Archive

Quotes

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

—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BC

A good dog, sir, deserves a good bone.

—Ben Jonson, 1633

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.

—Thomas Hobbes, 1651

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

—Thomas Browne, 1658

Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.

—Alexander Pope, 1709

Alas! We are ridiculous animals.

—Horace Walpole, 1777

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.

—William Hazlitt, 1819

Of all the creatures that breathe and creep on the surface of the earth, none is more to be pitied than man.

—Homer, c. 750 BC

A dog starved at his master’s gate / Predicts the ruin of the state.

—William Blake, 1807

How like to us is that filthy beast the ape.

—Cicero, 45 BC

If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater, suggest that he wear a tail.

—Fran Lebowitz, 1981

Man is no man, but a wolf, to a stranger.

—Plautus, c. 200 BC

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. 

—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1821