Humans Quotes - Page 29

• Anyway, maybe there weren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. It never learned, it made the same cretinous mistakes over and over, trading short-term gain for long-term pain.

  Margaret Atwood

  Pain, Mistake, Long

  Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.243, Anchor

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• Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Civilization, man feels once more happy.

  Richard Francis Burton

  Nature, Travel, Journey

  "How to Explore Like a Real Victorian Adventurer". www.believermag.com. October 2011.

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• Things were rough all over, but it was better that way. That way you could tell the other guy was human too.

  S. E. Hinton

  Guy, Way, Outsiders

  S. E. Hinton (1995). “The Outsiders: That was Then, this is Now ; Rumble Fish”

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• Relational trust is built on movements of the human heart such as empathy, commitment, compassion, patience, and the capacity to forgive.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Heart, Commitment, Compassion

  Parker J. Palmer (2012). “The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life”, p.17, John Wiley & Sons

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• I felt before I thought, as all humans do.

  Arthur Japin

  Felt

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• The leech's kiss, the squid's embrace, The prurient ape's defiling touch: And do you like the human race? No, not much.

  Aldous Huxley

  Kissing, Race, Squids

  Aldous Huxley (1992). “Ape and Essence: A Novel”, p.19, Ivan R. Dee

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• Humans have various ways of coping with extended stress, and one is the anticipation of a better time. Here, as with retribution, there is often a kind of symmetry: the more intense the stress and the more hopeless the situation, the more fabulous the coming times that are anticipated.

  Robert Wright

  Stress, Way, Fabulous

  Robert Wright (2010). “The Evolution Of God: The origins of our beliefs”, p.116, Hachette UK

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• Tam Lin says rabbits give up when they're caught by coyotes [...]. He says they consent to die because their animals and can't understand hope. But humans are different. They fight against death no matter how bad things seem, and sometimes, even when everything's against them, they win.

  Nancy Farmer

  Giving Up, Fighting, Animal

  Nancy Farmer (2013). “The House of the Scorpion”, p.245, Simon and Schuster

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• ...churchgoing is not synonymous with personal spirituality. There are some people who get so busy in church worship and projects that they become insensitive to the pressing human needs that sourround them, contradicting the very precepts they profess to believe deeply.

  Stephen Covey

  Believe, People, Church

  Stephen R. Covey (2012). “The Wisdom and Teachings of Stephen R. Covey”, p.47, Simon and Schuster

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• Why would a man not argue his own shameful culpability, why would he not crave responsibility for disaster, when the alternative was to feel himself to be nothing more than a speck of human dust?

  Julie Orringer

  Responsibility, Men, Dust

  FaceBook post by Julie Orringer from Jan 17, 2017

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• Ignorance is hardly unusual, Miss Davar. The longer I live, the more I come to realize that it is the natural state of the human mind. There are many who will strive to defend its sanctity and then expect you to be impressed with their efforts.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Ignorance, Effort, Missing

  Brandon Sanderson (2014). “Brandon Sanderson Sampler: The Way of Kings and Mistborn”, p.71, Macmillan

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• I do not believe that the desires of young boys cause catastrophic events. The actions of humans do.

  Melina Marchetta

  Believe, Boys, Desire

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• Nothing makes an android feel more useless than when a human is crying.

  Marissa Meyer

  Useless, Androids, Cry

  Marissa Meyer (2016). “Stars Above: A Lunar Chronicles Collection”, p.80, Macmillan

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• We compromise ourselves the day we are born. If we are looking for the original sin, there it is- our incapacity to live honestly with ourselves because we are human, because we are shackled by custom, by obligations and we accept compromise only in the light of our conscience, answerable as we are only to ourselves.

  F. Sionil José

  Light, Compromise, Sin

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• Obviously a garden is not the wilderness but an assembly of shapes, most of them living, that owes some share of its composition, it’s appearance, to human design and effort, human conventions and convenience, and the human pursuit of that elusive, indefinable harmony that we call beauty. It has a life of its own, an intricate, willful, secret life, as any gardener knows. It is only the humans in it who think of it as a garden. But a garden is a relationship, which is one of the countless reasons why it is never finished.

  W. S. Merwin

  Garden, Thinking, Design

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• I think war is just part of human nature. And I’m fascinated by human nature – especially the dark side. I always have been. It doesn’t make me a Devil worshipper, no more than being interested in Hitler makes me a Nazi. I mean, if I’m a Nazi, how come I married a woman who’s half Jewish?

  Ozzy Osbourne

  War, Mean, Dark

  Ozzy Osbourne (2009). “I Am Ozzy”, p.220, Hachette UK

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• Marvin was humming ironically because he hated humans so much.

  Douglas Adams

  Humming, Hated, Marvin

  Douglas Adams (2009). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, p.79, Pan Macmillan

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• Because in some men it is in them to give up everything personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons--throw it to some human being or some human idea. They have to.

  Carson McCullers

  Giving Up, Men, Ideas

  Carson McCullers (2010). “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, p.32, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There's an honesty to the wolf world that is liberating. There's no diplomacy, no decorum. You tell your enemy you hate him; you show your admiration by confessing the truth. That directness doesn't work with humans, who are masters of subterfuge. Does this dress make me look fat? Do you really love me? Did you miss me? When a person asks this, she doesn't want to know the real answer. She wants you to lie to her. After two years of living with wolves, I had forgotten how many lies it takes to build a relationship.

  Jodi Picoult

  Honesty, Real, Lying

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• She wants you to be a god," I told him. "I know." His face twisted with embarrassment, and in spite of itself my heart lightened. It was such a boyish response. And so human. Parents, everywhere.

  Madeline Miller

  Heart, Parent, Want

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• Today's Gypsies, who have lived in Prague for only two generations, light a ritual fire wherever they work, a nomads' fire crackling only for the joy of it, a blaze of roughhewn wood like a child's laugh, a symbol of the eternity that preceded human thought, a free fire, a gift from heaven, a living sign of the elements unnoticed by the world-weary pedestrian, a fire in the ditches of Prague warming the wanderer's eye and soul.

  Bohumil Hrabal

  Children, Eye, Fire

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• When people attempt to rebel against the iron logic of Nature, they come into conflict with the very same principles to which they owe their existence as human beings. Their actions against Nature must lead to their own downfall.

  Adolf Hitler

  Iron, People, Principles

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• Thinking is the most overrated human activity.

  Wendell Berry

  Thinking, Overrated, Human Activity

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• Fantasy is escapism, but wait... Why is this wrong? What are you escaping from, and where are you escaping to? Is the story opening windows or slamming doors? The British author G.K. Chesterton summarized the role of fantasy very well. He said its purpose was to take the everyday, commonplace world and lift it up and turn it around and show it to us from a different perspective, so that once again we see it for the first time and realize how marvelous it is. Fantasy - the ability to envisage the world in many different ways - is one of the skills that make us human.

  Terry Pratchett

  Escaping, Doors, Skills

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• The food crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in the hopes of adding five years onto the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity.

  George Orwell

  Cutting, Years, Common Humanity

  George Orwell (2001). “Orwell's England: the Road to Wigan Pier in the context of essays, reviews, letters and poems selected from the Complete works of George Orwell”, ePenguin

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