Laurie F. 208  

I was born to catch dragons in their dens
And pick flowers
To tell tales and laugh away the morning
To drift and dream like a lazy stream
And walk barefoot across sunshine days.

~James Kavanaugh



SOME WISDOM FROM THE TAO TE CHING...

The Great Way is easy,
yet people prefer the side paths.
Be aware when things are out of balance.
Stay centered within the Tao.

When rich speculators prosper
while farmers lose their land;
when government officials spend money
on weapons instead of cures;
when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible
while the poor have nowhere to turn --
all this is robbery and chaos.
It is not in keeping with the Tao.
~#53
(From "A New English Version" by Stephen Mitchell)



AND FROM SOME OTHER ELOQUENT SOURCES....

The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man.
They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and the rest of creation.
This mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world,
just as Hitler's mythology of Aryan superiority
justified his doing whatever he pleased with Europe.
But in the end this mythology is not deeply satisfying.
The Takers are a profoundly lonely people.
The world for them is enemy territory, and they live in it like an army of occupation,
alienated and isolated by their extraordinary specialness.
~Daniel Quinn, "Ishmael"

There is still strong in our society the belief that animals and the natural world
have value only insofar as they can be converted into revenue.
That nature is a commodity.
And that the American dream is one of unlimited consumption.
There are many of us, on the other hand, who believe
that animals and the natural world have value by virtue of being alive.
That Nature is a community to which we belong
and to which we owe our lives.
And that the deeper American dream is one of unlimited compassion.
~John Robbins, "The Food Revolution"



Do not be daunted by the world's grief.
Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly, now.
You are not obligated to complete the work,
but neither are you free to abandon it.
~The Talmud

Let your boat of life be light,
packed with only what you need,
a homely home and simple pleasures,
one or two friends worth the name,
someone to love you,
a dog, a cat and a pipe or two,
enough to eat and enough to wear
and a little more than enough to drink....
for thirst is a dangerous thing.
~ Jerome K. Jerome, 1887

When the power of love
overcomes the love of power
we will know peace.
~ Jimi Hendrix

i thank You God for most this amazing day:
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes...
~e. e. cummings

Deep peace of the running wave to you
Deep Peace of the flowing air to you
Deep Peace of the quiet earth to you
Deep Peace of the shining stars to you
Deep Peace of the gentle night to you
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you
Deep Peace to you.
~a Gaelic Blessing

As long as space remains,
as long as sentient beings remain,
may I too remain
and dispel the miseries of the world.
~Shantideva, "Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life" (8th century)

Crush not yonder ant as it draggeth along its grain;
for it too liveth, and its life is dear to it.
A shadow there must be, and a stone upon the heart,
that could wish to sorrow the heart even of an ant.
Strike not with the hand of violence the head of the feeble;
for one day, like the ant, thou mayest fall under the foot thyself.
~Sadi (13th century)

I think I could live with the animals,
they are so placid and self-contained...
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented
with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind
that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
~Walt Whitman

All this talk of religion, but it's how you live your life that is the all-important thing.
If you set out each day to do all the goodness and kindness that you can,
and to do no harm to man or beast, then you are walking the highest path.
And when your time is up if you can leave the earth a better place than you found it,
then yours will have been a life well-lived.
~Holy Lance









To those who say that veganism is extreme, I reply that, on the contrary,
it is non-vegan lifestyle choices that are extreme.
How could choices that cause suffering be anything but extreme
when compassionate alternatives are available?
~Marianne Roberts

"We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation,
and have treated our distant cousins in fur
and feathers so badly that beyond doubt,
if they were able to formulate a religion,
they would depict the devil in human form."
~William Ralph Inage

"To meditate for world peace, to pray for a better world,
and to work for social justice and environmental protection
while continuing to purchase the flesh, milk, and eggs of horribly abused animals exposes a disconnect that is so fundamental that it renders our efforts absurd, hypocritical, and doomed to certain failure."
~Dr. Will Tuttle, "The World Peace Diet"


"In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal
it is considered to be cruelty,
but where a lot of people are unkind to animals,
especially in the name of commerce,
the cruelty is condoned and,
once large sums of money are at stake,
will be defended to the last
by otherwise intelligent people."
~Ruth Harrison, "Animal Machines"

"People often say that humans have always eaten animals,
as if this is a justification for continuing the practice.
According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people
from murdering other people,
since this has also been done since the earliest of times."
~Isaac Bashevis Singer



"Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is
- whether its victim is human or animal -
we cannot expect things to be much better in this world...
We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight
in killing any living creature."
~Rachel Carson

"Compassion is a verb."
~Thich Nhat Hanh

Plant trees.
They give us two of the most crucial elements for our survival:
oxygen and books.
~A. Whitney Brown