"I have talked about the distinction between the poet and the mystic: the mystic is always the same, on the same height, on the same sunlit peaks, but the poet goes on falling back.

Then an old man, a keeper of an inn, said, Speak to us of Eating and Drinking.
And he said:
Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth, and like an air plant be sustained by the light.

"But now the authority is gone. The words are still beautiful but something is missing. Up to now he was speaking from the heights; now he is standing amongst the crowd, just one of them.

But since you must kill to eat, and rob the newly born of its mother's milk to quench your thirst, let it be an act of worship…

"This is compromise. And this is one of the reasons why the world was not annoyed with Kahlil Gibran. He reaches to high peaks – that too, through a fictitious figure, Almustafa – but he will go on falling back many times and will not have the courage to go against tradition, the traditional mind, the society, its old, deep-rooted ugly behavior.

"It is strange that a man like Kahlil Gibran will agree with killing living animals to eat. He was born in a nonvegetarian society; he has not been able to be completely free of its bondage, its conditioning. Otherwise it would be impossible to say that you can go on killing animals for eating, and rob the newly born of its mother's milk to quench your thirst.

"Man for thousands of years has been a hunter. And if you are born in a society which eats living animals, you certainly don't have any reverence for life. He is allowing the old man in himself to say these things.

"Violence cannot come from the divine. Violence is barbarous. And it is only because all of humanity is almost asleep that you never question a simple thing: if you are eating living beings, killing living beings for your food, you can easily kill human beings too – it is not very far away. What is the difference?

"Life is one, whether it exists in the singing birds or in the beautiful deer or in the glories of a lion; they are also our brothers and sisters."