It is remarkable that only small birds properly sing.

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

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

Life is no way to treat an animal.

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.

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.

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

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all. 

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

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.

Happiness is a warm puppy.

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.

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