Human Life Quotes - Page 31

• It is human life. We are blown upon the world; we float buoyantly upon the summer air a little while, complacently showing off our grace of form and our dainty iridescent colors; then we vanish with a little puff, leaving nothing behind but a memory - and sometimes not even that. I suppose that at those solemn times when we wake in the deeps of the night and reflect, there is not one of us who is not willing to confess that he is really only a soap-bubble, and as little worth the making.

  Mark Twain

  Summer, Time, Memories

  Mark Twain (2010). “Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review”, p.152, Univ of Wisconsin Press

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• Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.

  Elie Wiesel

  Inspirational, Life, Women

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences”, p.170, Schocken

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• Nothing can alter the character of God. In the course of a human life, tastes and outlook and temper may change radically: a kind, equable man may turn bitter and crotchety: a man of good-will may grow cynical and callous. But nothing of this sort happens to the Creator. He never becomes less truthful, or merciful, or just, or good, than He used to be.

  J. I. Packer

  God, Character, Men

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• Cancer is a passport to intimacy. It is an invitation, maybe even a mandate, to enter the most vital arenas of human life, the most sensitive and the most frightening, the ones that we never want to go to - but when we do go there, we feel incredibly transformed.

  Bruce Feiler

  Motivation, Cancer, Inspiration

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• There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life.

  Karl Popper

  Numbers, History, Kind

  Karl Popper (2005). “The Open Society and Its Enemies: Hegel and Marx”, p.299, Routledge

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• Faith walks simply, childlike, between the darkness of human life and the hope of what is to come.

  Catherine Doherty

  Hope, Darkness, Walks

  Catherine de Hueck Doherty (2009). “Catherine de Hueck Doherty: Essential Writings”

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• As the days of spring arouse all nature to a green and growing vitality, so when hope enters the soul it makes all things new. It insures the progress which it predicts. Rooted in faith, growing up into love; these make the three immortal graces of the Gospel, whose intertwined arms and concurrent voices shed joy and peace over our human life.

  James Freeman Clarke

  Hope, Growing Up, Spring

  James Freeman Clarke (1880). “Self-culture, lectures”

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• Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.

  Joseph Addison

  Life, Laughter, Humor

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• Within the next few years-a decade perhaps-we should be in a position to unlock new knowledge about life and matter so great that wholly new concepts of human life will follow in the wake of this new knowledge.

  David Lilienthal

  Life, Knowledge, Years

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• Knowledge of the truth I may perhaps have attained to; happiness certainly not. What shall I do? Accomplish something in the world, men tell me. Shall I then publish my grief to the world, contribute one more proof for the wretchedness and misery of existence, perhaps discover a new flaw in human life, hitherto unnoticed? I might then reap the rare reward of becoming famous, like the man who discovered the spots on Jupiter. I prefer, however, to keep silent.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Grief, Knowledge, Men

  Soren Kierkegaard (1959). “Either/ Or”

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• I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.

  John Keats

  Life, Doors, Two

  John Keats (2015). “John Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn (Unabridged): From one of the most beloved English Romantic poets, best known for his Odes, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to Indolence, Ode to Psyche, Ode to Fanny, The Eve of St. Agnes, Lamia, Hyperion and more”, p.192, e-artnow

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• For men to tell how human life began
  Is hard; for who himself beginning knew?

  John Milton

  Life, Men, Humans

  1665 Adam to Raphael. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.8, l.250-1.

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• It is a bewildering thing in human life that the things that cause the greatest fear is the source of the greatest wisdom.

  Carl Jung

  Military, Greatest Fear, Causes

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• The question is, and this is what Barack Obama didn't want to answer, is that human life a person under the constitution. And Barack Obama says no. Well, if that person, human life, is not a person, then I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say no, we're going to decide who our people, and who are not people.

  Rick Santorum

  Men, People, Black

  Anderson Cooper 360°, transcripts.cnn.com. January 4, 2012.

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• If one were truly aware of the value of human life, to waste it blithely on distractions and the pursuit of vulgar ambitions would be the height of confusion.

  Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

  Wisdom, Ambition, Buddhism

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• The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual; everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Effort, Intellectual

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.15, Penguin

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• Since science's competence extends to observable and measurable phenomena, not to the inner being of things, and to the means, not to the ends of human life, it would be nonsense to expect that the progress of science will provide men with a new type of metaphysics, ethics, or religion.

  Jacques Maritain

  Mean, Science, Men

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• Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist, nor what sort of form they may have; there are many reasons why knowledge on this subject is not possible, owing to the lack of evidence and the shortness of human life.

  Protagoras

  God, Knowledge, Mean

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• I look upon the pleasure we take in a garden as one of the most innocent delights in human life.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Garden, Looks, Delight

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (1855). “Cicero's Three books of offices, or moral duties: also his Cato Major, an essay on old age; Lælius, an essay on friendship; Paradoxes; Scipio's dream; and Letter to Quintus on the duties of a magistrate”, p.241

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• I look upon the pleasure which we take in a garden as one of the most innocent delights in human life. . . It gives us a great insight into the contrivance and wisdom of Nature, and suggests innumerable subjects for meditation.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Garden, Giving, Meditation

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• Every stage of human life, except the last, is marked out by certain and defined limits; old age alone has no precise and determinate boundary.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Life, Time, Age

  Marcus Tullius Cicero, William Melmoth (1820). “Essays on old age and friendship”, p.70

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• It is like taking the sun out of the world, to bereave human life of friendship.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Real, World, Sun

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (1887). “Ethical Writings of Cicero: Cicero De Officiis, Cicero De Senectute, Cicero De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream”

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• The business of the law is to make sense of the confusion of what we call human life - to reduce it to order but at the same time to give it possibility, scope, even dignity.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Order, Law, Giving

  1972 'Apologia', in the Harvard Law Review, Jun.

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• It's fun to get together and have something good to eat at least once a day. That's what human life is all about - enjoying things.

  Julia Child

  Fun, Food, Yummy

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• All human life is here, but the Holy Ghost seems to be somewhere else.

  Anthony Burgess

  Life, Somewhere Else, Atheism

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