Bears

Magnificent bears of the Sierra are worthy of their magnificent homes. They are not companions of men, but children of God, and His charity is broad enough for bears. They are the objects of His tender keeping.

Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family Ursidae. They are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans. Although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Northern Hemisphere and partially in the Southern Hemisphere. Bears are found on the continents of North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. Common characteristics of modern bears include large bodies with stocky legs, long snouts, small rounded ears, shaggy hair, plantigrade paws with five nonretractile claws, and short tails. While the polar bear is mostly carnivorous, and the giant panda feeds almost entirely on bamboo, the remaining six species are omnivorous with varied diets.

Quotes

• Man is a great blunderer going about in the woods, and there is no other except the bear makes so much noise.
  • Mary Austin, The Land of Little Rain (1903), p. 60.

• Not unlike the bear which bringeth forth
  In the end of thirty dayes a shapeless birth;
  But after licking, it in shape she drawes,
  And by degrees she fashions out the pawes,
  The head, and neck, and finally doth bring
  To a perfect beast that first deformed thing.
  • Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578), First Week, First Day. Compare: "I had not time to lick it into form, as a bear doth her young ones", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader.

• He who shareth honey with the bear hath the least part of it.
  • Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia (1732)

• The grizzly bear is huge and wild;
  He has devoured the infant child.
  The infant child is not aware
  He has been eaten by the bear.
  • A. E. Housman, Infant Innocence (1936)

• Make ye no truce with Adam-zad—the Bear that walks like a man.
  • Rudyard Kipling, The Truce of the Bear; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 57.

• When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
  He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
  But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
  For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
  • Rudyard Kipling, "The Female of the Species: A Study in Natural History", st. 1, in The Morning Post (20 October 1911)

• The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
  • Thomas Macaulay, History of England (1849-1861), Volume I, chapter 3.

• Magnificent bears of the Sierra are worthy of their magnificent homes. They are not companions of men, but children of God, and His charity is broad enough for bears. They are the objects of His tender keeping.
  • John Muir, reported in Linnie Marsh Wolfe, John of the Mountains: the Unpublished Journals of John Muir (1938), p. 82.

• Bears are made of the same dust as we, and breathe the same winds and drink of the same waters. A bear's days are warmed by the same sun, his dwellings are overdomed by the same blue sky, and his life turns and ebbs with heart-pulsings like ours, and was poured from the same First Fountain. And whether he at last goes to our stingy heaven or no, he has terrestrial immortality. His life not long, not short, knows no beginning, no ending.
  • John Muir, reported in Linnie Marsh Wolfe, John of the Mountains: the Unpublished Journals of John Muir (1938), p. 82-83.

• I have camped where the grizzly bears were plentiful. It is nice that they are on the planet and all that, but I prefer my grizzlies shy, not too hungry, and far enough away to be picturesque.
  • Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order (2021), p. 315

• The bears are just being bears. We are way more of a threat to them. Bear attacks are so rare. And fatalities are even rarer. The bears' lives are more at threat than ours in encounters.
  • Beth Pratt of the National Wildlife Federation, quoted in "You come across a bear. Your next move is very important. Do you know what to do?", CNN (October 9, 2021)

• Some days you get the bear. Some days the bear gets you.
  • Proverb, origin unknown. Reported in, inter alia, Josh Pons, Country Life Diary (1992), p. 6.

• In the night, imagining some fear,
  How often is a bush suppos'd a bear?
  • Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, act 5, scene 1, Theseus

• O, she will sing the savageness out of a bear!
  • Shakespeare, Othello, act 4, scene 1, Othello

• This is the chase: I am gone for ever.
  [Exit, pursued by a bear.]
  • Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale, act 3, scene 3

In the Bible

The bear (דֹּב‎ dōb̲) spoken of in the Bible is the Syrian brown bear, which is now extinct in the Levant. Bears were highly feared on account of their ferocious and destructive instincts; to dare one was accordingly a mark of uncommon courage (1 Samuel 17:34–36). Its terror-striking roars and its fierceness, especially when robbed of its cubs, are repeatedly alluded to.

• And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
  • 2 Kings 2:23-25 (KJV)
  • The meaning of the original Hebrew is ambiguous. Cp. the NIV translation: “From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. ‘Go on up, you baldhead!’ they said. ‘Go on up, you baldhead!’ He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.”

• The LORD that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.
  • 1 Samuel 17:34–36 (KJV)