Human Nature Quotes - Page 36

• A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility what human nature is of what happens in the world. It's a creator of inwardness.

  Susan Sontag

  Education, Book, Heart

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• But I know human nature, my friend, and I tell you that, suddenly confronted with the possibility of being tried for murder, the most innocent person will lose his head and do the most absurd things.

  Agatha Christie

  Innocent Person, Murder, Possibility

  Agatha Christie (1974). “Murder in the Calais Coach”, Simon & Schuster of Canada, 1940

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• We make allowance for a certain degree of selfishness in men; because we know it to be inseparable from human nature, and inherent in our frame and constitution. By this reflexion we correct those sentiments of blame, which so naturally arise upon any opposition.

  David Hume

  Men, Selfishness, Degrees

  David Hume (2003). “A Treatise of Human Nature”, p.415, Courier Corporation

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• Every persisting marriage is based on fear', said Peregrine. 'Fear is fundamental, you dig down in human nature and what's at the bottom? Mean spiteful cruel self-regarding fear, whether it makes you to put the foot in it or whether it makes you to cower.

  Iris Murdoch

  Mean, Self, Feet

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• For, so inconsistent is human nature, especially in the ideal, that not to undertake a thing at all seems better than to undertake and come short.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Inconsistent, Humans, Ideals

  Harriet Beecher Stowe (2001). “Uncle Tom's Cabin”, p.125, Applewood Books

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• We have been told over and over that "you can't change human nature", but the study of emic realities shows quite the contrary, that almost anything can become "human nature" if society defines it as such.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Reality, Study, Shows

  Robert Anton Wilson (1990). “Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You and Your World”, New Falcon Publications

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• Pride... is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or the other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.

  Jane Austen

  Real, Believe, Pride

  "Pride and Prejudice". Book by Jane Austen, January 28, 1813.

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• ...in any land, in any country under modern free competition, to lay any class of weak and despised people, be they white, black, or blue, at the political mercy of their stronger, richer, and more resourceful fellows, is a temptation which human nature seldom has withstood and seldom will withstand.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Country, Blue, Land

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2014). “The Souls of Black Folk: The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois”, p.113, Oxford University Press

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• War grows out of ordinary human nature.

  Bertrand Russell

  War, Ordinary, Grows

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel”, p.5, Lulu Press, Inc

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• He who laughs.....lasts.

  Erma Bombeck

  Inspirational, Funny, Happiness

  Erma Bombeck (2013). “Forever, Erma: Best-Loved Writing From America's Favorite Humorist”, p.46, Open Road Media

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• If all we've got to look forward to is disloyalty and treachery, why do we even make friends?" "Again, human nature. Hoping for the best is what drives us.

  Gena Showalter

  Looks, Disloyalty, Hoping For The Best

  Gena Showalter (2010). “Intertwined”, p.180, Harlequin

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• Anything's possible in Human Nature," Chacko said in his Reading Aloud voice. Talking to the darkness now, suddenly insensitive to his little fountain-haired niece. "Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite joy." Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate Joy sounded the saddest. Perhaps because of the way Chacko said it. Infinnate Joy. With a church sound to it. Like a sad fish with fins all over.

  Arundhati Roy

  Niece, Reading, Voice

  Arundhati Roy (2002). “The God of Small Things”, p.118, Penguin Books India

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• Why must it be in human nature to hear one thing but to believe in another?" "Because we want things to get better," I said. "Otherwise we would all give up.

  F.E. Higgins

  Giving Up, Believe, Get Better

  F. E. Higgins (2008). “The Black Book of Secrets”, p.215, Pan Macmillan

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• Under capitalism the common man enjoys amenities which in ages gone by were unknown and therefore inaccessible even to the richest people. But, of course, these motorcars, television sets and refrigerators do not make a man happy. In the instant in which he acquires them, he may feel happier than he did before. But as soon as some of his wishes are satisfied, new wishes spring up. Such is human nature.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Spring, Men, People

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• What we believe as human nature in actuality is human habit.

  Jewel

  Nature, Believe, Habit

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• And we all vied, in saving face, to be the greatest student of human nature, the person with the quickest sense of humor.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Saving, Faces, Students

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• One wonders, in fact, why marriage is a legal issue at all - apart from its relevance to immigration and property laws. Why would something so integral to human nature require such vigilant legal protection?

  Christopher Ryan

  Law, Issues, Immigration

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• Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch--as cunning is the wisdom of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Coward, Virtue, Substitutes

  Ambrose Bierce, S. T. Joshi, David E. Schultz (1998). “A Sole Survivor: Bits of Autobiography”, p.238, Univ. of Tennessee Press

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• When it comes to people -- don't write about who you know; but what you know of human nature.

  Candace Bushnell

  Writing, People, Who You Know

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• What is a Poet? He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.

  William Wordsworth

  Passion, Men, Soul

  William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth (1815). “Poems”, p.376

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• School was more than academics; an education prepared you for the humdrum of real life: working with others, tempering one's personality to assimilate with the group but without losing your individual identity, understading the factors of logic, reasoning, and debate. For a person - vampire or human - to succeed in the world, unlocking the mysteries of the universe was insufficient. One would also need to grasp the mysteries of human nature.

  Melissa de la Cruz

  Real, School, Personality

  Melissa de la Cruz (2010). “The Van Alen Legacy: Number 4 in series”, p.165, Hachette UK

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• There is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Existentialism, There Is No God, Humans

  Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre (2016). “The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection: Essays in Metaphysics, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Philosophy of Existentialism”, p.164, Open Road Media

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• The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Feelings, Different, Frankenstein Novel

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1993). “Frankenstein”, p.45, Wordsworth Editions

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• There is something about wills which brings out the worst side of human nature. People who under ordinary circumstances are perfectly upright and amiable, go as curly as corkscrews and foam at the mouth, whenever they hear the words 'I devise and bequeath.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  People, Ordinary, Foam

  DOROTHY L. SAYERS (1963). “STRONG POISON”

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• Could you understand the meaning of light if there were no darkness to point the contrast? Day and night, life and death, love and hatred, since none of these things can have any being at all apart from the existence of the other, you can no more separate them than you can separate the two sides of a coin.

  Elizabeth Goudge

  Night, Light, Life And Death

  "Green Dolphin Country".

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