Animal life, sombre mystery. All nature protests against the barbarity of man, who misapprehends, who humiliates, who tortures his inferior brethren.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the profound suffering endured by animals due to human cruelty and ignorance.
Jules Michelet's quote highlights the somber connection between humanity and the animal kingdom, suggesting that the barbaric actions of humans toward their fellow creatures invoke a universal outcry from nature itself. It emphasizes the moral obligation to recognize and alleviate the suffering inflicted upon the animals that share our world, which are often misunderstood and mistreated by mankind.
In practice
In a speech advocating for animal rights, one might quote Michelet to underline the cruelty animals face.
Coffee, the sober drink, the mighty nourishment of the brain, which unlike other spirits, heightens purity and lucidity; coffee, which clears the clouds of the imagination and their gloomy weight; which illuminates the reality of things suddenly with the flush of truth.
How beautifully everything is arranged by Nature; as soon as a child enters the world, it finds a mother ready to take care of it.
The historian's first duties are sacrilege and the mocking of false gods. They are his indispensable instruments for establishing the truth.
If we do not save the environment, then whatever we do in civil rights will be of no meaning, because then we will have the equality of extinction.
The Indians' botanical knowledge is disappearing even faster than the plants themselves.
What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows! Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.
With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you're connected to the sea. No matter where on Earth you live.
In a delightful garden, sowing, planting or digging are not hardship but are done with a zeal and a certain pleasure.
And we'd sit in the dry leaves that whispered a little with the slow respiration of our waiting and with the slow breathing of the earth and the windless october, the rank smell of the lantern fouling the brittle air, listening to the dog and the echo of louis' voice dying away
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