Quotes About Animals

A]nimals are always the observed. The fact that they can observe us has lost all significance. They are the objects of our ever-extending knowledge. What we know about them is an index of our power, and thus an index of what separates us from them. The more we know, the further away they are.

We are told that "the meek shall inherit the earth." It follows that the meek are chosen of God. I shall try to be meek, not because I want the earth - you can keep it, after the way you've fucked it around it's not worth having - but because I too should like to be chosen of God. QED. Besides, I like animals better than you bastards.

This is why the past seems perfect, a time of proportion and order, because it is immersed in speech. For animals, memory might reside as a sensation, a resonance in the nerves, or in the meat of the spine. But for humans, the past cannot be described except in words. It is nowhere else.

and she had started to relax - but she was relaxing into something terrible, and she was going about the world in a state of complete indifference to whatever might come, a wild girl with dream patterns and faint, dark animals etched on her skin, a creature who had passed beyond fear and was, therefore, beyond saving.

Faced with a real fight, most animals will compromise. If the odds look bad, one or another will back off, or the fight will be discontinued by mutual consent. Humans are the only animals prepared to fight for a Pyrrhic victory.

Frost interviewing Noel Coward and Margaret Mead. Sir Noel's view of life is Sir Noel. Mead's mind is large and open, like Buckminster Fuller's. She found thoughts dull that suggest that men are superior to animals or plants.

My grandfather used to say that if God did not allow a man to be reunited with his dogs in the next life He was no God worth worshipping; that if a dog did not have a soul, then nothing had.

He knew there were some who said that those who kept dogs had to resign themselves to their eventual loss because of the animals' relatively short lives. The trick—if "trick" was the right word—was to learn to love the spirit of the animal, and to recognize that it transferred itself from dog to

Dogs were generally incompatible with melancholy.

Interestingly enough, it is now known that play behaviour is not limited to birds and mammals. Monitor lizards, turtles, crocodiles and even fish and cephalopods have been reported to engage in behaviours that do not seem to serve any other purpose than simply having fun.27,28 If all these animals could play, we are certain that Mesozoic dinosaurs could, too.

Old friend, there are people—young and old—that I like, and people that I do not like. The former are always in short supply. I am turned off by humorless fanaticism, whether it's revolutionary mumbo-jumbo by a young one, or loud lessons from scripture by and old one. We are all comical, touching, slapstick animals, walking on our hind legs, trying to make it a noble journey from womb to tomb, and the people who can't see it all that way bore hell out of me.

I like handling newborn animals. Fallen into life from an unmappable world, they are the ultimate immigrants, full of wonder and confusion.

You know, having raised animals all my life for 50-something years, I would say that you know, I'm fascinated by cats.

Spaying is a compromise in terms of reverence for life, but perhaps a necessary one in a society which kills millions of dogs and cats a year in "animal shelters".

Man is the only animal who enjoys the consolation of believing in a next life; all other animals enjoy the consolation of not worrying about it.

I think coexisting with another life form is a very rich experience. It's why people keep plants and animals.

Dogs and other animals - goats, donkeys, cows, a grumpy rooster - continue to change my writing life.

Birth, life, death is a cycle. And they're all beautiful, you celebrate all of them. Animals do grieve, but they move on. That's the lesson behind animals.

We animals live life in all its glorious uncertainty. Why do politicians think they can control events?

Animals play a big part in my life, on tour or at home.

All those animals live a pretty dreary life, then they get chopped up and put on a griddle.

Of all animals, he alone attains to the Contemplative Life.

To me, animal communication seemed an insane idea, years ago; but my experience altered my life and my beliefs.

My expertise lies in what I've devoted my life to. I wouldn't pretend to be a great gift to any other animal. My interest has always been in the horses.