, if we are honest, known all our lives, to death, except that most of the time we are careful not to admit it. ~ Thomas Bernhard

This time I look at him longer, properly, scanning his face for some sign of what he is thinking - some judgment, some hint of blame or guilt that I'm standing there, talking about leaving his people and mine, about abandoning our whole lives. About running away. But he only smiles at me, his fingers sliding from my cheek to twine around a floating lock of hair, making it spiral in midair. ~ Amie Kaufman

Every moment has the possibility of delighting us, nurturing us, supporting us - if we are here to see it. Life is a tremendous gift, but most of us are missing it because we are watching a mental movie of our lives instead. As we learn to trust in the moment and to value awareness, we learn how to turn off the internal mood projector and start living a much more interesting life - the one we are actually starring in. ~ Don Richard Riso

We forget how to be a whole person all by ourselves. We feel like we are only half a person and that we need someone else to make us whole. That is a lie we tell ourselves and unfortunately, that lie has ruined so many people. We get in a relationship, we get hurt and then we run to someone else to cover up the pain or fill that void in our lives, not realizing that running to the wrong person will just make it worse. ~ Tony A. Gaskins Jr.

The OCSD has been chipping away at our freedoms for most of our lives, all in the name of safety. But over-controlling something doesn't necessarily make it safer or better, even though people don't realize it. They believe the OCSD protects them and has their best interests at heart, but most of the OCSD's policies do more harm than good. ~ Tracy Lawson

What happens if the world we know changes today? Can we facebooking, tweeting, texting, shallow-thinking humans survive the slightest upheavel in our lives? ~ T.I. Wade

Men do not wound women only when they act violently and abusively. They wound us when they fail to protect our freedom in every aspect of our daily lives ~ Bell Hooks

It is, of course, true that discrimination in trusting others is necessary if we are to have quality relationships. Selectivity is important for our safety and security, because it means trusting only those who have proven their dependability. This makes sense but only in how we love, not that we love. Thus, our ways of showing love differ according to the commitment we have to various individuals in our lives. But our scope of love does not have to set or be set by limitations. We can be careful about our boundaries when others come close but free of boundaries in how far our love extends. There are boundaries in the topography of love but no barriers. ~ David Richo

Reading reassures us that no matter how alone we might feel, there are many others - spread as wide as history itself - who have felt the same way we have, who have occupied the rooms we find ourselves locked in at various points of our lives. ~ Simon Van Booy

Amy Martin (ladysky) and Daniel Baciagalupo had a month to spend on Charlotte Turner's island in Georgian Bay; it was their wilderness way of getting to know each other before their life together in Toronto began. We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly
as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth
the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.
Little Joe was gone, but not a day passed in Daniel Baciagalupo's life when Joe wasn't loved or remembered. The cook had been murdered in his bed, but Dominic Baciagalupo had had the last laugh on the cowboy. Ketchum's left hand would lvie forever in Twisted River, and Six-Pack had known what to do with the rest of her old friend ~ John Irving

L'Avventura,' Dad said, 'has the sort of ellipsis ending most American audiences would rather undergo a root canal than be left with, not only because they loathe anything left to the imagination-we're talking about the country that invented spandex-but also because they are a confident, self-assured nation. They know Family. They know Right from Wrong. They know God-many of them attest to daily chats with the man. And the idea that none of us can truly know anything at all-not the lives of our friends or family, not even ourselves-is a thought they'd rather be shot in the arm with their own semi-automatic rifle than face head-on. Personally, I think there's something terrific about not knowing, relinquishing man's feeble attempt to control. When you throw up your hands, say, "Who knows?" you can get on with the sheer gift of being alive. ~ Marisha Pessl

HOW DO WE put together the jigsaw puzzle of our lives? How do we find the right shapes and make them fit together so that they form an image we can recognize? It is not easy even when all the pieces are assembled in front of us and we have the picture on the box to compare it with. How much harder when we lack the solid, clear-cut corners to build out from. This ~ Ingrid Von Oelhafen

There is within us a fundamental dis-ease, an unquenchable fire that renders us incapable, in this life, of ever coming to full peace. This desire lies at the center of our lives, in the marrow of our bones, and in the deep recesses of the soul. At the heart of all great literature, poetry, art, philosophy, psychology, and religion lies the naming and analyzing of this desire. Spirituality is, ultimately, about what we do with that desire. What we do with our longings, both in terms of handling the pain and the hope they bring us, that is our spirituality . . . Augustine says: 'You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.' Spirituality is about what we do with our unrest. ~ Ronald Rolheiser

God allows hardship in our lives so that our beliefs-those handholds of faith in a troubled world-will became more and more real to us and less and less theory. ~ Greg Laurie