"Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you." - Elias Canetti, The Human Province

"I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections." - William Congreve, Letters upon Several Occasions, ed. John Dennis

"Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms." - George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life

"To his dog, every man is Napoleon. Hence the constant popularity of dogs." - Aldous Huxley

"The dog was created specially for children. He is a god of frolic." - HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

"A Robin Redbreast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage."
- WILLIAM BLAKE, Auguries of Innocence

"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
- WILLIAM BLAKE, The Tyger

"That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!"
- ROBERT BROWNING, Home-Thoughts, from Abroad

"Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!"
- ROBERT BURNS, To a Mouse

"The great 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 (d. 1902), Note-Books

"Animals are such agreeable friends; they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms." - GEORGE ELIOT, Scenes of Clerical Life

"Cats and monkeys, monkeys and cats; all human life is there." - HENRY JAMES, The Madonna of the Future

"I never saw a wild thing
Sorry for itself."
- D.H. LAWRENCE, Self-Pity

"When I play with my cat, who knows whether she isn't amusing herself with me more than I am with her?" - MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE, Essays

"The trouble with a kitten is
THAT
Eventually it becomes a
CAT."
- OGDEN NASH, The Kitten

"The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other, milk."
- OGDEN NASH, The Cow

"Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art."
- PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, To a Skylark

"The bluebird carries the sky on his back." - HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Journal

"If you put a billion monkeys in front of a billion typewriters typing at random, they would reproduce the entire collected works of Usenet in about...five minutes." - Anonymous

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." - Benfield, John

"I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals." - Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)

"Man is a dog's idea of what God should be." - Jackson, Holbrook

"If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever to get a 'fix' of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine." - Stampfli, Rob

"In ancient egypt, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this." - Unknown

"If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?" - Wright, Stephen