We often care more about the specifics than the principles.

From Table-Talk by Samuel Rogers.  

I was taught by my mother, from my earliest infancy, to be tenderly kind towards the meanest living thing; and, however people may laugh, I sometimes very carefully put a stray gnat or wasp out at the window. My friend Lord Holland, though a kind-hearted man, does not mind killing flies and wasps; he says, " I have no feeling for insects" When I was on the Continent with Richard Sharp, we one day observed a woman amusing her child by holding what we at first thought was a mouse tied to a string, with which a cat was playing. Sharp was all indignation at the sight; till, on looking more closely, he found that the supposed mouse was a small rat; upon which he exclaimed, " Oh, I have no pity for rats !" 

We often care more about the specifics than the principles.