"Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them... they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight."

I write because I've always written, can't stop. I am a writing animal. The way a silk worm is a silk-producing animal.

Thank God I got the rejects. These animals are very, very affectionate.

When I played Lady Day, I took Aba onstage with me as a joke. He started singing-in tune!-and the audience loved it.

Be a good animal, true to your animal instincts.

“I know of no pursuit in which more real and important services can be rendered to any country than by improving its agriculture, its breed of useful animals, and other branches of a husbandman’s cares.”

“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.”

“I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.” 

“Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.” 

“Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.”

“If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.”

“Music is a wind that blows away the years, memories, and fear, that crouching animal I carry inside me.” 

Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

“Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal invented anything so bad as drunkeness – or so good as drink.”

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

Let’s rise above this animalistic behavior and be kind to one another.

Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.