Human Nature Quotes

The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains.

When bitter enemies make peace, surely some bitterness remains.

Jealousy is the theory that some other fellow has just as little taste.

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

There are two things a real man likes - danger and play; and he likes woman because she is the most dangerous of play things.

How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you?

Humankind differs from the animals only by a little and most people throw that away.

I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in consequence.

Men in all ways are better than they seem.

One is more certain to influence men, to produce more effect on them, by absurdities than by sensible ideas.

These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.

We legislate against forestalling and monopoly; we would have a common granary for the poor; but the selfishness which hoards thecorn for high prices, is the preventative of famine; and the law of self-preservation is surer policy than any legislation can be.

Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this.

Man wishes woman to be peaceable, but in fact she is essentially warlike, like the cat.

Men hate the haughty of heart who will not be the friend of every man.

You do not know the unfathomable cowardice of humanity...servile in the face of force, pitiless in the face of weakness, implacable before blunders, indulgent before crimes...and patient to the point of martyrdom before all the violences of bold despotism.

The self is hateful.

Consciously or unconsciously, we are all striving for perfection. Every being must attain to it.

Though all society is founded on intolerance, all improvement is founded on tolerance.

When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

No one should therefore fear that he cannot accomplish what others have accomplished, for, men are born, live, and die in quite the same way they always have.

There are men who are wanting in the comparative, they as a rule are the most interesting.

In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an assortment as he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience.

If you want a good argument against democracy, spend five minutes with a voter.

The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human.

Those who give you a serpent when you ask for a fish, may have nothing but serpents to give.

It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously

At bottom, every state regards another as a gang of robbers who will fall upon it as soon as there is an opportunity.

We all have done something unethical.

Man's greatest drive is not love or hate but to change another person's writing.

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

Bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race - the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.

Human, all too human.

We are accustomed to see men deride what they do not understand, and snarl at the good and beautiful because it lies beyond their sympathies

You must be aware that most men (and also not only a few women) are by nature not monogamous. This nature makes itself even more forceful when tradition and circumstance stand in an individual's way.

Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because the regret is stronger than gratitude.

We have hearts within, Warm, live, improvident, indecent hearts.

Rebellion, in man, is the refusal to be treated as an object and to be reduced to simple historical terms. It is the affirmation of a nature common to all men, which eludes the world of power.

We are reassured almost as foolishly as we are alarmed; human nature is so constituted.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

Men are lead by trifles.

In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.

sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man the most guilty.

Perseverance is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy; for it seems to be only the enduring of certain inclinations and opinions which men neither give themselves nor take away from themselves.

The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

There is a secret drawer in every woman's heart.

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

Human beings are the only creatures who blush - or who need to.

There is only one sex. A man and a woman are so entirely the same thing that one can scarcely understand the subtle reasons for sex distinctions with which our minds are filled.

When I read history, I [see] what typically happens to presidents and the other party during tumultuous times and how people react when the economy is collapsing and they're losing their homes, losing their pensions - it sort of tracks, what ended up happening, because some of that is human nature.

All man's troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room.

Love based upon indulgence of animal passion, is at best a selfish affair, and likely to snap under the slightest strain.

In other men we faults can spy,/ And blame the mote that dims their eye;/ Each little speck and blemish find;/ To our own stronger errors blind.

A method of procuring sensations? Do you think then, that a man who has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again? Don't tell me that." says Dorian. "Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often," says Lord Henry

We despise no source that can pay us a pleasing attention.

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.

No one sees what is before his feet: they scan the tracks of heaven.

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.