When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

Alas! We are ridiculous animals.

We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.

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.

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

A bull contents himself with one meadow, and one forest is enough for a thousand elephants; but the little body of a man devours more than all other living creatures.

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

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all. 

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

What delight can there be, and not rather displeasure, in hearing the barking and howling of dogs? Or what greater pleasure is there to be felt when a dog followeth a hare than when a dog followeth a dog?

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.

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

Animals are good to think with.