We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals... In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.
An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.
Everyone's pet is the most outstanding. This begets mutual blindness.
Animals generally return the love you lavish on them by a swift bite in passing — not unlike friends and wives.
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.
Shall we, because we walk on our hind feet, assume to ourselves only the privilege of imperishability?
You enter into a certain amount of madness when you marry a person with pets.
Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.
The scientific name for an animal that doesn't either run from or fight its enemies is lunch.
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
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.
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.
Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem.
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.
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.
I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.
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.
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.
Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way.
With an endless assortment of children and animals living under one roof, there was always some absurd crisis that gave comic relief to my problems.
I know at last what distinguishes man from animals: financial worries.
The little furry buggers are just deep, deep wells you throw all your emotions into.
It is much easier to show compassion to animals. They are never wicked.
Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.
The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. That's the essence of inhumanity.
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.
I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet. That may be. But I think there's another thing that separates us from animals. We aren't afraid of vacuum cleaners.
Soon or late, every dog's master's memory becomes a graveyard; peopled by wistful little furry ghosts that creep back unbidden, at times, to a semblance of their olden lives.
I have consolidated all Mark Twain dog quotes together on one page.
I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers.
The zoo is a place for animals to study the behaviour of human beings.
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.
The Animals of the planet are in desperate peril. Without free animal life I believe we will lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen.
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.
The best thing about animals is that they don't talk much.
Each species is a masterpiece, a creation assembled with extreme care and genius.
