Elephants Quotes

• Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.

  John Donne

  Masterpiece, Great Things

  'The Progress of the Soul' (1601) st. 39

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• You know...they say an elephant never forgets.
  What they don't tell you is, you never forget an elephant.

  Bill Murray

  Never Forget, Forget, Knows

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• I can watch elephants (and elephants alone) for hours at a time, for sooner or later the elephant will do something very strange... There is mystery behind that masked gray visage, and ancient life force, delicate and mighty, awesome and enchanted, commanding the silence ordinarily reserved for mountain peaks, great fires, and the sea.

  Peter Matthiessen

  Inspirational, Motivational, Animal

  Peter Matthiessen (1992). “African Silences”, Vintage

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• Women and elephants never forget.

  Dorothy Parker

  Memories, Inspiration, Never Forget

  Dorothy Parker (1944). “Dorothy Parker”

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• Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is "elephant".

  Charlie Chaplin

  Wicked World

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Animals are indeed more ancient, more complex and in many ways more sophisticated than us. They are more perfect because they remain within Nature’s fearful symmetry just as Nature intended. They should be respected and revered, but perhaps none more so than the elephant, the world’s most emotionally human land mammal.

  Daphne Sheldrick

  Animal, Land, Perfect

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• I was born in love with all elephants. Not for a reason that I know. Not because of any of their individual qualities — wisdom, kindness, power, grace, patience, loyalty — but for what they are altogether. For their entire elephantness.

  Pat Derby

  Loyalty, Kindness, Grace

  Pat Derby, Peter S. Beagle (1976). “The lady and her tiger”, Dutton Books

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• Our elders say that an elephant does not find its own trunk heavy.

  Zakes Mda

  Doe, Trunks, Heavy

  Zakes Mda (2007). “Ways of Dying: A Novel”, p.168, Macmillan

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• The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?

  David Attenborough

  Inspirational, Motivational, Book

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  If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

  Desmond Tutu

  Bullying, Peace, Feet

  FaceBook post by Desmond Tutu from Jan 22, 2014

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• If anyone wants to know what elephants are like, they are like people only more so.

  Pierre Corneille

  Animal, People, Want

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• The Internet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhoea - massive, difficult to re-direct, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it.

  Gene Spafford

  Mind, Computer, Internet

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• We are not the only animal that mourns; apes do, and elephants, and dogs. Yet we are the only one that tortures.

  Geraldine Brooks

  Dog, Animal, Apes

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• God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.

  Pablo Picasso

  Inspirational, Success, God

  Quoted in Francoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso (1964)

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• When eating an elephant take one bite at a time.

  Creighton W. Abrams, Jr.

  Eating, Bites

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• A true philosopher is like an elephant; he never puts the second foot down until the first one is solidly in place.

  Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

  Feet, Firsts, Philosopher

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• I get an urge, like a pregnant elephant, to go away and give birth to a book.

  Stephen Fry

  Pregnancy, Book, Writing

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• I have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants often consult me.

  Noel Coward

  Memories, Facts

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• What? Men dodging this way for single bullets? What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance.

  John Sedgwick

  War, Distance, Men

  John Sedgwick's final words said by him to his men who were ducking for cover at the battle of Spotsylvania, May 9, 1864.

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• The circus a place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting the fool.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Horse, Children, Animal

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.31, 谷月社

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• When millions of tons of angry elephant come spinning through the sky, and there was no one there to hear it, does it - philosopically speaking - make a noise

  Terry Pratchett

  Sky, Doe, Noise

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• It is curious how there seems to be an instinctive disgust in Man for his nearest ancestors and relations. If only Darwin could conscientiously have traced man back to the Elephant or the Lion or the Antelope, how much ridicule and prejudice would have been spared to the doctrine of Evolution.

  Havelock Ellis

  Men, Atheism, Prejudice

  Havelock Ellis (1915). “Impressions and comments”

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• We have all seen these circus elephants complete with tusks, ivory in their head and thick skins, who move around the circus ring and grab the tail of the elephant ahead of them.

  John F. Kennedy

  Moving, Ivory, Presidential

  Speech at the Cow Palace, San Francisco, California, on November 02, 1960. "John F. Kennedy Quotations: Profiles in Courage Quotations", www.jfklibrary.org.

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• The elephant, not only the largest but the most intelligent of animals, provides us with an excellent example. It is faithful and tenderly loving to the female of its choice, mating only every third year and then for no more than five days, and so secretly as never to be seen, until, on the sixth day, it appears and goes at once to wash its whole body in the river, unwilling to return to the herd until thus purified. Such good and modest habits are an example to husband and wife.

  Saint Francis de Sales

  Husband, Animal, Intelligent

  "Introduction to the Devout Life". Book by Saint Francis de Sales, 1609.

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• Age is a terrible thief. Just when you're getting the hang of life, it knocks your legs out from under you and stoops your back. It makes you ache and muddies your head and silently spreads cancer throughout your spouse.

  Sara Gruen

  Cancer, Age, Thieves

  Sara Gruen (2016). “The Sara Gruen Collection: Water for Elephants - At the Water's Edge - Ape House”, p.25, Hachette UK

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