It had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together, in a few words, than in that speech: 'Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast, or a god.'

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.27,'Of Friendship'.

When people call this beast to mind, They marvel more and more At such a little tail behind, So large a trunk before.

-Belloc, (Joseph) Hilaire Pierre
  The Bad Child's Book of Beasts,'The Elephant'.

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Revelation13:17^18.

And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Revelation14:11.

Nae man can tether time or tide; The hour approachesTam maun ride; That hour, o'night's black arch the key-stane, That dreary hourTam mounts his beast in.

-Burns, Robert
  'Tam o' Shanter.  A  Tale'.

Dark Sappho! could not verse immortal save That beast imbued with such immortal fire? Could she not live who life eternal gave?

-Rochdale
^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 2, stanza 39.

Tea, although an Oriental, 212 Is a gentleman at least; Cocoa is a cad and coward, Cocoa is a vulgar beast.

-Chesterton, G(ilbert) K(eith)
  The Flying Inn, ch.18, stanza 3. Collected as'The Song of Right and Wrong' in Wine, Water and Song (1915).

And sad,Oh sad, that glen with one thin stream He met his death in; and a farmer told me There was but one small bird to shoot: it sang 'Better Beast and know your end, and die Than Man with murderous angels in his head.'

-Devlin, Denis
c.1956  'The Tomb of Michael Collins'.

If at times my eyes are lenses through which the brain explores constellations of feeling my ears yielding like swinging doors admit princes to the corridors into the mind, do not envy me. I have a beast on my back.

-Douglas, Gavin
  'Be"  te Noire'.

All, all of a piece throughout; Thy chase had a beast in view; Thy wars brought nothing about; Thy lovers were all untrue. 'Tis well an old age is out, And time to begin a new.

-Dryden,John
  The Secular Masque, l.92^7.

Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity? Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all? Is the eternal truth man's fighting soul Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?

-Eberhart, Richard Ghormley
  'The Fury of  Aerial Bombardment'.

It ain't a fit night out for man or beast.

-Fields,W C originally  William Claude Dukenfield
  The Fatal Glass of Beer.

Her occasional pretty and picturesque use of dialect wordsöthose terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.

-Hardy,Thomas
  The Mayor of Casterbridge, ch.20.

And a man who lay with a beast, said the Lord, would surelydie. And if he doesn't lie with a beast,Iwould have countered, he won't die?

-Heller,Joseph
  King David. God Knows, ch.2.

The nation seems to slouch onward into its uncertain future like some huge inarticulate beast, too much attainted by wounds and ailments to be robust, but too strong and resourceful to succumb.

-Hofstadter, Richard
Quoted in Hedrick Smith The Power Game (1988).

   The little sardine men crammed in a monster toy Who tilt their aggregate beast against our crumbling Troy.

-MacNeice, (Frederick) Louis
  Poems,'Turf-stacks'.

   Ah, Pythagoras'metempsychosis, were that time, This soul should fly from me, and I be changed Unto some brutish beast.

-Marlowe, Christopher
c.1592  Doctor Faustus (published1604), act 5, sc.2.

L'homme n'est ni ange ni be"  te, et le malheur veut que qui veut faire l'ange fait la be"  te. Man is neither angel nor beast.Unfortunately, he who wants to act the angel often acts the beast.

-Pascal, Blaise
c.1654^1662  Pense¤  es, pt.6, no.358.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest, In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer, Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little, or too much.

-Pope, Alexander
  An Essay on Man, epistle 2, l.1^12.

This rortie wretched city Sair come down frae its auld hiechts öThe hauf o't smug, complacent, Lost til all pride of race or spirit, The tither wild and rouch as ever In its secret hairt But lost alsweill, the smeddum tane, The man o'independent mind has cap in hand the day öSits on its craggy spine And drees the wind and rain That nourished all its genius öWeary wi centuries This empty capital snorts like a great beast Caged in its sleep, dreaming of freedom.

-Smith, Sydney Goodsir
  Of Edinburgh.'Kynd Kittock's Land' (Kynd Kittock is a character in the poetry of the16c Scottish poetWilliam Dunbar.) rortie=splendid, smeddum=spirit, drees=endures.