Foxes Quotes

“Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.

Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“When some claim demarcation and “regulation”, others fancy “deregulation”, preferring foxes guarding the henhouse or chicken yards with free chickens and free foxes. Friend or foe, hen or fox, anyone can have a go. (“This far”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Shake paws, count your claws,
You steal mine, I'll borrow yours.
Watch my whiskers, check both ears.
Robber foxes have no fears.”
― Brian Jacques

“When Gabriel was about Ivo's age," the duchess remarked almost dreamily, staring out at the plum-colored sky, "he found a pair of orphaned fox cubs in the woods, at a country manor we'd leased in Hampshire. Has he told you about that?"
Pandora shook her head, her eyes wide.
A reminiscent smile curved the duchess's full lips. "It was a pair of females, with big ears, and eyes like shiny black buttons. They made chirping sounds, like small birds. Their mother had been killed in a poacher's trap, so Gabriel wrapped the poor th-things in his coat and brought them home. They were too young to survive on their own. Naturally, he begged to be allowed to keep them. His father agreed to let him raise them under the gamekeeper's supervision, until they were old enough to return the f-forest. Gabriel spent weeks spoon-feeding them with a mixture of meat paste and milk. Later on, he taught them to stalk and catch prey in an outside pen."
"How?" Pandora asked, fascinated.
The older woman glanced at her with an unexpectedly mischievous grin. "He dragged dead mice through their pen on a string."
"That's horrid," Pandora exclaimed, laughing.
"It was," the duchess agreed with a chuckle. "Gabriel pretended not to mind, of course, but it was qu-quite disgusting. Still, the cubs had to learn." The duchess paused before continuing more thoughtfully. "I think for Gabriel, the most difficult part of raising them was having to keep his distance, no matter how he loved them. No p-petting or cuddling, or even giving them names. They couldn't lose their fear of humans, or they wouldn't survive. As the gamekeeper told him, he might as well murder them if he made them tame. It tortured Gabriel, he wanted to hold them so badly."
"Poor boy."
"Yes. But when Gabriel finally let them go, they scampered away and were able to live freely and hunt for themselves. It was a good lesson for him to learn."
"What was the lesson?" Pandora asked soberly. "Not to love something he knew he would lose?"
The duchess shook her head, her gaze warm and encouraging. "No, Pandora. He learned how to love them without changing them. To let them be what they were meant to be.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Spring

“She was named Jocaminca fforkes, with two small 'f's - as if having two 'f's wasn't pretentious enough”
― Jasper Fforde, The Constant Rabbit

“Our first point of discussion is the hunt. (...) My idea is to start the film with an image of the vixen locked out of her lair which has been plugged up. Her terror as she's pursued across the country. This is a big deal. It means training a fox from birth or dressing up a dog to look like a fox. Or hiring David Attenbrorough, who probably knows a few foxes well enough to ask a favour.”
― Emma Thompson, The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film

“Foxes were dreaded animals. They were not large or fierce, like the bears and tigers that roamed the mountains, but they were known to be fiendishly clever. some people even believed that foxes possessed evil magic. It was said that a fox could lure a man to his doom, tricking him into coming to its den, where somehow he would be fed to its offspring.

"Even to say the word made a trickle of fear run down Tree-Ear's spine...

"'So it was dusk, and I was still a good distance away. Suddenly, a fox appeared before me. It stopped there, right in the middle of the path, grinning with all its teeth shining white, licking its lips, its eyes glowing, its broad tail swishing back and forth slowly, back and forth-'

"'Enough!' Tree-Ear's eyes were wide with horror. 'What happened?'

"Crane-man picked up the last morsel of rice with his chopsticks and popped it into his mouth. 'Nothing,' he said. 'I have come to believe that foxes could not possibly be as clever as we think them. There I was, close enough to touch one, with a bad leg as well - and here I still am today.”
― Linda Sue Park, A Single Shard

“Everybody's life looks better when you're standing outside it, looking in, but that's never how it really is. We all got good things and bad things...”
― Torey Hayden

“Among the many fox magics her sobo had delighted in describing, the one that had most captured her imagination was the power to alter form. The most eldritch among foxes could turn (or so her grandmother would claim in that musical croak that was her storytelling voice) into human beings. The they would creep into the lives of lonely and impressionable souls and offer them long-sought affection.”
― Ali Shaw, The Trees

“Listen as the fox slowly and deftly unbinds his whole pack of tricks—his flattery and fine words, his warm and sugary russet charm, his bold-faced blandishments. He has brought forth a spool of raw lies and spun them into a glittering web of truth to trap them all. Every last one of them.”
― Anne Louise Avery, Reynard the Fox

“For friendship. For honor. Forever”
― Inbali Iserles, The Mage

“Run fast, be safe, live free.”
― Inbali Iserles, The Mage

“I see foxes often, but always they are crossing fallow fields in the distance. Gold flecks on faraway expanses of green. Magnetic to the meandering eye. Enigmatic, unreachable.”
― Sara Baume, A Line Made By Walking

“Sometimes concentrating on one lovely thing about each memory helped her remain upright. Like the foxes... she had 'hunted' with 'foxes'! Beautiful red-coated beasts who sometimes tangled under her feet like cats and let her scratch their throats. That had really happened. Focusing on their beauty kept her walking- shakily- and kept her stomach from reeling.”
― Liz Braswell, Once Upon a Dream

“Daughters don’t want their daddies to be foxes, they want them to be lions. No Poseidons. Only Zeuses.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“Yer it gave me comfort to know the wolves would keep our fallen in their thoughts. That somewhere, in a land of ice and flames, the memory of my family lived on.”
― Inbali Iserles, The Mage

“At once it struck me. Nothing can live without wonder. Wonder, perhaps, is the definition of life. The wild flowers stretch toward a sun they can never reach as if enamored of it, and it is when they are closest to that sun, blooming wide and grand, that they are most alive. The soaring birds, the creeping ants, even humans—all of them are wondering beings.”
― Bernard Voss, Nimbus

“The shiny black nose of a fox appears through her door before the rest of it steps tentatively across the wooden floor to where she’s cooking. A pile of children’s clothes lie discarded in a corner of the room. The fox knows what she is cooking and holds back a shudder. There are some things even foxes know better than to eat.”
― Amy Kuivalainen, Cry of the Firebird

“For the first time Gersen saw indigenous fauna of Moudervelt: a band of lizard-foxes, with gray-green pangolin scales and a single optic orb. They reared high to watch Gersen pass by; when he slowed the car they advanced with dancing sidelong steps, for purposes Gersen could not guess. He drove on, leaving the troop staring after him.”
― Jack Vance, The Book of Dreams

“Jean wondered how it might be to go out into the night and howl for sex. The clarity of purpose was appealing. No games.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“Long-limbed creatures like shards of ice given form stalked past, tall enough to plant the cobalt-and-silver banners atop various tents; wagons were hauled by sure-footed reindeer and lumbering white bears in ornate armour, some so keenly aware when they ambled by that I wouldn't have been surprised if they could talk. White foxes scuttled about underfoot, bearing what looked to be messages strapped to their little embroidered vests.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Wings and Ruin