Human Nature Quotes

Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious if unmixed.

The Nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature.

It is said that when manners are licentious, a revolution is always near: the virtue of woman being the main girth and bandage ofsociety; because a man will not lay up an estate for children any longer than whilst he believes them to be his own.

A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full;so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again.

I learned then that practically no one in the world is entirely bad or entirely good, and that motives are often more important than actions.

Misanthropy ariseth from a man trusting another without having sufficient knowledge of his character, and, thinking him to be truthful, sincere, and honourable, finds a little afterwards that he is wicked, faithless, and then he meets with another of the same character. When a man experiences this often, and more particularly from those whom he considered his most dear and best friends, at last, having frequently made a slip, he hates the whole world, and thinks that there is nothing sound at all in any of them.

There is in man a specific lust for cruelty which infects even his passion of pity and makes it savage.

The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.

We take a fancy to something: and scarcely have we thoroughly taken a fancy to it when that tyrant in us calls out: "Give me thatin sacrifice"--and we give it.

An obligation to feel can freeze feelings.

Nothing makes a man, or a body of men, as mad as the truth. If there is no truth in it, they laugh it off.

When women cease to be handsome, they study to be good.

Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.

Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.

Generally we are occupied either with the miseries which now we feel, or with those which threaten; and even when we see ourselves sufficiently secure from the approach of either, still fretfulness, though unwarranted by either present or expected affliction, fails not to spring up from the deep recesses of the heart, where its roots naturally grow, and to fill the soul with its poison.

The greatest part of intimate confidences proceed from a desire either to be pitied or admired.

Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.

To escape boredom, man works either beyond what his usual needs require, or else he invents play, that is, work that is designed to quiet no need other than that for working in general.

Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. If anyone finds out he'll become happy at once.

The symbol of the race ought to be a human being carrying an ax, for every human being has one concealed about him somewhere, and is always seeking the opportunity to grind it.

There are things which some people never attempt during their whole lives, but one of these is not poetry. Poetry attacks all human beings sooner or later, and, like the measles, is mild or violent according to the age of the sufferer.

When we enlarge upon the affection our friends have for us, this is very often not so much out of a sense of gratitude as from a desire to persuade people of our own great worth, that can deserve so much kindness.

The reason of idleness and of crime is the deferring of our hopes. Whilst we are waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with crimes.

In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us.

Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.

The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting. For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger, and covetous of gain; as long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours; they offer you their blood, their goods, their life, and their children, as I have before said, when the necessity is remote; but when it approaches, they revolt.

They hurt each other without wanting to, just because each represented to the others the cruel and demanding necessity of their lives.

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man... It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

If you think about human nature, our favourite pair of shoes are the ones we bought yesterday, our favourite thing is the newest thing that we have…and the thing we’ve seen the most and for the longest period of time is our reflection in the mirror, so obviously that’s going to be our least favourite thing.

Archetypes resemble the beds of rivers: dried up because the water has deserted them, though it may return at any time. An archetype is something like an old watercourse along which the water of life flowed for a time, digging a deep channel for itself. The longer it flowed the deeper the channel, and the more likely it is that sooner or later the water will return.

Every one is least known to himself, and it is very difficult for a man to know himself.

Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.

Flattery is a base coin which is current only through our vanity.

Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, but the absence of power.

Human nature is not of itself vicious.

It's a burden to us even to be human beings-men with our own real body and blood; we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalized man.

That's what I look at some people for. I like to know about them. I think them over afterward.

Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.

She let him finish, scratching his head with the tips of her fingers, and without his having revealed that he was weeping from love, she recognized immediately the oldest sobs in the history of man.

So few want to be rebels anymore. And out of those few, most, like myself, scare easily.

The greatest of all mysteries is the man himself.

The love of property and consciousness of right and wrong have conflicting places in our organization, which often makes a man's course seem crooked, his conduct a riddle.

We are more pained when one of our friends is guilty of something shameful than when we do it ourselves.

Man is about the same, in the main, whether with despotism, or whether with freedom.

Men are cruel, but Man is kind.

I must have been an insufferable child; all children are.

Every man is two men; one is awake in the darkness, the other asleep in the light.

One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.

There were moments when I hated everybody I came across, innocent or guilty, and looked at them as thieves who were robbing me of my life with impunity. The most unbearable misfortune is when you yourself become unjust, malignant, vile; you realize it, you even reproach yourself - but you just can't help it.

Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.

Perhaps a normal man is supposed to be stupid-how do we know? Perhaps it's even very beautiful.

When there is sympathy, there needs but one wise man in a company and all are wise,--so, a blockhead makes a blockhead of his companion. Wonderful power to benumb possesses this brother.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

If the lives of men were relieved of all need, hardship and adversity; if everything they took in hand were successful, they would be so swollen with arrogance that, though they might not burst, they would present the spectacle of unbridled folly-nay, they would go mad. And I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. A ship without ballast is unstable and will not go straight.

We carry our past with us, to wit, the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only with an enormous effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we invariably have to deal with a considerably intensified shadow.

But they who are unconcerned about the consequences of their actions are not therefore unconcerned about their actions.

We cannot possibly imagine the variety of contradictions in every heart.

If there was a pill that allowed you to drink and not get drunk, an alcoholic would go "What happens if you take two?"