Human Nature Quotes - Page 19

• If the head is lost, all that perishes is the individual; if the balls are lost, all of human nature perishes.

  Francois Rabelais

  Sex, Humanity, Balls

  28 Copy quote

• I have never looked at foreign countries or gone there but with the purpose of getting to know the general human qualities that are spread all over the earth in very different forms, and then to find these qualities again in my own country and to recognize and to further them.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Country, Travel, Quality

  7 Copy quote

• Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Diversity, Uniforms

  Essais bk. 1, ch. 1 (1580)

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a certain amount of purpose, acquiescence, and satisfaction in nursing one's melancholy.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Sadness, Nursing, Self

  Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupidity and feebleness of mind?

  Michel de Montaigne

  Art, Stupidity, Mind

  4 Copy quote

• That's human nature - we want to completely rewrite history so it can be comfortable. Without getting too profound, I'm pretty sure that's where the invention of the afterlife comes from. "We don't really become worm food. We go to a magical place with bunnies and rainbows."

  Bobcat Goldthwait

  Afterlife, Profound, Rainbow

  Source: www.avclub.com

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• A traditionalist can sometimes be looked at as someone who is a fundamentalist, or they can be looked at as someone with a very strict set of understandings of human nature. But a traditionalist in the Vedic tradition, is one who is open-hearted, who does not judge, there's nothing to judge whatsoever, who understands the basic understanding and karma of all of it, and who basically helps when help is called for.

  Maya Tiwari

  Karma, Judging, Understanding

  Source: www.abc.net.au

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Others form man; I tell of him, and portray a particular one, very ill-formed, whom I should really make very different from whathe is if I had to fashion him over again. But now it is done.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Fashion, Men, Self

  Michel de Montaigne (2003). “The Complete Works: Essays, Travel Journal, Letters”, Everyman's Library

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We imagine much more appropriately an artisan on his toilet seat or on his wife than a great president, venerable by his demeanorand his ability. It seems to us that they do not stoop from their lofty thrones even to live.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Imagination, Wife, President

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.615, Stanford University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Self, Arrogance

  Michel de Montaigne (1973). “Selections from the Essays”, Harlan Davidson

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• My opinion is that we must lend ourselves to others and give ourselves only to ourselves. If my will happened to be prone to mortgage and attach itself, I would not last: I am too tender, both by nature and by practice.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Self, Practice, Giving

  Michel de Montaigne (1976). “The Complete Essays of Montaigne”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our own peculiar human condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Laughter, Laughing, Peculiar

  4 Copy quote

• There is nothing so noble and so right as to play our human life well and fitly, nor anything so difficult to learn as how to livethis life well and according to Nature.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Play, Noble, Behavior

  4 Copy quote

• We perceive no charms that are not sharpened, puffed out, and inflated by artifice. Those which glide along naturally and simply easily escape a sight so gross as ours.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Sight, Charm, Gross

  Michel de Montaigne (1976). “The Complete Essays of Montaigne”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Badgered, snubbed and scolded on the one hand; petted, flattered and indulged on the other-it is astonishing how many children work their way up to an honest manhood in spite of parents and friends. Human nature has an element of great toughness in it.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Children, Hands, Parent

  Henry Ward Beecher (1862). “Eyes and Ears”, p.78

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• O human creature,you are the investigator without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and all in all, the fool of the farce.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Arrogance, Farce, Fool

  8 Copy quote

• Man is known to be a selfish, as well as a social being.

  James Madison

  Selfish, Men, Being Human

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Human nature is a scoundrel's favorite explanation.

  Mason Cooley

  Humanity, Scoundrels, Explanation

  9 Copy quote

• Man is clearly made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. And the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our Author and our end.

  Blaise Pascal

  Thoughtful, Men, Thinking

  20 Copy quote

• Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial, but generally speaking it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber.

  Jane Austen

  Nursing, Sick, Weakness

  Jane Austen (1833). “Northanger abbey [followed by] Persuasion”, p.351

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In an interview, former vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan said he does not have a racist bone in his body. However, he admitted he has three sexist bones and his spine is homophobic.

  Conan O'Brien

  Presidential, Racist, Body

  4 Copy quote

• Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light; for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Light, Practice, Diversity

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.239, Stanford University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no such passion in human nature, as the passion for gravy among commercial gentlemen.

  Charles Dickens

  Funny, Humorous, Passion

  Charles Dickens (1850). “The life and adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit: With a frontispiece, from a drawing by Frank Stone”, p.82

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is one of those problems of human nature, which may be noted down, but not solved; - although Ralph felt no remorse at that moment for his conduct towards the innocent, true-hearted girl; although his libertine clients had done precisely what he had expected, precisely what he most wished, and precisely what would tend most to his advantage, still he hated them for doing it, from the very bottom of his soul.

  Charles Dickens

  Girl, Character, Interesting

  Charles Dickens (1854). “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby ... With a Frontispiece from a Painting by T. Webster”, p.223

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• People who think of themselves as tough-minded and realistic, among them influential political leaders and businessmen as well as go-getters and hustlers of smaller caliber, tend to take it for granted that human nature is selfish and that life is a struggle in which only the fittest may survive. According to this philosophy, the basic law by which man must live, in spite of his surface veneer of civilization, is the law of the jungle. The "fittest" are those who can bring to the struggle superior force, superior cunning, and superior ruthlessness.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Philosophy, Selfish, Struggle

  "Language in Thought and Action". Book by S. I. Hayakawa (p. 8), 1949.

  30 Copy quote

  Show source