Henry Stephens Salt > Quotes

“Here, if nowhere else in the land, the sense of satiety is unknown; and it is to this mental tonic, even more than to the bracing air of the heights, that we owe the unwearied spirit which nerves us to walk more leagues upon the mountains than we could walk miles upon the plain. For in the lowlands we walk with the body only; in the highlands we walk with the mind”
― Henry Stephens Salt, On Cambrian and Cumbrian Hills: Pilgrimages to Snowdon and Scafell

“Religion has never befriended the cause of humaneness. Its monstrous doctrine of eternal punishment and the torture of the damned underlies much of the barbarity with which man has treated man; and the deep division imagined by the Church between the human being, with his immortal soul, and the soulless "beasts", has been responsible for an incalculable sum of cruelty.”
― Henry Stephens Salt, Seventy years among savages

“Bon Vivant: Stop! I will hear no more.

Vegetarian: You will hear no more, but will you eat more? It is on you, not on the brutal drover or the slaughter man, that the responsibility falls. For this 'speedy and painless' way in which animals must be slaughtered that you may live well.”
― Henry Stephens Salt, 'The Logic of Vegetarianism' and other historical works on the theme: Includes: 'Humanitarian Philosophy', 'Vegetable Diet as Sanctioned by Medical Men ', 'A Vindication of Natural Diet'

“But I would point out that there is another and still more important function of great mountains - the culture not of athletic faculty alone, but of that intellectual sympathy with untamed and primitive Nature which our civilization threatens to destroy. A mountain is something more than a thing to climb. To the many who, on a fine summer day, swarm up Skiddaw or Snowdon by the well-worn pony-paths, it is pure holiday-making; to the few who (in another sense) swarm up Scafell Pinnacel or the Napes needle, it is pure gymnastics; but between or beyond these two classes there are those - pilgrims I call them - who find mountain climbing what only mountains can give, the contact with unsophisticated Nature, the opportunity to be alone, to be out of and above the world of ordinary life, to pass from the familiar sights and surroundings into a cloudland of new shapes and sounds, where one feels the fascination of that undiscoverable secret (I do not know how else to name it) by which every true nature-lover is allured.”
― Henry Stephens Salt

“It is often said, as an excuse for the slaughter of animals, that it is better for them to live and to be butchered than not to live at all. … In fact, if we once admit that it is an advantage to an animal to be brought into the world, there is hardly any treatment that cannot be justified by the supposed terms of such a contract. Also, the argument must apply to mankind. It has, in fact, been the plea of the slave-breeder; and it is logically just as good an excuse for slave-holding as for flesh-eating. It would justify parents in almost any treatment of their children, who owe them, for the great boon of life, a debt of gratitude which no subsequent services can repay. We could hardly deny the same merit to cannibals, if they were to breed their human victims for the table, as the early Peruvians are said to have done.”
― Henry S. Salt, The Humanities of Diet, Some Reasonings and Rhymings

“It may be well here to sum up, in the fewest possible words, the conclusions reached in this book:
(I) That our present so called "Civilisation" is only a "manner of speaking," and is in fact quite a rude state as compared with what may already be foreseen.
(2) That the basis of any real morality must be the sense of Kinship between all living beings.
(3) That there can be no abiding national welfare until the extremes of Wealth and Poverty are abolished.
(4) That Warfare will not be discontinued until we have ceased to honour soldiering as heroic.
(5) That the Rights of Animals have henceforth to be considered; and that such practices as cruel sports, vivisection, and flesh eating are not compatible with civilised life.
(6) That Free Thought is essential to progress, and that the religion of the future will be a belief in a Creed of Kinship, a charter of human and sub-human relationships.”
― Henry Stephens Salt, The Creed of Kinship

“I advance no exaggerated or fanciful claim for Vegetarianism. It is not, as some have asserted, a "panacea" for human ills; it is something much more rational - an essential part of the modern humanitarian movement, which can make no true progress without it. Vegetarianism is the diet of the future, as flesh-food is the diet of the past.”
― Henry Stephens Salt

“I send thee, love, this upland flower I found
While wandering lonely with o'erclouded heart,
Hid in a grey recess of rocky ground
Among the misty mountains far apart;
And then I heard the wild wind's luring sound
Which whoso trusts, is healed of earthborn care,
And watched the lofty ridges loom around,
Yet yearned in vain their secret faith to share.
When lo! the sudden sunlight, sparkling keen,
Poured full upon the vales this glorious day,
And bared the abiding mountain-tops serene,
And swept the shifting vapour-wreaths away:
Then with the hills' true heart my heart beat true,
Heavens opened, cloud-thoughts vanished, and I knew.”
― Henry Stephens Salt, On Cambrian and Cumbrian Hills Pilgrimages to Snowdon and Scafell

“It is beyond doubt that the chief motive of Vegetarianism is the humane one. Questions of hygiene and of economy both play their part, and an important part, in a full discussion of food reform; but the feeling which underlies and animates the whole movement is the instinctive horror of butchery, especially the butchery of the more highly organized animals, so human, so near akin to man.”
― Henry Stephens Salt

“Whatever my own practice may be,” wrote Thoreau, “I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.”
― Henry S. Salt, Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress: Ethical Insights on Animal Rights and Social Progress

“We are learning to get rid of these 'anthropocentric' delusions, which, as has been pointed out by Mr E. P. Evans, 'treat man as being essentially different and inseparably apart from all other sentient creatures, to which he is bound by no ties of mental affinity or moral obligation'; whereas, in fact, 'man is as truly a part and product of Nature as any other animal, and this attempt to set him up as an isolated point outside of it is philosophically false and morally pernicious'.”
― Henry S. Salt, The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues

“One cannot walk in such regions, consciously
without enlargement of thought. There are
heights and valleys which, to those who seek
them in a sympathetic spirit, are better
" seats of learning " than any school or university in the land ; there are days when the climber seems to rise into a rarer mental as well as visual atmosphere, and to leave far below him the crass cares and prejudices of commonplace life.”
― Henry Stephens Salt, On Cambrian and Cumbrian Hills Pilgrimages to Snowdon and Scafell