“What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives.”

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).

Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship

Source: 1984

As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, in Lives of Eminent Philosophers: 'Zeno', 7.87.
The "end" here means “the goal of life.”

Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning (2003) <!-- | date = 2003-03-18
Context: Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then life's long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks on Earth (with the single exception of the catastrophic destruction of space itself). Will this happen before our technical civilisation disintegrates, leaving this as a might-have-been? Will the self-sustaining space communities be established before a catastrophe sets back the prospect of any such enterprise, perhaps foreclosing it for ever? We live at what could be a defining moment for the cosmos, not just for our Earth.

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

The Vices of Morality: Immoral Amorality (p. 109)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Interview, The Paris Review No. 80, Spring 2000 http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/730/the-art-of-poetry-no-80-geoffrey-hill