“Only humanity could grasp the stars and then let them slip through its fingers for the pettiness in its heart.”
Source: Dark Age (2019), Ch. 10: The Ash Rain; Lysander
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Pierce Brown 33
American writer 1988Related quotes

Source: The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857
“But you don't let true happiness slip out of your grasp without one helluva fight.”
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“Imagine what could be accomplished if only the human race would shed its humanity.”
Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Preface
The History and Present State of Electricity (1767)
Context: The history of philosophy enjoys, in some measure, the advantages both of civil and natural history, whereby it is relieved from what is most tedious and disgusting in both. Philosophy exhibits the powers of nature, discovered and directed by human art. It has, therefore, in some measure, the boundless variety with the amazing uniformity of the one, and likewise every thing that is pleasing and interesting in the other. And the idea of continual rise and improvement is conspicuous in the whole study, whether we be attentive to the part which nature, or that which men are acting in the great scene.
It is here that we see the human understanding to its greatest advantage, grasping at the noblest objects, and increasing its own powers, by acquiring to itself the powers of nature, and directing them to the accomplishment of its own views; whereby the security, and happiness of mankind are daily improved. Human abilities are chiefly conspicuous in adapting means to ends, and in deducing one thing from another by the method of analogy; and where may we find instances of greater sagacity, than in philosophers diversifying the situations of things, in order to give them an opportunity of showing their mutual relations, affections, and influences; deducing one truth and one discovery from another, and applying them all to the useful purposes of human life.
If the exertion of human abilities, which cannot but form a delightful spectacle for the human imagination, give us pleasure, we enjoy it here in a higher degree than while we are contemplating the schemes of warriors, and the stratagems of their bloody art.
Source: The Amazing Mr. Lutterworth (1958), p. 211