He reflected on the decay of mankind-the decline of the human race into folly and weakness and rottenness. 'Be a good animal, true to your animal instinct' was his motto.
The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritualcreation, and not in augmenting animal existence. Nor is the man enriched, in repeating the old experiments of animal sensation; nor unless through new powers and ascending pleasures he knows himself by the actual experience of higher good to be already on the way to the highest.
If chimpanzees have consciousness, if they are capable of abstractions, do they not have what until now has been described as 'human rights'? How smart does a chimp have to be before killing him constitutes murder?
MAMMALIA, n.pl. A family of vertebrate animals whose females in a state of nature suckle their young, but when civilized and enlightened put them out to nurse, or use the bottle.
About sacrifice and the offering of sacrifices, sacrificial animals think quite differently from those who look on: but they have never been allowed to have their say.
The saying, "The Magyar is much too lazy to be bored," is worth thinking about. Only the most subtle and active animals are capable of boredom.--A theme for a great poet would be God's boredom on the seventh day of creation.
The uniqueness of humans has been claimed on many grounds, but most often because of our tool-making, culture, language, reason and morality. We have them, the other animals don't, and -- so the argument goes -- that's that.
The animal lacks both anxiety and hope because its consciousness is restricted to what is clearly evident and thus to the present moment: the animal is the present incarnate.
Animals learn death first at the moment of death;...man approaches death with the knowledge it is closer every hour, and this creates a feeling of uncertainty over his life, even for him who forgets in the business of life that annihilation is awaiting him. It is for this reason chiefly that we have philosophy and religion.
My days I devote to reading and experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights in the study of astronomy. There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope.
The great lesson is, that unity is behind all. Call it God, Love, Spirit. Allah, Jehovah - it is the same unity that animates all life from the lowest animal to the noblest man.
Animals keep you company when you're really lonely. It helps because when you have a friend around who always likes you no matter what - it's harder to feel bad or down.