animals

A home without a cat—and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat—may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove its title?

If everything is perfect, language is useless. This is true for animals. If animals don't speak, it's because everything's perfect for them. If one day they start to speak, it will be because the world has lost a certain sort of perfection.

An enlightened person - by perceiving God in all - looks at a learned person, an outcast, even a cow, an elephant, or a dog with an equal eye.

The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures.  Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse.  There is no certainty that God actually did grant man dominion over other creatures.  What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse.  Yes, the right to kill a deer or a cow is the only thing all of mankind can agree upon, even during the bloodiest of wars.

Only when lions have historians will hunters cease being heroes.

All of the elements of the comic way tend to spread to others, insinuating joy where it was previously absent. Conversation has a way of leaping among persons, as it does at parties and celebratory gatherings. Storytelling always begets storytelling. It is difficult to watch others at play without wanting to join them. This is not only a human phenomenon, for researchers have consistently noted that animals at play are often imitated by other animals. So wherever it is possible to initiate a playful activity, it will have a good chance of replicating itself through other parts of the system.

God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.

Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God.

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

LIke any other animal, human beings will fight to the death when threatened or cornered, but as a species we are perhaps alone in imagining that our survival depends on such elusive properties as recognition, love, identity, honor, prestige, and wealth. Only we will feel that our very existence is endangered when our name is taken in vain, our pride is hurt, our nation threatned, our reputation impugned, our voice ignored, our loyalty betrayed. No other animal will figh t tooth and nail, not only to see that such symbolic losses are made good, but that those hwo have allegedly taken these things fro us are themselves subject to all the torment, degradation, and loss that we have suffered at their hands. This is why violators seldom admit to guilt. For they believe they were fully justified in their excesses; they were only taking back what was rightfully theirs, preserving their civilization, defending their rights, upholding their honor, and, of course, obeying orders from above.