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Quotes about animals

95 quotes from 72 people

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I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!
Robert Burns1759–1796To a Mouse (1786)In context
- Nature
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
Lewis Carroll1832–1898Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Chapter IIIn context
Will you walk a little faster?” said a whiting to a snail,
“There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle⁠—will you come and join the dance?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
Lewis Carroll1832–1898Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Chapter XIn context
- Dancing
Mourn, ye Graces and Loves, and all you whom the Graces love. My lady’s sparrow is dead, the sparrow my lady’s pet, whom she loved more than her own eyes.
Catullus84–54 BCIII, lines 1–4
The girl slept on, motionless, in that curled-up looseness achieved by some women and all cats.
Raymond Chandler1888–1959“I’ll Be Waiting” (short story), The Saturday Evening Post (14 October 1939)
- Sleep
A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from making such mistakes.
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936Charles Dickens (1906), Ch. 10 “The Great Dickens Characters”
- Comedy
No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle.
Winston Churchill1874–1965My early life, 1874–1904 (1930), Churchill, Winston S., p. 45 (1996 Touchstone Edition)
Let’s be perfectly clear, shall we. The fox is not a little orange puppy dog with doe eyes and a waggly tail. It’s a disease-ridden wolf with the morals of a psychopath and the teeth of a great white shark.
Jeremy Clarksonborn 1960The World According to Clarkson (2005), “A Murderous Fox Has Made Me Shoot David Beckham”, p. 161
- Comedy
With my cross-bow
I shot the Albatross!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge1772–1834The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), Part IIn context
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge1772–1834The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), Part VIIIn context
- God
- Prayer
It is very dangerous to ignore the suffering of any sentient being.
Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lamaborn 1935Interview in Worlds in Harmony: Dialogues on Compassionate Action, Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1992, pp. 20-21.
- Morality
It is mankind’s discovery of language which more than any other single thing has separated him from the animal creation.
Robertson Davies1913–1995On Seeing Plays (1990).
- Talking
The animal needing something knows how much it needs, the man does not.
Democritus460–360 BCFreeman (1948), p. 162
Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant,
The only harmless great thing.
John Donne1572–1631The Progress of the Soul (1601), stanza 39
People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky1821–1881The Brothers Karamazov (1880), Book V: Pro and Contra, Chapter IVIn context
- Good & Evil