Quotes About Human nature

Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.

Le sentiment que l'homme supporte le plus difficilement est la pitié, surtout quand il la mérite. La haine est un tonique, elle fait vivre, elle inspire la vengeance; mais la pitié tue, elle affaiblit encore notre faiblesse.

Vouloir nous brûle et pouvoir nous détruit; mais savoir laisse notre faible organisation dans un perpétuel état de calme.

Men were only made into "men" with great difficulty even in primitive society: the male is not naturally "a man" any more than the woman. He has to be propped up into that position with some ingenuity, and is always likely to collapse.

how could you watch someone floss one minute, and the next minute share your deepest passion or most ridiculous, trite little fears?

In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We're each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We've got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there is a lot of grey to work with. No one can live in the light all the time.

I am convinced that we not only love ourselves in others, but hate ourselves in others too.

Everyone was nice when they wanted something from you —was it a divinity thing, or just a basic natural fact?

The Bible says somewhere that we are desperately selfish. I think we would have discovered that fact without the Bible.

SELFISHNESS IS THAT DETESTABLE VICE WHICH NO ONE WILL FORGIVE IN OTHERS, AND NO ONE IS WITHOUT IN HIMSELF." —H.W. BEECHER

People are a wonder. They will always surprise you, for both good and ill.

God made life simple. It is man who complicates it.

In truth we are bigger, greedier versions of the same eating, shitting, rutting ruck, hell-bent on disguising from somebody, if only from a three-year-old, that pretty much all we do is eat and shit and rut. The secret is there is no secret. that is what we really wish to keep fom our kids, and it's suppression is the true collusion of adulthood...

You can call it innocence or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: She assumed that everyone else was just like her. Evidence to the contrary found nowhere to lodge, like a book on chaos theory in a library that didn't have a physics section.

We human beings have always known that our eyes reveal our true nature. It's nearly impossible to hide emotions in them. "Look me in the eye and tell me the truth," the questioner will say to the accused, because both parties know that while words can mask the truth, our eyes will invariably reveal it.

No. But I understand her. Life makes people what they are.

The great fact of individual difference and variability (that is, inequality) is evident from the long record of human experience: hence, the general recognition of the antihuman nature of a world of coerced uniformity.

Having had so many human rats in my life, I don't think I'm scared of the animal variety.

We are so accustomed to love on a human level that we find loving God for Himself either impossible or beyond our capabilities. We tend to love those who appeal to us, render us a service, or are good to us. In the degree they perform these various services, we love them.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables.

there is no such thing as a rational person. We are emotional creatures with some token capacity for reason.

I think a human animal is far more wild and unpredictable and dangerous and destructive than any other animal.

you can't use logic on human behavior.