Elephant Trunk Quotes & Sayings

I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, 'with four parameters I can fit an elephant and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.' — Enrico Fermi

The pointes for girls, I always say, have to be like an elephant's trunk; strong and yet flexible and soft. — George Balanchine

One elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Now he saw another elephant emerge from the place where it had stood hidden in the trees. Very slowly it walked to the mutilated body and looked down. With its sinuous trunk it struck the huge corpse; then it reached up, broke some leafy branches with a snap, and draped them over the mass of torn thick flesh. Finally it tilted its massive head, raised its trunk, and roared into the empty landscape. — Lois Lowry

I went to the animals' fair, The birds and the beasts were there, The old baboon By the light of the moon Was combing his auburn hair; The monkey he got drunk, And fell on the elephant's trunk, The elephant sneezed And fell on his knees - And what became of the monkety-monk? — James M. Cain

An agile, well-trained, brave elephant, ridden by a good mahout, its trunk armed with the kind of sabre known as a qartal and covered with chain mail, while the rest of its body is protected by sheets of bark and iron, surrounded by 500 men to defend it and protect it to the rear, can fight against 6000 men on horseback. — Mas'udi

There is a story of a hummingbird who lives in a beautiful forest. One day that forest goes up in flames. All the animals watch on in dismay as flames destroy their home. Only the tiny hummingbird tries to stop the fire. Backwards and forwards he flies, with drop after drop of precious water. Feeling helpless, the elephant with his big trunk and the giraffe with his long neck watch the flames in dismay. They stand and do nothing. The hummingbird continues in vain and the animals start to laugh. They laugh at how small he is and how hard he is trying to save the forest that he loves. "What are you doing?" they ask him, "You can't save the forest." He stops, just for a second, to look at all the hopeless animals. He knows that he cannot save the forest but it doesn't matter. "I'm doing the best that I can," he says. — Anonymous

There is a delicacy in it equalled only by the daintiness of the elephant's trunk. — Herman Melville

Katrina held Bram in her arms, speaking softly, reassuringly, as they approached baby Modoc.
This was an important moment, a beginning, for she knew the boy would spend his life with animals, especially elephants, and the meeting was of utmost importance. Neither the elephant nor the baby said a word. All was quiet as they looked at each other. Mo's small trunk wormed its way up, reaching to the baby. As Bram leaned over, his little hand pulled loose from Katrina's grasp found its way down toward the trunk. A finger extended to meet the tip of the trunk. Bram's expression was one of curiosity; he felt the wet tip, Modoc moved her "finger" all around Bram's hand, sliding it across each finger and the palm. A big tickle grin spread across Bram's face, Modoc did her elephant "chirp," a tear glistened as it ran down Katrina's face. All was well. The future had been written. — Ralph Helfer

Even the elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys. The perfection of traveling is to travel without baggage. — Henry David Thoreau

Visitors at the zoo indulge in transports of delight at the way an elephant reaches for an apple with it's trunk....but give not a moments thought to the ineffable capabilities of their own hands. — John Russell Napier

In desperation I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, "How many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?" I thought for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, "Four." He said, "I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." With that, the conversation was over. — Freeman Dyson

So, gently, and using the greatest of care, the elephant stretched his great trunk through the
air, and he lifted the dust speck and carried it over and placed it down, safe, on a very soft
clover — Dr. Seuss

Three blind men were shown an elephant. They touched it with their hands to determine what the creature was. The first man felt the trunk, and claimed that an elephant was like a snake. The second man touched its leg and claimed that an elephant was like a tree. The third man touched its tail, and claimed that the elephant was like a slender rope. I — Jim Butcher

A hydrogen atom in a cell at the end of my nose was once part of an elephant's trunk. A carbon atom in my cardiac muscle was once in the tail of a dinosaur. — Jostein Gaarder

The elephant's trunk strokes her cheek, her throat, her forehead, before slipping the scarf free and lifting it, so that the wind carries it off like a rumor. — Jodi Picoult

I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his nonvulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature-not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor. — John Ruskin

Their version of rock-paper-scissors was elephant - fist, mouse - palm, and ant - little finger. The elephant crushed the mouse, the mouse squashed the ant, and the ant crawled up the elephant's trunk and paralyzed his brain. — Colin Cotterill

He was the proud owner of a quite colossal member, which on the many awestruck occasions it had been exposed to public view had been compared variously to a giant frankfurter, an overfed python, a length of led piping, the trunk of a rogue elephant, a barrage balloon, an airport-sized Toblerone and a roll of wet wallpaper. — Jonathan Coe

Some Hindus have an elephant to show.
No one here has ever seen an elephant.
They bring it at night to a dark room.
One by one, we go in the dark and come out
saying how we experience the animal.
One of us happens to touch the trunk.
A water-pipe kind of creature.
Another, the ear. A strong, always moving
back and forth, fan-animal. Another, the leg.
I find it still, like a column on a temple.
Another touches the curve back.
A leathery throne. Another, the cleverest,
feels the tusk. A rounded sword made of porcelain.
He is proud of his description.
Each of us touches one place
and understands the whole in that way.
The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark
are how the senses explore the reality of the elephant.
If each of us held a candle there,
and if we went in together, we could see it. — Rumi

Letter 84


An elephant with his trunk raised is a ladder to the stars.

A breaching whale is a ladder to the bottom of the sea.

My photographs are a ladder to my dreams.

These letters are ladders to you. — Gregory Colbert

Our elders say that an elephant does not find its own trunk heavy. — Zakes Mda

When there is an invisible elephant in the room, one is from time to time bound to trip over a trunk. — Karen Joy Fowler

****your Parliament and your Constitution. America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea. If those two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant's trunk, whacked good. President Lyndon Johnson to the Greek ambassador in Washington (1964) — Richard Clogg

PROBOSCIS, n. The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk. — Ambrose Bierce