Human Life Quotes - Page 38

• Do not vainly lament, but do wonder at the rule of transiency and learn from it the emptiness of human life. Do not cherish to unworthy desire that the changeable might become unchanging.

  Gautama Buddha

  Desire, Might, Emptiness

  7 Copy quote

• The Pacific Yew can be cut down and processed to produce a potent chemical, taxol, which offers some promise of curing certain forms of lung, breast and ovarian cancer in patients who would otherwise quickly die... It seems an easy choice - sacrifice the tree for a human life - until one learns that three trees must be destroyed for each patient treated.

  Al Gore

  Cancer, Cutting, Sacrifice

  Al Gore (2013). “Earth in the Balance: Forging a New Common Purpose”, p.119, Routledge

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A seeker searched for years to know the secret of achievement and success in human life. One night in a dream a sage appeared bearing the answer to the secret. The sage said simply: "Stretch out your hand and reach what you can." "No, it can't be that simple," the seeker said. And the sage said softly, "You are right, it is something harder. It is this: Stretch out your hand and reach what you cannot." Now that's vision.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Dream, Simple, Night

  23 Copy quote

• The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Church, Ordinary, Helping

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2011). “Letters Papers from Prison”, p.162, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• . . . the example given by the Nazi regime as to the ability of a modern state to destroy human lives with the same techniques used by modern industry, employing the bureaucratic apparatus readily available to any modern state, is one that can hardly be ignored. Because although history may not repeat itself, it is rare that anything introduced to human history is not used again. Whether the Holocaust was unique or not in terms of its precedents is one question; whether it will remain so is quite another.

  Omer Bartov

  Unique, Holocaust, May

  4 Copy quote

• That human life must be some kind of mistake is sufficiently proved by the simple observation that man is a compound of needs which are hard to satisfy; that their satisfaction achieves nothing but a painless condition in which he is only given over to boredom . . .

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Mistake, Simple, Men

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2004). “On the Suffering of the World”, p.22, Penguin UK

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• Human life, its growth, its hopes, fears, loves, et cetera, are the result of accidents

  Bertrand Russell

  Humanity, Growth, Fear Of Love

  8 Copy quote

• Genius can do much, but even genius falls short of the actuality of a single human life.

  Hamilton Wright Mabie

  Fall, Genius, Humans

  Hamilton Wright Mabie (1900). “My Study Fire: First Series”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Evolution isn't just a story about where we came from. It's an epic at the center of life itself. Far from robbing our lives of meaning, it instills an appreciation for the beautiful, enduring, and ultimately triumphant fabric of life that covers our planet. Understanding that doesn't demean human life - it enhances it.

  Kenneth R. Miller

  Beautiful, Gratitude, Appreciation

  "America’s Darwin Problem". www.huffingtonpost.com. February 10, 2012.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Human life very much resembles a game of chess: for, as in the latter, while a gamester is too attentive to secure himself very strongly on one side of the board, he is apt to leave an unguarded opening on the other, so doth it often happen in life.

  Henry Fielding

  Games, Boards, Chess

  Henry Fielding (1857). “Joseph Andrews. History of the life of the late Mr. Jonathan Wild the great”, p.57

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anxiety in human life is what squeaking and grinding are in machinery that is not oiled. In life, trust is the oil.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Funny, Oil, Anxiety

  Henry Ward Beecher (1866). “Royal truths”, p.154

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which my own "I" ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about. This novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become.

  Milan Kundera

  Courage, Character, Discovery

  4 Copy quote

• Our resistance to this war should be our resistance to profit at the cost of human life. Because that is what these drums beating over Iraq are really about. This is about business.

  Tim Robbins

  War, Iraq, Cost

  4 Copy quote

• Torture is senseless violence, born in fear... torture costs human lives but does not save them. We would almost be too lucky if these crimes were the work of savages: the truth is that torture makes torturers.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Doe, Savages, Lucky

  "A Victory" by Jean-Paul Sartre, 1958.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Love is our true essence. Love has no limitations of caste, religion, race, or nationality. We are all beads strung together on the same thread of love. To awaken this unity-and to spread to others the love that is our inherent nature-is the true goal of human life.

  Mata Amritanandamayi

  Inspirational, Love Is, Race

  139 Copy quote

• Spirit, faith, and positive energy are the core of human life, without them you lose your way. You live without Zest. You go through the motions but there's no passion

  Lee Bolman

  Attitude, Passion, Zest

  9 Copy quote

• The three most important events of human life are equally devoid of reason: birth, marriage and death.

  Austin O'Malley

  Marriage, Important Events, Three

  5 Copy quote

• You cannot force growth of human life and civilization, any more than you can force these slow-growing trees. That is the economy of Almighty God, that all good growth is slow growth.

  William Jay Gaynor

  Civilization, Tree, Growth

  4 Copy quote

• Every human life involves an unfathomable mystery, for man is the riddle of the universe, and the riddle of man in his endowment with personal capacities.

  Harry Emerson Fosdick

  Men, Mystery, Capacity

  Harry Emerson Fosdick (1971). “The Real Problems of Real People: Solutions for Christians”

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• Though we may never be able to comprehend human life, we know certainly that it is a movement, of whatever nature it be. The existence of movement unavoidably implies a body which is being moved and a force which is moving it. Hence, wherever there is life, there is a mass moved by a force. All mass possesses inertia; all force tends to persist

  Nikola Tesla

  Inspirational, Moving, Movement

  Nikola Tesla (2008). “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy: With Special Reference to the Harnessing of the Sun's Energy”, p.5, Cosimo, Inc.

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• Bombing is not especially inhumane. War itself is inhumane and the bombing plane, which is used to paralyse industry and transport, is a relatively civilised weapon. 'Normal' or 'legitimate' warfare is just as destructive of inanimate objects and enormously so of human lives.

  George Orwell

  War, Historical, Inanimate Objects

  George Orwell (2016). “Fifty Essays (George Orwell) (Literary Thoughts Edition)”, p.502, epubli

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A struggle for existence is not a decent living. A man or woman or child may die of starvation in a city teeming with plenty. Only human life is concerned.

  Susette La Flesche

  Children, Struggle, Men

  10 Copy quote

• For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline, and virtue. For the modern, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique.

  Peter Kreeft

  Wise, Men, Reality

  Peter Kreeft (1992). “Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion”, p.22, Ignatius Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is the province of poetry to be more realistic and present than the artificial narratives of an outer discourse, and not afraid of the truthful difficulty of the average human life.

  David Whyte

  Average, Narrative, Truthful

  "The Poetic Narrative Of Our Times" by David Whyte, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 18, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lutheranism restricted itself to an exclusively ecclesiastical and theological character, while Calvinism put its impress in and outside the church upon every aspect of human life.

  Abraham Kuyper

  Character, Church, Calvinism

  Abraham Kuyper (2007). “Lectures on Calvinism”, p.23, Cosimo, Inc.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source