Quotes about animals

Thus to their toils, in early summer, run

The clust'ring bees, and labour in the sun;

Led forth, in colonies, their buzzing race,

Or work the liquid sweets, and thicken to a mass.

The busy nation flies from flow'r to flow'r,

And hoards, in curious cells, the golden store;

A chosen troop before the gate attends,

To take the burdens, and relieve their friends;

Warm at the fragrant work, in bands, they drive

The drone, a lazy robber, from the hive.

Translation: Animals do not admire one another. A horse does not admire his companion.

O mortals, from your fellows' blood abstain,

Nor taint your bodies with a food profane:

While corn, and pulse by Nature are bestow'd,

And planted orchards bend their willing load;

While labour'd gardens wholesom herbs produce,

And teeming vines afford their gen'rous juice;

Nor tardier fruits of cruder kind are lost,

But tam'd with fire, or mellow'd by the frost;

While kine to pails distended udders bring,

And bees their hony redolent of Spring;

While Earth not only can your needs supply,

But, lavish of her store, provides for luxury;

A guiltless feast administers with ease,

And without blood is prodigal to please.

O impious use! to Nature's laws oppos'd,

Where bowels are in other bowels clos'd:

Where fatten'd by their fellow's fat, they thrive;

Maintain'd by murder, and by death they live.

'Tis then for nought, that Mother Earth provides

The stores of all she shows, and all she hides,

If men with fleshy morsels must be fed,

And chaw with bloody teeth the breathing bread:

What else is this, but to devour our guests,

And barb'rously renew Cyclopean feasts!

We, by destroying life, our life sustain;

And gorge th' ungodly maw with meats obscene.

So deep is their love of flowers and their glory in begetting honey.

Animals don’t lie. Animals don’t criticize. If animals have moody days, they handle them better than humans do.

"You can always tell about somebody by the way they put their hands on an animal,"

“If everyone took personal responsibility for their animals, we wouldn’t have a lot of the animal problems that we do.

I have always found singular pleasure in taming animals, especially such as are shy and wild. It appeared to me delightful to inspire them with a confidence which I have never abused. I desired their fondness for me to be perfectly unrestricted.

What truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute — for horses.

Fascination with horses predated every other single thing I knew. Before I was a mother, before I was a writer, before I knew the facts of life, before I was a schoolgirl, before I learned to read, I wanted a horse.

Master Sean O’Lochlainn had always been partial to mules. “The mule,” he was fond of saying, “is as much smarter than a horse as a raven is smarter than a falcon. Neither a raven nor a mule will go charging into combat just because some human tells him to.”