“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals.”

— George Orwell

Reflections on Gandhi (1949)
Source: In Front of Your Nose: 1945-1950

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George Orwell 473

English author and journalist 1903–1950

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Cuando no se quiere lo imposible, no se quiere.
Voces (1943)

“If one's point of view is that of the anarchist, he is led inevitably to make his war upon individuals.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Violence and the Labor Movement (1914), p.xii
Context: If one's point of view is that of the anarchist, he is led inevitably to make his war upon individuals. The more sensitive and sincere he is, the more bitter and implacable becomes that war. If one's point of view is based on what is now called the economic interpretation of history, one is emancipated, in so far as that is possible for emotional beings, from all hatred of individuals, and one sees before him only the necessity of readjusting the economic basis of our common life in order to achieve a more nearly perfect social order.

“Only by being a man or woman for others does one become fully human.”

Pedro Arrupe (1907–1991) Twenty-eighth Superior General of the Society of Jesus

'Men for Others' http://www.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/men-for-others.html, 1973, Valencia, Spain

“Precisely the way on which the species reaches its perfection, every individual human being (one earlier, one later) must have traversed, too.”

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) writer, philosopher, publicist, and art critic

Eben die Bahn, aus welcher das Geschlecht zu seiner Vollkommenheit gelangt, muß jeder einzelne Mensch (der früher, der später) erst durchlaufen haben.
The Education of Mankind, § 93

“One must love humanity in order to reach out into the unique essence of each individual: no one can be too low or too ugly.”

Georg Büchner (1813–1837) German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose

Lenz (1835).

“What one does in one's art, that is the breath of one's being. What one does in one's life, that is a bagatelle for the outsiders to fuss about.”

D.H. Lawrence book Women in Love

Source: Women in Love

“One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other than human.”

Loren Eiseley (1907–1977) US philosopher (1907-1977)

“Reason does not exist for the sake of life, but life for the sake of reason. An existence which does not of itself satisfy reason and solve all her doubts, cannot be the true one.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.94
The Vocation of Man (1800), Faith

“The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life.”

Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer

"The Art of Fiction: An Interview" (The Paris Review, Spring 1955), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 217.

“Do not think for one second that what you do is not important. Do not believe one second that individual can't change the course of human events, because individual can and does and will change the course of human events.”

Pamela Geller (1958) blogger, author, political activist, and commentator

"Pamela Geller speaks to the Sugar Land Tea Party in Sugar Land, Texas" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLzlQ7WrvfQ&t=0h28m21s, Sugar Land, Texas

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