“Vegetarianism alone can give us the quality of compassion, which distinguishes man from the rest of the animal world.”

Vol. II, p. 342.
The Life of Sir William Osler (1925)

Section III, Chap. I.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part II

"Affluence and Ennui in Our Society" in For the Love of Life (1986) translated by Robert and Rita Kimber
Context: What is it that distinguishes man from animals? It is not his upright posture. That was present in the apes long before the brain began to develop. Nor is it the use of tools. It is something altogether new, a previously unknown quality: self-awareness. Animals, too, have awareness. They are aware of objects; they know this is one thing and that another. But when the human being as such was born he had a new and different consciousness, a consciousness of himself; he knew that he existed and that he was something different, something apart from nature, apart from other people, too. He experienced himself. He was aware that he thought and felt. As far as we know, there is nothing analogous to this anywhere in the animal kingdom. That is the specific quality that makes human beings human.

Lecture 1
Lectures on Education (1855)

As quoted in The Anchor Book of French quotations, with English Translations (1963) by Norbert Guterman

Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; rev. through 1826)

On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
Context: Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept. For something is possible in the realm of these schemata which could never be achieved with the vivid first impressions: the construction of a pyramidal order according to castes and degrees, the creation of a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, and clearly marked boundaries — a new world, one which now confronts that other vivid world of first impressions as more solid, more universal, better known, and more human than the immediately perceived world, and thus as the regulative and imperative world.

“NBA scout Bonnie-Jill Laflin poses for PETA ad,” interview with ESPN's Page 2 (April 2011) http://www.espn.com/espn/page2/index/_/id/6403093.

"Letter from Thay", Blue Cliff Monastery http://www.plumvillage.org/HTML/news/letterfromThay.html (12 October 2007)