Life is no way to treat an animal.

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

Man and animals are really the conduit of food, the sepulcher of animals, and resting place of the dead, one causing the death of the other, making themselves the covering for the corruption of other dead bodies.

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men, but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

The elephant, although a gross beast, is yet the most decent and most sensible of any other upon earth. Although he never changes his female, and hath so tender a love for her whom he hath chosen, yet he never couples with her but at the end of every three years, and then only for the space of five days.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

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. 

Be a good animal, true to your animal instincts.

Men, my dear, are very queer animals—a mixture of horse nervousness, ass stubbornness, and camel malice.

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.

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

I hate the sight of monkeys; they remind me so of poor relations.

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.