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.

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

Who sleepeth with dogs shall rise with fleas.

Of all the creatures that breathe and creep on the surface of the earth, none is more to be pitied than man.

Man is merely a more perfect animal than the rest. He reasons better.

Happiness is a warm puppy.

Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals—except the weasel.

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.

Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.

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.

How like to us is that filthy beast the ape.

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