Quotes About Human nature

He understood that feeling of Levin's so well, knew that for Levin all the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included alll the girls in the world except her, and they had all the usual human failings and were very ordinary girls; while the other class - herself alone - had no weaknesses and was superior to all humanity.

One might murder and steal and yet be happy

Self-conceit is a sentiment entirely incompatible with genuine sorrow, and it is so firmly engrafted on human nature that even the most profound sorrow can seldom expel it altogether. Vanity in sorrow expresses itself by a desire to appear either stricken with grief or unhappy or brave: and this ignoble desire which we do not acknowledge but which hardly ever leaves us even in the deepest trouble robs our grief of its strength, dignity and sincerity.

And yet our existence is so organized that every personal enjoyment is purchased at the price of human suffering contrary to human nature.

Ali ljudi – veliki, odrasli ljudi – nisu prestajali da varaju i mu?e sami sebe i jedan drugoga. Ljudi su držali da nije sveto i važno to proljetno jutro, ni ta krasota svijeta božjega stvorena za dobro svim bi?ima – krasota koja pozivlje za mir, slogu i ljubav – nego je sveto i važno ono što su izmislili oni sami da bi vladali jedan nad drugim

He used to say that there were only two sources of human vice: idleness and superstition; and that there were only two virtues: activity and intelligence.

Only the people who are capable to love immensely can, also, feel immense pain: but that same need of love serves them as the cure against pain and it heals them. Because of that, mental nature is stronger than physical nature. Pain never kills.

an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes.

in every man, there were two beings: one the spiritual, seeking only that kind of happiness for him self which should tend towards the happiness of all; the other, the animal man, seeking only his own happiness, and ready to sacrifice to it the happiness of the rest of the world.

On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature.

Aparte de las conjeturas sobre los posibles traslados y ascensos que podrían resultar del fallecimiento de Ivan Ilich, el sencillo hecho de enterarse de la muerte de un allegado suscitaba en los presentes, como siempre ocurre, una sensación de complacencia, a saber: «el muerto es él; no soy yo».

People react to fear, not love- they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.

Men are always murderers, and their calmness and generosity is the calmness of a well-fed animal, that knows itself out of danger.

This is the really incomprehensible side of humanity, people never have time for anything.

C'est l'égoïsme de l'homme qui seul veut enterrer la femme comme un trésor. Toutes les tentatives ont échoué qui ont voulu introduire — par des cérémonies consacrées, par des serments ou des contrats — la durée dans ce qu'il y a de plus mouvant au sein de la mouvance de l'être humain, dans l'amour.

However, it is well to remember that nature is neither good nor bad, neither altruistic nor egoistic, and that it operates through the human psyche as well as through crystals and plants and animals with the same inexorable laws.

And yet he forced himself to confront hard truths. Perhaps it was not "them"—the jealous critics and the fickle readers—in whom the fault lay. Perhaps he had let his disappointment with America in particular and with human nature in general overwhelm his powers of storytelling and characterization in his recent work—perhaps he had simply taken it for granted that an adoring public would sit still for whatever he offered it.

In times of war, as everyone knows, who has lived through one, or talked to soldiers when they are allowing themselves to remember the truth, and not the sentimentalities with which we all shield ourselves from the horrors of which we are capable ... in times of war we revert, as a species, to the past, and are permitted to be brutal and cruel. It is for this reason, and of course others, that a great many people enjoy war. But this is one of the facts about war that is not often talked about.

Men are unwise and curiously planned.

Our own faults are those we are the first to detect, and the last to forgive, in others.

Furthermore, as long as the world shall last, there will always be people who, either for the sake of peace or from an unquiet conscience, will build up sublime lies for their neighbours. And these people have always been and will always be the masters of human thought.

Those works alone can have enduring success which successfully appeal to what is permanent in human nature -- which, while suiting the taste of the day, contain truths and beauty deeper than the opinions and tastes of the day.

Toute transformation sociale (...) s'est fondée sur de nouvelles bases métaphysiques et idéologiques; ou plutôt, sur des émotions et intuitions plus profondes, dont l'expression rationalisée prend la forme du cosmos et de la nature de l'homme.

Although Leonardo, for example, invented the submarine, he deliberately suppressed this invention "on account of the evil nature of men, who would practice assassination at the bottom of the sea." That reservation marks a moral sensitiveness equal to his inventive abilities: only a relative handful of scientists, like the late Norbert Wiener or Leo Szilard in our day, have shown any parallel concern and self-control.