February 21

There was a time when people ate one another; there came a time when they stopped doing this, but they still continue to eat animals. Now the time has come when more and more people are dropping this terrible habit.

1

How strange it is that the various societies for the protection of children and the protection of animals are completely indifferent to vegetarianism, when the consumption of meat is in most cases the source of the cruelty which they want to fight by way of punishment. The fulfillment of the law of love can restrain cruelty much more effectively than the fear of criminal liability. There is hardly any difference between the cruelty of torture and murder aimed at satisfying of one’s feeling of wrath and the cruelty of torture and murder aimed at the use of animal meat, by consuming which people kindle the hearth of cruelty within themselves.

— Lucy Mallory

2

The great trinity of curses: tobacco, wine and animal meat. This terrible trinity leads to great misfortune and great ruin. Falling under the power of this trinity, people become akin to animals, losing both their human form and the greatest blessing of human life: a clear mind and a kind heart.

— After Giles

3

There is outrageous rudeness and barbarism in the delusion that our actions in relation to animals have no moral meaning, or, in the words of conventional morality, that we have no obligations before animals.

— Schopenhauer

4

A traveler approached some African cannibals while they were eating some kind of meat. He asked them what they were eating. They replied that it was human flesh.

“Can you really eat it?” cried out the traveler.

“Why not? It’s very tasty with salt,” replied the Africans. They were so used to what they were doing that they could not even understand the reason for the traveler’s exclamation.

In the same way, meat eaters do not understand why vegetarians are so disturbed by the sight of pigs, lambs and cows being eaten just because their meat is tasty with salt.

— After Lucy Mallory

5

The killing and eating of animals happens mainly because people were told that animals were intended by God for human use and that there is nothing wrong in killing them. But that is not true. Even if it is written in some books that it is not a sin to kill animals, it is written clearer in our hearts than in the books that we should pity animals as we do human beings, and we all know this, so long as we are not muting our conscience.

Do not feel embarrassed when the people close to you attack you for rejecting meat eating, when they judge you and laugh at you. If meat eating was of no significance, then meat eaters would not attack vegetarianism; they get irritated because in our time they already recognize their sin, but lack the strength to free themselves from it.