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DanielLC comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 108 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Muggle research in the 2010s has revealed much about what actually makes people happy, and how often people are deceived. The best way to find out is with one of those mood-tracking cell phone apps, which eliminate the biases of memory. Quirrell doesn't have that, but as an approximation, I searched the PDF for the word "smile", which appears 310 times in chapters 1-106, and the word "enjoy", which appears 32 times. What did I find?
Interacting with Harry makes Quirrell happy. Moreso than killing idiots. Moreso than teaching Battle Magic. Killing him would be a grave mistake.
Too bad the 2010s haven't happened yet.
We haven't seen him kill idiots, so we don't know how happy that makes him.
From his perspective, Firenze would have been an idiot, and killing him didn't result in any visible sign of happiness.
Eh, Firenze was taking initiative to dispose of a major problem even if it required actions he considered morally distasteful. Compared to Quirrell, he's pretty dumb, but he hasn't distinguished himself for idiocy the way, say, the Ministry official who took self-destructive joy in obstructing him did. If anything, he probably distinguished himself as cleverer than the norm, if not in any way a peer.
On the other hand, Firenze's mistake was going into self-indulgent rambling instead of just killing the person he wanted to kill (especially with the stakes apparently as high as the survival of the universe). I get the feeling that Voldemort, who had his own Evil Overlord List, would find this particularly distasteful.
Well, given his actions in the past he can hardly call this idiocy worthy of being killed. Also, Firenze was not annoying him by being an idiot, he was annoying him by threatening Harry, for whom he had other plans.