I dont get this quote "We tolerate shapes in human beings that would horrify us if we saw them in a horse"

Question

I was reading a book where this quote is mentioned and googled it to find it really exists:

"We tolerate shapes in human beings that would horrify us if we saw them in a horse" - WR Inge.

What do you think it means? It's driving me crazy!

Answer 1

Suppose you saw an emaciated horse and could see that it was starving to death. You would report it to Animal Rescue, but if we see a child in that condition, we just shrug and go our way. The author feels that we should have more compassion for our fellow human beings.

Answer 2

To me it means that we are afraid of things that are different. We move away from things we don't understand. The quote symbolizes our way of seeing things that this is the norm and anything different is horrifying or unacceptable. Take for example in food, most of us would pour milk over cereal. What would you say if you know of someone who pours juice on cereal? Strange, right? But really, I know of someone who does just that and he's no different from us.

Answer 3

If we saw an obese horse we might report the owner to the RSPCA for cruelty. We see obese people every day and accept that as part of life.

Answer 4

I think it means that if horses had big noses like many humans that we would be horrified.
People report obese horses? I would have thought that letting them be lazy and eat as much as they want was better than starving them and working them to death?

Answer 5

We are all really pretty funny-looking; we don't notice because we are used to how we all look.

Can you imagine how weird we would look to an alien?

I don't know the context, but I suspect that the quote is reminding us not to take ourselves too seriously, individually or as a species.

Answer 6

It means people are so self-absorbed that they ignore others.