Human Life Quotes - Page 14

• We already know enough to begin to cope with all the major problems that are now threatening human life and much of the rest of life on earth. Our crisis is not a crisis of information; it is a crisis of decision of policy and action.

  George Wald

  Rest Of Life, Decision, Earth

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• It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.

  Alain de Botton

  Life, Dust, Space

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• The issues of the choice between right and wrong has to be an ongoing concern for everybody, at every age. There is no magical point in a human life when anyone is or becomes immune to the second-by-second choice to do right instead of wrong.

  Diane Duane

  Issues, Choices, Age

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• There is one great and universal wish of mankind expressed in all religions, in all art and philosophy, and in all human life: the wish to pass beyond himself as he now is.

  Beatrice M. Hinkle

  Art, Philosophy, Psychology

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• Human life is the only thing that takes care of itself.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Military, Care, Life Is

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• As the Deity has given us Greeks all other blessings in moderation, so our moderation gives us a kind of wisdom which is timid, in all likelihood, and fit for common people, not one which is kingly and splendid. This wisdom, such as it is, observing that human life is ever subject to all sorts of vicissitudes, forbids us to be puffed up by the good things we have, or to admire a man's felicity while there is still time for it to change.

  Solon

  Men, Blessing, Giving

  "Solon". Book by Plutarch, ch. 27; translation by Bernadotte Perrin, 1497.

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• The moral of human life is never simple, and the moral of a story which aims only at being true to human life cannot be expected to be any more so.

  James Anthony Froude

  Simple, Stories, Moral

  James Anthony Froude (1849). “The Nemesis of Faith”, p.3

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• The character of human life, like the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is "ambiguity": the inseparable mixture of good and evil, the true and false, the creative and destructive forces-both individual and social.

  Paul Tillich

  Character, Evil, Creative

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• On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life, Musing in solitude, I oft perceive Fair trains of images before me rise, Accompanied by feelings of delight Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mixed.

  William Wordsworth

  Sadness, Men, Solitude

  1814 'The Excursion', preface, l.1-5.

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• See, see how the sun has moved onward while we talked. Nothing can stop it in its course. Prayers cannot halt the revolving of nature. It is the same with human life. Victory and defeat are one in the vast stream of life. Victory is the beginning of defeat, and who can rest safely in victory? Impermanence is the nature of all things of this world. Even you will find your ill fortunes too will change. It is easy to understand the impatience of the old, whose days are numbered, but why should you young ones fret when the future is yours?

  Eiji Yoshikawa

  Prayer, Victory And Defeat, World

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• The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Religious, Pain, Optimism

  Science and the ModernWorld ch. 12 (1925)

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• The same suffering is much harder to bear for a high motive than for a base one. The people [during World War II] who stood motionless, from one to eight in the morning, for the sake of having an egg, would have found it very difficult to do in order to save a human life.

  Simone Weil

  Morning, War, Eight

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• In the nature of things, I must soon lose sight of this sense of constant metamorphosis whose limits bound our human life.

  Julia Ward Howe

  Sight, Limits, Metamorphosis

  "Beyond the Veil". Essay in "In After Days: Thoughts on the Future Life", book by Henry James and William Dean Howells, 1910.

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• All working, practical political systems, even those professing to originate in moral grandeur, are based upon and operate by contempt of human life and the individual fate.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Fate, Political, Politics

  Katherine Anne Porter, Darlene Harbour Unrue (2008). “Collected stories and other writings”

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• From Plato: the man who has an elevated mind and takes a view of all time and of all substance, dost thou suppose it possible for him to think that human life is anything great? It is not possible, he said. Such a man then will think that death also is no evil.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Plato, Men, Thinking

  Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (2015). “Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius The Golden Sayings Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion”, p.39, Lulu.com

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• I never took a human life, I only sold the fellow the gun to take it with.

  Will Rogers

  Gun, Humans, Fellows

  Will Rogers (1978). “Will Rogers' Daily Telegrams: The Coolidge years, 1926-1929”, Will Rogers Heritage Trust

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• What is the end of human life? It is not, believe me, the chief end of man that he should make a fortune and beget children whose end is likewise to make a fortune, but it is, in few words, that he should explore himself.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Believe, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2005). “The Selected Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.48, University of Georgia Press

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• Memory performs the impossible for man by the strength of his divine arms; holds together past and present, beholding both, existing in both, abides in the flowing, and gives continuity and dignity to human life.

  Mark Van Doren

  Memories, Past, Men

  "The portable Emerson".

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• For optimists, human life never needs justification, no matter how much hurt piles up, because they can always tell themselves that things will get better. For pessimists, there is no amount of happiness—should such a thing as happiness even obtain for human beings except as a misconception—that can compensate us for life’s hurt.

  Thomas Ligotti

  Hurt, Things Will Get Better, Needs

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• Art is the one form of human energy in the whole world, which really works for union, and destroys the barriers between man and man. It is the continual, unconscious replacement, however fleeting, of oneself by another; the real cement of human life; the everlasting refreshment and renewal. For, what is grievous, dompting, grim, about our lives is that we are shut up within ourselves, with an itch to get outside ourselves. And to be stolen away from ourselves by Art is a momentary relaxation from that itching, a minute's profound, and as it were secret, enfranchisement.

  John Galsworthy

  Art, Real, Men

  John Galsworthy (2008). “The Complete Essays of John Galsworthy: Easyread Super Large 20pt Edition”, p.338, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Whenever a man talks he lies, and so far as he talks to himself - that is to say, so far as he thinks, knowing that he thinks - he lies to himself. The only truth in human life is that which is physiological. Speech - this thing that they call a social product - was made for lying.

  Miguel de Unamuno

  Lying, Men, Thinking

  Miguel de Unamuno, Warner Fite (1928). “Mist: A Tragicomic Novel”, p.172, University of Illinois Press

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• When the record of any human life is set down, there are three pairs of eyes who see it in a different light. There is the life as I see it. as others see it, and as God sees it.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Eye, Light, Different

  Fulton J. Sheen (2009). “Treasure in Clay: The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen”, p.1, Image

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• I have seen that community and a close relationship with the land can enrich human life beyond all comparison with material wealth or technological sophistication. I have learned that another way is possible.

  Helena Norberg-Hodge

  Land, Community, Way

  Helena Norberg-Hodge (2017). “Ancient Futures, 3rd Edition”, p.172, Chelsea Green Publishing

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• Because of lack of moral principle, human life becomes worthless. Moral principle, truthfulness, is a key factor. If we lose that, then there is no future.

  Dalai Lama

  Keys, Principles, Moral

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• In order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and consider it as one of the conditions of human life. ...Reflecting on it in this way, we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of effective communication between people.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Art, Communication, Mean

  "What is Art?". Book by Leo Tolstoy, 1896.

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