Quotes About Humanity

People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people -- amongst whom your life is passed -- that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people, whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire -- for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience.

So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain.

The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies.... Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot.

There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.

If Art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

He had no ideal world of dead heroes; he knew little of the life of men in the past; he must find the beings to whom he could cling with loving admiration among those who came within speech of him.

That plain, middle-aged face, with a grave penetrating kindness in it, seeming to tell of a human being who had reached a firm, safe strand, but was looking with helpful pity towards the strugglers still tossed by the waves, had an effect on Maggie at this moment which was afterwards remembered by her as if it had been a promise.

What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?

In so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to find rules without exception.

If we had lost our own chief good, other people's good would remain, and that is worth trying for.

I at least have so much to do in unravelling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.

I believe that people are almost always better than their neighbors think they are," said Dorothea.

Tem dó do fardo alheio, porque o seu peso errante Poderá visitar-te a ti e a mim.

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.

is so painful in you, Celia, that you will look at human beings as if they were merely animals with a toilet, and never see the great soul in a man's face.

he was made from excellent human dough

On the other hand, she was disproportionately indulgent towards the failings of men, and was often heard to say that these were natural.

It was one of those moments of implicit revelation which will sometimes happen even between people who meet quite transiently,–on a mile's journey, perhaps, or when resting by the wayside. There is always this possibility of a word or look from a stranger to keep alive the sense of human brotherhood.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult to others?

If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.

The first condition of human goodness is something to love; the second, something to reverence.