“Our knowledge of human nature is for the most part empirical; and it would often be better, if, instead of endeavouring to say some new things ourselves, we were to confirm without more words the sayings of another.”
Source: Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd. 1901, p.19.
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Arthur Helps 17
British writer 1813–1875Related quotes

"Vestigial Instincts in Man", pp. 127–128
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“Knowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity.”
Life of Coriolanus
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Nobel Prize acceptance speech http://www.utoronto.ca/jpolanyi/nobel_prize/, Nobel Banquet in Stockholm (1986)

Interview on Entertainment Tonight, as quoted in "Oprah Winfrey Offers Words of Wisdom in Wake of Deadly Las Vegas Shooting", KTVB (2 October 2017)

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XIV
Context: What am I? I am the desire not to die. I have always been impelled — not that evening alone — by the need to construct the solid, powerful dream that I shall never leave again. We are all, always, the desire not to die. This desire is as immeasurable and varied as life's complexity, but at bottom this is what it is: To continue to be, to be more and more, to develop and to endure. All the force we have, all our energy and clearness of mind serve to intensify themselves in one way or another. We intensify ourselves with new impressions, new sensations, new ideas. We endeavour to take what we do not have and to add it to ourselves. Humanity is the desire for novelty founded upon the fear of death. That is what it is.

A vida é assim, está cheia de palavras que não valem a pena, ou que valeram e já não valem, cada uma que ainda formos dizendo tirará o lugar a outra mais merecedora, que o seria não tanto por si mesma, mas pelas consequências de tê-la dito.
Source: The Cave (2000), p. 28 (Vintage 2003)
Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 6.