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.
Though men now possess the power to dominate and exploit every corner of the natural world, nothing in that fact implies that they have the right or the need to do so.
The lime trees were in bloom. But in the early morning only a faint fragrance drifted through the garden, an airy message, an aromatic echo of the dreams during the short summer night.
In the valley of the giants where the stars and stripes explode, the peaches they were sweet and the milk and honey flowed.
Even without seeing the crickets, grasshoppers, cicadas and katydids, we hear them shrilling in this season and trust that they're the tiny living gargoyles entomologists claim.
Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?
The soil of their native land is dear to all the hearts of mankind.
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