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Quotes

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

—Book of Proverbs, c. 500 BC

Be a good animal, true to your animal instincts.

—D.H. Lawrence, 1911

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

—François Rabelais, 1535

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

—Erasmus, 1511

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 hears the fishes when they cry?

—Henry David Thoreau, 1849

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.

—John Ruskin, 1860

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.

—William Hazlitt, 1819

Man is a troublesome animal and therefore is not very manageable.

—Plato, c. 349 BC

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

—Archilochus, c. 650 BC

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

—Fran Lebowitz, 1981

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

—George Eliot, 1857

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

—T. H. Huxley, 1895