Nature gives liberty even to dumb animals. [ Tacitus ]

Liberty is given by nature even to mute animals. [ Tacitus ]

Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Without philosophy we should be little above the lower animals. [ Voltaire ]

A great fondness for animals often results from a knowledge of men.

Animals feed, men eat; but only men of intelligence know how to eat. [ Brillat-Savarin ]

Animals feed, man eats; the man of intellect alone knows how to eat. [ Brillat-Savarin ]

Thirst teaches all animals to drink, but drunkenness belongs only to man. [ Fielding ]

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, pass no criticisms. [ George Eliot ]

Instinct harmonizes the interior of animals, as religion does the interior of men. [ Jacobi ]

Among all animals, from man to the dog, the heart of a mother is always a sublime thing. [ A. Dumas pere ]

The chameleon, who is said to feed upon nothing but air, has of all animals the nimblest tongue. [ Swift ]

To drink without thirst, to make love without cessation: this is what distinguishes us from the lower animals. [ Beaumarchais, Marriage of Figaro ]

The most ridiculous of all animals is a proud priest; he cannot use his own tools without cutting his own fingers. [ Colton ]

It has always struck me that there is a far greater distinction between man and man than between many men and most other animals. [ Basil Hall ]

Hunting is a relic of the barbarous spirit that thirsted formerly for human blood, but is now content with the blood of birds and animals. [ Bovee ]

Critics must excuse me if I compare them to certain animals called asses, who, by gnawing vines, originally taught the great advantage of pruning them. [ Shenstone ]

There are many women who have never intrigued, and many men who have never gamed; but those who have done either but once are very extraordinary animals. [ Colton ]

Be free from grief not through insensibility like the irrational animals, nor through want of thought like the foolish, but like a man of virtue by having reason as the consolation of grief. [ Epictetus ]

All courageous animals are carnivorous, and greater courage is to be expected in a people, such as the English, whose food is strong and hearty, than in the half starved commonalty of other countries. [ Sir W. Temple ]

For imitation is natural to man from his infancy. Man differs from other animals particularly in this, that he is imitative, and acquires his rudiments of knowledge in this way; besides, the delight in it is universal. [ Aristotle ]

A taste for flowers and a love for the beautiful, as exhibited in the wonders of creative power, are evidences of a refined and sensitive nature, and peculiar traits of character which distinguish man from the lower order of animals. [ Celestia R. Colby ]

Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and hollyhock. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

The eye is the window of the soul, the mouth the door. The intellect, the will, are seen in the eye; the emotions, sensibilities, and affections, in the mouth. The animals look for man's intentions right into his eyes. Even a rat, when you hunt him and bring him to bay, looks you in the eye. [ Hiram Powers ]

The difference between a parable and an apologue is that the former, being drawn from human life, requires probability in the narration, whereas the apologue, being taken from inanimate things or the inferior animals, is not confined strictly to probability. The fables of Aesop are apologues. [ Fleming ]

We lose in depth of expression when we go to inferior animals for comparisons with human beauty. Homer calls Juno ox-eyed; and the epithet suits well with the eyes of that goddess, because she may be supposed, with all her beauty, to want a certain humanity. Her large eyes look at you with a royal indifference. [ Leigh Hunt ]

Nature, at all events, humanly speaking, is manifestly very fond of color; for she has made nothing without it. Her skies are blue; her fields, green; her waters vary with her skies; her animals, vegetables, minerals, are all colored. She paints a great many of them in apparently superfluous hues, as if to show the dullest eye how she loves color. [ Leigh Hunt ]

The brute animals have all the same sensations of pain as human beings, and consequently endure as much pain when their body is hurt; but in their case the cruelty of torment is greater, because they have no mind to bear them up against their sufferings, and no hope to look forward to when enduring the last extreme pain. Their happiness consists entirely in present enjoyment. [ Chalmers ]