"How can you say that?" retorted Don Quixote. "Do you not hear the neighing of the horses, the blaring of the trumpets, and the rattling of the drums?"
"All I can hear," replied Sancho, "is lots of sheep bleating."

It is not the wolf that cries, but the goat.

"Jeeves," I said, and I am free to admit that in my emotion I bleated like a lamb drawing itself to the attention of the parent sheep, "what the dickens is all this?"

The whole world, according to that account, is divided into two parts, the righteous and the unrighteous, figuratively called the sheep and the goats. They are then to receive their sentence. To the one, figuratively called the sheep, it says, “Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” To the other, figuratively called the goats, it says, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.

Every year in ancient Israel the high priest brought two goats into the Jerusalem temple on the Day of Atonement. He sacrificed one to expiate the sins of the community and then laid his hands on the other, transferring all the people’s misdeeds onto its head, and sent the sin-laden animal out of the city, literally placing the blame elsewhere. In this way, Moses explained, “the goat will bear all their faults away with it into a desert place.”1 In his classic study of religion and violence, René Girard argued that the scapegoat ritual defused rivalries among groups within the community.2 In a similar way, I believe, modern society has made a scapegoat of faith.

Maybe, he said hesitantly, maybe there is a beast.
The assembly cried out savagely and Ralph stood up in amazement. You, Simon? You believe in this?
I don't know, said Simon. His heartbeats were choking him.
[...]
Ralph shouted. Hear him! He's got the conch!
What I mean is . . . maybe it's only us.
Nuts! That was from Piggy, shocked out of decorum.

[T]he skin that graces the king's shoulders, the leopard knows who supplied it. When mother Goat nods at the sonorous sound of the drum, she is not dancing! It is because, each time it sounds, she recognizes the wailing of the leather!

"So he had them into the slaughter house, where was a butcher killing a sheep. And behold, the sheep was quiet and took her death patiently. Then said the Interpreter, "You must learn of this sheep to suffer, and put up wrongs without murmurings and complaints. Behold how quietly she takes her death! And without objecting she suffereth her skin to be pulled over her ears. Your King doth call you his sheep.

His [Victor's] voice rose suddenly, sounding shrill and aggrieved, as though someone was accusing him. That was where examinations of conscience tended to end — in a burst of pitiful anger. The Church was right; confession to a priest, carrying absolution and penance was wiser.

In a dead white field an untethered goat gave them sardonic greeting.