Archive

Quotes

Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.

—George Eliot, 1857

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

—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BC

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

—Thomas Browne, 1658

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.

—The Qur’an, c. 620

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

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

—Winston Churchill, 1945

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

—François Rabelais, 1535

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

A good dog, sir, deserves a good bone.

—Ben Jonson, 1633

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

—William Blake, 1807

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

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

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

—Alain de Lille, c. 1200