Quotes about humanity

page 34

“Can you take human form in daylight? (Talon)
Obviously so. Ever tried to answer a phone without opposable thumbs? (Vane)”

“In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present - I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world?”

“Human history is a Gaian dream.”

“Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.”

“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?”

“Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.”

“Most humans manage to squander their free time, as free time makes them dysfunctional, lazy, and unmotivated—the busier they get, the more active they are at other tasks.”

“For me, I think the greatest achievements of science is to allow humanity to realize that our world is comprehensible. Through science, rational thinking, we can understand how the universe works.”

“According to Dickens, the first rule of human nature is self-preservation and when I forgive him for writing a character as pathetic as Oliver Twist, I'll thank him for the advice.”

“Sometimes, all it takes to become human again is someone who can see you that way, no matter how you present on the surface.”

“Absurdity is one of the most human things about us: a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics.”

“I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it.”

“We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.”

“Moroi shied from the sunlight but as I watched Sydney, I knew without a doubt that humans had been made for the sun.”

“There is a reason the word belonging has a synonym for want at its center; it is the human condition.”

“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world... The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm.”

“But you’re human, aren’t you? (Kat)
I’m human, except when I first wake up in the morning. Even I don’t want to be around myself then. (Kish)”

“We are not mad. We are human. We want to love, and someone must forgive us for the paths we take to love, for the paths are many and dark, and we are ardent and cruel in our journey.”

“Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans." Yann Martel in Life of Pi, Page 25”

“Professors of humanities, with all their leftist fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy.”

“That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end.”

“It has been my experience that most human stories are circular rather than linear. Regardless of the path we choose, we somehow end up where we commenced - in part, I suspect, because the child who lives in us goes along for the ride.”

“In that high place in the darkness the two oddly sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and waited. In the mind of each was the same thought. "I have come to this lonely place and here is this other," was the substance of the thing felt.”

“Yes, men are pigs. Except your brother, of course. He's actually a decent human being. Almost a woman.

-Jillian's mother”

“All of us started normal. All of us started out as functioning human beings with the potential to do almost anything we wanted, but somewhere along the paths of our lives, we got lost.”

“Our great human adventure is the evolution of consciousness. We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain.”

“Entertainment is a sacred pursuit when done well. When done well, it raises the quality of human life.”

“Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.”

“They're fanatics. It's like expecting humanity from a falling rock. It's not going to have a fit of compassion and not crack your skull open.”

“She is a real bookworm. I think she lives on print. Her whole house is full of books - looks as if she likes them better than human company.”

“The human heart is a strange vessel. Love and hatred can exist side by side.”

“Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.”

“Demons don't understand human hearts, not well. They see through a distorted glass and show you what you desire, but warped and wrong. Use that wrongness to push yourself out of the dream. Life is loss, Alexander, but it's better than this.”

“After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment.”

“I feel guilty for being a member of the human race.”

“A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?”

“But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.”

“Human sympathy has its limits, and we were contented to let all their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind.”

“Until you have done something for humanity,” wrote the great American educator Horace Mann, “you should be ashamed to die.”

“Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.”

“Can't you recognize the human in the inhuman?”

“The human bones are but vain lines dawdling, the whole universe a blank mold of stars.”

“you can’t use logic on human behavior.”

“The news of life is carried via telephone. A baby's birth, a couple engaged, a tragic car accident on a late night highway - most milestones of the human journey, good or bad, are foreshadowed by the sound of a ringing.”

“Humans were built to look back; that's why we have that swivel joint in our necks”

“The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell. Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.”

“Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother's face,
Her aspect and her attitude,
All her majestic loveliness
Chastened and softened and subdued
Into a more attractive grace,
And with a human sense imbued.
He is the greatest artist, then,
Whether of pencil or of pen,
Who follows Nature.”

“Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.”

“Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying "Blood… blood… blood… blood…”

“I hate witches. Humans had the right idea, burning them at the stake.”

“Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.”

“An ideal culture is one that makes a place for every human gift”

“There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.”

“Literature is humanity talking to itself.”

“It means the third rail has seven hundred volts of direct current running through it. Touch it and you're human popcorn”

“There are certain mortal moments and minutes that matter. Certain hingepoints in the history of each human. Some seconds are so decisive they shrink the soul, while others are spent, so as to stretch the soul.”

“The two most important phrases in the human language are "If only" and "Maybe someday". Our past mistakes and our unrequited longings. The things we regret and the things we yearn for. That's what makes us who we are.”

“Great beauty is often perceived by human senses as pain.”

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”

“She only felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go easier, the world be happier, if she could give and receive some human love.”

“It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity.”

“Mundane humans create distinctions between themselves, distinctions that seem ridiculous to any Shadowhunter. Their distinctions are based on race, religion, national identity, any of a dozen minor and irrelevant markers. ~ Valentine”

“If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy.”

“Poseidon held out his arms and gave me a hug. I realized, a little embarrassed, that I'd never actually hugged my dad before. He was warm—like a regular human—and he smelled of a salty beach and fresh sea air.”

“human relationships simply aren't
durable.
I think back to the women in
my life.
they seem non-existent.”

“Being a wizard gives you more power than most, but it doesn't change your heart. We're all human. We're all of us equally naked before the jaws of pain.”

“.. we wear the mask that grins and lies,
it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes-
this debt we pay to human guile;
with torn and bleeding hearts we smile.”

“There are two insults which no human being will endure: The assertion that he hasn't a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.”

“To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy; but at the same time, Elinor, one would not be without experience. Anyone who has never really loved has never really lived..”

“Do you not see how strange and wonderful that is? That all history balances on an affair of the human heart?”

“We are here and it is now: further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.”

“There is nothing to make you like other human beings so much as doing things for them.”

“The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”

“A human being is like a television set with millions of channels…. We cannot let just one channel dominate us. We have the seed of everything in us, and we have to recover our own sovereignty.”

“for civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized”

“To be a human is to state the obvious. Repeatedly. Over and over, until the end of time.”

“What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can read only a few and those perhaps not accurately.”

“Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.”

“It's human; we all put self interest first.”

“We are all brothers under the skin - and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.”

“There is no such thing as an average human being. If you have a normal brain, you are superior.”

“They laugh at this, the idea that one might keep herds of friendly deer or elk that walk happily to their slaughter whenever it's time for the human to eat meat. Some ask openly if there aren't consequences of a life so easy to live.”

“This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.”

“What a bog and labyrinth the human essence is… We are all overbrained and overemotioned.”

“As far as I am concerned, poetry is a statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse.”

“The Bishop goes on to the human eye, asking rhetorically, and with the implication that there is no answer, 'How could an organ so complex evolve?' This is not an argument, it is simply an affirmation of incredulity.”

“Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead.”

“I no longer feel any allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despise being one myself.”

“He's no more human than I am, ma petite."
At least I'm not dead."
That can be remedied.”

“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.”

“Humans were so stupid. They had something so precious, and they barely safeguarded it at all. They threw away their lives for money, for packets of powder, for a stranger's charming smile.”

“A whizzpopper!" cried the BFG, beaming at her. "Us giants is making whizzpoppers all the time! Whizzpopping is a sign of happiness. It is music in our ears! You surely is not telling me that a little whizzpopping if forbidden among human beans?”

“As human beings, we have a natural compulsion to fill empty spaces.”

“God's law is 'right reason.' When perfectly understood it is called 'wisdom.' When applied by government in regulating human relations it is called 'justice.”

“Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me—to find out what you're good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then we were good tools.”

“I don't want to inhabit the human world under false pretenses.”

“Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.”

“I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.”

“Anything worth knowing cannot be understood by the human mind.”