Animals Quotes

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A kindly gesture bestowed by us on an animal arouses prodigies of understanding and gratitude.

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.

Leonardo da Vinci

Dancing, the theater, society, card-playing, games of chance, horses, women, drinking, traveling, and so on … are not enough to ward off boredom where intellectual pleasures are rendered impossible by lack of intellectual needs. Thus a peculiar characteristic of the Philistine is a dull, dry seriousness akin to that of animals.

Arthur Schopenhauer

It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer

Arthur Schopenhauer

The young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements.

In Christian ethics … animals are seen as mere things. They can therefore be used for vivisection, hunting, coarsing, bull-fights and horse-races and can be whipped to death as they struggle along with their heavy carts of stone. Shame on such a morality that fails to recognise the eternal essence that exists in every living thing and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun.

Arthur Schopenhauer

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

Only the most acute and active animals are capable of boredom.

Friedrich Nietzsche

When Zarathustra was alone... he said to his heart: "Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead!"Thus Spake Zarathustra [1883-1891], prologue, ch. 2 Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman—a rope over an abyss.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Humor must be one of the chief attributes of God. Plants and animals that are distinctly humorous in form and characteristics are God's jokes.

I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't...The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.

It may be presumed that all animals which feed on various substances possess the sense of taste, and this is certainly the case with worms.

Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilised—the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals.

Was he an animal, that music could capture him so completely? It seemed to him that he was being shown the way to the longed for, unknown, nourishment.

The great depths of the ocean are entirely unknown to us. Soundings cannot reach them. What passes in those remote depths what beings live, or can live, twelve or fifteen miles beneath the surface of the waters what is the organization of these animals we can scarcely conjecture.

The soul of animals is characterized by two faculties, (a) the faculty of discrimination which is the work of thought and sense, and (b) the faculty of originating local movement.

I am sure the man who powders most, perfumes most, embroiders most, and talks most nonsense, is most admired. Though to be candid, there are some who have too much good sense to esteem such monkey-like animals as these, in whose formation, as the saying is, the tailors and barbers go halves with God Almighty.

Thomas Jefferson

Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals.

The higher animals are in a sense drawn into Man when he loves them and makes them (as he does) much more nearly human than they would otherwise be.

The comparison here implied between the actions of one of the higher animals and of one so low in the scale as an earth-worm, may appear far-fetched; for we thus attribute to the worm attention and some mental power, nevertheless I can see no reason to doubt the justice of the comparison.