These are quotes about specific species of animals - birds, cats, dogs, horses, and insects.
God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.
-Jacques Deval, Afin de vivre bel et bien
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin,
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
-Emily Dickinson
Those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties, with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art.
-Izaak Walton (describing birds)
There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.
-Robert Lynd, The Blue Lion and Other Essays
A wonderful bird is the pelican
His bill will hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week,
But I'm damned if I see how the helican.
-Dixon Lanier Merritt
When I was twelve, I went hunting with my father and we shot a bird. He was laying there and something struck me. Why do we call this fun to kill this creature who was as happy as I was when I woke up this morning.
-Marv Levy
I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.
- Emily Dickinson
I never saw a wild thing
Sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
Without ever having felt sorry for itself.
-D.H. Lawrence, Self-pity
The cat is the animal to whom the Creator gave the biggest eye, the softest fur, the most supremely delicate nostrils, a mobile ear, an unrivaled paw, and a curved claw borrowed from the rose-tree.
-Colette
When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?
-Michel de Montaigne, Essays
I had been told that the training procedure with cats was difficult. It's not. Mine had me trained in two days.
-Bill Dana
I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.
-Edgar Allan Poe
The problem with cats is that they get the exact same look on their face whether they see a moth or an axe-murderer.
-Paula Poundstone
If I called her she would pretend not to hear, but would come a few moments later when it could appear that she had thought of doing so first.
-Arthur Weigall (about his cat)
I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
-Abraham Lincoln
A dog, I have always said, is prose; a cat is a poem.
-Jean Burden
It's funny how dogs and cats know the inside of folks better than other folks do, isn't it?
-Elenor H. Porter, Pollyanna
Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. But a pig will look a man in the eye and see his equal.
-Winston Churchill
Personally, I would not give a fig for any man's religion whose horse, cat and dog do not feel its benefits. Life in any form is our perpetual responsibility.
-S. Parkes Cadman
Dogs come when they're called; cats take a message and get back to you later.
-Mary Bly
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.
-Jeff Valdez
Life is life - whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage.
-Sri Aurobindo
One reason a dog is such a lovable creature is his tail wags instead of his tongue.
-Author Unknown
In order to keep a true perspective of one's importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him.
-Dereke Bruce
I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me they are the role model for being alive.
-Gilda Radner
For fidelity, devotion, love, many a two-legged animal is below the dog and the horse. Happy would it be for thousands of people if they could stand at last before the Judgment Seat and say, I have loved as truly and have lived as decently as my dog, and yet we call them only brutes.
-Henry Ward Beecher
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
-Mark Twain
Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.
-Agnes Repplier
One reason a dog can be such a comfort when you're feeling blue is that he doesn't try to find out why.
-Author Unknown
We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.
-George Eliot
Treat me kindly, my beloved friend, for no heart in all the world is more grateful for kindness than the loving heart of me.
Do not break my spirit with a stick, for although I should lick your hand between blows, your patience and understanding will quickly teach me the things you would have me learn.
Speak to me often, for your voice is the world's sweetest music, as you must know by the fierce wagging of my tail when your footsteps fall upon my waiting ear.
Please take me inside when it is cold and wet, for I am a domesticated animal, no longer accustomed to bitter elements. I ask no greater glory than the privilege of sitting at your feet beside the hearth. Keep my pan filled with fresh water, for I cannot tell you when I suffer thirst.
Feed me clean food that I may stay well, to romp and play and do your bidding, to walk by your side and stand ready, willing and able to protect you with my life, should your life be in danger.
And, my friend, when I am very old, and I no longer enjoy good health, hearing and sight, do not make heroic efforts to keep me going. I am not having any fun. Please see that my trusting life is taken gently. I shall leave this earth knowing with the last breath I draw that my fate was always safest in your hands.
-Author Unknown, A Pet's Plea
Beneath this spot are deposited the remains of a being who is possessed of beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man without his vices.
-Epitaph on the grave of Lord Byron's dog
I talk to him when I'm lonesome like; and I'm sure he understands. When he looks at me so attentively, and gently licks my hands; then he rubs his nose on my tailored clothes, but I never say naught thereat. For the good Lord knows I can buy more clothes, but never a friend like that.
-W. Dayton Wedgefarth
The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man's.
-Mark Twain
If you think dogs can't count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them.
-Phil Pastoret
My goal in life is to be as good of a person my dog already thinks I am.
-Author Unknown
You ask of my companions. Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog as large as myself that my father bought me. They are better than human beings, because they know but do not tell.
-Emily Dickinson
You think that these dogs will not be in Heaven! I tell you they will be there long before any of us.
-Robert Louis Stevenson
To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace.
-Milan Kundera
Hold then the same view of the dog which has lost his master, which has sought him in all the thoroughfares with cries of sorrow, which comes into the house troubled and restless, goes downstairs, goes upstairs; goes from room to room, finds at last in his study the master he loves, and betokens his gladness by soft whimpers, frisks, and caresses. There are barbarians who seize this dog, who so greatly surpasses man in fidelity and friendship, and nail him down to a table and dissect him alive, to show you the mesaraic veins! You discover in him all the same organs of feeling as in yourself. Answer me, mechanist, has Nature arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel?
-Voltaire
If you get to thinking you're a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else's dog around.
-Will Rogers
The more I see of man, the more I like dogs.
-Mme. de Staël
If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.
-Woodrow Wilson
...there was not a well-bred young horse in my time that had not his tail docked in that shameful way, just as if the good God that made us did not know what we wanted and what looked best...fashion is one of the wickedest things in the world. Now look, for instance, at the way they serve dogs, cutting off their tails to make them look plucky, and shearing up their pretty little ears to a point to make them look sharp...Why don't they cut their own children's ears into points to make them look sharp? Why don't they cut the end off their noises to make them look plucky? One would be just as sensible as the other. What right have they to torment and disfigure God's creatures?
-Anna Sewell, Black Beauty
My little dog - a heartbeat at my feet.
-Edith Wharton
Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. They serve us in return for scraps. It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made.
-Roger Caras
Humanity advances only as it becomes more humane. The highest known form of friendship is that of a dog to his master. You are in luck if you can find one man or one woman on earth who has that kind of affection for you and fidelity to you.
-Dr. Frank Crane
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
-W.C. Fields
People on horses look better than they are. People in cars look worse than they are.
-Author Unknown
I must say...that more unmanly, brutal treatment of a little pony it was never my painful lot to witness; and by giving way to such passion, you injure your own character as much, nay more, than you injure your horse, and remember, we shall all have to be judged according to our works, whether they be towards man or towards beast.
-Anna Sewell, Black Beauty
Many people have sighed for the 'good old days' and regretted the 'passing of the horse,' but today, when only those who like horses own them, it is a far better time for horses.
-C.W. Anderson
Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.
-Bradley Millar
If you want to live and thrive, let the spider run alive.
-American Quaker Saying
Two-legged creatures we are supposed to love as we love ourselves. The four-legged, also, can come to seem pretty important. But six legs are too many from the human standpoint.
-Joseph W. Krutch
We are closer to the ants than to butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure.
-Gerald Brenan
We hope that, when the insects take over the world, they will remember with gratitude how we took them along on all our picnics.
-Bill Vaughan
If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.
-Betty Reese
The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee; a clover, anytime, to him, is aristocracy.
-Emily Dickinson
I'll not hurt thee, says Uncle Toby, rising with the fly in his hand. Go, he says, opening the window to let it escape. Why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me.
-Lawrence Stern