Living creatures possess a moving soul and a certain spiritual superiority which in this respect make them similar to those who possess intellect (people) and they have the power of affecting their welfare and their food and they flee from pain and death.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the spiritual and intellectual similarities between living creatures and humans.
Nahmanides emphasizes the idea that all living beings share a soul and a sense of spirituality, leading to a similarity with humans. This shared essence grants animals the ability to seek their own welfare and escape from suffering, suggesting a profound interconnectedness between all forms of life.
In practice
In a speech about animal rights, one might quote Nahmanides to highlight the spiritual nature of all living beings.
I begin each day with holy Mass, receiving Jesus hidden under the appearance of a simple piece of bread. Then I go out into the streets and I find the same Jesus hidden in the dying destitute, the AIDS patients, the lepers, the abandoned children, the hungry, and the homeless. It's the same Jesus.
Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
The death of a language. The word has the same kind of reluctant resonance as it has when we talk about the death of a person. And indeed, that's how it should be. For that's how it is. A language dies only when the last person who speaks it dies.
That makes me think, my friend, as I have often done before, how natural it is that those who have spent a long time in the study of philosophy appear ridiculous when they enter the courts of law as speakers. Those who have knocked about in courts and the like from their youth up seem to me, when compared with those who have been brought up in philosophy and similar pursuits, to be as slaves in breeding compared with freemen.
The difference between sentiment and being sentimental is the following: Sentiment is when a driver swerves out of the way to avoid hitting a rabbit on the road. Being sentimental is when the same driver, when swerving away from the rabbit, hits a pedestrian.
Let him that desires to see others happy, make haste to give while his gift can be enjoyed, and remember that every moment of delay takes away something from the value of his benefaction.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.