logo

Quotes About Humanity

The truth is that every morning war is declared afresh. And the men who wish to continue it are as guilty as the men who began it, more guilty perhaps, for the latter perhaps did not foresee all its horrors.
~ Marcel Proust
in all countries fools outnumber the rest;
~ Marcel Proust
You cannot be surprised at anything men do, they're such brutes.
~ Marcel Proust
It was evident to me then that I existed in the same manner as all other men, that I must grow old, that I must die like them, and that among them I was to be distinguished merely as one of those who have no aptitude for writing. And so, utterly despondent, I renounced literature for ever,
~ Marcel Proust
Lying is essential to humanity. It plays as large a part perhaps as the quest for pleasure, and is moreover governed by that quest. One lies in order to protect one's pleasure, or one's honour if the disclosure of one's pleasure runs counter to one's honour. One lies all one's life long, even, especially, perhaps only, to those who love one. For they alone make us fear for our pleasure and desire their esteem.
~ Marcel Proust
In the human race, the frequency of the virtues that are identical in us all is not more wonderful than the multiplicity of the defects that are peculiar to each one of us. Undoubtedly, it is not common sense that is "the commonest thing in the world"; it is human kindness.
~ Marcel Proust
the Finger of God, Whose Body might have been concealed below among the crowd of human bodies without fear of my confounding It, for that reason, with them. And so even to-day in any large provincial town, or in a quarter of Paris which I do not know well, if a passer-by who is 'putting me on the right road' shews me from afar, as a point to aim at, some belfry of a hospital, or a convent steeple lifting the peak of its ecclesiastical cap
~ Marcel Proust
I do my intellectual work within myself, and once with other people, it's more or less irrelevant to me that they're intelligent, as long as they are kind, sincere etc."
~ Marcel Proust
The stellar universe is not so difficult of comprehension as the real actions of other people.
~ Marcel Proust
Self-centredness thus enabling every human being to see the universe spread out in descending tiers beneath himself who is its lord,
~ Marcel Proust
she exclaimed, the innate respectability of the middle-class housewife rising impulsively to the surface through the acquired dilettantism of the 'light woman.' People who enjoyed 'picking-up' things, who admired poetry, despised sordid calculations of profit and loss, and nourished ideals of honour and love, she placed in a class by themselves, superior to the rest of humanity.
~ Marcel Proust
What attaches us to other human beings is the thousand tiny roots, the innumerable threads formed by memories of the previous evening, hopes for the following morning; it is this continuous web of habit from which we cannot extricate ourselves
~ Marcel Proust
I came to recognise that, apart from her [Françoise's] own kinsfolk, the sufferings of humanity inspired in her a pity which increased in direct ratio to the distance separating the sufferers from herself.
~ Marcel Proust
They say that Death embellishes its victims and exaggerates their virtues, but in general it is actually life that wronged them. Death, that pious and irreproachable witness, teaches us, in both truth and charity, that in each man there is usually more good than evil.
~ Marcel Proust
I concluded all the same from this first evening that his [Morel's] must be a vile nature, that he would not shrink from any act of servility if the need arose, and was incapable of gratitude. In which he resembled the majority of mankind.
~ Marcel Proust
A book is no mere book anymore than man can be mere man. A book was like an individual man, unmatched and with no cause of existence beyond himself.
~ Marcel Proust
No man [...] can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free, being the image and resemblance of God himself.
~ John Milton
Thou therefore on these Herbs, and Fruits, and Flow'rs Feed first, on each Beast next, and Fish, and Fowl, No homely morsels, and whatever thing The Scyth of Time mows down, devour unspar'd, Till I in Man residing through the Race, His thoughts, his looks, words, actions all infect, And season him thy last and sweetest prey.
~ John Milton
From some points of view, the demonic is not that which hides in the shadows, but lives among us, is us, in every choice we make and don't make.
~ John Milton
De la întâia neascultare a omului, È™i fructul Copacului oprit, al c?rui gust mortal A adus moartea în lume È™i toat? durerea noastr?, Pentru pierderea Edenului, pân? când un Om mai m?reÈ› Ne va duce înapoi È™i va recâÈ™tiga acest loc minunat.
~ John Milton
He who kills a person kills a reasonable creature, but he who kills a good book destroys reason itself
~ John Milton
With no significant political forces opposing the conversion of our world into a universal marketplace, the conflict of our time is the struggle to retain one's humanity in an increasingly artificial world. That is the only battle that retains any genuine significance from a traditional perspective.
~ Unknown
How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!
~ John Muir
full of God's thoughts, a place of peace and safety amid the most exalted grandeur and enthusiastic action, a new song, a place of beginnings abounding in first lessons of life, mountain building, eternal, invincible, unbreakable order; with sermons in stone, storms, trees, flowers, and animals brimful with humanity.
~ John Muir