36 Inspirational Animal Quotes

In the bustling pace of modern life, we often seek moments of simplicity and profound wisdom. Nature, in all its glory, offers us endless reminders of resilience, strength, and grace through its most enchanting inhabitants—animals. Drawing inspiration from these creatures can provide clarity and motivation, grounding us in their raw beauty and instinctive ways of living. Dive into our curated collection of the top 36 inspirational animal quotes. Each one is a testament to the unyielding spirit and gentle wisdom found in the animal kingdom, ready to uplift your soul and spark your imagination.

1. “restraint equals indulgence” - Barbara Kingsolver

2. “True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which is deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.” - Milan Kundera

3. “As a member of the Protestant British squirearchy ruling Ireland, he was touchy about his Irish origins. When in later life an enthusiastic Gael commended him as a famous Irishman, he replied "A man can be born in a stable, and yet not be an animal.” - Arthur Wellesley

4. “Sam: “I—it’s—I’m not an animal.” - Maggie Stiefvater

5. “Why do you like show jumping?""... Beauty and excitement. The elements of trust, talent, training, love, and danger make show jumping a thrilling and aesthetic experience. It's really the ultimate test of two nervous systems--the kinetic transfer of the rider's muscle to the horse's muscle enables them to clear those jumps. And there's nothing like it--horse and rider forming an arc of beauty, efficiency, and power, like a double helix.""DNA,""Yes, DNA, the code to life.” - Ainslie Sheridan

6. “Out last chance is a cat's magic sight. We are doomed.” - Laurell K. Hamilton

7. “Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason. More often I have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. Perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly — but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the second degree.” - Miguel de Unamuno

8. “It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. ” - Mark Twain

9. “No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.” - Winston S. Churchill

10. “The truth about an animal is far more exciting and altogether more beautiful than all the myths woven about it. ” - Konrad Lorenz

11. “After scolding one's cat one looks into its face and is seized by the ugly suspicion that it understood every word. And has filed it for reference.” - Charlotte Gray

12. “It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their writing. The best I can think to tell them is: Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise” - Barbara Kingsolver

13. “For it is just this question of pain that partsus. So long as visible or audible pain turns you sick; so long as your ownpains drive you; so long as pain underlies your propositions aboutsin,—so long, I tell you, you are an animal, thinking a little less obscurelywhat an animal feels.” - H.G. Wells

14. “There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, andnot in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever ismore than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or Icould not live.” - H.G. Wells

15. “A man wasn't equal to an animal, not one particle of him. Human life was stinking corrupt, and meanwhile there were beautiful creatures who lived with delicacy on the earth without doing anyone harm. "We should be dying." the judge almost wept.” - kiran desai

16. “Between world and animal are fewer questions than between man and world. How many such questions are there in God's Word?” - Sorin Cerin

17. “Like some winter animal the moon licks the salt of your hand,Yet still your hair foams violet as a lilac treeFrom which a small wood-owl calls.” - Johannes Bobrowski

18. “The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters.” - Lewis Carroll

19. “It is with eight lengthy legs we use to catch food, balance and knit a beautiful silk bed,but as babies we had lost our bones and skin, and hence our legs we had shed.” - Jasmine Martin

20. “Killing animals to make a fashion statement = a sickening + cold-blooded vanity.” - Jess C. Scott

21. “Sigmund Freud once asserted, "Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge." Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, the "individual differences" did not "blur" but, on the contrary, people became more different; people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints.” - Viktor E. Frankl

22. “In the end, it is our defiance that redeems us. If wolves had a religion – if there was a religion of the wolf – that it is what it would tell us.” - Mark Rowlands

23. “We're all animals, high school is animals, but some of us are more animal than others. Like in 'Animal Farm,' which I read, all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others? Here in the real world, all equals are created animal, but some are more animal than others.” - Ned Vizzini

24. “Rabbits (says Mr. Lockley) are like human beings in many ways. One of these is certainly their staunch ability to withstand disaster and to let the stream of their life carry them along, past reaches of terror and loss. They have a certain quality which it would not be accurate to describe as callousness or indifference. It is, rather, a blessedly circumscribed imagination and an intuitive feeling that Life is Now. A foraging wild creature, intent above all upon survival, is as strong as the grass.” - Richard Adams

25. “A boy is a dangerous animal.” - Lionel Shriver

26. “What a strange thing it is to recognize a sound like the shriek of a wounded animal, when you've never heard the shriek of a wounded animal.” - John L'Heureux

27. “Chialer, c'était bon quand on perdait au foot, qu'on vous racontait des histoires d'animaux héroïques, ou en entendant "Flower of Scotland" après l'heure de fermeture.” - Ian Rankin

28. “What’s an “Animus”?’ asked Mad Dog.Literally, it means “animating spirit” – that’s the essence of your core being, the spirit that defines you as a person,' answered Yazuki. 'But it can also mean “animosity” which is why the animal shadows only usually come out in confrontational situations. For centuries, Ninja have looked to the earth for inspiration in ways to live and fight. This is why you see us all giving off animal shadows. We each study the species that mean most to us. We each have an “Animus” that is unique...” - Jane Prowse

29. “Why does it seem easier for us to accept reality when it is within the confinement of the animal kingdom yet so hard for us to face it in our?” - Aysha Taryam

30. “Once I saw a chimpanzee gaze at a particularly beautiful sunset for a full 15 minutes, watching the changing colors [and then] retire to the forest without picking a pawpaw for supper.” - Adriaan Kortlandt

31. “Hey. My life’s not all about weird little creatures pretending to be teddy bears.” From Tribe of the Teddy Bear.” - J. Joseph Wright

32. “This, for many people, is what's most offensive about hunting—to some, disgusting: that it encourages, or allows, us not only to kill but to take a certain pleasure in killing” - Michael Pollan

33. “All animals understand love and affection, but only man shows the propensity to place himself into the shoes of another life form” - The Cruxshadows

34. “You always fed strays and bent down to talk to the dogs you met on the street, looking straight into their eyes as if they were old friends. (Maybe they are, you said. From another life.) You liked to go to the pound and look at them. You tried to send them messages of comfort. I couldn’t go because I started crying the one time I tried. All those eyes and the barks like sobs.” - Francesca Lia Block

35. “I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate.” - Frederick Douglass

36. “Long after the traces of the human animal have disappeared, many of the species it is bent on destroying will still be around, along with others that have yet to spring up.The Earth will forget mankind. The play of life will go on.” - john gray