A Quote by John Climacus

The man who pets a lion may tame it, but the man who coddles the body makes it ravenous. — © John Climacus
The man who pets a lion may tame it, but the man who coddles the body makes it ravenous.

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A man in the jungle at night, as someone said, may suppose a hyena's growl to be a lion's; but when he hears the lion's growl, he knows damn well it's a lion.
[I]t being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a Wolf or a lion.
On the one hand, man is a body, in the same way that this may be said of every other animal organism. On the other hand, man has a body. That is, man experiences himself as an entity that is not identical with his body, but that, on the contrary, has that body at its disposal. In other words, man's experience of himself always hovers in a balance between being and having a body, a balance that must be redressed again and again.
It is God's earth out of which man is taken. From it he has his body. His body belongs to his essential being. Man's body is not his prison, his shell his exterior, but man himself. Man does not "have" a body; he does not "have" a soul; rather he "is" body and soul. Man in the beginning is really his body. He is one. He is his body, as Christ is completely his body, as the Church is the body of Christ
The way to overcome the angry man is with gentleness, the evil man goodness, the miser with generosity, and the liar with truth. (Indian proverb) It sounds good, doesn’t it? If only people and life were that effing easy. Trust me, it takes more than a friendly biscuit to tame a hungry lion. And it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Then it’s war. (Savitar)
Men, specifically in the West, have no rights of passage, no way to know when they become a man. Everywhere else in the world you gotta kill a lion or stab a shark, or go on some journey, and you come back and you're a man. But here in the West, we're really kind of clueless as to what makes us a man.
Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind, as that though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he.
I may not be the man I want to be; I may not be the man I ought to be; I may not be the man I could be; I may not be the man I truly can be; but praise God, I'm not the man I once was
The man for whom the law exists - the man of forms, the conservative - is a tame man.
I never use a score when conducting my orchestra... Does a lion tamer enter a cage with a book on how to tame a lion?
It is faith that makes a lion of a man.
Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate—do you hear me? no man may start—the use of physical force against others.
For after years of living in a cage, a lion no longer even believes it is a lion . . . and a man no longer believes he is a man.
The great roe is a mythological beast with the head of a lion and the body of a lion, though not the same lion.
The difference between a brave man and a coward is a coward thinks twice before jumping in the cage with a lion. The brave man doesn't know what a lion is. He just thinks he does.
Love is a very contradiction of all the elements of our ordinary nature -- it makes the proud man meek -- the cheerful, sad -- the high-spirited, tame; our strongest resolutions, our hardiest energy fail before it. Believe me, you cannot prophesy of its future effect in a man from any knowledge of his past character.
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