Imitate the ass in his love to his master.

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

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.

It is remarkable that only small birds properly sing.

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

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

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.

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

There be beasts that, at a year old, observe more, and pursue that which is for their good more prudently, than a child can do at ten.

I hate the sight of monkeys; they remind me so of poor relations.

Alas! We are ridiculous animals.

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.

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.