Archive

Quotes

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

—Fran Lebowitz, 1981

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

—François Rabelais, 1535

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.

—St. Francis de Sales, 1609

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

—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BC

A bull contents himself with one meadow, and one forest is enough for a thousand elephants; but the little body of a man devours more than all other living creatures.

—Seneca the Younger, c. 64

The fox knows lots of tricks, the hedgehog only one—but it’s a winner.

—Archilochus, c. 650 BC

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

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

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.

—Joseph Addison, 1711

Who sleepeth with dogs shall rise with fleas.

—John Florio, 1578

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

Every ass thinks himself worthy to stand with the king’s horses.

—Gnomologia, 1732

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.

—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500