Maurice Maeterlinck Quotes

If it is indeed impossible - or at least very difficult - to inhabit the consciousness of an animal, then in writing about animals there is a temptation to project upon them feelings and thoughts that may belong only to our own human mind and heart.

The belief that 'animals' are superior or inferior to humans because they live in an eternal now is untrue, because no being lives in a now.

Every animal is related to its own constitution and the consciousness of it.

They are all beasts of burden in a sense, ' Thoreau once remarked of animals, 'made to carry some portion of our thoughts.' Animals are the old language of the imagination; one of the ten thousand tragedies of their disappearance would be a silencing of this speech.

We animals are the most complicated things in the known universe.

The dog is the only living being that has found and recognizes an indubitable, tangible and definite god. He knows to whom above him to give himself. He has not to seek for a superior and infinite power.

Man is a dog's idea of what God should be.

I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.

Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way.

I know well enough that there have been dogs so loving that they have thrown themselves into the same grave with the dead bodies of their masters.

There is in every animal's eye a dim image and gleam of humanity, a flash of strange light through which their life looks out and up to our great mystery of command over them, and claims the fellowship of the creature if not of the soul.

I have had a long unabashed love affair with dogs that stretches back to early childhood.

The animal has secrets which, unlike the secrets of caves, mountains, seas are specifically addressed to man.

I have never found in a human being loyalty that is comparable to a dog's loyalty.

Zoologists seem to consider the cerebration of cats and dogs about 50-50 -- but my respect always goes to the cool, sure, impersonal, delicately poised feline who minds his business and never slobbers.

There is no faith which has never yet been broken, except that of a truly faithful dog

There's a schizoid quality to our relationship with animals, in which sentiment and brutality exist side by side. Half the dogs in America will receive Christmas presents this year, yet few of us pause to consider the miserable life of the pig - an animal easily as intelligent as a dog - that becomes the Christmas ham.

Dogs are wonderful, and in many ways unique. But they are remarkably unremarkable in their intellectual and experiential capacities. Pigs are every bit as intelligent and feeling, by any sensible definition of the words. They can't hop into the back of a Volvo, but they can fetch, run and play, be mischievous, and reciprocate affection. So why don't they get to curl up by the fire? Why can't they at least be spared being tossed on the fire?

It is scarcely possible to doubt that the love of man has become instinctive in the dog.

Like many other much-loved humans, they believed that they owned their dogs, instead of realizing that their dogs owned them.

There are two kinds of fidelity, that of dogs and that of cats; you, gentleman, have the fidelity of cats who never leave the house.

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog.

A lifelong intimacy with animals has got me out of the common notion that they are automata with a slight infusion of intelligence in their composition. The mind in beast and bird, as in man, is the main thing.

I’m adding ‘canine’ to my searches,” I said. “And ‘instinct.’” “Whatever. I’m adding ‘lunatic.

A Canadian psychologist is selling a video that teaches you how to test your dog's IQ. Here's how it works: if you spend $12.99 for the video, your dog is smarter than you.