Hippopotamus Quotes

Is a hippopotamus a hippopotamus, or just a really cool Opotamus? (Mitch Hedberg)

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.

Bertrand Russell

There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.

Carl Sandburg

I shoot the Hippopotamus with bullets made of platinum,because if I use the leaden one his hide is sure to flatten em.

Hilaire Belloc

To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size. The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern. I do not suppose that Henry Ford would find much difficulty in running Andorra or Luxembourg on a socialistic basis. He has already more men on his pay-roll than their population. It is conceivable that a syndicate of Fords, if we could find them, would make Belgium Ltd. or Denmark Inc. pay their way. But while nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge.

J. B. S. Haldane

A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from making such mistakes.

G. K. Chesterton

A city is where you can sign a petition, boo the chief justice, fish off a pier, gaze at a hippopotamus, buy a flower at the corner, or get a good hamburger or a bad girl at 4 a.m. A city is where sirens make white streaks of sound in the sky and foghorns speak in dark grays. San Francisco is such a city.

Herb Caen

I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That's why we've got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.

Kurt Vonnegut

I found in one of the tombs an inscription saying, 'If you touch my tomb, you will be eaten by a crocodile and hippopotamus.' It doesn't mean the hippo will eat you, it means the person really wanted his tomb to be protected.

Zahi Hawass

The Natural History Museum is open to the public on Tuesdays and Fridays. Elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus; extraordinary animals! Rubens rendered them marvellously. I had a feeling of happiness as soon as I entered the place and the further I went the stronger it grew. I felt my whole being rise above commonplaces and trivialities and the petty worries of my daily life.

Eugène Delacroix

The broad-backed hippopotamus
Rests on his belly in the mud;
Although he seems so firm to us
He is merely flesh and blood. (T. S. Eliot)

A pretext presented itself; some insult needed to be avenged, or some debt to be collected. Six battleships, fourteen cruisers, and eighteen transports sailed up the mouth of the river Hippopotamus. Six hundred canoes vainly opposed the landing of the troops. Admiral Vivier des Murenes' cannons produced an appalling effect upon the blacks, who replied to them with flights of arrows, but in spite of their fanatical courage they were entirely defeated. Popular enthusiasm was kindled by the newspapers which the financiers subsidised, and burst into a blaze. Some Socialists alone protested against this barbarous, doubtful, and dangerous enterprise. They were at once arrested.

Anatole France

Behold the hippopotamus! We laugh at how he looks to us, And yet in moments dank and grim, I wonder how we look to him.

Ogden Nash

It looks like a miniature hippopotamus with badly-fitting panty hose all over.

Roger Caras

I have a hippopotamus skull next to my bed, called Gregory. When I was six, my three sisters and I clubbed together and paid £4 for it in a junk shop. We collected owl pellets, ostrich eggs and sheep skulls for our natural history museum at home.

Deborah Moggach

Away on the hilltop sat combing her hair His fair Hippopotamine maid. The Hippopotamus was no ignoramus And sang her this sweet serenade: Mud! Mud! Glorious mud! Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood. So, follow me, follow, down to the hollow, And there let us wallow in glorious mud.

Michael Flanders

He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk Descending from the bus He looked again, and found it was A Hippopotamus. If this should stay to dine,' he said, There won't be much for us'

Lewis Carroll

When Reginald Iolanthe Perrin set out for work on the Thursday morning, he had no intention of calling his mother-in-law a hippopotamus.

David Nobbs