Human Nature Quotes

There is an accumulative cruelty in a number of men, though none in particular are ill-natured.

~ George Savile Halifax

Discussions of death and such matters do more to unlock the human tongue than any other subject.

~ Agatha Christie

Desire of The Wings Can Broke you Own Feet.

~ Yaganesh Derasari

To ennoble is to diminish by robbing people of their complexity, their completeness, of their humanity, which is always clouded by what gets stirred up at the bottom.

~ Norman Lock

You were correct, for all men have within them both that which is dark and that which is light. A man is a thing of many divisions, not a pure, clear flame such as you once were. His intellect often wars with his emotions, his will with his desires . . . his ideals are at odds with his environment, and if he follows them, he knows keenly the loss of that which was old, but if he does not follow them, he feels the pain of having forsaken a new and noble dream. Whatever he does represents both a gain and a loss, an arrival and a departure. Always he mourns that which is gone and fears some part of that which is new. Reason opposes tradition. Emotions oppose the restrictions his fellow men lay upon him. Always, from the friction of these things, there arises the thing you called the curse of man and mocked; guilt!

~ Roger Zelazny

No person is just one person. Everyone is a crate of fruits, a crate of mixed fruits. The apple in there may have worms, a peach may be mildewed, a banana may be too green, a pear may be in perfect ripeness, and a melon may have the sweetest smell.

~ Victor Robert Lee

The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature.

~ David Mitchell

Actually, what does man live for?”“To think about it. Any other question?” “Yes. Why does he die just when he has done that and has become a bit more sensible?” “Some people die without having become more sensible.”“Don’t evade my question. And don’t start talking about the transmigration of souls.” “I’ll ask you something else first. Lions kill antelopes; spiders flies; foxes chickens; which is the only race in the world that wars on itself uninterruptedly, fighting and killing one another?” “Those are questions for children. The crown of creation, of course, the human being— who invented the words love, kindness, and mercy.” “Good. And who is the only being in Nature that is capable of committing suicide and does it?” “Again the human being— who invented eternity, God, and resurrection.”“Excellent,” Ravic said. “You see of how many contradictions we consist. And you want to know why we die?

~ Erich Maria Remarque

At some indeterminate point in their life cycles, they cause themselves to be placed in artificial stone or wooden cocoons, or chrysalises. They have an idea that they will someday emerge from these in an altered state, which they symbolize with carvings of themselves with wings. However, we did not observe that any had actually done so.

~ Margaret Atwood

It's amazing how people can be so blind to what's good for them and what isn't, what's truth and what's not, or the difference between secrets and things just not yet known.

~ Eric Lindstrom

You'll contact with me by the pressure, the need or by the interest .

~ Fernando González Y Lozano

And there can be no end to greed because man, by his very exclusive human nature, is pathologically insatiable.

~ Mariano Ngan

Sometimes trials...Bring out the hard-hearted nature of a good person and make him unforgiving.And, sometimes trials...Help a socially snubbed person to live a humane life and make him appreciable!Its called TIME that exposes people truly.

~ Salsabeel

It is not easy to be stranded between two worlds, the sad truth is that we can never feel completely comfortable in either world

~ Sharon Kay Penman

as was his way, once he acknowledged the problem, he set about finding a means to resolve it

~ Sharon Kay Penman

Many artists and scholars have pointed out that ultimately art depends on human nature.

~ Steven Pinker

It suits here now to forget last year, but she'll never make me forget last year, not if I live to be a hundred. I didn't know much then. I know now that there's people like her who want to be friendly for what you do, not what you are.

~ K.m. Peyton

Ah, what broken creatures we are, and how we endure.

~ Anne Rice

There are people among us who are biologically human but who are androids in the metaphoric sense.

~ Philip K. Dick

The rest were nondescript, as yet undifferentiated—yet nondescripts, thought Harriet, were the most difficult of all human beings to analyze. You scarcely knew they were there, until—bang! Something quite unexpected blew up like a depth charge and left you marveling, to collect strange floating debris.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

He tried to decide if he was really ashamed of being afraid, and decided that he was not. Fear was there for a purpose. It was wired into any creature that had not completely turned its back on its evolutionary inheritance and so remade itself in whatever image it coveted. The more sophisticated you became, the less you relied on fear and pain to keep you alive; you could afford to ignore them because you had other means of coping with the consequences if things went badly.

~ Iain M. Banks

Ladies tell their nurses things in a sudden burst of confidence, and then, afterwards, they feel uncomfortable about it and wish they hadn't! It's only human nature.

~ Agatha Christie

Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The story of the herd of seals. Hundreds of them on a beach; among them the hunter killing one after the other with a club. Together they could easily have crushed him— but they lay there, watching him come to murder, and did not move; he was only killing a neighbor— one neighbor after the other. The story of the European seals. The sunset of civilization. Tired shapeless Götterdämmerung. The empty banners of human rights. The sell-out of a continent. The onrushing deluge. The haggling for the last prices. The old dance of despair on the volcano. Peoples again slowly being driven into a slaughterhouse. The fleas would save themselves when the sheep were being sacrificed. As always.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

In a war the most dangerous thing is to understand the enemy. To understand is to forgive. And wehave no right to do that—we never have had, not since the creation of the world.

~ Sergei Lukyanenko

Man is a plant, and its gardener. But it is only his soil that lets him rise, and it is only gardening himself, that may allow him to bear fruit.

~ Lars Frodesen

I am not a snob, because I know opulence doesn't stamp out ignorance and unhappiness.

~ Sarina Bowen

But such is the nature of man that as soon as you begin to force him to do a thing, from that moment he begins to seek ways by which he can avoid doing the thing you are trying to force upon him. A man with malaria parasites in his blood is a danger to his companions. To kill all the parasites, he was then required to continue doses of quinine a week or ten days after his fever. When the convalescing men were given their daily dose of quinine they would manage to throw their tablets out of the dispensary window. The old turkey-gobbler pet of the hospital gobbled up all the tablets he could find. He became so dissipated he finally developed a species of blindness caused by too much quinine. I cannot vouch for this, but I was often twitted with this story as an illustration of how the men were treating prophylactic quinine.

~ William Crawford Gorgas

Since humans are social animals, you’re basically only as good as your reputation.

~ A.d. Aliwat

In times of stress and danger such as come about as the result of an epidemic, many tragic and cruel phases of human nature are brought out, as well as many brave and unselfish ones.

~ William Crawford Gorgas

One of the biggest differences between humans and trees is simply that humans burn trees.

~ M. Jackson

I am strangely tired, not from having talked so much but at the mere thought of what I still have to say

~ Albert Camus

Wolves eat dogs. That did seem to be the consensus of the village, Arkady thought. Roman shook his head as if he'd given the matter a lot of consideration. Wolves hate dogs. Wolves hunt down dogs because they regard them as traitors. If you think about it, dogs are dogs only because of humans; otherwise they'd all be wolves, right? And where will we be when all the dogs are gone? It will be the end of civilization.

~ Martin Cruz Smith

The prison inspector and the warders, though they had never understood or gone into the meaning of these dogmas and of all that went on in church, believed that they must believe, because the higher authorities and the Tsar himself believed in it. Besides, though faintly (and themselves unable to explain why), they felt that this faith defended their cruel occupations. If this faith did not exist it would have been more difficult, perhaps impossible, for them to use all their powers to torment people, as they were now doing, with a quiet conscience. The inspector was such a kind-hearted man that he could not have lived as he was now living unsupported by his faith.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Nature to all things fixed the limits fitAnd wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.As on the land while here the ocean gains.In other parts it leaves wide sandy plainsThus in the soul while memory prevails,The solid power of understanding failsWhere beams of warm imagination play,The memory's soft figures melt awayOne science only will one genius fit,So vast is art, so narrow human witNot only bounded to peculiar arts,But oft in those confined to single partsLike kings, we lose the conquests gained before,By vain ambition still to make them moreEach might his several province well command,Would all but stoop to what they understand.

~ Alexander Pope

We all make mistakes. It is in our human nature. It just happens, it's nature's way to keep life interesting.

~ Ariana Godoy

Pessimism is a funny thing, isn't it? Madison thought as she looked at Judith's furrowed face. I like a bit of pessimism as much as the next man, but when I'm bombarded with it I suddenly became an eternal optimist.

~ Melissa Kite

Polarization breeds respect.

~ A.d. Aliwat

Last days? Don't they know? These are the traits of all days, every day, everywhere.

~ Paul Theroux

From Hinduism to the monotheisms through to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the common message is that we are all, naturally and potentially, inclined to reject the other, and to be intolerant and racist. Left to our own devices and our own emotions, we can be deaf, blind, dogmatic, closed and xenophobic: we are not born open-minded, respectful and pluralist. We become so through personal effort, education, self-mastery and knowledge.

~ Tariq Ramadan