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Human Life Quotes

Browse 1303 quotes about Human Life.

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Human Life Quotes

“No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy.”

HumansMayHas BeensHappinessFacesLawSidesLinesPerfectEffortExpressionJudgmentAll ThingsMercyChecksHuman LifeBelovedBranchesImperfectionLeafsVitalityExertionSymmetryHuman FacesIrregularity
Book:The Stones of Venice (Complete)
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“The Buggers have finally, finally learned that we humans value each and every individual human life. But they've learned this lesson just in time for it to be hopelessly wrong — for we humans do, when the cause is sufficient, spend our own lives. We throw ourselves onto the grenade to save our buddies in the foxhole. We rise out of the trenches and charge the entrenched enemy and die like maggots under a blowtorch. We strap bombs on our bodies and blow ourselves up in the midst of our enemies. We are, when the cause is sufficient, insane.”

HumansBodyValuesDiesIndividualCausesEnemyLessonsBlowInsaneHuman LifeSufficientBombsMidstBuddyTrenchesGrenadeMaggotsFoxholes
Author:Orson Scott Card
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“I shield my eyes from the sun to see her cold look—the expression I saw in my mind even before I looked at her. She looks older to me than she ever has, stern and tough and worn by time. I feel that way, too. “These people have no regard for human life,” she says. “They’re about to wipe the memories of all our friends and neighbors. They’re responsible for the deaths of a large majority of our old faction.” She sidesteps me and marches toward the door. “I think they’re lucky I’m not going to kill them.”

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Author:Veronica Roth
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“Time is the most precious gift in our possession, for it is the most irrevocable. This is what makes it so disturbing to look back upon the time which we have lost. Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering. Time lost is time not filled, time left empty.”

HumansLooksTimeSufferingLostLeftCreativeEmptyFilledPossessionHuman LifeEnjoymentEndeavorDisturbingLife TimeIrrevocablePrecious GiftsLost TimeTime Left
Author:Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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“It is human life. We are blown upon the world; we float buoyantly upon the summer air a little while, complacently showing off our grace of form and our dainty iridescent colors; then we vanish with a little puff, leaving nothing behind but a memory - and sometimes not even that. I suppose that at those solemn times when we wake in the deeps of the night and reflect, there is not one of us who is not willing to confess that he is really only a soap-bubble, and as little worth the making.”

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Book:Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review
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“Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.”

MenLifeInspirationalHumansSometimesMomentsPoliticalReligionUniverseNationsWomenViewsRaceDangerDignityHuman RightsProtectionHuman LifeBordersThat MomentInterfereSensitivityPersecutionIrrelevantHuman DignityPersecutedJeopardyCenter Of The UniversePolitical ViewCenterednessNational Borders
Book:From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences
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“Nothing can alter the character of God. In the course of a human life, tastes and outlook and temper may change radically: a kind, equable man may turn bitter and crotchety: a man of good-will may grow cynical and callous. But nothing of this sort happens to the Creator. He never becomes less truthful, or merciful, or just, or good, than He used to be.”

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Author:J. I. Packer
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“As the days of spring arouse all nature to a green and growing vitality, so when hope enters the soul it makes all things new. It insures the progress which it predicts. Rooted in faith, growing up into love; these make the three immortal graces of the Gospel, whose intertwined arms and concurrent voices shed joy and peace over our human life.”

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Book:Self-culture, lectures
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“Knowledge of the truth I may perhaps have attained to; happiness certainly not. What shall I do? Accomplish something in the world, men tell me. Shall I then publish my grief to the world, contribute one more proof for the wretchedness and misery of existence, perhaps discover a new flaw in human life, hitherto unnoticed? I might then reap the rare reward of becoming famous, like the man who discovered the spots on Jupiter. I prefer, however, to keep silent.”

MenWorldHumansMayMightGriefExistenceKnowledgeHe ManBecomingMiserySilentRewardsAccomplishProofSpotsHuman LifeFlawsPublishReapUnnoticedJupiterWretchednessBecoming Famous
Book:Either/ Or
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“I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.”

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Book:John Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn (Unabridged): From one of the most beloved English Romantic poets, best known for his Odes, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to Indolence, Ode to Psyche, Ode to Fanny, The Eve of St. Agnes, Lamia, Hyperion and more
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“Through Gandhi and my own life experience, I have learned about nonviolence. I believe that human life is a very special gift from God, and that no one has a right to take that away in any cause, however just. I am convinced that nonviolence is more powerful than violence.”

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Author:Cesar Chavez
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“Sacredness of human life! The world has never believed it! It has been with life that we settled our quarrels, won wives, gold and land, defended ideas, imposed religions. We have held that a death toll was a necessary part of every human achievement, whether sport, war or industry. A moment's rage over the horror of it, and we have sunk into indifference.”

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Book:New Ideals in Business, an Account of Their Practice and Their Effects Upon Men and Profits
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“Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served, which values are to be rates higher and which lower, in short, what men should believe and strive for.”

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Author:Friedrich August von Hayek
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“Our aims in political activism are not, and should not be, to create a perfect utopia. What we seek is more simply to improve the quality of human life while at the same time respecting the natural environment which sustains it: 'Not a heaven on earth but a better earth on earth.' This is not at all a timid agenda, far from it. The work ahead of us is enormous!”

ShouldHumansEarthPoliticalPoliticsHeavenNaturalPerfectQualityEnvironmentAimActivismEnormousHuman LifeAgendasUtopiaNatural EnvironmentHeaven On EarthPolitical Activism
Author:Paul Wellstone
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“To most theistic believers, human life can have no meaning in a universe without God. Quite sincerely, and with understandable yearning for a meaning to their existence, they reject the possibility of no God. In their minds, only a purposeful universe based on God is possible and science can do nothing else but support thistruth.”

MindHumansReligionUniverseCan DoExistenceSupportAtheismPossibilityBelieverHuman LifeRejectsYearningSincerelyWithout God
Author:Victor J. Stenger
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“In the New Testament it is taught that willing and voluntary service to others is the highest duty and glory in human life. . . . The men of talent are constantly forced to serve the rest. They make the discoveries and inventions, order the battles, write the books, and produce the works of art. The benefit and enjoyment go to the whole. There are those who joyfully order their own lives so that they may serve the welfare of mankind.”

MenLifeWritingHumansMayArtBookWholeOrderMankindTalentProduceTaughtWillingHe ManDutyBattleBenefitsHighestGloryDiscoveryInventionHuman LifeWelfareEnjoymentWorks Of ArtTestamentNew TestamentService To OthersDiscovery And Invention
Book:Folkways - A Study Of The Sociological Importance Of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores And Morals
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“For you deal here above all with human life, and human life is sacred; no one may dare make an attempt upon it. Respect for life, even with regard to the great problem of the birth rate, must find here in your Assembly its highest affirmation and its most rational defense. Your task is to ensure that there is enough bread on the tables of mankind, and not to encourage an artificial control of births, which would be irrational, in order to diminish the number of guests at the banquet of life.”

HumansMayEnoughProblemWould BeLife IsOrderDealsNumbersMankindBirthHighestTasksRegardTablesSacredRateDareDefenseBreadRationalHuman LifeAbortionGuestsArtificialIrrationalAffirmationDiminishAssemblyBanquetsBirth Rate
Author:Pope Paul VI
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“Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and cruelties; it accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap”

HumansTwoRealMatterCharacterAgeLife IsCertainSufferingCultureCoursesEvilAcceptingHellWeaknessTraditionCrueltyHuman LifeCustomsSteppenwolfTwo CulturesCulture And ReligionSufferings In LifeCustoms And Traditions
Book:Der Steppenwolf
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“Human life is so full of pain, that once past the youthful delusion that a sad countenance is interesting, and an incurable woe the most delightful thing possible, the mind instinctively turns where it can get rest, and cheer and sunshine. And the friend who can bring to it the largest portion of these is, of a natural necessity, the most useful, the most welcome, and the most dear.”

MindHumansRealPainPastLife IsTurnsNaturalInterestingDearWelcomeHuman LifeDelusionSunshineCheerPortionsDelightfulWoeReal FriendsCountenanceDelightful Things
Author:Dinah Maria Murlock Craik
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“What you select from, in order to tell your story, is nothing less than everything. What you build up your world from, your local, intelligible rational, coherent world, is nothing less than everything. . . . . All human knowledge is local. Every life, each human life is local, is arbitrary, the infinitesimal momentary glitter of a reflection.”

WorldHumansStoriesLife IsOrderHumilityReflectionLocalsRationalHuman LifeArbitrarySelectGlitterMomentaryHuman Knowledge
Author:Ursula K. Le Guin
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“In every child who is born, no matter what circumstances, and of no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again: and in him, too, once more, and of each of us, our terrific responsibility toward human life; toward the utmost idea of goodness, of the horror of terror, and of God.”

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Book:Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families
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“A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.”

PeopleKnowsMenHumansWellsMadeJusticeKindnessTreeSittingDiscoveryGardenSocial JusticePlantGenerosityHuman LifeMeaning Of LifeShadeGardeningDiscoveringAltruismPlant A TreeForests And TreesGenerosity And GivingGardening And GodOld TreesTree PlantingPlants And TreesPlants And LifeBeautiful Trees
Author:D. Elton Trueblood
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“... we have been warned by the power of modern weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself ... There must be law, steadily invoked and respected by all nations, for without law, the world promises only such meager justice as the pity of the strong upon the weak.”

WorldHumansMayHas BeensLawStrongNationsJusticeModernPromiseWeaponsWeakClimatePityHuman Life
Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957
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