Creature That Is Part Quotes & Sayings

It is not history. But I am beginning to wonder strongly what is the nature of history. Is it only memory in decent sentences, and if so, how reliable is it? I would suggest, not very. And that therefore most truth and fact offered by these syntactical means is treacherous and unreliable. And yet I recognise that we live our lives, and even keep our sanity, by the lights of this treachery and this unreliability, just as we build our love of country on these paper worlds of misapprehension and untruth. Perhaps this is our nature, and perhaps unaccountably it is part of our glory as a creature, that we can build our best and most permanent buildings on foundations of utter dust. — Sebastian Barry

My reputation is largely the creature of the kindly imaginings of my flock, whom I chose not to disillusion, in part because the truth had the kind of pathos in it that would bring on sympathy in its least bearable forms. — Marilynne Robinson

You sell yourself. The part that I sell is the creature. The adorable part. — Katharine Hepburn

The trickster is an important archetype, a mischievous, sometimes malicious creature who survives the challenges of the world through deceit. Despite the damage he causes, he leads those who encounter him to confront their own deficiencies and the deficiencies of the society in which they exist. In other words, even as he tears things down, he leads to the creation of other, better structures in their place. In a sense, he represents the part of the human psyche that is unrestricted by convention, the imaginative capability that enables us to confront, and overcome, our problems. — John Connolly

Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit - the cosmos? — John Muir

The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience to him as their creator, yet they could never have attained the reward of life but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant. — Various

Christian holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good but of learning to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world we publicly entered in our baptism. There are many parts of the world we can't do anything about except pray. But there is one part of the world, one part of physical reality, that we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us call myself. — N. T. Wright

If you're in pop music, you've got to deal with the changing of the guard every few years. By the time the '70s arrived, I was well aware of the cyclical nature of the game. Pop music is a creature of the moment; it thrives on the mood of its time. Either you hook into that or you're not going to be part of it. — Paul Anka

Pythagoras said that the most divine art was that of healing. And if the healing art is most divine, it must occupy itself with the soul as well as with the body; for no creature can be sound so long as the higher part in it is sickly. — Apollonius Of Tyana

As we move, a roar like the voice of some satanic creature bellows from the staircase. The fire's voice. I've heard it in lots of places, and the sound turns my insides to jelly. There's a reason human beings will jump ten floors onto concrete to escape being burned alive. That roar is part of it. — Greg Iles

One part of that divine fullness which is communicated is the divine knowledge. That communicated knowledge, which must be supposed to pertain to God's last end in creating the world, is the creature's knowledge of HIM. For this is the end of all other knowledge, and even the faculty of understanding would be vain without it. — Jonathan Edwards

But God does not neglect his lost creature. He plans to re-create his image in man, to recover his first delight in his handiwork. He is seeking in it his own image so that he may love it. But there is only one way to achieve this purpose and that is for God, out of sheer mercy, to assume the image and form of fallen man. But this restoration of the divine image concerns not just a part, but the whole image of divine nature. It is not enough for man to simply recover right ideas about God, or to obey his will in the isolated actions of his life. No, man must be re-fashioned as a living whole in the image of God. His whole form, body, soul and spirit, must once more bear that image on earth. Such is God's purpose and destiny for man. His good pleasure can rest only on his perfected image. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

And when the creature spoke, it used Harry's mouth, so that in his agony he felt his jaw move ...
"Kill me now Dumbledore ... "
Blinded and dying, every part of him screaming for release, Harry felt the creature use him again ...
"If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy ... — J.K. Rowling

She was not daily bread. She was stardust. Her solitude made her and was part of her. Taken from her distant sky, she must have become a creature as different as fallen meteor from pulsing star. One may ask of the Sphinx if life would not have been dearer to her, lived as other women lived it? To have been, in essence, more as other women were? Or if, in so doing and so being, she would have missed that inordinate compulsion, that inquisitive comprehension that made her Emily Dickinson? It is to ask again the old riddle of genius against everyday happiness. — Martha Dickinson Bianchi

-It is true that I am part of the laughing-aristocrat structure, Charles said. I don't mean I am one of them. I mean I am their creature. They hold me in thrall.
Laughing aristocrats who invented the cost-plus contract . . .
Laughing aristocrats who invented the real estate broker . . .
Laughing aristocrats who invented Formica . . .
Laughing aristocrats wiping their surfaces clean with a damp cloth . . .
Charles poured himself another brilliant green Heineken.
-To the struggle! — Donald Barthelme

Here is yet another important consideration for
helping us to understand the individual in a group:
Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of
an organised group, a man descends several rungs
in the ladder of civilization. Isolated, he may be a
cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian
that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses
the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also
the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings.
He then dwells especially upon the lowering in
intellectual ability which an individual experiences when
he becomes merged in a group. — Sigmund Freud

To our three levels of complicating alienation we must add the fundamental distinction or break between God and humankind, between Creator and creature. That "division" is no tragedy, but part and parcel of our identity and God's grandeur. It must be accounted for in the mystery of God, who reveals himself to us as we can bear it: revelation invariably involves concealment, since God is God and we are not. The communion that he forges with us remains a tantalizing "mystery" that leads us to know more and more of him, but never in completion - and at this, we wonder! As Kallistos Ware puts it, where knowledge of God is concerned, "The eyes are closed - but they are also opened" (The Orthodox Way, p. 15). — Edith M. Humphrey

In Life's name and for Life's sake, I say that I will use the Art for nothing but the service of that Life. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so - till Universe's end. I will look always toward the Heart of Time, where all times are one, where all our sundered worlds lie whole, as they were meant to be. — Diane Duane

According to a much-traveled analogy, if we put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately hop out. But put the frog in water that's at room temperature and heat it slowly, and the creature will stay there until it boils to death. Put him in a lethal environment suddenly, and he will escape. But introduce the danger gradually, and he will never notice. The truth is that the dangers to which we are most vulnerable are generally not the sudden, dramatic, obvious ones. They are the ones that creep up on us, that are so much a part of our environment that we don't even notice them. — John Ortberg Jr.

Ladies are always of great use to the party they espouse, and never fail to win over numbers to it. Lovers, according to Sir William Petty's computation, make at least the third part of sensible men of the British nation; and it has been an uncontroverted maxim in all ages, that though a husband is sometimes a stubborn sort of a creature, a lover is always at the devotion of his mistress. By this means, it lies in the power of every fine woman, to secure at least half a dozen able-bodied men to his Majesty's service. — Joseph Addison

The church itself has got to go outside of its own borders and carry the Gospel to every creature, or it is no church of Christ; and any mutual improvement club which thinks that by reading its Shakespeare, or by acting its pretty tableaux, or by having this or that little reading from Spenser and from Chaucer, it is going to lift itself up into any higher order of culture or life, is wholly mistaken, unless as an essential part of its duty, it goes out into the world, finds those that are falling down, and lifts them up to the majesty of freemen, who are sons of God. — Edward Everett Hale

In order to understand the symbolic indications of the unconscious, one must be careful not to get outside oneself or "beside oneself," but to stay emotionally within oneself. Indeed, it is vitally important that the ego should continue to function in normal ways. Only if I remain an ordinary human being, conscious of my incompleteness, can I become receptive to the significant contents and processes of the unconscious. But how can a human being stand the tension of feeling himself at one with the whole universe, while at the same time he is only a miserable earthly human creature? If, on the one hand, I despise myself as merely a statistical cipher, my life has no meaning and is not worth living. But if, on the other hand, I feel myself to be part of something much greater, how am I to keep my feet on the ground? It is very difficult indeed to keep these inner opposites united within oneself without toppling over into one or the other extreme. — C. G. Jung

But nowadays my heart is empty and the boxwood has lost its magic scent; yes, absolutely and entirely. The creature that I was no longer exists. When I speak to her she does not understand me; I think of her, already, as of some one I have known but who no longer has any connection with myself.

This sort of death of part of oneself strikes terror into my heart.
Life presents itself to me as a progressive series of annihilations, until in time one arrives at the general destruction of all memory and the barren slumber of one's conscience. — Julien Green

I never pretend to be so superior a being as to be above having and indulging a hobby horse [her journal writing], and while I keep mine within due bounds and limits, nobody, I flatter myself, would wish to deprive me of the poor animal: to be sure, he is not formed for labour, and is rather lame and weak, but then the dear creature is faithful, constant, and loving, and though he sometimes prances, would not kick anyone into the mire, or hurt a single soul for the world
and I would not part with him for one who could win the greatest prize that ever was won at any races. — Fanny Burney

Forgive yourself for being a human creature, Ramezay. That is the beginning of wisdom; that is part of what is meant by the fear of God; and for you it is the only way to save your sanity. Begin now, or you will end up with your saint in the madhouse. — Robertson Davies

Man is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his beliefs to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another. — Thomas B. Macaulay

I was thinking of people who say that happiness is impossible on earth. Look how hard they all try to find some joy in life. Look how they struggle for it. Why should any living creature exist in pain? By what conceivable right can anyone demand that a human being exist for anything but for his own joy? Every one of them wants it. Every part of him wants it. But they never find it. I wonder why. — Ayn Rand

While we're having all these debates about how the book is being destroyed by the Kindle, we have to remember that narrative will not be affected at all because it's part of our makeup as a creature on this planet. — Jim Crace

The thunderstorm is a constant phenomenon, raging alternately over some part of the world or the other. Can a single man or creature escape death if all that charge of lightning strikes the earth? — Kalki Krishnamurthy

[E]very time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state of the other. — C.S. Lewis

Humankind is that creature who lost a part of its animal instinct in order to gain access to "desire," as it is called. Once their natural needs are satisfied, humans desire intensely, but they don't know exactly what they desire, for no instinct guides them. We do not each have our own desire, one really our own. The essence of desire is to have no essential goal. Truly to desire, we must have recourse to people about us; we have to borrow their desires. — Rene Girard

God communicates himself to the understanding of the creature, in giving him the knowledge of his glory; and to the will of the creature, in giving him holiness, consisting primarily in the love of God: and in giving the creature happiness, chiefly consisting in joy in God.108 These are the sum of that emanation of divine fullness called in Scripture, the glory of God. The first part of this glory is called truth, the latter, grace, — John Piper

As a child there's a horror in discovering the limitations of the ones you love. The time you find that your mother cannot keep you safe, that your tutor makes a mistake, that the wrong path must be taken because the grown-ups lack the strength to take the right one ... each of those moments is the theft of your childhood, each of them a blow that kills some part of the child you were, leaving another part of the man exposed, a new creature, tougher but tempered with bitterness and disappointment. — Mark Lawrence

The half-brained creature to whom books are other than living things may see with the eyes of a bat and draw with the fingers of a mole his dullard's distinction between books and life: those who live the fuller life of a higher animal than he know that books are to poets as much part of that life as pictures are to painters or as music is to musicians, dead matter though they may be to the spiritually still-born children of dirt and dullness who find it possible and natural to live while dead in heart and brain. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life. — Susanne Katherina Langer

He places the skull in the palm of my hand. There are four canines; the top two are so long and curved I can feel them pricking my skin. There's a green tinge round the eye socket and in a fine line across the cranium. I'm not sure what animal it's from.
'Stoat,' Harris says, as if I've spoken out loud. 'They hunt grouse and partridge. I found it behind my house. I buried the body in the furze until it was just bone.'
His hand is still beneath mine, supporting it. I think of him seeing the small dead creature and digging a tiny grave for it. Planning ahead for all those months just so he'd see the skeleton. Or maybe he severed the animal's head and that was the only part he buried.
'It's been waiting for you all this time. Like I have. — Sanjida Kay

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, 'If you keep a lot of rules I'll reward you, and if you don't I'll do the other thing.' I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To — C.S. Lewis

To exist in this poem [of creation] is a greater gift than any finite creature can imagine. To be so insignificant and yet still be given a speaking part, to be given scenes that are my own, and my own only, scenes where the audience is limited to the Author Himself (scenes that I often flub), to have been here with my frozen nose, to have been crafted with at least as much care as a snowflake (though I'm harder to melt), and to hear and feel and see and taste and smell the heavy poetry of God, that is enough. — N.D. Wilson

Liberation

My mind is clouded,
I cannot hunt anymore.
I lay my gun over the tracks of the rabbit.

It was as though I became that creature
who could not decide
whether to flee or be still
and so was trapped in the pursuer's eyes-

And for the first time I knew
those eyes have to be blank
because it is impossible
to kill and question at the same time.

Then the shutter snapped,
the rabbit went free. He flew
through the empty forest

that part of me
that was the victim.
Only victims have a destiny.

And the hunter, who believed
whatever struggles
begs to be torn apart:

that part is paralyzed. — Louise Gluck

I haven't had a lot of good, soft things in my life," he said against my forehead. "Not since my family sent me away. Apart from being your sire and feeling that pull to you, it's that goodness, that softness and warmth, along with the resolve and strength in you, that I love. Being turned hasn't taken that from you. If someone were going to design the perfect mate for me, it would be you. Even when you infuriate me with your pigheaded stubbornness and your temper and incredible lack of anything resembling self-preservation - "
"Stop describing me please."
"You're the most fascinating, maddening, adorable creature I've ever met," he said, sighing and pushing my hair out of my eyes. "So, when I seem possessive or I'm raving like a lunatic, it's just that part of me is still very afraid that I'll lose that - that I'll lose you. I love you. — Molly Harper

The mountain pine beetle is a tiny creature that chews through a lodgepole's bark, gouges out a hollow in the wood and lays its eggs. The larvae hatch hungry and feed on the cambium layer, a tree's most vital part, the annual layer of cells that makes up a growth ring. To prevent drowning in the tree's sap, the beetle larvae can eject a choking fungus that not only halts the life-giving flow of sap, but stains the wood a grey-blue color. — Annie Proulx

Can anything be imagined so ridiculous, that this miserable and wretched creature [man], who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole? — Michel De Montaigne

People are disappearing from movies, and normal human behaviour is disappearing from movies ... You are not always fighting a creature in life. That's part of life, it's a pretty big part of life, but it's not all of life. — Judd Apatow

At what point does character-playing become habit, something for which we are grateful because it allows us to go through the world with the ease that comes from being predictable to ourselves, even if that predictability takes the form of neurosis, hysteria, depression? And at what point does that habit turn darkly into addiction? I wiped my hands clean. We are so desperate to be explicable to ourselves, to rely on ourselves, that we need to believe a certain version of who we are even when evidence starts to mount that the version is a lie, even when the part of us which is not tamed by habit strains to break free and overwhelm the tired, repetitive creature that our character has become, mouldering at the edges. — Kamila Shamsie

Durkheim frequently criticized his contemporaries, such as Freud, who tried to explain morality and religion using only the psychology of individuals and their pairwise relationships. (God is just a father figure, said Freud.) Durkheim argued, in contrast, that Homo sapiens was really Homo duplex, a creature who exists at two levels: as an individual and as part of the larger society. — Jonathan Haidt

To deprive a gregarious creature of companionship is to maim it, to outrage its nature. The prisoner and the cenobite are aware that the herd exists beyond their exile; they are an aspect of it. But when the herd no longer exists, there is, for the herd creature, no longer entity, a part of no whole; a freak without a place. If he cannot hold on to his reason, then he is lost indeed; most utterly, most fearfully lost, so that he becomes no more than the twitch in the limb of a corpse. — John Wyndham