It is necessary to correct the error that vegetarianism has made us weak in mind, or passive or inert in action. I do not regard flesh-food as necessary at any stage
Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so amazingly know their path, though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it themselves.
Generally speaking, our prisoners were capable of loving animals, and if they had been allowed they would have delighted to rear large numbers of domestic animals and birds in the prison. And I wonder what other activity could better have softened and refined their harsh and brutal natures than this. But it was not allowed. Neither the regulations nor the nature of the prison made it possible.
No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees, sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air, dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding, our animal passion rooted in the city.
It's disheartening that animal people criticize societies that enlist the help of actors or organize creative acts like 'I'd rather go naked than wear fur,' to increase public awareness to our cause. These are great/courageous ideas which time has come! Liberation of animals is REVOLUTION - not elegant performance/ intellectual competition. We should do most anything to advance the animal rights cause. All the bickering may make the one step forward... TWO STEPS BACKWARD???
There never was any party, faction, sect, or cabal whatsoever, in which the most ignorant were not the most violent; for a bee is not a busier animal than a blockhead.
Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.
Religion is still useful among the herd - that it helps their orderly conduct as nothing else could. The crude human animal is in-eradicably superstitious, and there is every biological reason why they should be. Take away his Christian god and saints, and he will worship something else.
I cannot see the short, white curls Upon the forehead of an Ox, But what I see them dripping with That poor thing's blood, and hear the ax; When I see calves and lambs, I see Them led to death; I see no bird Or rabbit cross the open field But what a sudden shot is heard; A shout that tells me men aim true, For death or wound, doth chill me through. W.H. Davies I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.
Nature has willed that man should, by himself, produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical ordering of his animal existence, and that he should partake of no other happiness or perfection than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has created by his own reason.