Quotes About Human nature

We acknowledge, indeed, that Christ in human nature is called a Son, not like believers by gratuitous adoption merely, but the true, natural, and, therefore, only Son, this being the mark which distinguishes him from all others. Those of us who are regenerated to a new life God honours with the name of sons; the name of true and only-begotten Son he bestows on Christ alone. But how is he an only Son in so great a multitude of brethren, except that he possesses by nature what we acquire by gift?

Now God's image is the perfect excellence of human nature which shone in Adam before his defection, but was subsequently so vitiated and almost blotted out that nothing remains after the ruin except what is confused, mutilated, and disease-ridden. Therefore in some part it now is manifest in the elect, in so far as they have been reborn in the spirit; but it will attain its full splendor in heaven.

eAs far as pertains to those secret promptings we are discussing, Solomon's statement that the heart of a king is turned about hither and thither at God's pleasure [Prov. 21:1] certainly extends to all the human race, and carries as much weight as if he had said: "Whatever we conceive of in our minds is directed to his own end by God's secret inspiration." And

Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.

You did it because you wanted to. No one can make you do evil. You had evil inside you, and you indulged it. Men will always indulge it.

It was human nature. You didn't give everything away; if you did, you would have nothing left. There were those who took the view that there was a liberation in the act of confession, but mostly they tended to be the ones who were listening, and not the ones confessing. The only full confessions occur on deathbeds; all others are partial, modified.

Most people are not bad. Oh, they do bad things sometimes, and we all have a little badness in us, but very few people are unspeakably evil, and most of the bad things they do seem perfectly reasonable to them at the time. Perhaps they're bored, or selfish, or greedy, but, for the most part, they don't actually want to hurt anyone when they do bad things. They just want to make their own lives a little easier.

It's odd, but people are capable of forgetting quite extraordinary occurrences very quickly if it makes them happier to do so

Men are men, but Man is a woman. —Chesterton

At one blood labors to beget, Spirits as like as it can, Because such figures need to knit, that subtle knot which makes us man.

I am as free as Nature first made man,Ere the base laws of servitude began,When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

So over violent, or over civil,That every man with him was God or Devil.

The human species produces a certain percentage of scum. That is the way in which I have understood the world my whole life

In the intercourse of life, we please more by our faults than by our good qualities.

But human nature cannot be content on a diet of honey and if there is nothing in one's life that requires pity, one must invent it; for to go through life unpitied would be an unthinkable loss.

Human nature being what it is, people will insist upon getting some pleasure out of life.

at the end of the day, human beings are products of nature, and if humans have purposes, then at some level purposefulness must arise from nature and therefore be inherent in nature … Might purpose be a genuine property of nature right down to the cellular or even the subcellular level? (p. 121–2)

No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.

Maybe I am not very human - all I ever wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.

History does not end. It is a timeless repetition of human folly and correction. It follows that there is no single model of how to organise society. Who, barring those of religious faith, can say that view is wrong?

What is man? Storyteller, mythmaker, and destroyer of the living world. Thinking

TO FORM GROUPS, drawing visceral comfort and pride from familiar fellowship, and to defend the group enthusiastically against rival groups—these are among the absolute universals of human nature and hence of culture.

if our conception of human nature is to be altered, it must be by means of truths conforming to the canons of scientific evidence and not a new dogma however devoutly wished for.

except for behaving like apes much of the time and suffering genetically limited life spans, we are godlike.