Quotes About Humanity

Is there anything more fundamentally human than the desire to live in another world, as someone other than our own earthbound selves?

That's what I learned. Everybody's black and blue, somewhere. I never met anybody who wasn't." "Not like me." "No," said Shannon. "Everybody gets broken all their own way." She smiled bitterly. "That's what makes you, you: the pieces you're smashed into aren't like anybody else's. They're all yours.

It's not a bad thing, is it, to be strong in some ways and fragile and vulnerable in others?

The starving, the unwanted old and unborn, the criminal, those of wrong color, ideology, sex, nation, class—whatever category renders a person least in our minds—bear the face of Jesus.

And this is why you don't want me to be friends with Dee, because you were afraid that I'd find out the truth?" That, and you're a human. Humans are weak. They bring us nothing but trouble." My eyes narrowed. We aren't weak. And you're on our planet. How about a little respect, buddy." Amusement flickered in his emerald eyes. Point taken.

It's the messy parts that make us human, so we should embrace them too —pat ourselves on the back for getting through them rather than being angry for having gotten into them in the first place

Maybe, to do what you and I do, we have to have a little bit of the monster in us.

Nobody knew what it was like to be torn between what it meant to be human and what it meant to be Pack better than me.

She'd been taught all her life not to attack humans, but knocking them unconscious with tranquilizer guns was more of a gray area.

What is the human condition, if not Why me?

I wasn't built for running away from monsters. I wanted desperately to run toward them--track them down, kill them. Luckily, I was used to restraining myself, used to acting human even when I wasn't, and the human part of my brain reminded me that right now, preternatural beasties weren't exactly my primary concern. Someone had made a strong attempt at killing me this morning....

The problem was that there was no treatment. No cure. There was nothing that...any medical professional could do. If I'd been fully human, I would have been a dead girl walking....

If humanity's central existential difficulty comes from the fact that we have humanness—consciousness, hopes, dreams, loneliness, shame, plans, memory, a sense of fairness, love—and the universe does not, that means that we are constantly trying to wrangle our needs out of a universe that does not tend in such directions.

We are humanity, Kant says. Humanity needs us because we are it. Kant believes in duty and considers remaining alive a primary human duty. For him one is not permitted to "renounce his personality," and while he states living as a duty, it also conveys a kind of freedom: we are not burdened with the obligation of judging whether our personality is worth maintaining, whether our life is worth living. Because living it is a duty, we are performing a good moral act just by persevering.

People forget that war is not simply about regimentals and anthems and brave soldiers. It is also about heartbreak and death and real people

You are not alone." Before I can tell him, Actually I am, which is part of the problem; we are all alone, trapped in these bodies and our own minds, and whatever company we have in this life is only fleeting and superficial, he tightens his grip until I worry my arm will snap off. "And we are not done discussing this.

I want to say It's okay to be a person. We're all afraid. We all get hurt. It's okay to hurt. You'd be so much more likable if you just acted human.

You are not alone.'... I tell him, Actually I am, which is part of the problem; we are all alone, trapped in these bodies and our own minds, and whatever company we have in this life is only fleeting and superficial.

I've had to work really fucking hard to learn everyone, and even if skin color and hair color help me find people, that's not who they are to me. It's not about that. It's about the important things, like the way their face lights up when they laugh, or the way they move as they're walking toward you, or the way their freckles create a map of the stars.

People can be great, but they can also be lousy. I am often lousy. But not completely lousy. You, Libby Strout, are great.

I don't know what brings you up here, but to me the town looks prettier and the people look nicer and even the worst of them look almost kind.

God disposes all. From the highest to the lowest extreme of a man's scope, wherever justice and retribution can reach him, so can grace.

If none of us ever fell short, or put a foot astray, everything would be good in this great world, but we stumble and fall, every one. We must deal with what we have. - Cadfael, Pg. 245-6

The thing about fear,' said Cadfael, seriously considering, 'is that it is pointless. When need arises, fear is forgotten. Would you recoil from taking a leper's hand, if he needed yours, or you his, to be hauled out of danger? I doubt it. Some men would, perhaps-- but of you I doubt it. You would grip first and consider afterwards, and by then fear would be clearly a mere waste of time.