What is beast?

Famous quotes containing the word beast:

    Through light-obliterating garden foliage what magic drum?
    Down limb and breast or down that glimmering belly move his mouth and sinewy tongue.
    What from the forest came? What beast has licked its young?
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    But the dark changed to red, and torches shone,
    And deafening music shook the leaves; a troop
    Shouldered a litter with a wounded man,
    Or smote upon the string and to the sound
    Sang of the beast that gave the fatal wound.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)