Alexander Pope

“ Lobsters roasted alive, pigs whipt to death, fowls sew'd up, are testimonies of our outrageous luxury. Those who (as Seneca expresses it) divide their lives betwixt an anxious conscience and a nauseated stomach , have a just reward of their gluttony in the diseases it brings with it; for human savages, like other wild beasts, find snares and poison in the provisions of life, and are allured by their appetite to their destruction. I know nothing more shocking or horrid than the prospect of one of their kitchens covered with blood, and filled with the cries of creatures expiring in tortures. ”

“ The adder intreated the traveller's assistance, who tying a bag to the end of his staff reached it, and drew him out: he then bid him go where he pleased, but never be more hurtful to men, since he owed his life to a man's compassion. The adder, however, prepared to sting him, and when he expostulated how unjust it was to retaliate good with evil, 'I shall do no more,' said the adder, 'than what you men practise every day, whose custom it is to requite benefits with ingratitude. ”

“ As for such as are mortal or noxious, we have a right to destroy them; and for those that are neither of advantage or prejudice to us, the common enjoyment of life is what I cannot think we ought to deprive them of. ”

“ We should find it hard to vindicate the destroying of any thing that has life, merely out of wantonness; yet in this principle our children are bred up, and one of the first pleasures we allow them, is the licence of inflicting pain upon poor animals; almost as soon as we are sensible what life is ourselves, we make it our sport to take it from other creatures. ”

“ Every one knows how remarkable the Turks are for their humanity in this kind. I remember an Arabian author [1] , who has written a treatise to show, how far a man supposed to have subsisted in a desert island, without any instruction, or so much as the sight of any other man, may, by the pure light of nature, attain the knowledge of philosophy and virtue. One of the first things he makes him observe is, that universal benevolence of nature in the protection and preservation of its creatures. ”

“ Montaigne thinks it some reflection upon human nature itself, that few people take delight in seeing beasts caress or play together, but almost every one is pleased to see them lacerate and worry one another. ”

“ It gives one an image of a giant's den in a romance, bestrew'd with the scattered heads and mangled limbs of those who were slain by his cruelty. ”

“ That it is no easy talk to preach to the belly, which has no ears." 'Yet if,' says he, 'we are ashamed to be so out of fashion as not to offend, let us at least offend with some discretion and measure. If we kill an animal for our provision, let us do it with the meltings of compassion, and without tormenting it. ”

“ Yet amidst all the misfortunes of these unfriended creatures, it is some happiness that we have not yet taken a fancy to eat them: for should our countrymen refine upon the French never so little, it is not to be conceived to what unheard of torments owls, cats, and frogs may be yet reserved. ”

“ Perhaps that voice or cry so nearly resembling the human, with which Providence has endued so many different animals, might purposely be given them to move our pity, and prevent those cruelties we are too apt to inflict on our fellow creatures. ”

“ I fancy too, some advantage might be taken of the common notion, that it is ominous or unlucky to destroy some sorts of birds, as swallows or martins; this opinion might possibly arise from the confidence these birds seem to put in us by building under our roofs, so that it is a kind of violation of the laws of hospitality, to murder them. ”

“ History tells us of a wise and polite nation that rejected a person of the first quality, who stood for a judiciary office, only because he had been observed in his youth to take pleasure in tearing and murdering of birds. ”

“ However it be, I do not know, I say, why this prejudice, well improved and carried as far as it go, might not be made to conduce to the preservation of many innocent creatures, which would are now exposed to all the wantonness of an ignorant barbarity.
There are other animals that have the misfortune, for no manner of reason, to be treated as common enemies wherever found. The conceit that a cat has nine lives, has cost at least nine lives in ten of the whole race of them. ”

“ It is observable of those noxious animals, which have qualities most powerful to injure us, that they naturally avoid mankind, and never hurt us unless provoked or necessitated by hunger. Man, on the other hand seeks out and pursues even the most inoffensive animals, on purpose to persecute and destroy them. ”