Quotes About Humanity

Nous sommes tous merveilleux, et nous sommes tous répugnants, Alessandro Baricco

porque no hay nada en la faz de la tierra, nada que respire o camine, nada tan infeliz como lo es el hombre.

Forse il mondo è una ferita e qualcuno la sta ricucendo in quei due corpi che si mescolano. E nemmeno è amore, questo è stupefacente. Ma è mani e pelle, labbra, stupore, sesso, sapore, tristezza, forze perfino desiderio. Quando lo racconteranno non diranno la parola amore: mille parole diranno, taceranno amore, tace tutto intorno.

Così, ben prima che in Dio, crediamo nell'uomo – e solo questo, all'inizio, è la fede.

Forse al vecchietto vennero delle specie di lacrime agli occhi, ma era impossibile dirlo, perché gli occhi dei vecchi piangono sempre un po'.

Damos asco todos. Somos maravillosos todos, y damos todos asco

I think human beings have evolved to appreciate narrative, in the same way that we have evolved to learn language. What is narrative, after all, but a kind of super-language, where stories, like words, are ways of encapsulating information?

Better? I went from holding her hand to hugging her. Lindy, you loved me when I wasn't even human. You kissed me when I had no lips. You saw what was deep down inside me when I wasn't even sure about it myself. Believe me, there's no way I could do better. I think you're perfect.

I don't mind shaking hands with a human being, are you one?

He thought that it was impossible for a massa to perceive that being owned by anyone could never be enjoyable.

I believed he had no human weaknesses or faults, and that, therefore, he could make no mistakes and that he could do no wrong. There on a Holy World hilltop, I realized how very dangerous it is for people to hold any human being in such esteem, especially to consider anyone some sort of divinely guided and protected person.

Story is the greatest human mystery. Alex Miller, author, at BRWF 2014

I never expect a perfect work from an imperfect man.

At this time of day it should have been open and full of fifty fellow smackheads, crackheads, psychotics, epileptics, schizophrenics, self-harmers, beggars, buskers, car thieves, sherry pushers, ciderheads, just-released-that-morning convicts, ex-army, ex-married-men-with-young-children-who'd-discovered-their-wife-in-bed-with-two-members-of-the-university-rowing-team-at-the-same-time.

Great feuds often need very few words to resolve them. Disputes, even between nations, between peoples, can be set to rest with simple acts of contrition and corresponding forgiveness, can so often be shown to be based on nothing much other than pride and misunderstanding, and the forgetting of the humanity of the other—and land, of course.

There was so much suffering in Africa that it was tempting just to shrug your shoulders and walk away. But you can't do that, she thought. You just can't.

If we treated others with the consideration that one would give to those who only had a few days to live, then we would be kinder, at least.

What does it matter, she thought, if businesses are left unattended, if people are not always as we want them to be; we need the time just to be human, to enjoy something like this: a boy chasing ants, a dry land drinking at last, birds in the the sky, a rainbow.

I do not think this is so, because there is no difference between white men and black men; we are all the same; we are just people.

We are human and vulnerable, whatever our individual situation: The moon looks on them all The Healers and the brilliant talkers The eccentrics and the silent walkers The dumpy and the tall.

Sometimes it seemed as if the world itself was broken, that there was something wrong with all of us, something broken in such a way that it might not be put together again; but the holding of hands, human hand in human hand, could help, could make the world seem less broken.

The trouble with technology is that it's dehumanised us – it's removed the restraints of ordinary human interactions. So we lose the notion that the person with whom we're dealing is a person like us, with failings and feelings. It's exactly the same as in wartime. When people are engaged in conflict, they very easily lose sight of the humanity of the other. They become capable of doing things that they would never do in their ordinary lives.

It is such an easy thing to do—to touch another in sympathy—but it is such a hard thing too.

If only people could keep that in their minds—if they could remember that the people they met during the day had all the same hopes and fears that they had, then there would be so much less conflict and disagreement in this world. If only people remembered that, then they would be kinder to others—and kindness, Mma Ramotswe believed, was the most important thing there was. She knew that in the depths of her being; she knew it.