“Once … I was offered a lift by some carters … It was the Thursday before Easter. I was seated in the first cart, with a strong, red, coarse carman, who evidently drank. On entering a village we saw a well-fed, naked, pink pig being dragged out of the first yard to be slaughtered. It squealed in a dreadful voice, resembling the shriek of a man. Just as we were passing they began to kill it. A man gashed its throat with a knife. The pig squealed still more loudly and piercingly, broke away from the men, and ran off covered with blood. Being near-sighted I did not see all the details. I saw only the human-looking pink body of the pig and heard its desperate squeal; but the carter saw all the details and watched closely. They caught the pig, knocked it down, and finished cutting: its throat. When its squeals ceased the carter sighed heavily. 'Do men really not have to answer for such things?”

— Leo Tolstoy

he said.
Source: The First Step (1892), Ch. IX

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Once … I was offered a lift by some carters … It was the Thursday before Easter. I was seated in the first cart, with a…" by Leo Tolstoy?

Leo Tolstoy photo

Leo Tolstoy 456

Russian writer 1828–1910

Related quotes

“I intensely dislike the job of butchering a farm animal. The pig we butchered today squealed unmercifully when it was shot. It thought we were going to feed it but instead it received a bullet to its brain. Eating animals is so uncivilized, I am beginning to understand why GB Shaw, Tolstoy and Albert Einstein are vegetarians…”

Virgil John Tangborn (1920–1944)

March 4, 1942

“Everyone who is grieved at anything, or discontented, is like a pig for sacrifice, kicking and squealing. Like a dove for sacrifice is he who laments in silence. Our one distinction is that it is given to us to consent, if we will, to the necessity imposed upon us.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Volume 2, Ch. 2
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

“I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Criticizing Hillary Clinton's health-care plan as being "eerily reminiscent" of the plan she advocated as First Lady, 11 October 2007 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-campaign10-2008sep10,0,311675.story
2000s, 2007

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

“Before I could figure out how to apologize for being such an idiot, she tackled me with a hug, then pulled away just as quickly. "I'm glad you're not a guinea pig."
"Me, too." I hoped my face wasn't as red as it felt.”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

“But no one can eat the flesh of a slaughtered animal without having used the hand of a man as slaughterer. Suppose that we had to kill for ourselves the creatures whose bodies we would fain have upon our table, is there one woman in a hundred who would go to the slaughterhouse to slay the bullock, the calf, the sheep or the pig?”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Humanimal http://books.google.co.in/books?id=KwmMAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA140, p. 140

“The sun was almost down on the mountain tops, and the shadows of the whole group fell upon the snow. I saw the Count lying within the box upon the earth, some of which the rude falling from the cart had scattered over him. He was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with the horrible vindictive look which I knew so well. As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph. But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan's great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat. Whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart. It was like a miracle, but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight. I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Mina Harker
Dracula (1897)

“What I was to encounter at Greensville defied anything that I’d expected. The pigs had a refined system and license for brutalizing prisoners. I was not to understand the magnitude of the situation until a few days after being there. The pigs had a tier of handpicked proxy prisoners, whom they used to violently suppress those who got out of line. The ringleader – I’ll call him Pumpkin – was a career con with a reputation for butchering other prisoners. He had a trustee job (all trustees were similarly selected). Pumpkin was allowed by the pigs to keep weapons on his person. Part of the mental terror game was that while he was out cleaning (everyone knew he was a pig hit man and stayed armed), the pigs would bring others out around him in handcuffs. … The next day or so the pigs would put them on the exercise yard together, remove everyone’s handcuffs except the target’s (they’d put five to seven prisoners in each pen), and allow them to mob attack the still handcuffed target. Or if they wanted him butchered, he’d be unhandcuffed and left to contend unarmed against a knife-wielding Pumpkin.”

Kevin Rashid Johnson (1971) American prisoner and social activist

Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin Rashid Johnson (2010)

“You could weave silk from pig bristles before you could make a man anything but a man.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Lini
(15 September 1992)

“If I had a mind to rent pigs, I'd be mighty upset. A man that likes to rent pigs won't be stopped.”

Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove

Source: Lonesome Dove

Related topics