Quotes & Sayings About Sheep And Goats

We followed Mrs. Morton down the High Street. She sailed, like a vessel, along the pavement, skirting around pushchairs and small dogs, and people who had stopped to wipe ice cream from their chins.
July had found its fiercest day yet. The sky was ironed into an acid blue, and even the clouds had fallen from the edges, leaving a faultless page of summer above our heads. Even so, there were those who still nurtured mistrust. We walked past cardigans draped across elbows and raincoats bundled into shopping bags, and one woman who carried an umbrella wedged into her armpit, like artillery. It seemed that people couldn't quite let go of the weather, and felt the need to carry every form of it around with them, at all times, for safekeeping.

The trouble with goats and sheep by Joanna Cannon — Joanna Cannon

Students of the heavens are separable into astronomers and astrologers as readily as are the minor domestic ruminants into sheep and goats, but the separation of philosophers into sages and cranks seems to be more sensitive to frames of reference. — Willard Van Orman Quine

Unprotected by the army, the Mexican peasants were helpless to resist the Apache raiders, with scores carried off into captivity and hundreds more slaughtered. The desert now reclaimed the untilled fields. Cattle, sheep, mules, and goats wandered free only to fall prey to the great packs of wolves and coyotes that trailed the Apache raiding parties just as the raven shadows the predator on his rounds. Skeletons lined the roads, littered the burned haciendas, and were picked clean by scavengers in deserted villages. It was a perfect reign of terror. — Paul Andrew Hutton

The sheep vs. goats analogy is presumptuous. I define the world in general to be the people who populate it without assignment of an either/or category in presumption of their final and ultimate choice as to Who and Whose Jesus is".

~R. Alan Woods [2012] — R. Alan Woods

It was the unprecedented surplus calories resulting from domestication that ushered in the so-called Neolithic revolution, which created the conditions for not only an agricultural economy but also urban life and, ultimately, the suite of innovations we think of as modern culture. The cradle of civilization is, not coincidentally, also the place where first dogs and then barley, wheat, sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, and cats commenced a fatefully intimate association with humans. — Anonymous

When Geoffrey was away, the goat often took himself off. He had soon got the goats at Granny's cottage doing his bidding, and Nanny Ogg said once that she had seen what she called 'that devil goat' sitting in the middle of a circle of feral goats up in the hills. She named him 'The Mince of Darkness' because of his small and twinkling hooves, and added, 'Not that I don't like him, stinky as he is. I've always been one for the horns, as you might say. Goats is clever. Sheep ain't. No offence, my dear. — Terry Pratchett

When Jesus describes Judgment, the famous separation of the sheep from the goats, he does not mention religious affiliation or sexual orientation or family values. He says, "I was hungry, and ye fed me not" (Matthew 25:42). — Marilynne Robinson

What are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? — Alfred Lord Tennyson

The constantly recurring question must be: What shall we unite with and from what shall we separate? The question of coexistence does not enter here, but the question of union and fellowship does. The wheat grows in the same field as the tares, but shall the two cross-pollinate? The sheep graze near the goats, but shall they seek to interbreed? The unjust and the just enjoy the same rain and sunshine, but shall they forget their deep moral differences and intermarry? ... The Spirit-illuminated church will have none of this — Aiden Wilson Tozer

I looked up at this train car full of strangers, and my heart soared. In New Hampshire, I'd always felt like a goat among sheep; until I got to New York it had never occurred to me that there could be a place filled with other goats. — Sarah Silverman

When God doesn't conform to our expectations, we're tempted to betray what we believe in. Like Judas, we're in it for what we can get out of it. So when God doesn't grant our wishes like a divine genie in a bottle, we are tempted to turn our back on Him.

This is what separates the boys from the men. Or maybe I should say the sheep from the goats! How do you react when God doesn't meet your expectations? If you truly accepted the invitation to follow Jesus, you'll keep going on through hurricanes, hail, and hazardous conditions. If you have simply invited Him to follow you, you'll bail out at the first sign of bad weather. — Mark Batterson

The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led. — Terry Pratchett

Men have always hated the wolf."
"Why?" said the boy indignantly, suddenly looking very unhappy indeed.
"Maybe because they see something in the wolf that they hate and fear in themselves. Maybe because wolves take their sheep and goats, as if we shouldn't all share life's bounty. — David Clement-Davies

To meet the huge consumer demand for fish, the industry can no longer rely on hunting wild fish. Now we are doing to fish what was done to wild cows, sheep, goats, chickens, and ducks thousands of years ago: we are confining them in holding pens. — Sharon Gannon

I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats. — J.M. Coetzee

Cultures of honor tend to take root in highlands and other marginally fertile areas, such as Sicily or the mountainous Basque regions of Spain. If you live on some rocky mountainside, the explanation goes, you can't farm. You probably raise goats or sheep, and the kind of culture that grows up around being a herdsman is very different from the culture that grows up around growing crops. The survival of a farmer depends on the cooperation of others in the community. But a herdsman is off by himself. Farmers also don't have to worry that their livelihood will be stolen in the night, because crops can't easily be stolen unless, of course, a thief wants to go to the trouble of harvesting an entire field on his own. But a herdsman does have to worry. He's under constant threat of ruin through the loss of his animals. So he has to be aggressive: he has to make it clear, through his words and deeds, that he is not weak. — Malcolm Gladwell

The ideas of justice of Europe and Africa are not the same and those of the one world are unbearable to the other. To the African there is but one way of counter-balancing the catastrophes of existence, it shall be done by replacement; he does not look for the motive of an action. Whether you lie in wait for your enemy and cut his throat in the dark; or you fell a tree, and a thoughtless stranger passes by and is killed; so far as punishment goes, to the Native mind, it is the same thing. A loss has been brought upon the community and must be made up for, somewhere, by somebody. The Native will not give time or thought to the weighing of guilt or desert; either he fears that this may lead him too far, or he reasons that such things are no concerns of his. But he will devote himself, in endless speculations, to the method by which crime or disaster shall be weighed up in sheep and goats - time does not count to him; he leads you solemnly into a sacred maze of sophistry. — Karen Blixen

The e-reader certainly sorts out the sheep from the goats, and divides those who need to read from those who like to turn the pages. — Margaret Drabble

Sheep and goats and cows
gather 'round a manger bed
to awe at a babe. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Goats, to the left with you!' the Judge one day will ordain. 'And you, little sheep, stand quietly here on my right!' - Fair enough; but it is to be hoped he will say one thing more, namely: 'As for you, stand right opposite me, you men of sense! — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

But there you put your finger on what it is that separates the sheep from the goats, and vice versa: imagination. Those who possess it have an afterlife; those who don't possess it, or in whom it has greatly atrophied, are reborn as plants or animals. It's as simple, and unfair, as that. You could almost say that heaven is no more than a fantasm generated by the excess energies of the pooled imaginations of the blessed. — Thomas M. Disch

The male has more teeth than the female in mankind, and sheep and goats, and swine. This has not been observed in other animals. Those persons which have the greatest number of teeth are the longest lived; those which have them widely separated, smaller, and more scattered, are generally more short lived. — Aristotle.

Slavery has been outlawed in most arab countries for years now but there are villages in jordan made up entirely of descendants of runaway Saudi slaves. Abdulrahman knows he might be free, but hes still an arab. No one ever wants to be the arab - its too old and too tragic, too mysterious and too exasperating, and too lonely for anyone but an actual arab to put up with for very long. Essentially, its an image problem. Ask anyone, Persian, Turks, even Lebanese and Egyptians - none of them want to be the arab. They say things like, well, really we're indo-russian-asian european- chaldeans, so in the end the only one who gets to be the arab is the same little old bedouin with his goats and his sheep and his poetry about his goats and his sheep, because he doesnt know that he's the arab, and what he doesnt know wont hurt him. — Diana Abu-Jaber

Haiku Christmas Story

New light in the sky
announces a sacred birth.
Shine brightly young star.

Hallelujah song
carries on a gentle wind,
heralding a king.

Shepherds lift their heads,
not to gaze at a new light
but to hear angels.

"Unto you is born
in the city of David
a Savior for all."

Born on straw at night
under low stable rafters,
Baby Jesus cried.

Sheep and goats and cows
gather 'round a manger bed
to awe at a babe.

Wise men come to see
a child of greater wisdom
and honor divine.

Rare and precious gifts,
gold and myrrh and frankincense,
to offer a king.

Mary and Joseph
huddle snugly together.
They cradle God's son.

On this wise He came,
the Son of God to the earth.
A humble wonder. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Sheep!" Angel cried, catching sight of some fluffy brown wool. "Anne is quite the animal lover," Fang said to me as we followed Angel. "Horses, sheep, goats. Chickens. Pigs." "Yeah," I said. "I wonder who's for dinner?" He flashed one of his rare smiles at me, and it was like the sun coming out. I felt my cheeks get hot and strode on ahead. — James Patterson

Like a dingy London bird among the birds at roost in these pleasant fields, where the sheep are all made into parchment, the goats into wigs, and the pasture into chaff, the lawyer, smoke-dried and faded, dwelling among mankind but not consorting with them, aged without experience of genial youth, and so long used to make his cramped nest in holes and corners of human nature that he has forgotten its broader and better range, comes sauntering home. In the oven made by the hot pavements and hot buildings, he has baked himself dryer than usual; and he has in his thirsty mind his mellowed port-wine half a century old. — Charles Dickens

It is quite affecting to observe how much the olive tree is to the country people. Its fruit supplies them with food, medicine and light; its leaves, winter fodder for the goats and sheep; it is their shelter from the heat and its branches and roots supply them with firewood. The olive tree is the peasant's all-in-all. — Fredrika Bremer

When a man really believes that it is necessary to do a certain thing to be happy forever, or that a certain belief is necessary to ensure eternal joy, there is in that man no spirit of concession. He divides the whole world into saints and sinners, into believers and unbelievers, into God's sheep and Devil's goats, into people who will be glorified and people who are damned. — Robert Green Ingersoll

I am told that in the heart of a vast, bowl-shaped valley deep inside the High Pamir where the sheep and the goats spend their summers grazing by the hundreds as far as the eye can see, there is a cold blue stream that meanders through emerald meadows until it spills into a small lake that carries the color of the sky and that the surface of this lake and the surrounding grasslands shiver in unison beneath the movement of a wind that never stops blowing. — Greg Mortenson

Matheus pondered which deity he'd annoyed in a previous life. Maybe if he figured out which sacrifices he'd skipped, he could make amends. Did they sell goats at the farmer's market? Matheus wrinkled his nose. He didn't want to leave the city, not to mention the issue of travelling with a goat. People frowned on sticking farm animals in the trunk. What if he got a rack of lamp and chanted over that? Sheep were kind of like goats. — Amy Fecteau

The ultimate reason why the democratic impulse is so strong - why we resist such differences - is that the sinful heart resents the final discrimination made in the judgment of God when He separates the sheep from the goats. Spelling tests smack of the Last Day. The way we manage our schools shows how, deep down, we would really like to abolish the Great White Throne Judgment. This resistance extends from the democratic government school system down to the most trivial awards ceremony. And judging from our awards ceremonies, many modern educators do not want God to separate the sheep from the goats. They want Him to hand out participant ribbons to all. — Douglas Wilson

All religions must, at their core, look forward to the end of this world and to the longed-for moment when all will be revealed and when the sheep will be divided from the goats, or whatever other bucolic Bronze-Age desert analogy might seem apt. (In Papua New Guinea, where as in most tropical climes there are no sheep, the Christians use the most valued animal of the locals and refer to the congregation as "swine." Flock, herd: what difference does it make?) Against this insane eschatology, with its death wish and its deep contempt for the life of the mind, atheists have always argued that this world is all that we have, and that our duty is to one another to make the very most and best of it. Theism cannot coexist with this unexceptionable conclusion. — Christopher Hitchens

Some of the parables that Matthew records and that Jesus delivered as part of his Olivet Discourse-such as the ten virgins and their lamps or the servants and the talents they were given-are some of the best known of Jesus' teachings. Reading them in the context of his prophecies about the end of the world, however, makes them clearly parables of preparation. To be on his right hand with his "sheep" rather than at his left hand with the "goats" at his return, we must prepare ourselves now. — Eric D. Huntsman

Behind us are two or three dozen country people from the outlying towns. With them are cages of chicken and goats, sheep, even cattle. That's where we fit on market day. Between the executions and the livestock sales. — Kristen Simmons

Just when I get my church all sorted out, sheep from the goats, saved from the damned, hopeless from the hopeful, somebody makes a move, get out of focus, cuts loose, and I see why Jesus never wrote systematic theology. So you and I can give thanks that the locus of Christian thinking appears to be shifting from North America and northern Europe where people write rules and obey them, to places like Africa and Latin America where people still know how to dance. — William Henry Willimon

My hope is that we can navigate through this world and our lives with the grace and integrity of those who need our protection. May we have the sense of humor and liveliness of the goats; may we have the maternal instincts and protective nature of the hens and the sassiness of the roosters. May we have the gentleness and strength of the cattle, and the wisdom, humility, and serenity of the donkeys. May we appreciate the need for community as do the sheep and choose our companion as carefully as do the rabbits. May we have the faithfulness and commitment to family as the geese, and adaptability and affability of the ducks. May we have the intelligence, loyalty, and affection of the pigs and the inquisitiveness, sensitivity, and playfulness of the turkeys.
My hope is that we learn from the animals what it is we need to become better people. — Colleen Patrick-Goudreau