On Animal Suffering
& Human Kindness

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Shantideva
Whatever joy there is in this world, All comes from desiring others to be happy, And whatever suffering there is in this world, All comes from desiring myself to be happy. [TOP]

John Galsworthy, 1867-1933
Much Cry, Little Wool
Once admit that we have the right to inflict unnecessary suffering and you destroy the very basis of human society. [TOP]

Pope Pius the 12th, 1876-1958
The animal world is a manifestation of God’s power, and demands respect and consideration. The desire to kill animals, unnecessary harshness and callous cruelty toward them, must always be condemned. [TOP]

Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970
Moral progress has consisted in the main of protest against cruel customs, and of attempts to enlarge human sympathy. [TOP]

Christina Rossetti, 1830-1894
A Nursery Rhyme Book
Hurt no living thing:
Ladybird, nor butterfly,
Nor moth with dusty wing,
Nor cricket chirping cheerily,
Nor grasshopper so light of leap,
Nor dancing gnat, nor beetle fat,
Nor harmless worms that creep. [TOP]

Henry S. Salt, 1851-1939
The Creed of Kinship
Humaneness is not a dead external precept, but a living impulse from within; not self-sacrifice, but self-fulfillment. [TOP]

Dr. Gerald Cutler, dtbc
The smaller the victim, the greater the crime. [TOP]

Charlotte Bronte, 1816-1855
It is piteous to see even an animal lying lifeless. [TOP]

Ian Naill, dtbc
One Man and His Dogs
I suppose man’s first step toward civilization ... and he still has a thousand miles to go ... was when he was touched by the helplessness of the weak and young and felt compelled to protect them. The savage man became something a little better than a beast when he first held out his hand in compassion and helped the helpless. [TOP]

John Gardner, 1912-
Nickelson’s Ghosts
...poor syphilitic Neitzsche, who in 1889 had run into the street to throw his arms around the neck of a horse as its master was beating it to its knees, after which moment “the antichrist” was never again sane ... the best mind in Europe reduced in one instant of passionate sympathy ... to rubble. [TOP]

Robert Buchanan, 1841-1901
Nature is pitiless...
Then be thou pitiful. Cruel is the world
Then be thou kind, even to the creeping thing
That crawls and agonizes in its place
As thou in thine. [TOP]

Edith Sitwell, dtbc
Taken Care Of
When we think of cruelty, we must try to remember the stupidity, the envy, the frustration from which it has arisen. [TOP]

Joseph Addison, 1672-1719
Maxims, Observations and Reflections
True benevolence, or compassion, extends itself through the whole of existence and sympathizes with the distress of every creature capable of sensation. [TOP]

George T. Angell, 1823-1909
from a letter
Standing before you as the advocate of the lower races, I declare what I believe cannot be gainsaid ... that just so soon and so far as we pour into all our schools and songs, the poems and literature of mercy toward these lower creatures, just so soon and so far shall we reach the roots not only of cruelty but of crime. [TOP]

Francis Bacon, 1561-1626
Advancement of Learning
Nature has endowed man with a noble and excellent principle of compassion, which extends itself also to the dumb animals—whence this compassion has some resemblance to that of a prince toward his subjects. And it is certain that the noble souls are the most extensively compassionate, for narrow and degenerate minds think that compassion belongs not to them; but a great soul, the noblest part of creation, is ever compassionate. [TOP]

STBC
The nobler a soul is, the more objects of compassion it hath. [TOP]

George Eliot, 1819-1880
from a letter
Women should be protected from anyone’s exercise of unrighteous power ... but then, so should every other living creature. [TOP]

STBC
Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside itself; it only requires opportunity. [TOP]

The Holy Bible
Proverbs 12:10
A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. [TOP]

Isaiah 66:3
He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog’s neck ... Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations. [TOP]

Isiah I: 11-15
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. [TOP]

Thomas Fuller, 1608-1661
The Holy State
He that will not be merciful to his beast is a beast himself. [TOP]

Edgar A. Guest, 1881-1959
Obligation
They cannot ask for kindness
Or for mercy plead,
Yet cruel is our blindness
Which does not see their need.
World over, town or city,
God trusts us with this task:
To give our love and pity
To those who cannot ask. [TOP]

Lord Douglas Houghton of Sowerby, 1898-
House of Lords, 6/19/78
I reject the proposition that fondness for animals implies some lack of concern for human beings. Do I have to prove a love of children by being cruel to animals? Is the person who is cruel to animals likely to love children all the more? Is that the proposition, or is cruelty an evil streak in the nature of some humans which makes a selfless love, whether for humans or animals, impossible? [TOP]

Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine, 1790-1869
Les Confidences
We cannot have two hearts, one for the animals, the other for man. In cruelty toward the former and cruelty toward the latter there is no difference but in the victim. [TOP]

John Lawrence, 1753-1839
On the Rights of Beasts
Can there be one kind of justice for men and another for brutes? Is feeling in them a different thing to what it is in ourselves? Is not a beast produced by the same rule and in the same way as we ourselves? Is not his body nourished by the same food, hurt by the same injuries, his mind actuated by the same passions and affections which animate the human breast and does not he, also, at last, mingle his dust with ours and in like manner surrender up the vital spark? Is this spark or soul to perish because it chanced to belong to a beast? Is it to become annihilate? Tell me, learned philosophers, how that may possibly happen. [TOP]

H.W. Nevinson, 1856-1941
Essays in Freedom and Rebellion
Cruelty is the vice most natural to dullness of mind. [TOP]

Cardinal John Henry Newman, 1801-1890
Parochial and Plain Sermons
It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain. [TOP]

Ibid.
Now what is it that moves our very heart, and sickens us so much at the cruelty shown poor brutes? I suppose this: first, that they have done us no harm; next, that they have no power whatsoever of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which make their sufferings so especially touching ... there is something so very dreadful, so Santanic in tormenting those who have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power. [TOP]

STBC
Cruelty to animals is as if humans did not love God. [TOP]

Laurence Sterne, 1713-1768
Tristram Shandy
“I’ll not hurt thee,” says Uncle Toby, rising with the fly in his hand. “Go,” he says, opening the window to let it escape. “Why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me.” (TOP)

Seneca, c. 4 b.c.-65 a.d.
Epistola
Let us love temperance—let us be just—let us refrain from bloodshed. None is so near the gods as he who shows kindness. [TOP]

STBC
We are members of one great body. Nature planted in us a mutual love, and fitted us for a social life. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole. [TOP]

Thomas Tryon, 1634-1703
Friendly Advice to the Gentleman Planters of the East and West Indies
The inferior creatures groan under your cruelties. You hunt them for your pleasure, and overwork them for your covetousness, and kill them for your gluttony, and set them to fight one with another till they die, and count it a sport and a pleasure to behold them worry one another. [TOP]

Buddha, c. 563-483 b.c.
All things are born of the unborn, and from this unity of life flows brotherhood and compassion for all creatures. [TOP]

All beings tremble before violence. All fear death. All love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do? [TOP]

Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881
Never apologize for showing feeling, my friend; remember that when you do so you apologize for truth. [TOP]

L.T. Dansheill, 1914-
from a legislative address, Texas
Show me the enforced laws of a state for the prevention of cruelty to animals and I in turn will give you a correct estimate of the refinement enlightenment, integrity and equity of that commonwealth’s people. [TOP]

Victor Hugo, 1802-1885
Alpes et Pyrénées
Animals are weak because they are less intelligent. Let us therefore be kind and compassionate toward them. In the relations of man with the animals, with the flowers, with all the objects of creation, there is a whole great ethic scarcely seen as yet, but which will eventually break through into the light and be the corollary and the complement to human ethics. [TOP]

Dr. Gordon Latto, 1911-
The Vegetarian Way
When we lose our sense of pity and compassion for the creatures, we harden our hearts to them and also to our brother man. [TOP]

President Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865
after returning a fledgling to its nest
I could not have slept tonight if I had left that helpless little creature to perish on the ground. [TOP]

Gladys Taber, 1899-
Conversations with Amber
...when people reach out to relate to animals, life is richer for both ... Shooting or trapping may give a momentary sense of triumph—man the powerful. But the limp body is only another victim; no more experience can come of it. Life has more to give than death. [TOP]

Richard Wagner, 1813-1883
I do not know how God will judge my handiwork. During the last three years, I have written more than 50 pages of the score of “Parsifal” and saved three young dogs from death. We shall have to wait and see which lies heavier in the scales. [TOP]

The Regeneration of Mankind
Human dignity begins to assert itself only at the point where man is distinguishable from the beast by pity for it. [TOP]

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