Prey

Famous quotes containing the word prey:

    A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,
    Lay couching, head on ground, with cat-like watch
    When that the sleeping man should stir; for ‘tis
    The royal disposition of that beast
    To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of the snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda,—these are in the system, and our habits like theirs. You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity, expensive races,—race living at the expense of race.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)