“[Concerning the love La Fontaine felt for animals] He follows their emotions, he represents their reasonings, he becomes tender, he becomes gay, he participates in their feelings. The factis, he lived in them. […] The animals contain all the materials of man-sensations, judgments, images.”

— Hippolyte Taine

La Fontaine et ses Fables (1853–1861), Hachette, 1911, p. 166 and 107; as quoted in Matthieu Ricard, A Plea for the Animals, trans. Sherab Chödzin Kohn, Shambhala Publications, 2016, p. 102.

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Hippolyte Taine 3

French critic and historian 1828–1893

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