We require rules, standards, values — alone and together. We’re pack animals, beasts of burden. We must bear a load, to justify our miserable existence.

Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.

Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.

They are all beasts of burden in a sense, ' Thoreau once remarked of animals, 'made to carry some portion of our thoughts.' Animals are the old language of the imagination; one of the ten thousand tragedies of their disappearance would be a silencing of this speech.

Yet is it not the heart but the members of play that elevate us above the beasts: the fingers with which we touch the clavichord or the flute, the tongue with which we jest and lie and seduce. Lacking members of play, what is there left for beasts to do when they are bored but sleep?

God's and beasts, that is what our world is made of.

The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole! We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.

Little things comfort us because little things distress us.

The self-esteem one acquires and a well-earned feeling of one's strength are the only consolation in this world. Income, after all, most brutes have that.

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?

So in sum, what are we? We are the creatures that know and know too much. That leaves us with such a burden again we have a choice, to laugh or cry. No other animal does either. We do, depending on the season and the need.

We comfort our physical bodies in hopes our souls will follow.

Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition,

What we seek is some kind of compensation for what we put up with.