Alas! We are ridiculous animals.

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.

Who sleepeth with dogs shall rise with fleas.

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

Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.

A good dog, sir, deserves a good bone.

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

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

The righteous know the needs of their animals, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.

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

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

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

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.