In any of our relations with the living world around us, whether with domestic animals or with men, we have to be careful to sustain the proper distance, knowing when to be intimate and when to separate ourselves.
All closer involvement becomes an approach to the prohibited, like, for instance, eating the flesh of the donkey we drive to market.
As for the inner world of man, in his feelings and thoughts the dangers of infringement are subtler and more dangerous.
A little falsehood, for the sake of politeness and good neighborly relations, is often necessary, but if it is extended and corrupted by politics, if it insidiously enters the personal life and cannot get out, then it endangers the heart of existence.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz