Metello

It must be admitted that of the objections urged against Vegetarianism, not one can withstand s loyal and scrupulous inquiry. I, for my part, can affirm that those whom I have known to submit themselves to this regimen have found its results to be improved or restored health, marked addition to strength, and the acquisition by the mind of clearness, brightness, well-being, such as might follow the release from some secular, loathsome, detestable dungeon.� - MAURICE MAETERLINCK -............................................ �Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?� - PLUTARCH - ..................................�A pitiful fellow! Such a ridiculous kind of pity his, as those silly souls have, who would not kill an innocent chicken for the world; but when killed to their hands, are always the most greedy devourers of it.� - SAMUEL RICHARDSON - ...........�It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation, that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion; and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.� -PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY - .........�Think how the glutton man devours; What bloody feasts regale his hours! O impudence of power and might, Thus to condemn a hawk or kite, When thou, perhaps, carniv'rous sinner Hadst pullets yesterday for dinner!� - JOHN GAY - ............�As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.� - LEO TOLSTOY - ............�Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.� - DR. ALBERT SCHWEITZER ................... �How pitiful, and what poverty of mind, to have said that the animals are machines deprived of understanding and feeling . . . There are some barbarians who will take this dog, that so greatly excels man in capacity for friendship, who will nail him to a table, and dissect him alive, in order to show you his veins and nerves. And what you then discover in him are all the same organs of sensation that you have in yourself. Answer me, mechanist, has Nature arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel? Has he nerves that he may he incapable of suffering?� - VOLTAIRE .....................�It is certainly preferable to raise vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure from the established barbarious habit. That we can subsist on plant food and perform our work even to advantage is not a theory, but a well-demonstrated fact. Many races living almost exclusively on vegetables are of superior physique and strength. There is no doubt that some plant food, such as oatmeal, is more economical than meat, and superior to it in regard to both mechanical and mental performance. Such food, moreover, taxes our digestive organs decidedly less, and, in making us more contented and sociable, produces an amount of good difficult to estimate. In view of these facts every effort should be made to stop the wanton and cruel slaughter of animals, which must be destructive to our morals.� - NIKOLA TESLA ..................�To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of men. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous.—And that is the unpardonable crime.� - ROMAIN ROLLAND ...................�My mother was convinced, and on this head I have retained her firm belief, that to kill animals for the purpose of feeding on their flesh is one of the most deplorable and shameful infirmities of the human state; that it is one of those curses cast upon man either by his fall, or by the obduracy of his own perversity.� - ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE ...................While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal living conditions on this earth? - ISADORA DUNCAN ........................�Next to the ridicule of denying an evident truth, is that of taking much pains to defend it; and no truth appears to me more evident, than that beasts are endow'd with thought and reason as well as men. The arguments are in this case so obvious, that they never escape the most stupid and ignorant.� - DAVID HUME ......................�And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. (...)Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation, creeps upon them. And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?� - H. G. WELLS ..............�All savages are cruel, and it is not their customs that tend in this direction; their cruelty is the result of their food.� - JEAN- JACQUES ROUSSEAU .....................�It is not a digression to mention the horrors of war in connection with the massacre of cattle and carnivorous banquets. The diet of individuals corresponds closely to their manners. Blood demands blood.� - ELISEE RECLUS ..................�And yet (would you believe it?) I have seen the very men who have thus boasted of their tenderness, at the same time devouring the flesh of six different animals tossed up in a fricassee. Strange contrariety of conduct! They pity, and they eat the objects of their compassion!� - OLIVER GOLDSMITH .........................�As for me, I could never so much as endure, without remorse and griefe, to see a poore, sillie, and innocent beast pursued and killed, which is harmelesse and voide of defence, and of whom we receive no offence at all.� - MONTAIGNE ....................�Everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty� - THOMAS PAINE ........................�To see the convulsions, agonies and tortures of a poor fellow-creature, whom they cannot restore nor recompense, dying to gratify luxury and tickle callous and rank organs, must require a rocky heart, and a great degree of cruelty and ferocity. I cannot find any great difference between feeding on human flesh and feeding on [other] animal flesh, except custom and practice.� - GEORGE CHEYNE .....................�Thousands of people who say they 'love' animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs.� - JANE GOODALL ........................ �We manage to swallow flesh, only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do.� - RABINDRANATH TAGORE ......................................... Lest I slight any creature, I must also mention the domestic animals, the beasts, and the birds from whom I have learned. Job said long ago (35:11) "Who teacheth us more than than the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven? - SHMUEL YOSEF AGNON................................................... MORE QUOTES AT: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/VegetarianismMY HI5 PAGE:http://metello.hi5.comCause: Animals raised for food have to eat as many as 16 pounds of grain to create just 1 pound of edible flesh (a.k.a. "meat").It takes about 300 gallons of water per day to produce food for a vegan, and more than 4,000 gallons of water per day to produce food for a meat-eater.Effect: 18,000 children die every day because of hunger and malnutrition, and 850 million people go to bed every night with empty stomachs, the head of the United Nations food agency said yesterday.This is an over-simplified version of things, but you get the point, right? Find ou more: http://www.goveg.com/worldhunger.asp/