Human Nature Quotes - Page 20

• I have come to realize that in every person there is something fine and pure and noble, along with a desire for self-fulfillment.

  Jimmy Carter

  Self, Desire, Noble

  Jimmy Carter (1976). “"I'll Never Lie to You": Jimmy Carter in His Own Words”

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• Man is clearly made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. And the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our Author and our end.

  Blaise Pascal

  Thoughtful, Men, Thinking

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• There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.

  Blaise Pascal

  Happiness, Men, Trying

  Pensees no. 181 (1658). Popularly paraphrased as "There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart."

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• Those who profess contempt for men, and put them on a level with beasts, yet wish to be admired and believed by men, and contradict themselves by their own feelings--their nature, which is stronger than all, convincing them of the greatness of man more forcibly than reason convinces them of his baseness.

  Blaise Pascal

  Greatness, Men, Feelings

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• The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved by his wretchedness. For what in animals is nature, we call in man wretchedness--by which we recognize that, his nature being now like that of animals, he has fallen from a better nature which once was his.

  Blaise Pascal

  Animal, Greatness, Men

  Blaise Pascal (2016). “Pensées”, p.150, Open Road Media

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• Life is a tragedy filled with suffering and despair and yet some people do manage to avoid jury duty.

  Woody Allen

  People, Suffering, Tragedy

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• What is to be done with people who can't read a Sunday paper without messing it all up?... Show me a Sunday paper which has been left in a condition fit only for kite flying, and I will show you an antisocial and dangerous character who has left it that way.

  Robert Benchley

  Character, Sunday, People

  Robert Benchley (1932). “No Poems”

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• Men expect too much, do too little,
  Put the contraption before the accomplishment,
  Lack skill of the interior mind
  To fashion dignity with shapes of air.
  Luxury, yes but not elegance!

  Allen Tate

  Fashion, Men, Skills

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.86, Macmillan

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• Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial, but generally speaking it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber.

  Jane Austen

  Nursing, Sick, Weakness

  Jane Austen (1833). “Northanger abbey [followed by] Persuasion”, p.351

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• Robin [Williams] was a world treasure. As we mourn his tragic death, we must remember him for the great waves of laughter that he was able to illicit from us, how his humor and insights - though they came from a place of pain and uncertainty - connected us and reminded us of how flawed and fragile...how human we are. How we are capable of moments of inspired transcendence and others of unspeakable despair.

  Glenn Close

  Leadership, Wisdom, Pain

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• ... beauty, like ecstasy, has always been hostile to the commonplace. And the commonplace, under its popular label of the normal,has been the supreme authority for Homo sapiens since the days when he was probably arboreal.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Beauty, Normal, Labels

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• I would write of the universal, not the provincial, in human nature.... I would write of characters, not of characteristics.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Writing, Character, Humans

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• People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of anextreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions.

  Stendhal

  Family, Heart, Self

  Stendhal (1986). “Armance”, Dufour Editions

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• Signs cannot be represented, in a spy's report, so damningly as words.

  Stendhal

  Spy, Language, Reports

  Stendhal (2016). “The Red and the Black: World Classics”, p.204, World Classic

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• Great ladies are no more spiteful than the average rich woman; but one acquires in their society a greater susceptibility, and feels more profoundly andmore irremediably, their unpleasant remarks.

  Stendhal

  Women, Average, Society

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• The mayor of Sochi is now saying that there are no gay people in Sochi. So the only thing that is flaming over there now is the Olympic torch.

  David Letterman

  Leadership, Gay, Class

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• Here's a woman, a real pioneer for other women looking for careers in stand-up comedy. And talk about guts - she would come out here and sit in this chair and say some things that were unbelievable - where you would have to swallow pretty hard... but it was hilarious... the force of her comedy was overpowering.

  David Letterman

  Leadership, Fashion, Real

  "Joan Rivers Dead: Hollywood Mourns Comedian" by Hilary Lewis, www.hollywoodreporter.com. September 4, 2014.

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• In one and the same human being there are cognitions that, however utterly dissimilar they are, yet have one and the same object,so that one can only conclude that there are different subjects in one and the same human being.

  Franz Kafka

  Experience, Different, Cognition

  Franz Kafka (1954). “Wedding preparations in the country: and other posthumous prose writings. With notes by Max Brod”

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• The history of the world, as it is written and handed down by word of mouth, often fails us completely; but man's intuitive capacity, though it often misleads, does lead, does not ever abandon one.

  Franz Kafka

  Love, Men, Doe

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

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• Ye whose clay-cold heads and luke-warm hearts can argue down or mask your passions--tell me, what trespass is it that man should have them?... If nature has so wove her web of kindness, that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece--must the whole web be rent in drawing them out?

  Laurence Sterne

  Kindness, Passion, Heart

  Laurence Sterne (1849). “The Works of Laurence Sterne: Containing The Life and Opinions of Tristan Shandy ... [etc.] ; with a Life of the Author Written by Himself”, p.339

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• However incoherent a human existence may be, human unity is not bothered by it.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Unity, May, Existence

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• I think if you write humor, then people don't - you know - they don't give you that much credit. They tend to think you just dictate your stories into a tape recorder. And I'm not necessarily insulted by that, because I think that just means that it looks easy.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Mean, Thinking

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• Sometimes you read something and it's just -- it doesn't invite a reader....Sometimes you read something and it's not saying, 'oh come in, come in have a seat. I'm going to tell you what happened.' Perhaps my writing comes off as conversational...and that takes effort.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Effort, Community

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• I'm not afraid to write about madness. I always figure that whatever most embarrasses you is something that everyone can relate to, really...because we're just not that different. So if you think, 'Oh my god, this is so embarrassing. I can't possibly talk about that,' and you write about it, the audience is gonna be like, 'that happened to me!

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Reality, Thinking

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• Adolescence is the time to enlarge the natural sentiments of pity, friendship, and generosity, the time to develop an understanding of human nature and the varieties of human character, the time to gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of all men and to study the history of mankind.

  Louise J. Kaplan

  Strength, Time, Character

  Louise J. Kaplan (1995). “Adolescence: The Farewell to Childhood”, Touchstone Books

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