International Vegetarian Union (IVU) | |
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George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Writings and Quotes on Vegetariansim |
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On being asked why he was a vegetarian: While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth? - unknown origin Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends. - unknown origin Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground and it explodes into a giant oak! Bury a sheep and nothing happens but decay. - unknown origin
A dinner!
THE YOUNG WOMAN: You know, to me this is a funny sort of lunch. You begin with the dessert. We begin with the entrees. I suppose it's all right: but I have eaten so much fruit and bread and stuff, that I don't feel I want any meat. "... It seems to me, looking at myself, that I am a remarkably superior person, when you compare me with other writers, journalists, and dramatists; and I am perfectly content to put this down to my abstinence from meat. That is the simple and modest ground on which we should base our non-meat diet. . . ." I was told that my diet was so poor that I could not repair the bones that were broken and operated on. So I have just had an Xradiograph taken; and lo! perfectly mended solid bone so beautifully white that I have left instructions that, if I die, a glove stretcher is to be made of me and sent to you as a souvenir. - Letter to Mrs.Patrick Campbell Archibald Henderson, author of a three-volume biography of Shaw, recorded an appropriate conversation with him in 1924, when Shaw was already sixty-eight; it appears in Table-Talks, a colection illustrating the outspoken and witty side of the prolific playwright:
Henderson: So be a good fellow and tell me how you succeeded in remaining so youthful. A poem - attributed to Shaw, but disputed by some. Apparently there is no specific source for this poem, if anyone can help with the attribution please and let us know: Living Graves
We are the living graves of murdered beasts,
Like carrion crows we live and feed on meat,
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