Creature Quotes
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Because the divine goodness could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, God produced many and diverse creatures, that what was wanting in one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness, which in God is simple and uniform, in creatures is manifold and divided. Thus the whole universe together participates in the divine goodness more perfectly and represents it better than any single creature.
Thomas Aquinas
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O God, I confess I am not worthy to rock that little babe or wash its diapers, or to be entrusted with the care of a child and its mother. How is it that I without any merit have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? Oh, how gladly will I do so. Though the duty should be even more insignificant and despised, neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labor will distress me for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight.
Elisabeth Elliot
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There is in every animal's eye a dim image and gleam of humanity, a flash of strange light through which their life looks out and up to our great mystery of command over them, and claims the fellowship of the creature if not of the soul.
John Ruskin
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Excellent creature! How my soul pants for thee!
Edward Joseph Young
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The challenge of modern freedom, or the combination of isolation and freedom which confronts you, is to make yourself up. The danger is that you may emerge from the process as a not-entirely-human creature. (Referenced in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young)
Saul Bellow
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I wrote to one of my doctors:
I could never have guessed what would get me through this past year - a woodland snail and its offspring; I honestly don't think I would have made it otherwise. Watching another creature go about its life...somehow gave me, the watcher, purpose too. If life mattered to the snail and the snail mattered to me, it meant something in my life mattered, so I kept on...
Elisabeth Tova Bailey
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One has to respect the preferences of another creature, no matter its size, and I did so gladly.
Elisabeth Tova Bailey
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Who do we think we are — we small creatures with three-pound brains, a few limited senses, and life spans barely long enough to get to know our neighborhood, much less the planet, and much less the galaxy, and much less the universe, and much less still its creator! Who do we think we are to be able to define or even describe the creator of DNA, galaxies, dust mites, blue whales, the carbon cycle, light, and a billion other realities we have no notion about whatsoever, no awareness of at all?
Brian D. McLaren
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I liked the sound of the word 'snail' every time I said it; the word was as small and simple as the creature itself.
Elisabeth Tova Bailey