Quotes About Humanity

There is no Hell, other than that which men make on earth.

I lost interest in the condition of humans, but I never lost interest in the human condition.

the world, right this very moment people were suffering unimaginable atrocities and you couldn't close your heart completely, but you couldn't leave it wide open either, because otherwise how could you possibly live your life, when through pure, random luck you got to live in paradise? You had to register the existence of evil, do the little that you could, and then close your mind and think about new shoes.

I understand now that desperate, clumsy desire to make people feel better—even when you know perfectly well that nothing will.

Was she ever grumpy? Did she ever yell? Fall about laughing? Eat too much? Drink too much? Call out for someone to bring her toilet paper? Lose her car keys? Was she ever just a human being?

in times of crisis a person's face is somehow stripped back to something essential and universally human: all those labels like "beautiful," "sexy," "plain" became irrelevant.

You shouldn't only be nice to nice people.

She combines them all into one giant sumo wrestler of humanity and punches him again and again in his big flabby stomach.

You don't want lottery wins for your enemies, but you don't want tragedies for them either. Then they got the upper hand.

I think perhaps we've all learned to be a little kinder to one another. And to document everything. Everything.

altruism without action, it didn't get better than that!

Now, for one day every month, she had to fake everything: her basic humanity, her love for her children, her love for Ed. She'd once been appalled to hear of women claiming PMS as a defense for murder. Now she understood. She could happily murder someone today!

What if evil doesn't really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?

We're all strangers connected by what we reveal, what we share, what we take away--our stories. I guess that's what I love about books--they are thin strands of humanity that tether us to one another for a small bit of time, that make us feel less alone or even more comfortable with our aloneness, if need be.

In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We're each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We've got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there is a lot of grey to work with. No one can live in the light all the time.

What if evil doesn't really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?

We're all strangers connected by what we reveal, what we share, what we take away--our stories. I guess that's what I love about books--they are thin strands of humanity that tether us to one another for a small bit of time, that make us feel less alone or even more comfortable with our aloneness, if need be.

library catalogs are a tangible example of humanity's effort to establish and preserve the possibility of order.

Truly, men make too little use of their lives; and so it is no wonder that the world should still be in such a poor way.

The world is a body common to all men, changes to it bring about a change in the souls of all men who are turned towards that part of it at that moment.

Do not take too artificial a view of mankind but judge them from a natural standpoint, deeming them neither over good nor over bad.

In every man there is a little of all men.

Everyone shares the same fate.

Despite our strongly felt kinship and oneness with nature, all the evidence suggests that nature doesn't care one whit about us. Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen without the slightest consideration for human inhabitants.