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

Alas! We are ridiculous animals.

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

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

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

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.

There are some who, if a cat accidentally comes into the room, though they neither see it nor are told of it, will presently be in a sweat and ready to die away.

Who hears the fishes when they cry?

How like to us is that filthy beast the ape.

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

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.

Animals are in possession of themselves; their soul is in possession of their body. But they have no right to their life, because they do not will it. 

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