Top 100 The Elephant Quotes
#1. Michelangelo was once asked how he would carve an elephant. He replied, I would take a large piece of stone and take away everything that was not the elephant.
Sharon Salzberg
#2. Of all footprints, that of the elephant is supreme. Similarly, of all mindfulness meditations, that on death is supreme.
Gautama Buddha
#3. Worn out by suffering, we lie on our great backs, tossing grass up to heaven - as a distraction, not a prayer. That's not humility you see on our long final journeys: it's procrastination. It hurts my heavy body to lie down. - DAN CHIASSON, The Elephant
Jodi Picoult
#4. Did Maleldil suggest that our own world might have been saved if the elephant had accidentally trodden on the serpent a moment before Eve was about to yield?
C.S. Lewis
#5. So, gently, and using the greatest of care, the elephant stretched his great trunk through the
air, and he lifted the dust speck and carried it over and placed it down, safe, on a very soft
clover
Dr. Seuss
#6. There was talk of the Centaur being moved into the elephant cages to make room for a banjo-picking Minotaur. Surrendering his meager furnishings to a musical half man half bull was all bull.
Don Roff
#8. Their version of rock-paper-scissors was elephant - fist, mouse - palm, and ant - little finger. The elephant crushed the mouse, the mouse squashed the ant, and the ant crawled up the elephant's trunk and paralyzed his brain.
Colin Cotterill
#9. Even the elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys. The perfection of traveling is to travel without baggage.
Henry David Thoreau
#10. Never ignore the elephant in the room. That's rude; play with it and introduce it.
Donna Lynn Hope
#11. The elephant is never won by anger; nor must that man who would reclaim a lion take him by the teeth.
John Dryden
#12. Better it is to live alone; there is no fellowship with a fool. Live alone and do no evil; be carefree like an elephant in the elephant forest.
Gautama Buddha
#13. Patriarchy is like the elephant in the room that we don't talk about, but how could it not affect the planet radically when it's the superstructure of human society.
Ani DiFranco
#14. When you hear the elephant music you're hearing what they mean to make.
Dave Soldier
#15. There is a delicacy in it equalled only by the daintiness of the elephant's trunk.
Herman Melville
#16. The elephant goad represents Yama, the god of death and bondage. Ganesha thus acknowledges the life-giving aspect of nature as well as the life-taking aspect of nature.
Devdutt Pattanaik
#17. 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
#18. And the elephant sings deep in the forest-maze
About a star of deathless and painless peace
But no astronomer can find where it is.
Ted Hughes
#19. I had no time to make a world of my own: I had to stay fixed like Atlas, my feet on the elephant's back and the elephant on the tortoise's back. To inquire on what the tortoise stood would be to go mad.
Henry Miller
#20. The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy; his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure.
William Shakespeare
#21. In Haydn's oratorios, the notes present to the imagination not only motions, as, of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, but colors also; as the green grass.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#22. I know my Republican friends were glad to see my wife feeding an elephant in India. She gave him sugar and nuts. But of course the elephant wasn't satisfied.
John F. Kennedy
#23. The elephant which supports the world is called Muha-pudma, and the the tortoise which supports the elephant is called Chukwa. In some of the Eastern mythologies we are told that the world stands on the backs of eight elephants, called Achtequed-jams.
E. Cobham Brewer
#24. I always think I look like the Elephant Man - I can't get used to my own image.
Brian Cox
#25. That's odd. It looks almost as if Nick is picking a fight with that elephant."
"Well, the elephant started it."
"That's irrelevant. Fighting with civilians is against the rules. Go break it up."
-Admiral Breya Andreyasn & Sergeant Schlock
Howard Tayler
#26. She is the elephant's eyebrows," Evie whispered appreciatively. "Those jewels! How her neck must ache."
"That's why Bayer makes aspirin," Mabel whispered back, and Evie smiled, knowing that even a socialist wasn't immune to the dazzle of a movie star.
Libba Bray
#27. Not every ant which stays under the elephant's foot dies; the most powerful cannot always kill the weakest!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#28. The knife flaying the elephant does not have to be large, only sharp!
Andre Norton
#29. Before you eat the elephant, make sure you know what parts you want to eat.
Todd Stocker
#30. I don't know if you picked up on the elephant in the room ... but we're witches. Angela, Andrea, me, and Evelyn and Celia back home.
Aunt Maddy from The Ragtime Coven
Bruce Jenvey
#31. By the time you get to your sixth record, some of the benefits of being in a band are grander than ever, but some of the obstacles are just massive. You deal with these lateral subjects, and all that is left is the elephant in the room.
Josh Homme
#32. If the Rider isn't sure exactly what direction to go, he tends to lead the Elephant in circles. And as we'll see, that tendency explains the third and final surprise about change: What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.
Chip Heath
#33. She looked up to see all three of them looking at her. She put her spoon down, knowing she wasn't going to be able to eat until they got the elephant out of the room.
What happened a year ago ... shouldn't have happened, she said in a low voice
Maya Banks
#34. I sounded like Horton the Elephant. "A person is a person no matter how small." What the hell was I doing standing in the middle of a cave, in the dark, surrounded by wererats, quoting Dr. Seuss, and trying to kill a one-thousand-year-old vampire?
Laurell K. Hamilton
#35. Life after death is the elephant in the living room, the one that we are not supposed to notice.
Dinesh D'Souza
#36. We are so used to the elephant in the room that sometimes we forget it is there
Aminatta Forna
#37. They say that vegetable food is not sufficiently nutritious. But chemistry proves the contrary. So does physiology. So does experience ... And again: the largest and strongest animals in the world are those which eat no flesh-food of any kind - the elephant and the rhinoceros.
R. Trall
#38. Some animals are cunning and evil-disposed, as the fox; others, as the dog, are fierce, friendly, and fawning. Some are gentle and easily tamed, as the elephant; some are susceptible of shame, and watchful, as the goose. Some are jealous and fond of ornament, as the peacock.
Aristotle.
#40. I saw David Lynch's 'The Elephant Man' when I was 15. I was completely bowled over. I found it so beautiful, strange and mesmerizing that I went back to the cinema every night for a week to see it.
Ben Daniels
#41. This man, lady, hath robb'd many beasts of their particular additions: he is as valiant as a lion, churlish as the bear, slow as the elephant-a man into whom nature hath so crowded humours that his valour is crush'd into folly, his folly sauced with discretion.
William Shakespeare
#42. All the religions are true, they just see a different part of the elephant.
George Lucas
#43. 'Helping industry' is the elephant pit of socialism, a deep hole with sharp spikes at the bottom, covered over with twigs and fresh grass.
Enoch Powell
#44. As the elephant is powerless to think in the terms of the ant, in spite of the best intentions in the world, even so is the Englishman powerless to think in the terms of, or legislate for, the Indian.
Mahatma Gandhi
#45. The Elephant Man claimed his head was big because, it's so full of dreams. Actually, it's because his skull was shaped like a turkey.
Dana Gould
#46. The elephant in the room has always been simulator sickness and disorientation. That's one of the biggest challenges.
Brendan Iribe
#47. When she's gone, Tom dares to look at Sam and then the ultrasound photo again. You've fathered the elephant man. Someone has to tell her.
Melina Marchetta
#48. If the bees which seek the liquid oozing from the head of a lust-intoxicated elephant are driven away by the flapping of his ears, then the elephant has lost only the ornament of his head. The bees are quite happy in the lotus filled lake.
Chanakya
#49. I like to think of my people as mute optimists - leave the elephant alone and, eventually, perhaps with the help of a couple mimosas, he will disappear from the room on his own accord.
Julie Buxbaum
#50. I went to the animals' fair, The birds and the beasts were there, The old baboon By the light of the moon Was combing his auburn hair; The monkey he got drunk, And fell on the elephant's trunk, The elephant sneezed And fell on his knees - And what became of the monkety-monk?
James M. Cain
#51. What is true for E. coli is also true for the elephant.
Jacques Monod
#52. The modern spirit is the genius of Greece with the genius of India for its vehicle; Alexander upon the elephant.
Victor Hugo
#53. Unlike the primate hand, the elephant's grasping organ is also its nose. Elephants use their trunks not only to reach food but also to sniff and touch it. With their unparalleled sense of smell, the animals know exactly what they are going for. Vision is secondary.
Frans De Waal
#54. And that is how Goodwin problems were always fixed. Fix them on the surface but don't go to the root, always ignoring the elephant in the room. I think that morning was when I realized I'd grown up with an elephant in every room of my life. It was practically our family pet.
Cecelia Ahern
#55. If size mattered, the elephant would be king of the jungle.
Rickson Gracie
#56. The elephant's trunk strokes her cheek, her throat, her forehead, before slipping the scarf free and lifting it, so that the wind carries it off like a rumor.
Jodi Picoult
#57. The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider's job is to serve the elephant.
Jonathan Haidt
#58. The four movies I can remember seeing as a kid were 'The Elephant Man,' 'The Magnificent Seven,' 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' and 'Mad Max!' Two of those are westerns. So the western genre is emblazoned on my memory from childhood, and those are two great movies.
Casey Affleck
#59. Money, you could say, was the elephant in The Room.
Greg Sestero
#60. I first got involved with Mel Brooks through 'The Elephant Man.' Everybody knows now, but they didn't know at the time that he was the producer.
John Hurt
#61. The Elephant of Depression wasn't just parked on my chest, it was relaxing there with the Walrus of Gloom and the Hippo of Bleak Friday Nights in Alone. They had beers. They were settling in.
Hester Browne
#62. Giving advice is like seeing an elephant in someone's path and suggesting they remove it. Heeding advice requires forcing the elephant to budge. Huge difference.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#63. It is in some ways more troublesome to track and swat an evasive wasp than to shoot, at close range, a wild elephant. But the elephant is more troublesome if you miss.
C.S. Lewis
#64. Time magazine put Chris Christie on the cover with the caption, 'The Elephant in the Room.' And People magazine named him 'Sexiest Garbage Truck in a Suit.'
Bill Maher
#65. We're adding a billion people every decade. We're just spin doctors. Whatever we do is supposedly great, and yet it's always at the expense of diversity and nature. We're like elephants. The ecology of the elephant is more similar to human than any other.
Peter Beard
#66. And that is how the problems were always fixed. Fix them on the surface but don't go to the root, always ignoring the elephant in the room. I think that morning was when I realized I'd grown up with an elephant in every room. It was practically our family pet.
Cecelia Ahern
#67. He who mounts a wild elephant goes where the elephant goes.
Randolph Bourne
#68. There is no creature among all the Beasts of the world which hath so great and ample demonstration of the power and wisdom of almighty God as the Elephant.
Edward Topsell
#69. But my mother loved The Elephant Man, and my father gave David Lynch a scholarship to study in Rome.
Isabella Rossellini
#70. Oys by civil calculations, we had by now roughed up the swami and slept where the elephant shits, Shocking us would have required some kind of genius.
Woe To Live On
Daniel Woodrell
#71. Let's get the elephant out of the room. I'm a conservative Democrat.
Scott Howell
#72. I'll do anything to keep everyone laughing. Things get too intense on film sets. I remember on The Elephant Man, I used to imitate a cat without moving my lips. David Lynch would say, "Cut! Sorry, we've got a noise somewhere on set." Everyone would be looking around for this cat.
Anthony Hopkins
#73. Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.
Michael Caine
#74. Erwin, Tennessee, has the unusual distinction of being the only town in America to have hung an elephant. That was in 1916, and the elephant had it coming. Since then there have been no more elephant incidents.
David Miller
#75. Always drawn to the theatric, Bowie also performed in stage productions of "The Elephant Man" and just recently collaborated on "Lazarus," an off-Broadway musical that's a sequel to his 1976 role in the film "The Man Who Fell To Earth."
David Bowie
#76. Was it home, the mercury-lit street? Was he returning like the elephant to his graveyard, to lie down and soon become ivory in whose bulk slept, latent, exquisite shapes of chessmen, backscratchers, hollow open-work Chinese spheres nested one inside the other?
Thomas Pynchon
#77. The night before 'The Elephant Man' opened, we had a sleepover for 12 kids. Being organized is the key.
Scott Ellis
#79. Q: What's the difference between a tweaker and an elephant?
A: The elephant will eat all your peanut butter.
Bucky Sinister
#81. There is a vast asymmetry in the dynamic here that Billy can't quite put his finger on, even though it's the elephant shitting all over the room.
Ben Fountain
#82. The elephant smoked too much.(explaining why the keys of his piano were so yellow)
Victor Borge
#83. The lion's blessing is in his strength; the monkey's blessing is in his cunning; and the elephant's blessing is in his might.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#84. I was called 'Dumbo,' like the elephant, as a child because I couldn't understand things at school.
Anthony Hopkins
#85. Ella is nervous," the harpy muttered from her perch on the railing. "The elephant. The elephant is watching Ella.
Rick Riordan
#86. I am trying to call attention to the elephant in the room that everybody is too polite - or too devout - to notice: religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that religion has on human life.
Richard Dawkins
#88. The elephant can survive only if forests survive.
Mark Shand
#90. There was a low rumbling. "I'm going to kill somebody," said the Elephant. "As soon as I figure out who."
"Whoa, dear heart," said the Marquis, rubbing his hands together. "You mean whom.
Neil Gaiman
#91. Another example of how connected we all are, and are meant to be, is the story of the "elephant whisperer," the late Lawrence Anthony. He was a conservationist who saved the lives of countless elephants
Christiane Northrup
#92. If the world held magic powerful enough to make the elephant appear, then there must exist, too, magic in equal measure, magic powerful enough to undo what had been done.
Kate DiCamillo
#93. Do we really want to know how Michael Jackson makes his music? No. We want to understand why he needs the bones of the Elephant Man
and, until he tells us, it doesn't make too much difference whether or not he really is 'bad.
Frank Zappa
#94. Whimper in the dark, and knew that Vixen had found me at last. She knew as well as I did that if there is one thing in the world the elephant is more afraid of than another it is a little barking dog. So she
Rudyard Kipling
#95. When the elephant decides to walk through the village, all the dogs come out and bark.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
#97. The Bible is a stream of running water, where alike the elephant may swim, and the lamb walk without losing its feet.
Pope Gregory I
#98. She nods and the elephant in the room throws back its head and trumpets so loud I think the roof might come off.
Sharon Bolton
#99. Everything must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindus give the world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand upon a tortoise.
Mary Shelley
#100. We are, more and more, our own defects and not our qualties.
The Elephant's Journey
Jose Saramago
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