Status Updates From El primer peldaño

X "We cannot pretend that we do not know this. We are not ostriches, and cannot believe that if we refuse to look at what we do not wish to see, it will not exist. This is especially the case when what we do not wish to see is what we wish to eat. "

VIII I asked him (a butcher) whether he did not feel sorry for the animals that he killed. He gave me the usual answer : 'Why should I feel sorry.? It is necessary.' But when I told him that eating flesh is not necessary, but is only a luxury, he agreed ; and then he admitted that he was sorry for the animals. 'But what can I do? I must earn my bread,' he said

VIII They pretend that dinner, eating, is not necessary to them, is even a burden ; but this a lie. Try giving them—instead of the refined dishes they expect, I do not say bread and water, but—porridge or gruel or something of that kind, and see what a storm it will call forth, and how evident will become the real truth, namely, that the chief interest of the assembly is, not the ostensible one, but—gluttony.

VII I cannot but repeat this same thing again and again, notwithstanding the cold and hostile silence with which my words are received. A moral man, living a life of comfort, ... cannot live quietly, knowing that all that he is using is produced by the labour and crushed lives of working people

IV. In olden times, when there was no Christian teaching, all the teachers of life, beginning with Socrates, regarded as the first virtue of life, self-control; and it was understood that every virtue must begin with and pass through this one. It was clear that a man who had no self-control, who had developed an immense number of desires and had yielded himself up to them, could not lead a good life.

"a superior step could not be attained without the lower one having been previously taken"