Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.

The righteous know the needs of their animals, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.

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.

Do you not see how God is praised by those in the heavens and those on earth? The very birds praised Him as they wing their way.

Every ass thinks himself worthy to stand with the king’s horses.

Who hears the fishes when they cry?

Alas! We are ridiculous animals.

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

Of all the creatures that breathe and creep on the surface of the earth, none is more to be pitied than man.

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.

How like to us is that filthy beast the ape.

A good dog, sir, deserves a good bone.

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.