We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead
Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.
Interpretation
Caring for animals reflects a person's moral character, and cruelty to them indicates a lack of goodness.
This quote emphasizes the connection between a person's treatment of animals and their overall moral character. Schopenhauer argues that true goodness and compassion can be measured by how one treats those who are defenseless, suggesting that cruelty towards animals is a clear indicator of a person's lack of moral integrity.
In practice
During a speech about animal rights, this quote can help illustrate the importance of compassion.
We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.
To be shocked at how deeply rejection hurts is to ignore what acceptance involves. We must never allow our suffering to be compounded by suggestions that there is something odd in suffering so deeply. There would be something amiss if we didn't.
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
Life is full of troubles and vexations, that one must either rise above it by means of corrected thoughts, or leave it.
Our religions will never at any time take root; the ancient wisdom of the human race will not be supplanted by the events in Galilee. On the contrary, Indian wisdom flows back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought.
We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other people when we acquire a knowledge of the superficial nature of their thoughts, the narrowness of their views and of the number of their errors. Whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honor.
People have a right to get stoned. They have a right to think and explore their own minds. This is as intimate a part of their being as their sexuality. Any culture which mitigates that is clearly afraid of a full and fair and open dialogue about what reality is and what real human values ought to be.
On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it.
All my life I have been passionately interested in monomaniacs of any kind, people carried away by a single idea. The more one limits oneself, the closer one is to the infinite; these people, as unworldly as they seem, burrow like termites into their own particular material to construct, in miniature, a strange and utterly individual image of the world.
Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity.
The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
Suffering is essential for the elimination of the ego, just as it was necessary for you to scrub and scrub in order to wash the stain from my coat.
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