Eleanor Porter Quotes

Pets have more love and compassion in them than most humans.

The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.

Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be.

On love, not harming others, and respecting all beings. Even animals have these elements in their behavioral patterns. We should start by observing how animals act. They are honest and appreciate it when we are honest with them. If you present something nice to an animal in one hand while hiding a rope in the other, the creature will know your intention. Yet animals have no religion, no constitution. Basic nature has endowed them with the faculty of discernment. It is the same for humans.

Dogs are nicer than people.

The rules of wildlife are simple and clear, which is not the case for men.

To get a sense of a person, to get their essence, it's not just about details. It is about something you can't really describe.

These days, many people are unwilling to see their dog as an animal. Let's face it: they are cute, but they will bite. Not only do I look at dogs as animals, I look at myself as an animal, which explains why, since I got my permit, I drive with my head out the window.

People-watching is my favorite thing to do. This is blowing my mind. I fixate on one person, and then I think about the struggles in their life. I think about what made them walk the way they do.

I think you can tell a lot about people if you observe them as they're observing.

As humans, we are not so rationalist as we think we are. I think our biggest quality is indeed that we are human, truly human: if our biggest quality would be rationality, we would lose our soul.

As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prarie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits.

You have learned enough to see that cats are much like you and me.

Cats gotta scratch. Dogs gotta bite. I gotta write.

Here, Gentlemen, a dog teaches us a lesson in humanity.

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.

He said that people who loved [animals] to excess were capable of the worst cruelties toward human beings. He said that dogs were not loyal but servile, that cats were opportunists and traitors, that peacocks were heralds of death, that macaws were simply decorative annoyances, that rabbits fomented greed, that monkeys carried the fever of lust, and that roosters were damned because they had been complicit in the three denials of Christ.

Humans will always tell you the story. Dogs can only tell you the truth. Trust your instincts and listen your dog.

Some will protest that in a world with so much human suffering, it is something between eccentric and obscene to mourn a dog. I think not. After all, it is perfectly normal—indeed, deeply human—to be moved when nature presents us with a vision of great beauty. Should we not be moved when it produces a vision—a creature—of the purest sweetness?

I know that I have had friends who would never have vexed or betrayed me, if they had walked on all fours.

Even in civilized mankind faint traces of monogamous instinct can be perceived.

Humans are able to give very good feedback. You can't tell with an animal what they feel.

Animals have always left me with a curiosity about human nature. I trust animals more than most people.

I love both the way a dog looks up to me and a cat condescends to me.

Dogs are very different from cats in that they can be images of human virtue. They are like us.