Human Nature Quotes

It is difficult to get rid of people when you once have given them too much pleasure.

Everybody has strange things that mean things to them. You couldn't help it.

It is wonderful how well men can keep secrets they have not been told.

Not to him who is offensive to us are we most unfair, but to him who doth not concern us at all.

The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.

Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness,--these are the threads on the loom of time, these are the lords of life.

There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.

Of all our faults, the one that we excuse most easily is idleness.

Hypocrisy ... is only bad when it is improperly used.

. . . you did not seem to me over-fond of money. And this is the way in general with those who have not made it themselves, while those who have are twice as fond of it as anyone else. For just as poets are fond of their own poems, and fathers of their own children, so money-makers become devoted to money, not only because, like other people, they find it useful, but because it's their own creation.

We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted.

Shakespeare is a great psychologist, and whatever can be known of the heart of man may be found in his plays.

Constant labor of one uniform kind destroys the intensity and flow of a man's animal spirits, which find recreation and delight in mere change of activity.

What lawsuits grow out of the graves of rich men, every day; sowing perjury, hatred, and lies among near kindred, where there should be nothing but love!

from the beginning of my sojourn in this world there was a persistent vacancy in me where the industry ought to be. (Ought to was is better, perhaps, though the most of the authorities differ as to this.

We are almost always bored by just those whom we must not find boring.

Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.

We all go about longing for love: it is the first need of our natures, the loudest cry of our hearts.

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.

I remember the very thing that I do not wish to; I cannot forget the things I wish to forget.

Benefits should be granted little by little, so that they may be better enjoyed.

Imagination does not enable us to invent as many different contradictions as there are by nature in every heart.

There is no man so blessed that some who stand by his deathbed won't hail the occasion with delight.

In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people's, we do not accept them easily enough.

Men are in general so tricky, so envious, and so cruel that when we find one who is only weak, we are too happy.

The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular, and even when, by the sheer strength of his case, he prevails, he is put down as a scoundrel.

When I say that all men have the mind which cannot bear to see the suffering of others, my meaning is illustrated this way: when two men suddenly see a child about to fall into a well, they all have a feeling of alarm and distress, not to gain friendship with the child's parents, nor to seek the praise of their neighbors and friends. From such a case, we see that a man without the feeling of commiseration is not a man. The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of humanity.

The fear of loss is greater than the desire for gain.

It is more often from pride than from defective understanding that people oppose established opinions: they find the best places taken in the good party and are reluctant to accept inferior ones.

Sorrow makes us all children again -destroys all differences of intellect.The wisest know nothing.

A new person is to me a great event, and hinders me from sleep. I have often had fine fancies about persons which have given me delicious hours; but the joy ends in the day; it yields no fruit.

When you see anyone complaining of such and such a person's ill-nature and bad temper, know that the complainant is bad-tempered, forasmuch as he speaks ill of that bad-tempered person, because he alone is good-tempered who is quietly forbearing towards the bad-tempered and ill-natured.

Nothing in Man is either worse or better for being shared with the beasts.

The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.

When the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, when he feels himself to be in the world as in a great, beautiful, noble, and valued whole, when harmonious ease affords him a pure and free delight, then the universe, if it could experience itself, would exult, as having attained its goal, and admire the climax of its own becoming and essence.

Rebukes are easy from our betters,From men of quality and letters;But when low dunces will affront,What man alive can stand the brunt?

We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blesses facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it.

The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. We hate the kindness which we understand.

Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad.

I cannot often enough say, that a man is only a relative and representative nature. Each is a hint of the truth, but far enough from being that truth, which yet he quite newly and inevitably suggests to us. If I seek it in him, I shall not find it.

Imagination is not a talent of some men but is the health of every man.

Never was a government that was not composed of liars, malefactors and thieves.

People cannot stand too much Reality.

Catch {a man} at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, "By jove, I'm being humble," and almost immediately pride - pride at his own humility - will appear.

Old age by nature is rather talkative.

There's nobody for me to attack in this matter even with soft and gentle ridicule-and I shouldn't ever think of using a grown up weapon in this kind of a nursery. Above all, I couldn't venture to attack the clergymen whom you mention, for I have their habits and live in the same glass house which they are occupying. I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.

All our troubles come from not being able to be alone.

Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness)

There is nobody more dangerous than one who has been humiliated, even when you humiliate him rightly.

Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.

Man is a creative animal, doomed to strive toward a goal, engaged in full-time engineering.

The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone. As it is not so easy as the detective novels might lead one to believe, one generally relies on politics and joins the cruelest party.What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one's mind one succeeds in dominating every one? I discovered in myself sweet dreams of oppression.

Men cry because things are not what they ought to be.

To think but nobly of my grandmother: Good wombs have borne bad sons.

What a chimera then is man. What a novelty! What a monster... what a contradiction, what a prodigy

Those characters wherein fear predominates over hope may apprehend too much from...instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth nor experience.

Many people see themselves as a problem that needs to be solved. They also habitually see the present moment as an obstacle that they need to overcome or get away from. With awareness, an inner sense of spaciousness arises that enables you to look at your own mind, which is to say the human mind, with a certain degree of detachment.

We bless and curse ourselves.

Truth is too simple for us: we do not like those who unmask our illusions.

You can manicure a cat but can you caticure a man?