We starve the rats, creosote the ticks, swat the flies, step on the cockroaches and poison the scales. Yet when these pests appear in human form we go paralytic. – Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)

Two-legged creatures we are supposed to love as we love ourselves. The four-legged, also, can come to seem pretty important. But six legs are too many from the human standpoint. – Joseph W. Krutch

Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites. – George Bernard Shaw