Miscellaneous animal quotes

Animal quotes that don't fit into the other categories.



Lots of people talk to animals. Not very many listen, though. That's the problem.
-Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

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.
-Voltaire

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
-George Eliot

The man who is described as behaving like a beast would often in his behavior be a disgrace to any known animal.
-Ernest Bell

Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored.
-Alice Walker

Man is the only animal that blushes, or has a need to.
-Mark Twain

Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied.
-Henry George

An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.
-Martin Buber

Man is rated the highest animal, at least among all animals who returned the questionnaire.
-Robert Brault

It is much easier to show compassion to animals. They are never wicked.
-Haile Selassie

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.
-Anatole France

This is what you should do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men...re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss what insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem.
-Walt Whitman

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

Many birds and beasts are...as fit to go to Heaven as many human beings - people who talk of their seats there with as much confidence as if they had booked them at a box office.
-Leigh Hunt

My music is best understood by children and animals.
-Igor Stravinsky

The life spark in my eyes is in no way different than the life spark in the eyes of any other sentient being.
-Michael Stepaniak, The Vegan Sourcebook

There are, I know, people who do not love animals, but I think this is because they do not understand them - or because, indeed, they do not really see them. For me, animals have always been a special part of the wonder of nature - the smallest as well as the largest - with their amazing variety, their beautifully contrived shapes and fascinating habits. I am captivated by the spirit of them. I find in them a longing to communicate and a real capacity for love. If sometimes they do not trust but fear man, it is because he has treated them with arrogance and insensitivity.
-Pablo Casals

The love of all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.
-Charles Darwin

All animals except man know that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it.
-Samuel Butler

So often when you start talking about kindness to animals someone comments that starving and mistreated children should come first. The issue can't be divided like that. It isn't a choice between children and animals. It's our duty to care for both. Kindness is the important thing. Kids and animals are our responsibility.
-Minnie Pearl

There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties...the lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery...Nevertheless, the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, is one of degree and not of kind.
-Charles Darwin

One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other than human.
-Dr. Loren Eiseley

I saw deep in the eyes of the animals, the human soul look out upon me.
-Edward Carpenter

Love of animals is a universal impulse, a common ground on which all of us may meet. By loving and understanding animals, perhaps we humans shall come to understand each other.
-Dr. Louis J. Commuti

Animals share with us the privilege of having a soul.
-Pythagoras



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