Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.

Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals—except the weasel.

Alas! We are ridiculous animals.

An ape will be an ape, though clad in purple.

There be beasts that, at a year old, observe more, and pursue that which is for their good more prudently, than a child can do at ten.

Animals are in possession of themselves; their soul is in possession of their body. But they have no right to their life, because they do not will it. 

Every creature in the world is like a book and a picture, to us, and a mirror.

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave.

Who hears the fishes when they cry?

I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his nonvulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature—not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor.

Go to the ant, you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise.

Do you not see how God is praised by those in the heavens and those on earth? The very birds praised Him as they wing their way.