Quotes about humanity

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“Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.”

“Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart.”

“You are an infinite spiritual being having a temporary human experience.”

“Everything is evil that humans can't control or conquer”

“We tend to think human knowledge as progressive; because we know more and more, our parents and grandparents are back numbers. But a contrary theory is possible - that we simply recognize different things at different times and in different ways.”

“That was when the world wasn't so big and I could see everywhere. It was when my father was a hero and not a human.”

“No matter what happens, you will always be Pack. Because you have that loyalty and restraint. Not human, not whatever, but Kate. Unique and different, but not separate.”

“It's funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. Maybe that's why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. It's not the pain they're getting over, it's the love.”

“The only thing that guarantees an open-ended collaboration among human beings, the only thing that guarantees that this project is truly open-ended, is a willingness to have our beliefs and behaviors modified by the power of conversation.”

“When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.”

“So how on earth can I bring a child into the world, knowing that such sorrow lies ahead, that it is such a large part of what it means to be human?
I'm not sure. That's my answer: I'm not sure.”

“Finally, a human man saw me as intensely valuable. Just my luck he was happily married and thought I was a freak.”

“A tattoo is a true poetic creation, and is always more than meets the eye. As a tattoo is grounded on living skin, so its essence emotes a poignancy unique to the mortal human condition.”

“Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be.”

“There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.”

“So I'm scared, because you're not just not human, you're not like anyone…. there's nobody like you in all the world and it's you I want. I want you and I hate wanting things and I especially hate admitting I want them.”

“It's the sorrow you feel that allows you to crave love. Without the suffering, there would be no true pleasure. Without tears, no joy. Without deficiency, no longing. This is the secret of the human heart, Rom.”

“You are using your own moral intuitions to authenticate the wisdom of the Bible - and then, in the next moment, you assert that we human beings cannot possibly rely upon our own intuitions to rightly guide us in the world.”

“Life is full of screwups. You're supposed to fail sometimes. It's a required part of the human existance.”

“Death in anonymity is the ultimate insult to human dignity.”

“I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.”

“You assume that it has to be a male god who finds a human female attractive? How sexist is that?”

“The most wonderful opportunity which life offers is to be human.”

“What we lose in our great human exodus from the land is a rooted sense, as deep and intangible as religious faith, of why we need to hold on to the wild and beautiful places that once surrounded us.”

“You see gods have great power, but only humans have creativity, the power to change history rather than simply repeat it. Humans can… how do you moderns say it… think outside the cup.”

“It didn't pay to trust another human being. Humans didn't have it, whatever it took.”

“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.”

“Just a rat, she repeated to herself. After all, there were rats in the palace. Human and otherwise. Could be worse.”

“There are times when the human face and body can express the yearning of the heart so accurately that you can, as they say, read them like a book. Do not abandon me.”

“I'm only interested in stories that are about the crushing of the human heart.”

“I do not understand how you humans can walk in shoes that are that tall.”
“Its my motto,” said Isabelle, with a sultry smile. “Nothing less than seven inches.”

“We'll meet you here. Hopefully everyone will be in human form." A wry smile. "Though I'll warn you, he's not a whole lot more pleasant that way. At least as a wolf, he can't talk.”

“Only human beings can look directly at something, have all the information they need to make an accurate prediction, perhaps even momentarily make the accurate prediction, and then say that it isn't so.”

“The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours”

“You're trying to be tricky. What's morality?"
"It's the difference between what's right and what you can rationalize."
"Must be a human thing."
"Exactly.”

“More exists among human beings than can be answered by the simplistic question I'm hit with every day of my life: "Are you a man or a woman?”

“Accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart.”

“You're probably wondering what's going to happen to you. That's easy. The same thing is going to happen to you that has happened to every other human being who has ever lived. You're going to die. We all die. That's just how it is.”

“When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.”

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.”

“So you see, Good and Evil have the same face; it all depends on when they cross the path of each individual human being.”

“Books are the carriers of civilization… They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.”

“You are human, you will make mistakes, and it’s one of the most beautiful things about being human, but you must learn from your mistakes, otherwise your life will have a lot of unnecessary pain.”

“All these words, words like 'evil' and 'vicious', they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil was a human invention.”

“Every human being must be viewed according to what it is good for. For not one of us, no, not one, is perfect. And were we to love none who had imperfection, this world would be a desert for our love.”

“The human heart is my school.”

“Finally, she mused that human existence is as brief as the life of autumn grass, so what was there to fear from taking chances with your life?”

“It is a very natural human trait to destroy that which frightens us.”

“The problem with people is that they're only human.”

“I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.”

“To know and feel all this and not have the words to express it makes a human a grave of his own thoughts.”

“It takes too much imagination to see the sorrows of people we take for happy. Their real battles take place, like those of the stars, in some realm of light imperceptible to the human eye. It is a feat of the mind to guess another's heart.”

“My old tutor used to say that the hearts of Nephilim were like the hearts of angels: They felt every human pain, and never healed”

“This inhuman place makes human monsters.”

“With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.”

“Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home.”

“I am certain that a Sewing Machine would relieve as much human suffering as a hundred Lunatic Asylums, and possibly a good deal more.”

“Love is lust made meaningful. Hope is hunger made human.”

“Not an ugly color, Nanny thought. Just not a human color.”

“The sweetness and generosity and politeness and gentleness and humanity of the French had shown me how lovely life can be if one takes time to be friendly.”

“Then again, Solomon was human. And that meant he was flawed (Go on, take a look at yourself in the mirror. A good long look, if you can bear it. See? Flawed's putting it mildly, isn't it?)”

“The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.”

“Imagine what could be accomplished if only the human race would shed its humanity.”

“You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.”

“I do not need the written code of a spiritual belief to act like a decent human being.”

“The revolution is made through human beings, but individuals must forge their revolutionary spirit day by day”

“Sure, it was your idea and your fly, but he caught the big fish. Remember, fairness is a human idea largely unknown in nature.”

“Anyone who says he knows God's intention is showing a lot of very human ego.”

“The Human Species could have been great but instead we became satisfied with lights on our tennis shoes.”

“Spiritual realization is theoretically the easiest thing and in practice the most difficult thing there is. It is the easiest because it is enough to think of God. It is the most difficult because human nature is forgetfulness of God.”

“Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people - those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food;”

“He won't be one of those girlishly pretty men with curly gold hair… He'll be dark, dangerous, too. Brave, certainly, but not without flaws. I like my heroes human.”

“It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.”

“I'm just saying -- you can't prevent other people from disappointing you. It's bound to happen at some point. We're all only human. What you can do is decide how you're going to deal with it.”

“The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line. The objection to it is not that it is predominantly painful, but that it is lacking in sense.”

“Most important and most vulnerable of human emotions; Love.”

“As far as he was concerned, there were only two good positions for a human. A female on her back. And a male facedown not breathing.”

“So you want me to go to a human orgy, where I will not be welcome, and you want us to leave before I get to enjoy myself? ~Eric Northman”

“I didn't want a world in which I had to choose between blind human babies and tortured monkey ones. To be frank, that's the sort of choice I expect science to protect me from, not give me.”

“His calls for justice were lost at the mercy of the wind and human indifference.”

“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”

“There's so much nonsense about human inconstancy and the transience of all emotions. I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place.”

“Sometimes this human stuff is slimy and pathetic… but better to feel it and talk about it and walk through it than to spend a lifetime being silently poisoned.”

“Scenery is fine — but human nature is finer.”

“Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes?”

“There was beauty in the idea of freedom, but it was an illusion. Every human heart was chained by love.”

“To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.”

“If both Church and fairy-tale belong to humanity, they may occasionally cross circles, without injury to either.”

“At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn’t possible to save mankind.”

“Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.”

“Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.”

“Things can turn out differently, Apollo. That's the nice thing about being human. We only have one life, but we can choose what kind of story it's going to be.”

“If we humans are good at anything, it’s thinking we’ve got a terrific idea and going for it without acknowledging the potential consequences or our own ignorance.”

“Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple. The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves.”

“A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility what human nature is of what happens in the world. It's a creator of inwardness.”

“Everyone needs help. That's the human condition.”

“Most of the successful people in Hollywood are failures as human beings.”

“In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.”

“Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and rarely invite them round to dinner.”