Archive

Quotes

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

—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BC

Keep running after a dog, and he will never bite you.

—François Rabelais, 1535

How like to us is that filthy beast the ape.

—Cicero, 45 BC

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

—Plautus, c. 200 BC

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

—Erasmus, 1511

In every man is a wild beast; most of them don’t know how to hold it back, and the majority give it full rein when they are not restrained by terror of law.

—Frederick the Great, 1759

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

—William Blake, 1807

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

Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.

—Erich Fromm, 1947

Alas! We are ridiculous animals.

—Horace Walpole, 1777

It is remarkable that only small birds properly sing.

—Charles Darwin, 1871

What delight can there be, and not rather displeasure, in hearing the barking and howling of dogs? Or what greater pleasure is there to be felt when a dog followeth a hare than when a dog followeth a dog?

—Thomas More, 1516

We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.

—Anna Sewell, 1877