ANIMAL QUOTES
"I never suffer any of my family to kill those little innocent animals called striped snakes, for they do me much service in destroying grasshoppers and other troublesome insects. Toads are of essential service, especially in a garden, to eat up cabbage worms, caterpillars, etc.."
- Farmer's Almanac
- Farmer's Almanac
“Worry is today's mice nibbling on tomorrow's cheese”
- thinkexist.com
- thinkexist.com
“It's better to feed one cat than many mice.”
- Norwegian Proverb
- Norwegian Proverb
“If you build a better mousetrap, you will catch better mice”
- George Gobel
- George Gobel
“The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cats' teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice”
- Mahatma Gandhi
- Mahatma Gandhi
“It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.”
- Deng Xiaoping
- Deng Xiaoping
“Swallow a toad in the morning if you want to encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day”
- Chamfort
- Chamfort
"Since we humans have the better brain, isn't it our responsibility to protect our fellow creatures from, oddly enough, ourselves?"
- Joy Adamson
- Joy Adamson
"Spring is here, and sprouting seeds are not the only living things stirring the warm, moist soil of California gardens. The gophers are stirring down there, too."
- Maria Gaura
- Maria Gaura
“It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.”
- Mark Twain
- Mark Twain
“Gophers will take an apricot's pit and leave the flesh.”
- Roy Ellis
- Roy Ellis
“Raccoon tastes like raccoon. I've never heard of any elected official or politician who didn't like 'coon.”
- Phil English
- Phil English
"I would welcome your gophers to my hard soggy clay soil any day these little buddies do more "good" than harm to the land."
- Author Unknown
- Author Unknown
"He said you can play with the gopher after you catch it, because it won't run away when you dump it out of the jar. Which is true, they just get up on their hind legs and clack their teeth at you."
- Charles Roncelli
- Charles Roncelli
"The dog is the only animal that has seen his god."
- Author Unknown
- Author Unknown
"Here Skugg
Lies snug
As a bug
In a rug."
- Benjamin Franklin
Lies snug
As a bug
In a rug."
- Benjamin Franklin
"I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn."
- Henry David Thoreau
- Henry David Thoreau
"The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too."
- Samuel Butler.
- Samuel Butler.
"If your heart is straight with God, then every creature will be to you a mirror of life and a book of holy doctrine."
- Thomas à Kempis
- Thomas à Kempis
"Of the 2,400 species of snakes, some 270 species have venom that is harmful, but not necessarily fatal, to humans. ... However, experiments have demonstrated that people from all corners of the planet have adverse physiological responses to sudden sightings of snakes."
- Sharon Lovejoy
- Sharon Lovejoy
"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained, I stand and look at them long and long."
- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 1855
- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 1855
"He may look just the same to you,
And he may be just as fine,
But the next-door dog is the next-door dog,
And mine - is - mine."
- Dixie Wilson
And he may be just as fine,
But the next-door dog is the next-door dog,
And mine - is - mine."
- Dixie Wilson
"I have found the link between animal and civilized man; it is us."
- Konrad Lorenz
- Konrad Lorenz
"I love cats because I love my home and after a while they become its visible soul."
- Jean Cocteau
- Jean Cocteau
"I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs."
- Joseph Addison
- Joseph Addison
"Not the cry, but the flight of the wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow."
- Chinese Proverb
- Chinese Proverb
"A cow is a very good animal in the field; but we turn her out of a garden."
- Samuel Johnson
- Samuel Johnson
"When a man does not admit that he is an animal, he is less than an animal. Not more but less."
- Michael McClure
- Michael McClure
"Dog: A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship."
- Ambrose Bierce
- Ambrose Bierce
"The dog was created especially for children. He is the god of frolic."
- Henry Ward Beecher
- Henry Ward Beecher
"If dogs are not there, it is not heaven."
- Elisabeth M. Thomas
- Elisabeth M. Thomas
"Rabbits have a habit of coming for breakfast and staying for lunch. Now there's one leaf instead of a bunch."
- Gerry Krueger
- Gerry Krueger
"Dogs lives are too short. Their only fault, really."
- Carlotta Monterey O'Neill
- Carlotta Monterey O'Neill
"I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven."
- Emily Dickinson
- Emily Dickinson
"All animals but men know that the principle business of life is to enjoy it - and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will allow it."
- Samuel Butler
- Samuel Butler
"A study of animal communities has this advantage: they are merely what they are, for anyone to see who will and can look clearly; they cannot complicate the picture by worded idealisms, by saying one thing and being another; here the struggle is unmasked and the beauty is unmasked."
- John Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts, from Cannery Row.
- John Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts, from Cannery Row.
"From a dog's point of view his master is an elongated and abnormally cunning dog."
- Mabel L. Robinson
- Mabel L. Robinson
"He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
All things both great and small."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"Door: What a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of."
- Ogden Nash
- Ogden Nash
"A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs,
showing that he is aroused and watchful.
Bearing in his right paw the shovel that digs to the truth beneath
appearances, cut the roots of useless attachments, and flings
damp sand on the fires of greed and war;
His left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display - indicating
that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and
that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards
all grow in the realm of the Dharma..."
- Gary Snyder, Smokey The Bear Sutra
showing that he is aroused and watchful.
Bearing in his right paw the shovel that digs to the truth beneath
appearances, cut the roots of useless attachments, and flings
damp sand on the fires of greed and war;
His left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display - indicating
that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and
that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards
all grow in the realm of the Dharma..."
- Gary Snyder, Smokey The Bear Sutra
"When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not more of a pastime to her than she is to me?"
- Montaigne
- Montaigne
"I guess cows aren't into the four food groups, especially when they are two of them."
- Anthony Clark
- Anthony Clark
"If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer."
- Alfred North Whitehead
- Alfred North Whitehead
"I am indebted to the cat for a particular kind of honorable deceit, for a greater control over myself, for a characteristic aversion to brutal sounds, and for the need to keep silent for long periods of time."
- Colette
- Colette
"The world has different owners at sunrise ... Even your own garden does not belong to you. Rabbits and blackbirds have the lawns; a tortoise-shell cat who never appears in daytime patrols the brick walls, and a golden-tailed pheasant
glints his way through the iris spears."
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
glints his way through the iris spears."
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
A dog thinks: Hey, these people I live with feed me, love me, provide me with a nice warm, dry house, pet me, and take good care of me... They must be Gods! A cat thinks: Hey, these people I live with feed me, love me, provide me with a nice warm, dry house, pet me, and take good care of me... I must be a God!
- Author Unknown
- Author Unknown
"When a dog barks at the moon, then it is religion;
but when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism!"
- David Starr Jordan
but when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism!"
- David Starr Jordan
"The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."
- Mark Twain, What Is Man
- Mark Twain, What Is Man
"The toad has indeed no superior as a destroyer of noxious insects, and he possesses no bad habits and is entirely inoffensive himself, every owner of a garden should treat him with utmost hospitality."
- Celia Thaxter, An Island Garden, 1894
- Celia Thaxter, An Island Garden, 1894
"The great charm of cats is their rampant egotism, their devil may care attitude toward responsibility, and their disinclination to earn an honest dollar."
- Robertson Davies
- Robertson Davies
"Odd things animals. All dogs look up to you. All cats look down to you. Only the pig looks at you as an equal."
- Winston Churchill
- Winston Churchill
"The time comes to every dog when it ceases to care for people merely for biscuits or bones, or even for caresses, and walks out of doors. When a dog really loves, it prefers the person who gives it nothing, and perhaps is too ill ever to take it out for exercise, to all the liberal cooks and active dog-boys in the world."
- Frances P. Cobbe
- Frances P. Cobbe
"It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions."
- Mark Twain
- Mark Twain
"Cats don't adopt people. They adopt refrigerators."
- Solomon Short
- Solomon Short
"I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren't certain we knew better."
- George Bird Evans
- George Bird Evans
"Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms."
- George Eliot
- George Eliot
"An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language."
- Martin Buber
- Martin Buber
"I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it."
- Abraham Lincoln
- Abraham Lincoln
"Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want."
- Joseph Wood Krutch
- Joseph Wood Krutch
"Poor indeed is the garden in which birds find no homes."
- Abram L. Urban
- Abram L. Urban
"When a man has pity on all living creatures then only is he noble."
- The Buddha
- The Buddha
"We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace."
- Albert Schweitzer, The Philosophy of Civilization
- Albert Schweitzer, The Philosophy of Civilization
"To the ass, or the sow, their own offspring appears the fairest in creation."
- Latin Proverb
- Latin Proverb
"A cat is a pygmy lion who loves mice, hates dogs, and patronizes human beings."
- Oliver Herford
- Oliver Herford
"Toads are conservative animals, I think, and not much given to expecting the best from fortune. Some weeks ago, well before the end of October, I accidentally dug up one while turning over some garden earth. I was surprised, naturally, when one of the clods heaved over on its die and there, in some annoyance, sat at toad."
- Henry Mitchell
- Henry Mitchell
"A prudent man does not make the goat his gardener."
- Hungarian Proverb
- Hungarian Proverb
"It seems to me the worst of all the plagues is the slug, the snail without a shell. He is beyond description repulsive, a mass of sooty, shapeless slime, and he devours everything."
- Celia Thaxter, An Island Garden, 1894
- Celia Thaxter, An Island Garden, 1894
"It's not easy being green."
- Kermit the Frog
- Kermit the Frog
"My little old dog, a heartbeat at my feet."
- Edith Wharton
- Edith Wharton
"They smell, they snarl and they scratch; they have a singular aptitude for shredding rugs, drapes and upholstery; they're sneaky, selfish and not at all smart; they are disloyal, condescending and totally useless in any rodent free environment."
- Jean Michel Chapereau
- Jean Michel Chapereau
"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."
- St. Francis of Assisi
men who will deal likewise with their fellow men."
- St. Francis of Assisi
"He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals."
- Immanuel Kant
- Immanuel Kant
"Anyone who has accustomed himself to regard the life of any living creature as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human lives."
- Albert Schweitzer
- Albert Schweitzer
"Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equals."
- Charles Darwin
- Charles Darwin
"When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal. When he destroys one of the
works of god we call him a sportsman."
- Joseph Wood Krutch
works of god we call him a sportsman."
- Joseph Wood Krutch
"I envy animals for two things - their ignorance of evil to come, and their ignorance of what is said about them."
- Voltaire
- Voltaire
"To a coon, six feet of wire fence is merely a jungle gym upon which it can work up an appetite before raiding the corn."
- Roy Barette
- Roy Barette
"From the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are to be found in men and each of them exists in some man, sometimes several at the time. Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls. God displays them to us to give us food for thought."
- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
"The partridge loves peas, but not those that go into the pot with it."
- African Proverb
- African Proverb
"Remember that gophers also need to make a living; preferably in somebody else's garden.
When you can't fight on and drop to die; your just a big tasty feast for the crows, ants, buzzards and flies.
Your dog will always shit near your favorite garden seat.
Your wet and smelly dog always likes to cozy up real close while your weeding.
If dogs and cats craved raw vegetables, they would have never become pets.
Mother Nature is always pregnant.
Gardens are demanding pets."
- Michael P. Garofalo,
When you can't fight on and drop to die; your just a big tasty feast for the crows, ants, buzzards and flies.
Your dog will always shit near your favorite garden seat.
Your wet and smelly dog always likes to cozy up real close while your weeding.
If dogs and cats craved raw vegetables, they would have never become pets.
Mother Nature is always pregnant.
Gardens are demanding pets."
- Michael P. Garofalo,
"Some people are uncomfortable with the idea that humans belong to the same class of animals as cats and cows and raccoons. They're like the people who become successful and then don't want to be reminded of the old neighborhood."
- Phil Donahue
- Phil Donahue
"O to be self balanced for contingencies!
O to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule,
accidents, rebuffs as trees and animals do!"
- Walt Whitman
O to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule,
accidents, rebuffs as trees and animals do!"
- Walt Whitman
"Any man that hates dogs and babies can't be all bad."
- Leo C. Rosten
- Leo C. Rosten
"Bats are in serious decline nearly everywhere. Worldwide, there are almost a thousand different kinds of bats which comprise nearly one fourth of all mammal species. Of the 43 species living in the U.S. and Canada, nearly 40 percent are endangered or are candidates for such status. ... Bats may eat their own weight in insects in a single night. They also control such garden pests such as ants, beetles and disease carrying mosquitoes. As the primary predator of night-flying insects, bats play an important role in this balance of nature."
"Every man is sociable until a cow invades his garden"
- Irish toast
- Irish toast
"Dogs come when they're called. Cats take a message and get back to you."
- Mary Bly
- Mary Bly
"Early in April, as I was vigorously hoeing in a corner, I unearthed a huge toad, to my perfect delight and satisfaction; he had lived all winter, he had doubtless fed on slugs all the autumn. I could have kissed him on the spot."
- Celia Thaxter
- Celia Thaxter
"I look out my window what do I see
a cardinal, a blue jay and a chickadee
They sit on my feeder or in my tree
they're fun to watch and company
When singing their pretty song
my worries and cares are gone
Hummingbirds enjoy my flowers
succulent nectar they love to devour
The chipmunk fills his cheeks
with the seeds that he seeks
He scurries away back to his den
then comes back for seeds again
Rabbits run, hop. and play
on this wonderful sunny day
Mother Nature is a window away
I am thankful for this every day"
- Sandi Vander Sluis
a cardinal, a blue jay and a chickadee
They sit on my feeder or in my tree
they're fun to watch and company
When singing their pretty song
my worries and cares are gone
Hummingbirds enjoy my flowers
succulent nectar they love to devour
The chipmunk fills his cheeks
with the seeds that he seeks
He scurries away back to his den
then comes back for seeds again
Rabbits run, hop. and play
on this wonderful sunny day
Mother Nature is a window away
I am thankful for this every day"
- Sandi Vander Sluis
"A garden without cats, it will be generally agreed, can scarcely deserve to be called a garden at all."
- Beverly Nichols, Garden Open Tomorrow, 1968
- Beverly Nichols, Garden Open Tomorrow, 1968
"In my next life I want to come back as one of my cats. They basically pretend we don't exist. They sit like two bumps on a log and watch us work for hours in the yard. They're probably wondering, along with the entire neighborhood, why we work so hard in our garden and it still looks like hell."
- Annie Spiegelman, Annie's Garden Journal, 1996
- Annie Spiegelman, Annie's Garden Journal, 1996
"I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior."
- Hippolyte Taine
- Hippolyte Taine
Oh, John the Rabbit
Traditional American Folksong
Traditional American Folksong
"Oh, John the rabbit, Yes, Ma’am
Got a mighty habit, Yes, Ma’am
Jumping in my garden, Yes Ma’am
Cutting down my cabbage, Yes Ma’am
My sweet potatoes, Yes Ma’am
My fresh tomatoes, Yes Ma’am
An if I live, Yes Ma’am
To see next fall, Yes, Ma’am
I ain’t gonna have, Yes Ma’am
No garden at all, Yes Ma’am"
- From Sea to Shining Sea: A Treasure of American Folklore and Folk Songs,
Compiled by Amy L. Cohn, Scholastic 1993
Got a mighty habit, Yes, Ma’am
Jumping in my garden, Yes Ma’am
Cutting down my cabbage, Yes Ma’am
My sweet potatoes, Yes Ma’am
My fresh tomatoes, Yes Ma’am
An if I live, Yes Ma’am
To see next fall, Yes, Ma’am
I ain’t gonna have, Yes Ma’am
No garden at all, Yes Ma’am"
- From Sea to Shining Sea: A Treasure of American Folklore and Folk Songs,
Compiled by Amy L. Cohn, Scholastic 1993
"This cat in my lap
Purring, eyes closed, ears back -
Fur on my fingers."
- Mike Garofalo,
Purring, eyes closed, ears back -
Fur on my fingers."
- Mike Garofalo,
"We know what the animals do, what are the needs of the beaver, the bear, the salmon, and other creatures, because long ago men married them and acquired this knowledge from their animal wives."
- The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River
- The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River
"As far as our noblest hardwood forests are concerned, the animals, especially squirrels and jays, are our greatest and almost only benefactors. It is to them that we owe this gift. It is not in vain that the squirrels live in or about every forest tree, or hollow log, and every wall and heap of stones."
- Henry David Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1860
- Henry David Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1860
"Evolutionary biology is now uttering and seeking those forces that link us with all those that have being. If we can discover the meaning in the trilling of a frog, perhaps we may understand why it is for us not merely noise but a song of poetry and emotion."
- Adrian Forsyth, A Natural History of Sex, 1986
- Adrian Forsyth, A Natural History of Sex, 1986
