#cruelty

It may be a mistake, that man, in a state of nature, is more disposed to cruelty than courtesy. ↗

— Mercy Otis Warren

#cruelty #disposed #man #may #mistake

There's a certain edge about cruelty. If you're honest about it, most people wince, but say it had to be said. ↗

— Pete Waterman

#certain #cruelty #edge #had #honest

The lamb misused breeds public strife And yet forgives the butcher's knife. ↗

— William Blake

#hypocrisy #poetry #vegetarianism #forgiveness

To see human beings in agony, to see them covered in blood and to hear their death groans, makes people humble. It makes their spirits delicate, bright, peaceful. It's never at such times that we become cruel or bloodthirsty. No, it's on a beautiful spring afternoon like this that people suddenly become cruel. It's at a moment like this, don't you think, while one's vaguely watching the sun as it peeps through the leaves of the trees above a well-mown lawn? Every possible nightmare in the world, every possible nightmare in history, has come into being like this. ↗

— Yukio Mishima

#mishima #beauty

Japan and Hong Kong are steadily whittling away at the last of the elephants, turning their tusks (so much more elegant left on the elephant) into artistic carvings. In much the same way, the beautiful furs from leopard, jaguar, Snow leopard, Clouded leopard and so on, are used to clad the inelegant bodies of thoughtless and, for the most part, ugly women. I wonder how many would buy these furs if they knew that on their bodies they wore the skin of an animal that, when captured, was killed by the medieval and agonizing method of having a red-hot rod inserted up its rectum so as not to mark the skin. ↗

— Gerald Durrell

#conservation #fur-trade #beauty

Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance and her sunlight, from before human cruelty or suffering. She overwhelms man by the contrast between divine beauty and social hideousness. She spares him nothing of her loveliness, neither wing or butterfly, nor song of bird; in the midst of murder, vengeance, barbarism, he must feel himself watched by holy things; he cannot escape the immense reproach of universal nature and the implacable serenity of the sky. The deformity of human laws is forced to exhibit itself naked amidst the dazzling rays of eternal beauty. Man breaks and destroys; man lays waste; man kills; but the summer remains summer; the lily remains the lily; and the star remains the star. ... As though it said to man, 'Behold my work. and yours. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#nature #beauty

I remember an hypothesis argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, 'Whether supposing that the flavour of a big who obtained his death by whipping (per flagellationem extremem) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting an animal to death?' I forget the decision. ↗

— Charles Lamb

#flavor #food #justification #pig #suffering

Brutality to an animal is cruelty to mankind - it is only the difference in the victim. ↗

— Alphonse de Lamartine

#brutality #cruelty #difference #mankind #only

If anyone has seen the horrific and unwatchable footage of the Chinese cat and dog trade - animals skinned alive - then they could not possibly argue in favour of China as a caring nation. There are no animal protection laws in China and this results in the worst animal abuse and cruelty on the planet. It is indefensible. ↗

— Steven Patrick Morrissey

#alive #animal #anyone #argue #caring

As I get older, all sorts of things become less funny. Once one has children, any cruelty involving children becomes far less amusing than when one was at the mercy of one's friends' and relatives' children. ↗

— P. J. O'Rourke

#any #become #becomes #children #cruelty