Quotes from Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

Then, too, the Ju/wa men had an inherent, almost natural bravery that everyone took entirely for granted. They hunted the world's most dangerous game with quarter-ounce arrows, they stood off lions and dealt with strangers, all without a shred of the bravado or machismo that so characterizes the men of other societies, including ours. The Ju/wa men simply did what men do without making anything of it, and didn't even think of themselves as brave.

Death is the price we pay for life.

Many of the names on the gravestones are also the names of town roads, which reminded me of my long-ago childhood, when these roads were essentially long unpaved driveways named for the people whose farms were at the ends of them.

Fall, winter, fall; for he, Prompt hand and headpiece clever, Has woven a winter robe, And made of earth and sea His overcoat forever, And wears the turning globe.

joined them later understood the arrangement, and fitted

The Night Is Freezing Fast," by A. E. Housman

This was what you did in the '50s: You get married, get a job, put your husband through graduate school, and have two kids - a girl and a boy.

We fill the woods with invasive primates camouflaged to look like piles of leaves who sneak around, sprinkling estrus doe urine and manipulating gadgets that sound like antlers clashing.

We used to go in the woods by ourselves, and you can't help noticing the world then, especially animals. People used to know a lot about the natural world, especially in the country.

Besides individual things like thunder and gunshots, what dogs fear most is not belonging, being alone.

Not even a maggot is an it, and to refer to any animal in that manner is an affectation, an ignorant stab at science-speak.

Many expressions of a cat's feelings seem deeply related to the capture of live prey.

People didn't think animals thought or remembered or had minds! They most certainly do: any pet owner knows more than a lot of scientists about animals.

With all due respect to the nation's fish and game departments, more deer die because people hunt them than because people feed them.

Once you're known to be an alcoholic, that's how many people identify you, which could be a reason not to talk about it.

To sit idly, not doing, merely experiencing, comes hard to a primate.

People acquire a dog, don't understand it, can't train it, get fed up, and... offer it for adoption, hoping to pass on the problem to somebody else. But nobody wants a problem dog.

In truth, most of us don't know our cats.

We are surely the primary agent of death for all members of the cat tribe. For many if not most cat species, our depredations must surpass accidents, disease, and even starvation by a considerable margin.

No other creatures of the savannah sleep as deeply or as soundly as lions, but after all, lions are the main reason for not sleeping soundly.

Every day, the humane societies execute thousands of dogs who tried all their lives to do their very best by their owners. These dogs are killed not because they are bad but because they are inconvenient. So as we need God more than he needs us, dogs need us more than we need them, and they know it.

I always thought of deer as solitary animals that weren't very interesting. But my goodness, that was very wrong. The big eye-opener for me was that they're social. They have family groups.

You have to be able to love members of your own species before you can branch out and apply that to other species.

Dogs who live in each other's company are calm and pragmatic, never showing the desperate need to make known their needs and feelings or to communicate their observations, as some hysterical dogs who know only the company of our species are likely to do.