In a dialogue prefixed to Lessius’ Hygiasticon (1634), a glutton reforms himself by arguing with his own echo:

Gl. My belly I do deifie.
Echo. Fie.
Gl. Who curbs his appetite ‘s a fool.
Echo. Ah, fool!
Gl. I do not like this abstinence.
Echo. Hence.
Gl. My joy ‘s a feast, my wish is wine.
Echo. Swine.
Gl. We epicures are happie, truely.
Echo. You lie.
Gl. Who ‘s that which giveth me the lie?
Echo. I.
Gl. What? Echo, thou that mock’st a voice?
Echo. A voice!
Gl. May I not, Echo, eat my fill?
Echo. Ill.
Gl. Will ‘t hurt me if I drink too much?
Echo. Much.
Gl. Thou mock’st me, Nymph! I’ll not beleeve ‘t.
Echo. Beleeve ‘t.
Gl. Dost thou condemne, then, what I do?
Echo. I do.
Gl. I grant it doth exhaust the purse.
Echo. Worse.
Gl. Is ‘t this which dulls the sharpest wit?
Echo. Best wit.
Gl. Is ‘t this which brings infirmities?
Echo. It is.
Gl. Whither will ‘t bring my soul? canst tell?
Echo. T’ Hell.
Gl. Dost thou no gluttons vertuous know?
Echo. No.
Gl. Would’st have me temperate till I die?
Echo. I.
Gl. Shall I therein finde ease and pleasure?
Echo. Yea, sure.
Gl. But is ‘t a thing which profit brings?
Echo. It brings.
Gl. To minde or bodie? or to both?
Echo. To both.
Gl. Will it my life on earth prolong?
Echo. O, long!
Gl. Will ‘t make me vigorous untill death?
Echo. Till death.
Gl. Will ‘t bring me to eternal blisse?
Echo. Yes.
Gl. Then, sweetest Temperance, I’ll love thee.
Echo. I love thee.
Gl. Then, swinish Gluttonie, I’ll leave thee.
Echo. I’ll leave thee.
Gl. I’ll be a belly-god no more.
Echo. No more.
Gl. If all be true which thou dost tell,
They who fare sparingly fare well.
Echo. Farewell!

Koko the gorilla is famous for mastering more than 1,000 signs based on American Sign Language, which she uses to communicate with Stanford researchers.

That’s not all she’s learned from humans. One day her attendants discovered that a steel sink in her enclosure had been torn from its moorings. When they confronted her, she pointed to her pet kitten.

“Cat did it,” she signed.

At the start of the French revolution, a poet was asked what he thought of the new constitution. He replied with two stanzas:

To see what he really thought, read each line straight across.

(From Henry Benjamin Wheatley, Of Anagrams, 1862.)

leighster
n. a female liar

Somebody asked the Baron Rothschild to take venison.—’No,’ said the Baron, ‘I never eatsh wenshon, I don’t think it ish so coot ash mutton.’—’Oh,’ said the Baron’s friend, ‘I wonder at your saying so. If mutton were better than venison, why does venison cost so much more?’ ‘Vy,’ replied the Baron, ‘I vill tell you vy—in dish world de peoples alvaysh prefers vat ish deer to vat is sheep.’

— “Anecdote of Sir Richard Jebb,” recounted in A Collection of Newspaper Extracts, 1842

agerasia
n. youthful appearance in an old person

Also:

neanimorphism
n. the quality of looking younger than one’s age

Mamihlapinatapais, from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, is considered the world’s most succinct word — and the hardest to translate.

It means “a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but that neither one wants to start.”

Sir Fletcher Norton was noted for his want of courtesy. When pleading before Lord Mansfield on some question of manorial right, he chanced unfortunately to say, ‘My lord, I can illustrate the point in an instance in my own person; I myself have two little manors.’ The judge immediately interposed with one of his blandest smiles, ‘We all know it, Sir Fletcher.’

— John Timbs, A Century of Anecdote, 1873

psaphonic
n. planning one’s rise to wealth and fame