We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight.
We must recognise the essential underlaying savagery in the animal called man, and return to older and sounder principles of national life and defense. We must realise that man’s nature will remain the same so long as he remains man; that civilisation is but a slight coverlet beneath which the dominant beast sleeps lightly and ever ready to awake.
We know that we have looked back through the ivory gates into that world of wonder which was ours before we were wise and unhappy.
We call ourselves a dog’s “master” — but who ever dared call himself the “master” of a cat? We own a dog — he is with us as a slave and inferior because we wish him to be. But we entertain a cat — he adorns our hearth as a guest, fellow-lodger, and equal because he wishes to be there.
Very few minds are strictly normal, and all religious fanatics are marked with abnormalities of various sorts.
Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.
Two widely dissimilar races, whether equal or not, cannot peaceably coexist in the same territory until they are either uniformly mongrelised or cast in folkways of permanent and traditional personal aloofness.
Toil without song is like a weary journey without an end.
To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.
To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drift on a chartless, resistless sea. Let us sing when we can, and forget the rest.
Throw a stick, and the servile dog wheezes and pants and stumbles to bring it to you. Do the same before a cat, and he will eye you with coolly polite and somewhat bored amusement.
Through all this horror my cat stalked unperturbed. Once I saw him monstrously perched atop a mountain of bones, and wondered at the secrets that might lie behind his yellow eyes.
