The best thing about animals is that they don't talk much.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

My favourite animal is the koala, but his life would be boring. I would rather be a giraffe so that I could contemplate the beauty of Africa.

Well I do find the beauty in animals. I find beauty everywhere. I find beauty in my garden.

Walking in the mountains helps me unwind, but it also reminds me in a painful way that the real beauty in life is nature and animals, and that the human race, in all its arrogance, is intent on destroying it.

Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits.

I gave my beauty and my youth to men. I am going to give my wisdom and experience to animals.

Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test them in ways that work fine with humans but not so well with other species.

Even if people do wrong, we're social animals, so what can we do about stopping them doing the same things in future? Saying people are 'bad' or 'evil' is just an unwillingness to engage; an unwillingness to try to empathise. That sanctimonious attitude doesn't help anyone.

Animals have a much better attitude to life and death than we do. They know when their time has come. We are the ones that suffer when they pass, but it's a healing kind of grief that enables us to deal with other griefs that are not so easy to grab hold of.

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.

The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals, but he is also the proudest. It is he who invented the sublime art of ruining poetry.

Art owes its origin to Nature herself... this beautiful creation, the world, supplied the first model, while the original teacher was that divine intelligence which has not only made us superior to the other animals, but like God Himself, if I may venture to say it.

Animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

It's important to remember that the animals are not grieving with us. They're very accepting. They're not lying there thinking 'How could you do this to me? Why aren't you keeping me going?' Pets don't do the human things of guilt and anger and recrimination that we do. They come and go with great acceptance.

'How To Train your Dragon 2' is an amazing film. I think it's an extraordinary film. The animation in it is fantastic.

It's amazing how these little guys can say things that a mortal human could never get away with. There's some sort of unspoken license... when outlandish things come out of an inanimate object, somehow it equals humor.

The majority of the world is empty space. Empty space, empty space, empty space. All that we see in the world, the life, the animals, plants, people - it's all empty space. That's amazing!

Musicians like James Blake were a big influence on me. How he uses his vocals is amazing. And then Yeasayer and Animal Collective, who aren't pop bands exactly, but they do something that is so catchy and undeniable and so much fun.

From afar, we know we have a great land, dominated by so many different forms of terrain, and we've got amazing and unique animals, and the climate, the beauty and the brutality of it. But I think the detail, and the intimate element of it, I think we're kind of a little bit lost on it.

I absolutely adore cows. They're the most fascinating, gentle and beautiful animals. Their eyes are so amazing. I have ten that live on the land around my house. I love to talk to them. There are few things better than falling asleep in a field and being woken up by an inquisitive cow.

Lately, Nastoyna felt that she had no right to criticize anyone at all -- no man, no animal, no bird, because each lived his own life, which was not in his control and which he could not change.

Many of us want to have relationships because we want a nest, a cozy place of acceptance; that unconditional circumstance. Relationships have become the using of another person as soft stuff to build nests with. Many can do this without even liking the other person, or feeling connected to them, or even wanting to actually be near them. I think the animals are better; an animal would never live with someone they don't like, because they don't have to. They have no religion, no laws, no society. And yet, we see swans and wolves and others: mating for life! For no other reason than that they've found their one-and-only.