Known commonly as the jackass, this long-eared little creature is respected throughout the southwest--roundly cursed yet respected...--and here he is usually referred to by his Spanish name, burro. Because of his extraordinary bray, he is sometimes ironically called the "Arizona Nightingale."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You've got to just stand there and take it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There were many vessels, like gulls, skimming over the surface of the sea, now half concealed in its troughs, their dolphin- strik...ers plowing the water, now tossed on the top of the billows.... Some of these vessels lagged behind, while others steadily went ahead. We narrowly watched their rig and the cut of their jibs, and how they walked the water, for there was all the difference between them that there is between living creatures. But we wondered that they should be remembering Boston and New York and Liverpool, steering for them, out there; as if the sailor might forget his peddling business on such a grand highway. They had perchance brought oranges from the Western Isles; and were they carrying back the peel? We might as well transport our old traps across the ocean of eternity. Is that but another "trading flood," with its blessed isles? Is Heaven such a harbor as the Liverpool docks?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A jackass has that kind of strength, and puts it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to the world because he is a jackass; but a ...nobleman is not valuable because he is a jackass. It is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and should never have been attempted in the first place. And yet, once you start a mistake, the trouble is done and you never know what is going to come of it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity--these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace ...of them. They hide nothing; they are not ashamed. Man, with his soiled mind, covers himself. He will not even enter a drawing room with his breast and back naked, so alive are he and his mates to indecent suggestion. Man is "The Animal That Laughs." But so does the monkey, as Mr. Darwin pointed out; and so does the Australian bird that is called the laughing jackass. No--Man is the Animal that Blushes. He is the only one that does it--or has occasion to.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »