Rat Man Quotes & Sayings

A mouse can fall down a mine shaft a third of a mile deep without injury. A rat falling the same distance would break his bones; a man would simply splash ... Elephants have their legs thickened to an extent that seems disproportionate to us, but this is necessary if their unwieldy bulk is to be moved at all ... A 60-ft. man would weigh 1000 times as much as a normal man, but his thigh bone would have its area increased by only 100 times ... Consequently such an unfortunate monster would break his legs the moment he tried to move.

[Expressing, in picturesque terms, the strength of an organism relative to its bulk.] — John Scott Haldane

I wish to have no status as a man. I am equally content to be a worm or a rat, and am only glad that I am not becuase they have such a rough time without the pleasure of painting. — Stanley Spencer

Whoa," Thomas said, feeling bolder by the minute. "Slim it nice and calm there, old fella. You look three steps away from a heart attack. — James Dashner

No. You don't get to call me Izzy, you don't send me letters, you don't follow me into dark corridors and try to save me from rats."
"Trust me, we see a rat, it's every man for himself. — Cassandra Clare

The eye is the window of the soul, the mouth the door. The intellect, the will, are seen in the eye; the emotions, sensibilities, and affections, in the mouth. The animals look for man's intentions right into his eyes. Even a rat, when you hunt him and bring him to bay, looks you in the eye. — Hiram Powers

I think it's a worthy undertaking
to provide a decent apartment for a man who earns fifteen dollars a week. But not at the expense of other men. Not if it raises the taxes, raises all the other rents and makes the man who earns forty live in a rat hole. — Ayn Rand

From his shoulder on down, the Rat felt the supple weight of her body. An odd sensation, that weight. This being that could love a man, bear children, grow old, and die; to think one whole existence was in this weight. — Haruki Murakami

A loud knocking woke him early the next morning. He'd barely gotten up on his elbows when the door opened and the same five guards from the day before came in with Launchers raised. Janson stepped into the room right after them. "Rise and shine, boys," the Rat Man said. "We've decided to give you your memories back after all. Like it or not. — James Dashner

If you confine yourself to this Skinnerian technique, you study nothing but the learning apparatus and you leave out everything that is different in octopi, crustaceans, insects and vertebrates. In other words, you leave out everything that makes a pigeon a pigeon, a rat a rat, a man a man, and, above all, a healthy man healthy and a sick man sick. — Konrad Lorenz

He was not, by the standard definitions, a bad man; in the same way a plague-bearing rat is not, from a dispassionate point of view, a bad animal. — Terry Pratchett

The Page awaits the Inspiration even as Inspiration roams the world of man, seeking a Page upon which to unfurl itself, body and soul, bare yet clothed in immortality if not immediacy.
And the gods said, "Let there be a Page, and many a Page," and there was a Book. And we saw that the Book was good. — Chila Woychik

She glanced at his handsome profile. It would be a long time before she forgot anything that happened tonight. But she had to pretend, for the sake of the Librus team--her friends--that everything was hunky dory. That she didn't give a rat's ass about Byrn. That his man-whoring didn't bother her in the least.
That she didn't love him like whoa. — Kendall Grey

Opening the fridge door, I found a rat eating the cheese. My dealings with rodents, particularly those tagged verminous, have been few, but generally the pattern has been one of man, the boss, the caretaker of creation, the namer, appearing and the lower orders hitting the road. — Tibor Fischer

In the front was a man he knew only as "Samson," a big man that from all appearances was a former juice head gym rat with exquisitely defined muscles, stripped to the waist and carrying a huge nine foot cross hewn from raw timber and held together with nails and twine. Behind him in a rough line were the flagellates: five men also stripped to the waist, holding various chains, heavy corded ropes, and one with what looked like a leather whip from the S&M sex shop. They beat their backs as they slowly walked down the center of the street. — Joseph M. Chiron

I sat up in bed. "What did he say?"
Tyson groaned, still half asleep. He was lying facedown on the couch, his feet so far over the edge they were in the bathroom. "The happy man said ... bowling practice?"
I hoped he was right, but then there was an urgent knock on the suite's interior door.
Annabeth stuck her head in
her blonde hair in a rat's nest. "DISEMBOWLING practice? — Rick Riordan

Before you were born, the year ninety-two,
lost what was precious, and that what was new.
The blink of an eye, the beat of a heart,
Out went the candle, and guilt was my part.

A king and his knight went hunting a boar,
A rat and his friends were hunting for love.
Together they fought, till one was alive.
The knight sadly wept, no king had survived.

The answers to riddles, to secrets and more,
Are found in the middle of legends and love.
Seek out the answer, and learn if you can
The face of regret, the life of a man. — Michael J. Sullivan

It is the 'zoomorphic' or 'rattomorphic' fallacy - the expressed or implicit contention that there is no essential difference between rat and man - which makes American psychology so profoundly disturbing. — Ludwig Von Bertalanffy

The moment I was introduced to my wife, Emma, at a party I thought, here she is - and 20 minutes later I told her she ought to marry me. She thought I was as mad as a rat. She wouldn't even give me her telephone number - and she wrote in her diary: 'A funny little man asked me to marry him.' — Julian Fellowes

Today's youth seem finally to have understood that only by freeing woman from her exclusively sexual role can man free himself from his ordained role in the rat-race: that of the rat. — Carolyn Heilbrun

He was split, one part of him never left this mental chamber that pictured itself as a sphere full of light fading into dark, because there was no way out. But motion in this world depended on rest in the world outside. A man is in bed, wanting to sleep. A rat is behind the wall at his head, wanting to move. The man hears the rat fidget and cannot sleep, the rat hears the man fidget and dares not move. They are both unhappy, one fidgeting and the other waiting, or both happy, the rat moving and the man sleeping. — Samuel Beckett

Where's the elevator?" Mike asked, sheathing his weapon. Tallow felt a little better telling Mike there wasn't an elevator and watching his face. But then Mike picked up the dolly, boxes and all, with one hand, took the kit bag from Sophie with the other, and started jogging up the stairs with"Third floor, right?"
"There," said Scarly, "goes a man who has names for all his muscles."
"I was just thinking that," Tallow said. "Serious gym rat."
"No, I mean he's named all his muscles. That's a man who calls one of his muscles Steve. — Warren Ellis

with finding a cure for some disease?" "It has everything in the world to do with it." Rat Man sighed — James Dashner

Now we see it, lying in the middle of the road. A swan, a mute swan. It looks like an offcut of organza, crumpled around the edges, twitching. As we pass we see its long neck has buckled into its body like a folding chair. We see its wings are tucked back as if the tar is liquid and the swan is swimming.
There are two men and a woman in the road. One man is standing on the tar, the other is directing the traffic. The woman is kneeling down beside the swan. I think she is crying, she seems to be crying, and this makes me suddenly angry. I think of all the other creatures we've seen since we set out. I think of the rat, the fox, the kitten, the badger. I think of the jackdaw, did you see the jackdaw? We passed it in the queue to pass the swan. Its beak was cracked open, its brains squeeged out. Why didn't anybody stop for the jackdaw? Because the swan looks like a wedding dress, that's why. Whereas the jackdaw looks like a bin bag. Because this is how people measure life. — Sara Baume

The thought struck me, as I went about my daily ablutions, that Elliot had awfully nice hair for a man who'd take someone else's ticket. It wasn't long, but had a small curl to it that made you think about running your fingers through it. "Not that I have any intention of doing so ," I told my reflection in the steam mirror. "Even if I was looking for a man, and I'm certainly not that stupid, he would be off the table. He's friend to a rat bastard." It was just a shame, too. How many bona fide lords does a girl meet? And how many of them have BBC voices, and nice faces, and curly hair that looks soft and silky and utterly gropeworthy? — Katie MacAlister

You are the part of rat race because you are letting them treat you like a rat. This is the modern definition of a slave. — Saurabh Sharma

For a moment, upon waking, he had NO idea at all who he was. It was a tremendously liberating feeling, as if he were free to be whatever he wanted to be: he could be anyone at all, able to try on any identity; he could be a man or a woman; a rat or a bird, a monster or a god. — Neil Gaiman

Only once did McMurdo see him, a sly, little gray-haired rat of a man, with a slinking gait and a sidelong glance which was charged with malice. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Elden started toward me, "I think that's enough!"
The man I almost knocked down bolted from his chair and shouted, "Let her speak!"
Yield, rat boy! — Joan Bauer

Sometimes parties of men went spud-gathering in no-man's-land. About a mile to the right of us, where the lines were closer together, there was a patch of potatoes that was frequented both by the Fascists and ourselves. We went there in the daytime, they only at night, as it was commanded by our machine-guns. One night to our annoyance they turned out en masse and cleared up the whole patch. We discovered another patch further on, where there was practically no cover and you had to lift the potatoes lying on your belly - a fatiguing job. If their machine-gunners spotted you, you had to flatten yourself out like a rat when it squirms under a door, with the bullets cutting up the clods a few yards behind you. It seemed worth it at the time. Potatoes were getting very scarce. If you got a sackful you could take them down to the cook-house and swap them for a water-bottleful of coffee. And — George Orwell

Grooming oneself with all the crazed compulsion of an under-exercised lab rat in order to hook a rich man and obtain a lush lifestyle makes a certain (albeit seedy) sense. — Julie Burchill

Perhaps there is no greater test of a man's regularity and easiness of conscience than his readiness to face the postman. Blessed is he who is made happy by the sound of a rat-tat! The good are eager for it; but the naughty tremble at the sound thereof. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Every man shall reap what he has sown, from the highest lord to the lowest gutter rat. — Anonymous

When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy years life-span only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well? — Cyril Connolly

I may say that the only differences I expect to see revealed between the behavior of the rat and man (aside from enormous differences of complexity) lie in the field of verbal behavior. — B.F. Skinner

I must admit, Peter, I have difficulty in understanding why an innocent man would want to spend twelve years as a rat. — J.K. Rowling

Yet, for my part, I was never usually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fail when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? — Henry David Thoreau

I am a product of a rat and roach infested black ghetto. It is easy for me to rationalize my dealings as a numbers man. I'll defend men today who are involved in it. — Don King

You okay, there, Mr. Rat Man?" Minho asked. "My name is Assistant Director Janson," he replied, his voice low and strained, as if it was hard work to stay calm. His eyes never left Thomas. "Learn to show respect for your elders. — James Dashner

Many governments employ torture but this was the first time that the element of Saturnalia and pornography in the process had been made so clear to me. If you care to imagine what any inadequate or cruel man might do, given unlimited power over a woman, then anything that you can bring yourself to suspect was what became routine in ESMA, the Navy Mechanics School that became the headquarters of the business. I talked to Dr. Emilio Mignone, a distinguished physician whose daughter Monica had disappeared into the precincts of that hellish place. What do you find to say to a doctor and a humanitarian who has been gutted by the image of a starving rat being introduced to his daughter's genitalia? Like hell itself the school was endorsed and blessed by priests, in case any stray consciences needed to be stilled. — Christopher Hitchens

Let's be honest: in ten years, the man-bun of the 2010s will be equivalent to the rat-tail of the 1980s. — Julie Johnson

A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat, mouse, beetle, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus, and microbe. — Ambrose Bierce

Thomas jabbed a thumb over his shoulder and raised his eyebrows.
"You met our new friend?" Miho responded, a smirk flashing across his face. "Real piece of work, this guy. I gotta get me one of those shuck suits. Fancy stuff."
"Am I awake?" Thomas asked.
"You're awake. Now eat - you look horrible. Almost as bad as Rat Man over there, reading his book. — James Dashner

He lived in the rich city as alien as a rat in a rich man's house that is fed on scraps thrown away, and hides here and there and is never a part of the real life of the house. — Pearl S. Buck

As I sorted through my confusion, I started to get mad. More and more, this had turned into one grotesque comedy of mishaps, and I didn't think it was funny. How much did the rat know? And while we're at it, hot much did the man in the black suit know? Here I was, smack in the center of everything without a clue. At every turn, I'd been off base, way off the mark. Of course, you can say the same about my whole life. In that sense, I suppose I had no one to blame. All the same, what gave them the right ti treat me like this? I'd been used, I'd been beaten, I'd been wrung dry. — Haruki Murakami

You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away. A rat would probably be killed, though it can fall safely from the eleventh story of a building, a man is broken, a horse splashes. — John B. S. Haldane

For the anthropomorphic view of the rat, American psychology substituted a rattomorphic view of man. - Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation — Alfie Kohn

It is difficult for the ordinary voter to come to grips with the notion that a truly evil man, a truthless monster with the brains of a king rat and the soul of a cockroach, is about to be sworn in as the president of the United States for the next four years ... And he will bring his gang in with him, a mean network of lawyers and salesmen and pimps who will loot the national treasury, warp the laws, mock the rules and stay awake 22 hours a day looking for at least one reason to declare war, officially, on some hapless tribe in the Sahara or heathen fanatic like the Ayatollah Khomeini. — Hunter S. Thompson

The unmerciful man is most certainly an unblessed man. His sympathies are all dried up; he is afflicted with a chronic jaundice, and lives timidly and darkly in a little, narrow rat-hole of distrust. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Was he a good father?"
To their surprise, I shake my head and smile. "No," I reply candidly. "He wasn't a good father, but he was a good man."
Where Dad came from, that meant a great deal more. — Deana Martin

We never will have any prosperity that is free from speculation till we pass a law that every time a broker or person sells something, he has got to have it sitting there in a bucket, or a bag, or a jug, or a cage, or a rat trap, or something, depending on what it is he is selling. We are continually buying something that we never get from a man that never had it. — Will Rogers

Most of the afternoons I would pass looking out at the pasture. I soon began seeing things. A figure emerging from the birch woods and running straight in my direction. Usually it was the Sheep Man, but sometimes it was the Rat, sometimes my girlfriend. Other times it was the sheep with the star on it's back. — Haruki Murakami

Morgan said that his mother said that Miss Kildaire is sitting on a shelf."
Zach had to think about that one for a few seconds. "He said she's on the shelf?"
"Uh-huh." An emphatic nod. "I don't know why Miss Kildaire would sit on a shelf, but that's what Morgan said."
"I'm guessing there's more."
"And then Morgan said that his mother said that Miss Kildaire was too fat to get a man."
What a load of horseshit, Zach thought. Morgan's mother was probably some shriveled-up jealous twit. "I see."
"And then Morgan said she was a cripple."
Zach had a sudden urge to punch out the little rat himself. — Nalini Singh

Read History: thus learn how small a space
You may inhabit, nor inhabit long
In crowding Cosmos
in that confined place
Work boldly; build your flimsy barriers strong;
Turn round and round, make warm your nest; among
The other hunting beasts, keep heart and face,
Not to betray the doomed and splendid race
You are so proud of, to which you belong.
For trouble comes to all of us: the rat
Has courage, in adversity, to fight;
But what a shining animal is man,
Who knows, when pain subsides, that is not that,
For worse than that must follow
yet can write
Music; can laugh; play tennis; even plan. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Oi," Wayne said, hustling up beside him. "A good plan that one was, eh?"
"It was the same plan you always have," Wax said. "The one where I get to be the decoy."
"Ain't my fault people like to shoot at you, mate," Wayne said as they reached the coach. "You should be happy; you're usin' your talents, like me granners always said a man should do."
"I'd rather not have 'shootability' be my talent."
"Well, you gotta use what you have," Wayne said, leaning against the side of the carriage as Cob the coachman opened the door for Wax. "Same reason I always have bits of rat in my stew. — Brandon Sanderson

Television is the most insidious form of escape known to man. It is the leading medication in the production of catatonia, cutting attention spans down to nothing, and as result will gut the sales of this book. And nobody gives a rat's ass because everyone's catatonic. — Tommy Walker