A Quote by Jean de La Fontaine

Never sell the bear's skin before one has killed the beast. — © Jean de La Fontaine
Never sell the bear's skin before one has killed the beast.
There was a man who sold a hyena skin while the beast still lived and who was killed in hunting it.
Coming down off the trail, I am lost in my own thoughts and unprepared when a bear chugs across the path just before it gives out on the gravel road. I am so distracted that I keep walking towards the bear. I only stop when it rears, stands on hind legs, and stares at me, sensitive nose pressed into the air, weak eyes searching. I have never been this close to a wild bear before, but I am not frightened. There is no menace in its stance; it is not even curious. The bear seems to know who or what I am. The bear is not impressed.
I was reading a magazine when I was a little kid, probably about twelve years old, and an ad said that if you sell so many jars of Noxzema skin cream, we'll sell you a ukulele. So I went out and banged on doors in the snow in Quincy, Massachusetts, where I was raised, and I sold the skin cream.
I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there.
It is the lash of hunger which compels the poor man to submit. In order to live he must sell - 'voluntarily' sell - himself every day and hour to the 'beast of property.'
Fruits are always of the same nature with the seeds and roots from which they come, and trees are known by the fruits they bear: as a man begets a man, and a beast a beast, that society of men which constitutes a government upon the foundation of justice.
I will never be without information,' she determined. 'I will do better than my sisters. If a bird or any other beast comes out of that uncanny republic where husbands are grown, I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love.' For this is how Marya Morevna surmised that love was shaped: an agreement, a treaty between two nations that one could either sign or not as they pleased.
The will to domination is a ravenous beast. There are never enough warm bodies to satiate its monstrous hunger. Once alive, this beast grows and grows, feeding on all the life around it, scouring the earth to find new sources of nourishment. This beast lives in each man who battens on female servitude.
'Yogi Bear' changed my life in ways that I can't explain because it's not a full feature on me. 'Yogi Bear' - there's everything before 'Yogi Bear,' and there's everything after 'Yogi Bear.' Like a major car accident, or the birth of Christ.
Superstition changes a man to a beast, fanaticism makes him a wild beast, and despotism a beast of burden.
Beast?" Jane murmured. "Then God make me a beast; for, man or beast, I am yours.
A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast, the less he knows it.
I never sell a book. I sell myself. And the way to sell yourself is to be an instrument of love.
And didn't they say that, although curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought the beast back?
He couldn't bear to live, but he couldn't bear to die. He couldn't bear the thought of he making love to someone else, but neither could he bear the absence of the thought. And as for the note, he couldn't bear to keep it, but he couldn't bear to destroy it either.
I have seen many a bear led by a man: but I never before saw a man led by a bear.
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