It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.
~Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
~Henry David Thoreau, “Chesuncook,” The Maine Woods, 1848
No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature, which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its extremity cries like a child. I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies do not always make the usual phil-anthropic distinctions.
Henry David Thoreau