"[Some] disobey the earth and sharpen knives against the animals to gain clothing and food. The Indian Brahmans disapproved of this personally and taught the Naked Philosophers of Egypt to disapprove of it too. From there Pythagoras, who was the first Greek to associate with Egyptians, borrowed the principle. He let the earth keep living creatures, but held that what the earth grows is pure, and so lived off that because it was sufficient to feed body and soul. Clothing made from dead creatures, which most people wear, he considered impure; he dressed in linen and, for the same reason, made his shoes of plaited bark. He derived many advantages from this purity, above all that of perceiving his own soul."

"I saw that he [Pythagoras] approached the altars in purity, and suffered not his belly to be polluted by partaking of the flesh of animals and that he kept his body pure of all garments woven of dead animal refuse ... I also saw that his philosophical system was in other respects oracular and true."

"No child, I think, can walk through a common market or slaughter-house without receiving moral injury; nor am I quite sure that any virtuous adult can."

"The destruction of animals for food, in its details and tendencies, involves so much of cruelty as to cause every reflecting individual—not destitute of the ordinary sensibilities of our nature—to shudder."

"If perfect health is the best preventive and security against disease, and if a well-selected and properly administered vegetable diet is best calculated to promote and preserve that perfect health, then this part of the subject — what I have ventured to call the medical argument—is at once disposed of."

"Vegetable diet and sweet repose. Animal food and nightmare.Pluck your body from the orchard; do not snatch it from the shamble.Without flesh diet there could be no blood-shedding war.Apollo eats no flesh and has no beard; his voice is melody itself.Without flesh diet there could be no blood-shedding war."

"Cruelty stares at me from the butcher's face. I tread amidst carcasses. I am in the presence of the slain. The death-set eyes of beasts peer at me and accuse me of belonging to the race of murderers. Quartered, disembowelled creatures on suspended hooks plead with me. I feel myself dispossessed of the divinity."

"The old man ... received the Sabbath with sweet song and chanted the hallowing tunefully over raisin wine; while it was still day he hallowed and the sun came to gaze at his glass. ... The table was well spread with all manner of fruit, beans, greenstuffs and good pies, plum water tasting like wine, but of flesh and of fish there was never a sign. ... in truth it is in no way obligatory to eat flesh and fish ... He and she, meaning the old man and the old woman, had never tasted flesh since growing to maturity."

"Any food containing blood is harmful for the development of subtle energy. If humanity would only refrain from devouring dead bodies, then evolution could be accelerated. Meat lovers have tried to remove the blood, but they have not been able to obtain the desired results. Meat, even with the blood removed, cannot be fully freed from the emanations of this powerful substance. The sun's rays to a certain extent remove these emanations, but their dispersion into space also causes no small harm. Try to carry out a psychic energy experiment near a slaughterhouse and you will receive signs of acute madness, not to mention the entities which attach themselves to the exposed blood. Not without foundation has blood been called sacred. There can thus be observed different kinds of people. It is possible to convince oneself particularly as to how strong atavism is. The desire for food containing blood is augmented by atavism, because the many preceding generations were saturated with blood. Unfortunately, governments pay no attention to improving the health of the population. State medicine and hygiene stand at a low level. Medical supervision is no higher than that of the police. No new thought penetrates into these outworn institutions. They can only prosecute, they cannot help. Hence, on the path to Brotherhood there should be no slaughterhouses. (21)"