Sentient Beings Quotes - Page 5

• We are all given a gift of existence and of being sentient beings, and I think true happiness lies in love and compassion.

  Adam Pascal

  Atheist, Lying, Thinking

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• It's probably weird to think about an addiction like it's a sentient being, but that's how it feels. Like it's something living inside you. Something you can't get rid of because killing it means killing you.

  Ellen Hopkins

  Mean, Thinking, Addiction

  Ellen Hopkins (2008). “Identical”, p.142, Simon and Schuster

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• It is love; love, the comfort of the human species, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sentient beings, love, tender love.

  Voltaire

  Soul, Comfort, Candide

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• We can no more justify using nonhumans as human resources than we can justify human slavery. Animal use and slavery have at least one important point in common: both institutions treat sentient beings exclusively as resources of others. That cannot be justified with respect to humans; it cannot be justified with respect to nonhumans—however “humanely” we treat them.

  Gary L. Francione

  Animal, Important, Use

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• If you are not vegan, please consider going vegan. It’s a matter of nonviolence. Being vegan is your statement that you reject violence to other sentient beings, to yourself, and to the environment, on which all sentient beings depend.

  Gary L. Francione

  Matter, Violence, Vegan

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• All sentient beings should have at least one right—the right not to be treated as property

  Gary L. Francione

  Compassion, Should Have, Treated

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• We do not have to be ashamed of what we are. As sentient beings we have wonderful backgrounds. These backgrounds may not be particularly enlightened or peaceful or intelligent. Nevertheless, we have soil good enough to cultivate; we can plant anything in it.

  Chogyam Trungpa

  Pride, Intelligent, Peaceful

  Chogyam Trungpa (2005). “The Sanity We Are Born With: A Buddhist Approach to Psychology”, p.85, Shambhala Publications

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• Civilization is very fragile, all it takes is a few decades of chaos for us to forget humanity and turn into animals. Our base natures can take over very fast. We can forget that we are sentient beings, with laws and codes and ethics.

  Amish Tripathi

  Animal, Law, Civilization

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• The misery we inflict on sentient beings slackens our human evolution.

  Annie Besant

  Compassion, Misery, Evolution

  Annie Besant (1913). “Vegetarianism in the Light of Theosophy”

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• When you open the door and invite in all sentient beings as your guests, you have to drop your agenda.

  Pema Chodron

  Freedom, Doors, Inspire

  Pema Chodron (2001). “Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living”, p.183, Shambhala Publications

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• We are vegans not simply because being vegan will reduce suffering. We are vegan because every sentient being values her or his life even if no one else does. We are vegan because justice minimally requires that we not take life for trivial purposes.

  Gary L. Francione

  Justice, Suffering, Doe

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• The idea that we have the right to inflict suffering and death on other sentient beings for the trivial reasons of palate pleasure and fashion is, without doubt, one of the most arrogant and morally repugnant notions in the history of human thought.

  Gary L. Francione

  Death, Fashion, Ideas

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• Veganism is about nonviolence. It is about not engaging in harm to other sentient beings; to oneself; and to the environment upon which all beings depend for life. In my view, the animal rights movement is, at its core, a movement about ending violence to all sentient beings. It is a movement that seeks fundamental justice for all. It is an emerging peace movement that does not stop at the arbitrary line that separates humans from nonhumans.

  Gary L. Francione

  Peace, Animal, Rights

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• It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Compassion, Vegetarianism, Should Have

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sir John Courtown Edward Shelley-Rolls (bart.), Roger Ingpen (1934). “Verse and prose from the manuscripts of Percy Bysshe Shelley”

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• Sometimes I think I am going mad. I live for days in the mystery and tears of things so that the commonest object, the most familiar face- even my own- become ghostly, unreal, enigmatic. I get into an attitude of almost total scepticism, nescience, solipsism, in a world of dumb, sphinx-like things that cannot explain themselves. The discovery of how I am situated- a sentient being on a globe in space overshadows me. I wish I were just nothing.

  W.N.P. Barbellion

  Attitude, Thinking, Space

  W. N. P. Barbellion (1919). “The Journal of a Disappointed Man”

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• As you embrace the present and become one with it, and merge with it, you will experience a fire, a glow, a sparkle of ecstasy throbbing in every sentient being. As you begin to experience this exultation of spirit in everything that is alive, as you become intimate with it, joy will be born within you, and you will drop the terrible burdens of defensiveness, resentment, and hurtfulness... then you will become lighthearted, carefree, joyous, and free.

  Deepak Chopra

  Motivational, Spiritual, Anger

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• Unceasing change turns the wheel of life, and so reality is shown in all it's many forms. Dwell peacefully as change itself liberates all suffering sentient beings and brings them great joy.

  Amartya Sen

  Reality, Joy, Suffering

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• If you see the intersection of time and space, you experience complete freedom of being. This state of existence is completely beyond any idea of time, space, or being. In that liberated state you can see fundamental truth and the phenomenal world simultaneously. That is called Buddha's world. That is the place where all sentient beings exist, so you can stand up there and see all beings, myriad beings. Then you know very clearly, through your own emotional and intellectual understanding, how all beings exist.

  Dainin Katagiri

  Emotional, Ideas, Space

  Dainin Katagiri (2008). “Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time”, p.75, Shambhala Publications

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• Should we find a second form of life right here on our doorstep, we could be confident that life is a truly cosmic phenomenon. If so, there may well be sentient beings somewhere in the galaxy wondering, as do we, if they are not alone in the universe.

  Paul Davies

  May, Wonder, Life Is

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• I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry and unhappy like we do. I feel very deeply about vegetarianism and the animal kingdom. It was my dog Boycott who led me to question the right of humans to eat other sentient beings.

  Cesar Chavez

  Inspiring, Dog, Food

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• We should have a bond of sympathy for all sentient beings, knowing that only the depraved and base take pleasure in the sight of blood and suffering.

  Seneca the Younger

  Life, Sight, Blood

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• Just as a chariot is verbalized, in dependence on collections of parts, so conventionally a sentient being, is set up depending on the mental and physical aggregates

  Gautama Buddha

  Inspiration, Chariots, Collections

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• Worship is the proper response of all moral, sentient beings to God, ascribing all honor and worth to their Creator-God precisely because he is worthy, delightfully so.

  D. A. Carson

  Creator God, Honor, Moral

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• The true miracle lies in our eagerness to allow, appreciate, and honor the uniqueness, and freedom of each sentient being to sing the song of their heart.

  Amit Ray

  Song, Lying, Yoga

  Amit Ray (2010). “Meditation: Insights and Inspiration”, p.110, INNER LIGHT PUBLISHERS

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• To feel overflowing love and almost unbearable compassion for all living creatures is the best way to fulfil the wishes of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Even if for the moment you cannot actually help a sentient being in an external way, meditate on love and compassion constantly over the months and years until compassion is knit inseparably into the very fabric of your mind.

  Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

  Compassion, Years, Mind

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