“Vultures are the most righteous of birds: they do not attack even the smallest living creature.”

Rather I fear on the contrary that while we banish painful thoughts we may banish memory as well.

Those who receive with most pains and difficulty, remember best; every new think they learn, being, as it were, burnt and branded in on their minds.

Silence at the proper season is wisdom and better than any speech.

Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.

It does not follow, that because a particular work of art succeeds in charming us, its creator also deserves our admiration.

I would rather excel in the knowledge of what is excellent than the extent of my power or possessions.

Of all the disorders in the soul, envy is the only one no one confesses to.

I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.

It’s a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man’s oration, it is a very easy matter, but to produce a better in its place is a work extremely troublesome.

Music, to create harmony, must investigate discord.

It is a true proverb, that if you live with a lame man, you will learn to limp.

The whole like of a man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it.

Adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.

No beast is more savage than man when possessed with power answerable to his rage.

But a man cannot by writing a bill of divorce to his vice get rid of all trouble at once, and enjoy tranquillity by living apart.

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

I’m in the middle of my sixth book, which is about animals at the Los Angeles Zoo.

There is no more reason to believe that man descended from an inferior animal than there is to believe that a stately mansion has descended from a small cottage.

You know what the problem that animal activists sometimes have? They only concentrate on the heartbreaking things to the point where the general public thinks, ‘Oh, here comes those animal folks again and I’m going to hear all the things I don’t want to hear.’

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

I secretly want to be a zebra. That is why I always wear stripes.

The moment I began to understand what was going on with the treatment of animals, it led me more and more in the way of the path I am [on] now, which is a complete vegan.

I never wanted to be a statistic. I never wanted to be that cat who tried and never made it.

If you love animals, don’t eat them.