Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life.
Interpretation
All living beings deserve respect and gentle treatment, as life is precious and short.
Elizabeth Goudge emphasizes the importance of respecting all forms of life, whether human, animal, or plant. She suggests that contempt towards living beings is unacceptable and highlights that civilization is defined by our ability to show respect and kindness towards others, reminding us that life is fleeting and should be cherished.
In practice
A speaker at a wildlife conservation event might quote this to advocate for animal rights.
Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real.
Beauty provokes harassment, the law says, but it looks through men's eyes when deciding what provokes it.
Whenever we moderns pause for a moment, and enter the silence, and listen very carefully, the glimmer of our deepest nature begins to shine forth, and we are introduced to the mysteries of the deep, the call of the within, the infinite radiance of a splendor that time and space forgot
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
Bottles of wine aren't like paintings. At some point you have to consume them. The object in life is to die with no bottles of wine in your cellar. To drink your last bottle of wine and go to sleep that night and not wake up.
God will prepare everything for our perfect happiness in heaven, and if it takes my dog being there, I believe he'll be there.
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