Animals and Pets

Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth! ~Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist


Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms. ~George Eliot


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


An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language. ~Martin Buber


It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons. ~Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy


Man is rated the highest animal, at least among all animals who returned the questionnaire. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


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


The kind man feeds his beast before sitting down to dinner. ~Hebrew Proverb


Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills. ~Voltaire, letter to Count Schomberg, 31 August 1769


[H]e doesn’t reckon his dog has human feelings, but he sure lets you know when you hurt his instincts. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being. ~Henry David Thoreau


Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet. ~Colette


Most pets display so many humanlike traits and emotions it's easy to forget they're not gifted with the English language and then get snubbed when we talk to them and they don't say anything back. ~Stephenie Geist


I believe in animal rights, and high among them is the right to the gentle stroke of a human hand. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Be it human or animal, touch is a life-giving thing. Has anyone ever had a stroke or a heart attack while cozied up with a pet? I doubt it. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. ~Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth, 1907


I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. ~Winston Churchill


There is in all animals a sense of duty that man condescends to call instinct. ~Robert Brault, robertbrault.com~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to the man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth. ~Chief Seattle of the Suquamish Tribe, letter to President Franklin Pierce


To insult someone we call him "bestial." For deliberate cruelty and nature, "human" might be the greater insult. ~Isaac Asimov, Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988