#animal

Cat rescue is like a virus," says Des placidely about the cat obsession that has taken over his life. "And once you're infected, it's incurable. ↗

— Denise Flaim

#cats #rescue #life

All zoos, even the most enlightened, are built upon the idea both beguiling and repellent—the notion that we can seek out the wildness of the world and behold its beauty, but that we must first contain that wildness. Zoos argue that they are fighting for the conservation of the Earth, that they educate the public and provide refuge and support for vanishing species. And they are right. Animal-rights groups argue that zoos traffic in living creatures, exploiting them for financial gain and amusement. And they are right. Caught inside this contradiction are the animals themselves, and the humans charged with their well-being. ↗

— Thomas French

#wildness #zoo #beauty

The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complex than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth. ↗

— Henry Benston

#life

Wer kann es sagen, wer nur ahnen, wie weit das Geistesvermögen der Tiere geht! ↗

— Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann

#intelligence #intelligence

My life is flashing lights and pointing fingers and uninvited visitors. Inches away, humans flatten their little hands against the wall of glass that separates us. The glass says you are this and we are that and that is how it will always be. ↗

— Katherine Applegate

#humanity #life

Often, vegan advocates assume that a person's defensiveness is the result of selfishness or apathy, when in fact it is much more likely the result of systematic and intensive social conditioning. ↗

— Melanie Joy

#animal-advocates #animals #apathy #defensiveness #social-condition

Why we should believe in wolf children seems somehow easier to understand than the ways we distinguish between what is human and what is animal behavior. In making such distinctions we run the risk of fooling ourselves completely. We assume that the animal is entirely comprehensible and, as Henry Beston has said, has taken form on a plane beneath the one we occupy. It seems to me that this is a sure way to miss the animal and to see, instead, only another reflection of our own ideas. ↗

— Barry Lopez

#men

Where do we record the passing of wildlife? Who mourns the silent deaths of the small? ↗

— O.R. Melling

#environment #sad #death

Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them. ↗

— Dag Hammarskjold

#ask #attend #because #become #cravings

You can judge a man's true character by the way he treats his fellow animals. ↗

— Paul McCartney

#beatles #character #man #vegetarianism #true