Reptile Quotes & Sayings

We know very well that we have ancestors. But our ancestors are not only human. We have animal ancestors; we have plant ancestors; and we have mineral ancestors. Our human ancestors are still very young. Human beings appeared very late in the history of life on Earth. Our animal ancestors are still there within us. The reptile, the fish, and the ape are still in our blood. Not only were they part of us in the past, but they continue to exist within us. Just look deeply into your cells. We see that we are the whole history of life. — Thich Nhat Hanh

You shudder beneath the orange glow, the wet reptile streets, while heading back to the muted torture of your dirty room, where some cruel memory sours the walls, viciously, like wisps of a flaming hell. — Brian Alan Ellis

A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest. — Alexander Pope

I had a dream about you. You was a crocodile and i was always looking for you with fear. Your teeth were alabaster and your skin green as grass. Unfortunate you had already a girlfriend. And i hoped she finish like a handbag. I love you from my all reptile heart, which is poikilothermic. — Kattie Belgar

He has a reptile dysfunction. — Jodi Picoult

In six thousand years, you could never grow wings on a reptile. With sixty million, however, you could have feathers, too. — John McPhee

I sometimes rented a car and drove from event to event in Europe; a road trip was a great escape from the day-to-day anxieties of playing, and it kept me from getting too lost in the tournament fun house with its courtesy cars, caterers, locker room attendants, and such - all amenities that create a firewall between players and what you might call the 'real' world - you know, where you may have to read a map, ask a question in a foreign tongue, find a restaurant and read the menu posted in the window to make sure you're not about to walk into a joint that serves only exotic reptile meat. — Patrick McEnroe

Life on our planet has been a constant series of cataclysmic events, and we are more suitable for extinction than a trilobite or a reptile. So we will vanish. There's no doubt in my heart. — Werner Herzog

Invade me now, my ruthless friend,
And make me cower in the dark.
Remind me that I'm all alone
And draw upon my face your mark.
How is it that you capture me,
When all my thoughts deny your force?
Is it the reptile in my brain
That lets your terror run its course?
Baseless Fear undoes us all
Despite our quest for lofty goals.
We would-be Galahads don't die,
Fear just freezes all our souls.
It keeps us mute when feeling love,
Reminding us what we might lose.
And if by chance we meet success,
Fear tells us which safe route to choose. — Arthur C. Clarke

Ideas are the finery we wrap our brains in, to hide the reptile core that we can't escape. The reptile brain, Ron, is a vestige of the past from which we can't seem to slip loose. We chug-chug-chug toward the future, and the world of ideas grows exponentially, but we are still base creatures at times. We all have those sad, tragic moments where we neglect thought and act on old, withered snippets of instinct. — Jeremy Robert Johnson

The geologist, in those tables of stone which form his records, finds no examples of dynasties once passed away again returning. There has no repetition of the dynasty of the fish, of the reptile, of the mammal. The dynasty of the future is to have glorified man for its inhabitant; but it is to be the dynasty-"the kingdom"-not of glorified man made in the image of God, but of God himself in the form man. — Hugh Miller

We're only human." "One of us, anyway. The other's a reptile." "Harsh, Annabelle. Very harsh. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

When Bruce had used the word "brilliant" about Uncle Monty, he meant "having a reputation for cleverness or intelligence." But when the children used the word - and when they thought of it now, staring at the Reptile Room glowing in the moonlight - it meant more than that. It meant that even in the bleak circumstances of their current situation, even throughout the series of unfortunate events that would happen to them for the rest of their lives, Uncle Monty and his kindness would shine in their memories. Uncle Monty was brilliant, and their time with him was brilliant. Bruce and his men from the Herpetological Society could dismantle Uncle Monty's collection, but nobody could ever dismantle the way the Baudelaires would think of him. — Lemony Snicket

In them was not the savage blankness of the reptile species. Instead there was something far worse - burning, unquenchable rage mixed with the self-mocking irony of great intelligence. — Whitley Strieber

As he has promised, no harm has come to the Baudelaire orphans in the Reptile Room, but great harm had come to Uncle Monty. — Lemony Snicket

Tahn crept up the stone wall like a reptile silent after its prey. — L.A. Kelly

My girlfriend thinks I look like a reptile - it's not the best. — Andy Murray

If the story is unflattering and the feeling is anger, adrenaline kicks in. Under the influence of adrenaline, blood leaves our brains to help support our genetically engineered response of "fight or flight," and we end up thinking with the brain of a reptile. We say and do dim-witted things. — Kerry Patterson

There is a courageous wisdom; there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear. — Edmund Burke

Science was false by being unpoetical. It assumed to explain a reptile or a mollusk, and isolated it-which is hunting for life in graveyards. Reptile or mollusk or man or angel only exists in system, in relation. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mercy didn't get embarrassed easily, but her cheeks flamed now. Because if Riley knew she was in heat - like a freaking wild cat! - then so did the rest of her own pack. "So what, you followed me hoping I'd lower my standards and sleep with a wolf?" She intentionally made "wolf" sound about as appetizing as "reptile."
Riley's jaw tightened under a shadow of stubble a shade darker than the deep chestnut of his hair. "You want to claw at me, kitty-cat? Come on."
Her hands clenched. She really wasn't this much of a bitch. But goddamn Riley had a way of lighting her fuse. — Nalini Singh

If only we could reach back before the concept, could write on a level with the senses, record the infinitesimal variations of what we touch, do what a reptile would do if it were to set about writing! — Emil M. Cioran

I don't give a damn about what people say. They can be reptile food for all I care. — Haruki Murakami

Genetics might be adequate for explaining microevolution, but microevolutionary changes in gene frequency were not seen as able to turn a reptile into a mammal or to convert a fish into an amphibian. Microevolution looks at adaptations that concern the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest ... The origin of species - Darwin's problem - remains unsolved. — Scott F. Gilbert

The evolutionists, piercing beneath the show of momentary stability, discovered, hidden in rudimentary organs, the discarded rubbish of the past. They detected the reptile under the lifted feathers of the bird, the lost terrestrial limbs dwindling beneath the blubber of the giant cetaceans. They saw life rushing outward from an unknown center, just as today the astronomer senses the galaxies fleeing into the infinity of darkness. As the spinning galactic clouds hurl stars and worlds across the night, so life, equally impelled by the centrifugal powers lurking in the germ cell, scatters the splintered radiance of consciousness and sends it prowling and contending through the thickets of the world. — Loren Eiseley

Besides human tissue, West employed much of the reptile embryo tissue which he had cultivated with such singular results. It was better than human material for maintaining life in organless fragments, and that was now my friend's chief activity. In a dark corner of the laboratory, over a queer incubating burner, he kept a large covered vat full of this reptilian cell-matter; which multiplied and grew puffily and hideously. On — H.P. Lovecraft

But for that blindness which is inseparable from malice, what terrible powers of evil would it possess! Fortunately for the world, its venom, like that of the rattlesnake, when most poisonous, clouds the eye of the reptile, and defeats its aim. — William Gilmore Simms

The kiss originated when the first male reptile licked the first female reptile, implying in a subtle way that she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The tree feels splintery, nasty to my touch; it feels Floridian, more reptile than vegetable, more stucco than stone. I do loathe this state, their Elba. — Allan Gurganus

If it was going to kill me or carry me off, I thought it would have done so already. But it just sat there, looking at me. Its tail swooshed suddenly, and it felt like I was looking at an overgrown cat in reptile form. — H.M. Ward

Me too!" Frank said. "I mean ... lactose intolerant. Not a reptile. Though I can be a reptile sometimes - — Rick Riordan

Thank you for nothing, you stupid reptile. — Cressida Cowell

Between a monkey and a snake, the one that resists change the most is the snake. You can hardly domesticate a snake and make it your trustworthy friend. And so, taking into consideration that most people refuse to change their attitude, and instead decide to discriminate others and act as enemies to the human race as a whole, in their selfishness, competitiveness and egotistical stubbornness, without empathy or compassion for others, they are acting like reptiles, not mammals. We have too much of reptile-thinking inside the human race; and the distance between our reality and a fiction movie about an alien invasion, in which reptiles walk among us disguised as humans isn't that much. We have been corrupted already. Humanity is nearly extinct due to a massive invasion of a reptilian belief-system. — Robin Sacredfire

It might go down better than appearing as a giant reptile encased in a ball of fire and forcing yourself on her.'
'WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO BRING THAT UP? — Meg Rosoff

When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another. — Henry David Thoreau

Monsters in movies are us, always us, one way or the other. They're us with hats on. The zombies in George Romero's movies are us. They're hungry. Monsters are us, the dangerous parts of us. The part that wants to destroy. The part of us with the reptile brain. The part of us that's vicious and cruel. We express these in our stories as these monsters out there. — John Carpenter

Salamander: Originally a reptile inhabiting fire; later, an anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile. Salamanders are now believed to be extinct, the last one of which we have an account having been seen in Carcassonne by the Abbe Belloc, who exorcised it with a bucket of holy water. — Ambrose Bierce

Love is like a reptile, you cut off its tail and it grows another one. Kiss Me Judas — Will Christopher Baer

With his venom irresistible and bittersweet that loosener of limbs, Love reptile-like strikes me down — Sappho

As you and I listen to Uncle Monty tell the three Baudelaire orphans that no harm will ever come to them in the Reptile Room, we should be experiencing the strange feeling that accompanies the arrival of dramatic irony. This feeling is not unlike the sinking in one's stomach when one is in an elevator that suddenly goes down, or when you are snug in bed and your closet door suddenly creaks open to reveal the person who has been hiding there. For no matter how safe and happy the three children felt, no matter how comforting Uncle Monty's words were, you and I know that soon Uncle Monty will be dead and the Baudelaires will be miserable once again. — Lemony Snicket

According to naturalists, the dragon belonged to the animal kingdom for sure, almost definitely to the vertebrates, and was as likely as not a reptile. Other — Jasper Fforde

Gentleman, we're all cruel, we're all monsters, we all make men weep and mothers, and babes at the breast, but of all, let it be settled here, now, of all I am the lowest reptile! I've sworn to amend, and every day I've done the same filthy things. I understand now that such men as I need a blow, a blow of destiny to catch them as with a noose, and bind them by force from without. Never, never should I have risen of myself! But the thunderbolt has fallen. I accept torture of accusation, and my public shame; I want to suffer and by suffering I shall be purified. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The sight of a slender young woman sitting in the anaconda exhibit with a 13-foot-long, predatory reptile snuggling in her lap, the tip of a tail coiled lovingly around one leg, provided dramatic evidence of what Scott and Wilson already knew: "Just about every animal," Scott says - not just mammals and birds - "can learn, recognize individuals, and respond to empathy." Once — Sy Montgomery

As he glided stealthily along, creeping beneath the shelter of the walls and doorways, the hideous old man seemed like some loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime and darkness through which he moved: crawling forth, by night, in search of some rich offal for a meal. — Charles Dickens

You can be such a reptile sometimes," she said. — Peter Watts

You're the coolest thing alive," Hi breathed, as close to the bonewhite reptile as he dared. "Don't let anyone tell you different. — Kathy Reichs

(In a letter from Einstein to Curie) Do not laugh at me for writing you without having anything sensible to say. But I am so enraged by the base manner in which the publc is presently daring to concern itself with you that I absolutely must give vent to this feeling. I am impelled to tell you how much I have come to admire your intellect, your drive, and your honesty, and that I consider myself lucky to have made your personal acquaintance in Brussels. Anyone who does not number among these reptiles is certainly happy, now as before, that we have such personages amoung us as you, and Langevin too, real peole with whom one feels privileged to be in contact. If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply dont read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptile for whom it has been fabricated. — Walter Isaacson

Given the choice between finding Godzilla and David Chambers on her doorstep, she'd have opted for the reptile, and never mind it wasn't the one who had the law degree. — Sandra Marton

I abide in a goodly Museum, Frequented by sages profound: 'Tis a kind of strange mausoleum, Where the beasts that have vanished abound. There's a bird of the ages Triassic, With his antediluvian beak, And many a reptile Jurassic, And many a monster antique. — May Kendall

What can be more discouraging to a man than to doubt if his soul be material, like a stone or a reptile, and subject to corruption like the vilest creatures? And does it not prove much more strength of mind and grandeur to be able to conceive the idea of a Being superior to all other beings, by whom and for whom all things were made ; of a Being absolutely perfect and pure, without beginning or end, of whom our soul is the image, and of whom, if I may say so, it is a part, because it is spiritual and immortal? — Jean De La Bruyere

And if you don't accept my challenge," shouted the Iron Man, "then you're a miserable cowardly reptile, not fit to bother with. — Ted Hughes

So I'd been captured? So I was starving?
Did that mean I had to shrivel up and die?
I could still slither. I could still hiss.
Nothing had been stolen from me except my freedom.
What I needed was a new plan. — Patrick Jennings

She sat in her chair and looked around the room. What should she take with her? The antique chatrang board her predecessor had given her? Her mummified baby alligator, which she had on the theory that every sorcerer's lair should have a mummified reptile of some kind? — Tim Pratt

A Man having found a Lion in his path undertook to subdue him by the power of the human eye; and near by was a Rattlesnake engaged in fascinating a small bird. "How are you getting on, brother?" the Man called out to the other reptile, without removing his eyes from those of the Lion. — Ambrose Bierce

But I won't watch them go to war again. I've been to war, you know, to save civilization from the reptile hordes. I bled for it, I saw friends and other men die for it. And then I watched men like you piss it away again, the civilization we'd saved, in squabbles over a few hundred square miles of territory and what language the people get to speak there, what color their skin and hair is and what kind of religious horseshit they get crammed down their throats. — Richard K. Morgan

I killed four flies while waiting. Damn, death was everywhere. Man, bird, beast, reptile, rodent, insect, fish didn't have a chance. The fix was in. I didn't know what to do about it. I got depressed. You know, I see a boy at the supermarket, he's packing my groceries, then I see him sticking himself into his own grave along with the toilet paper, the beer and the chicken breasts. — Charles Bukowski

[St. Patrick] was a terror to any snake that came in his path, whether it was the cold, slimy reptile sliding along the ground or the more dangerous snake that oppresses men through false teachings. And he drove the snakes out of the minds of men, snakes of superstition and brutality and cruelty. — Arthur Brisbane

What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is in a way a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behavior patterns of lizards and baboons: territoriality and aggression and dominance hierarchies. We are each of us largely responsible for what gets put in to our brains. For what as adults we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain we can change ourselves. Think of the possibilities. — Carl Sagan

It's a hat," said Jess.
Manx stretched. "Yes."
"A hat with - just to be clear - a lizard on it. A real, dead lizard."
"An iguana, yea. It's been stuffed."
"I can see that. Any idiot can see that, but it doesn;t address the issue."
"The issue being?"
"Manx, you're wearing a goddamn reptile! On your head! With pride! It's like you're the lovechild of Carmen Miranda and a taxidermist! — Foz Meadows

Republican comes in the dictionary just after reptile and just above repugnant. — Julia Roberts

Books, of which the principles are diseased or deformed, must be kept on the shelf of the scholar, as the man of science preserves monsters in glasses. They belong to the study of the mind's morbid anatomy, and ought to be accurately labelled. Voltaire will still be a wit, notwithstanding he is a scoffer; and we may admire the brilliant spots and eyes of the viper, if we acknowledge its venom and call it a reptile. — Robert Aris Willmott

It takes calculation to win a duel against a reptile, and you've always been impatient. — Jim Butcher

He holds the most frightening and terrible of all of the Shards. Ponder on that for a time, you old reptile, and tell me if your insistence on nonintervention holds firm. Because I assure you, Rayse will not be similarly inhibited. — Brandon Sanderson

Novelist time is reptile time; novelists tend to be ruminant and brooding, nursers of ancient grievances, second-guessers, Tuesday afternoon quarterbacks, retrospectators, endlessly, like slumping hitters, studying the film of their old whiffs. — Michael Chabon

Sits like a man, but smiles like a reptile. — David Bowie

If it takes a million years for a fish to become a reptile, has Man, in our few hundred, altered out of recognition? — T.H. White

If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don't read that hogwash, but rather leave it for the reptile from whom it has been fabricated. — Albert Einstein

Guess it didn't go so well, huh?"

"What was your first clue?" I turned my head slightly, then went back to staring blankly out at the city street below.

"Did your really expect it to? I mean the two of you together make no sense at all. It's like putting the Easter Bunny together with a crocodile. At first everyone's all nervous and shit like 'Oh, how cute. Look how they're getting along.' And then of course the predicable happens, the rabbit's a reptile snack and all the kids are cryin' 'cause Easter ain't comin' next year. — Michelle Mankin

The brain does much more than recollect. It compares, synthesizes, analyzes, generates abstractions. We must figure out much more than our genes can know. That is why the brain library is some ten thousand times larger than the gene library. Our passion for learning, evident in the behaviour of every toddler, is the tool for our survival. Emotions and ritualized behaviour patterns are built deeply into us. They are part of our humanity. But they are not characteristically human. Many other animals have feelings. What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behaviour patterns of lizards and baboons. We are, each of us, largerly responsible for what gets put into our brains, for what, as adults, we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain, we can change ourselves. — Carl Sagan

I'm always keen to use my body in my work, so I'm looking forward to the motion capture for Smaug. Both Gollum and King Kong were primates, whereas I'm playing a serpent, so it'll be interesting - I'll have to tie my legs together, possibly, or else they'll be kind of splayed out to the side as a reptile's should be. — Benedict Cumberbatch

I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. — Frederick Douglass

I followed the other Experiment around, yesterday afternoon, at a distance, to see what it might be for, if I could. But I was not able to make [it] out. I think it is a man. I had never seen a man, but it looked like one, and I feel sure that that is what it is. I realize that I feel more curiosity about it than about any of the other reptiles. If it is a reptile, and I suppose it is; for it has frowzy hair and blue eyes, and looks like a reptile. It has no hips; it tapers like a carrot; when it stands, it spreads itself apart like a derrick; so I think it is a reptile, though it may be architecture. — Mark Twain

Nothing says 'Hi, neighbor!' like killing a guy's flying reptile. — Rick Riordan

Had taught him to sharpen his senses - to trust the instincts that had been guiding him south. His homing radar was tingling like crazy now. The end of his journey was close - almost right under his feet. But how could that be? There was nothing on the hilltop. The wind changed. Percy caught the sour scent of reptile. A hundred yards down the slope, something rustled through the woods - snapping branches, crunching leaves, hissing. Gorgons. For the millionth time, Percy wished their noses weren't so good. They had always said they could smell him because he was a demigod - the half-blood son of some old Roman god. Percy had tried rolling in mud, splashing through creeks, even keeping air-freshener sticks in his pockets so he'd have that new car smell; but apparently demigod stink was hard to mask. He scrambled to the west — Rick Riordan

This time, there was the ghost of a reptile in Szatson's smile. 'I don't handle little problems. — Whitley Strieber

FROG, n. A reptile with edible legs — Ambrose Bierce

Now the leatherback turtle overcame the heat issue via a simple, but evolutionarily impossible solution; it is the only reptile that possesses fatty insulation known as brown adipose tissue, and the only reptile that regulates a high body temperature. This brown adipose tissue is the expression of the UCP1 gene, and, aside from the leatherbacks, is found only in mammals, amphibians, and fishes. Not one other reptile has UCP1. — B.C. Chase

To me there never has been a higher source of honour or distinction than that connected with advances in science. I have not possessed enough of the eagle in my character to make a direct flight to the loftiest altitudes in the social world; and I certainly never endeavored to reach those heights by using the creeping powers of the reptile, who in ascending, generally chooses the dirtiest path, because it is the easiest. — Humphry Davy

In Turkey, ancient drawings that are two thousand or more years old show djinn in half human-half reptilian forms with horns, scaly skin, lizard-like eyes, and claws for hands. This depiction is similar to the Christian description of devils and demons. It is also interesting to note that Islamic art dating from only eight hundred years ago shows the djinn as more human-like. — Rosemary Ellen Guiley

I'm a rat,' Robert said. 'I'm not going into a reptile's mouth.'
Oh boy. Fine time to develop phobias — Ilona Andrews

We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure. — Henry David Thoreau

When I take my kids to the zoo in Los Angeles, they always look the longest at the creature that moves the least - especially those in the reptile house. I asked myself: 'Who are the people that are pretty cool but also very still and monotone in their expression?' and I thought of Jose Mourinho. — Julian Sands

A square space with complicated ceremonies going on in it, the purpose of which is to transform animals into men. Two snakes, moving in opposite directions, have to be got rid of at once. Some animals are there, e.g. foxes and dogs. The people walk around the square and must let themselves be bitten by these animals in each of the four corners . If they run away all is lost. Now the higher animals come on to the scene-bulls and ibexes. Four snakes glide into the four corners. Then the congregation flies out. Two sacrificial priests carry in a huge reptile and with this they touch the forehead of a shapeless animal lump or life-mass. Out of it there instantly rises a human head, transfigured. A voice proclaims: "These are attempts at being. — David Lindorff

What cities, as great as this, have ... promised themselves immortality! Posterity can hardly trace the situation of some. The sorrowful traveller wanders over the awful ruins of others ... Here stood their citadel, but now grown over with weeds; there their senate-house, but now the haunt of every noxious reptile; temples and theatres stood here, now only an undistinguished heap of ruins. — Oliver Goldsmith

Inside our skulls are fish, reptile and shrew brains, as well as the highest centers that allow us to integrate information in our unique way; and some of our newer brain components talk to each other via some very ancient structures indeed. Our brains are makeshift structures, opportunistically assembled by Nature over hundreds of millions of years, and in multiple different ecological contexts. — Ian Tattersall

A second or two later, the reptile had been quite absorbed by a handsome, arrogant-looking Englishman smelling strongly of snobbery and snake. — P.B. Kerr

The principle of analogy is so simple, so natural, that everyone uses it in daily life. Imagine someone sitting down in front of the television after a long day at work. The first image he sees is that of a giant reptile squashing tall buildings. Is one's first hunch, "Oh! The news channel!"? Probably not. More likely one surmises the TV set had been left on the science fiction channel. Why? Because one's world of contemporary experience does not include newscasts of giant dinosaurs wreaking havoc in modern cities, but one has seen monster movies in which such disasters are quite typical. Which analogy does the TV screen image fit? — Robert M. Price

THE REPTILE ROOM — Lemony Snicket

As a boy, I was a member of a club run by the famous reptile showman Ross Allen, and the club sent its members pseudoscientific papers mimeographed on construction paper with a three-hole punch. — Padgett Powell

A dinosaur was a reptile — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Thank you for nothing, you useless reptile. — Hiccup Horrendous Haddock

Sometimes it is good to fall down so that we can see whether we honourably get up or disgracefully turn into a miserable reptile! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

What's an alligator?" Kaz asked. He'd never seen a figure like the one Claire projected onto the cabinet wall. "It's a reptile that lives in Florida," Claire explained. Kaz didn't know what Florida was, either. — Dori Hillestad Butler

Fish, amphibian, and reptile, warm-blooded bird and mammal-each of us carries in our veins a salty stream in which the elements sodium, potassium, and calcium are combined in almost the same proportions as in sea water. — Rachel Carson

It is very extraordinary, if the head of the money department of a country, being unprincipled enough to sacrifice his trust and his integrity, could not have contrived objects of profit sufficiently large to have engaged the co-operation of men of far greater importance than Reynolds, and with whom there could have been due safety, and should have been driven to the necessity of unkennelling such a reptile to be the instrument of his cupidity. — Alexander Hamilton

Now, get in the damn jeep. It is, as you know, very, very rude and usually unnecessary to use profanity, but the Baudelaire orphans were too terrified to point this out to Stephano. Taking one last look at their poor Uncle Monty, the three children followed Stephano to the door of the Reptile Room to get in the damn jeep. — Lemony Snicket

For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. — Anonymous

Do you know how the naturalist learns all the secrets of the forest, of plants, of birds, of beasts, of reptiles, of fishes, of the rivers and the sea? When he goes into the woods the birds fly before him and he finds none; when he goes to the river bank, the fish and the reptile swim away and leave him alone. His secret is patience; he sits down, and sits still; he is a statue; he is a log. — Henry David Thoreau

Years ago, it was pretty hard to get people to empathize even a little bit with scaly, cold-blooded critters; now, thanks a lot to good PR from television, it is easier to get the message of reptile conservation and tolerance across. We have a lot to be thankful to reptiles for, not the least of which is their control of rodents. — Romulus Whitaker

The Loch Ness monster doesn't exist either. Loch Ness is just not big enough to hide a thirty foot amphibian or reptile for hundreds of years. — Brian Jones