Quotes on Animals

Animals generally return the love you lavish on them by a swift bite in passing, not unlike friends and wives - Gerald Durrell

Our task must be to free ourselves; by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty - Albert Einstein

Shall we, because we walk on our hind feet, assume to ourselves only the privilege of imperishability? - George Eliot

You enter into a certain amount of madness when you marry a person with pets - Nora Ephron

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened - Anatole France

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated - Gandhi

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 - William Hazlitt

Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not die, so do other creatures - His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem - Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it - Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I don't believe in the concept of hell, but if I did I would think of it as filled with people who were cruel to animals - Gary Larson

I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being - Abraham Lincoln

The indifference, callousness and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering in animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of the human spirit - Ashley Montagu

Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to -         Alfred A. Montapert

Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way - John Muir

I know at last what distinguishes man from animals: financial worries - Romain Roland

The little furry buggers are just deep, deep wells you throw all your emotions into - Bruce Schimmel

It is much easier to show compassion to animals. They are never wicked - Haile Selassie

Nature teaches beasts to know their friends - William Shakespeare

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men - St. Francis of Assisi

Dogs love company. They place it first in their short list of needs - J.R. Ackerley

Dog does not eat dog. I donno from where they came up with the utterly crazy idea that they do! -         Uknown

The dog has been esteemed and loved by all the people on earth and he has deserved this affection for he renders services that have made him man's best friend - Alfred Barbou

A person who has never owned a dog has missed a wonderful part of life - Bob Barker

His ears were often the first thing to catch my tears - Elizabeth Barrett Browning, referring to her cocker spaniel, Flush

That was the first time I knew I loved him. - Kim Basinger, about her future husband's rescue of a dog hit by a car on a highway. While driving to work, Alec Baldwin stopped the car and dodged traffic to save the boxer. They adopted her, named her Gracie, and had her join their 15 other dogs and cats.

A dog is the only thing on this earth that loves you more than he loves himself - Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)

Money will buy a pretty good dog, but it won't buy the wag of his tail - Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)

My dogs - Bill Blass, after being asked "Who or what is the greatest love of your life?" by Vanity Fairmagazine

Here, Gentlemen, a dog teaches us a lesson in humanity - Napoleon Bonaparte, after being saved by a Newfoundland after slipping on his ship and falling overboard. He did not know how to swim, and was kept above water by the dog until he could be rescued.

This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog. I looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands. Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? By the grief of one dog.

- Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death.

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too - Samuel Butler, Higgledy-Piggledy

Animals have these advantages over man: They have no theologians to instruct them, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills - Voltaire

Only my dogs will not betray me - Maria Callas

For me a house or an apartment becomes a home when you add one set of four legs, a happy tail, and that indescribable measure of love that we call a dog - Roger Caras, president emeritus, ASPCA

We derive immeasurable good, uncounted pleasures, enormous security, and many critical lessons about life by owning dogs 

- Roger Caras, A Celebration of Dogs

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

One evening at Chequers the film was Oliver Twist. Rufus, as usual, had the best seat in the house, on his master's lap. At the point when Bill Sikes was about to drown his dog to put the police off his track, Churchill covered Rufus's eyes with his hand. He said, "Don't look now, dear. I'll tell you about it afterwards." - Winston Churchill, The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes

Dogs don't know about beginnings, and they don't speculate on matters that occurred before their time. Dogs also don't know, or at least don't accept - the concept of death. With no concept of beginnings or endings dogs probably don't know that for people having a dog as a life companion provides a streak of light between two eternities of darkness - Stanley Coren

Dogs love company. They place it first in their short list of needs - J.R. Ackerley

A species so intimately involved with our own, which has shared our life since time immemorial - Alfred Barbou

I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her - Ellen DeGeneres

God loved the birds and invented trees.  Man loved the birds and invented cages - Jacques Deval

Cruelty is one fashion statement we can all do without ~Rue McClanahan

No one in the world needs a mink coat but a mink ~Murray Banks

Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals suffering? Because the government is not.  Why not?  Animals don't vote ~Paul Harvey

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.  ~ Albert Schweitzer

Why should man expect his prayer for mercy to be heard by what is above him when he shows no mercy to what is under him?  

~Pierre Troubetzkoy