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Human Nature Quotes

Browse 4693 quotes about Human Nature.

Human Nature Quotes

“If language is intimately related to being human, then when we study language we are, to a remarkable degree, studying human nature.”

Ifs Humans Language Study Human Nature Degrees Related Remarkable Being Human

Author:Charlton Laird

“He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery.”

Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)

“It is open to question whether the highly individualized characters we find in Shakespeare are perhaps not detrimental to the dramatic effect. The human being disappears to the same degree as the individual emerges.”

Humans Character Individual Human Beings Effects Human Nature Drama Degrees Disappear Dramatic Individualism Detrimental

Author:Franz Grillparzer

“I have been too long acquainted with human nature to have great regard for human testimony; and a very great degree of probability, supported by various concurrent circumstances, conspiring in one point, will have much greater weight with me, than human testimony upon oath, or even upon honour; both of which I have frequently seen considerably warped by private views.”

Humans Long Has Beens Truth Views Greater Human Nature Circumstances Degrees Weight Regard Various Honour Probability Testimony Oath Conspiring

Book:Lord Chesterfield's Letters

Source: Lord Chesterfield's Letters

“Compassion does not only refine and civilize human nature, but has something in it more pleasing and agreeable, than what can be met with in such an indolent happiness, such an indifference to mankind, as that in which the stoics placed their wisdom. As love is the most delightful passion, pity is nothing else but love softened by a degree of sorrow: In short, it is a kind of pleasing anguish, anguish as well as generous sympathy, that knits mankind together, and blends them in the same common lot.”

Humans Wells Kind Doe Together Passion Love Is Common Compassion Mankind Human Nature Sorrow Mets Degrees Pity Indifference Generous Anguish Delightful

Book:The spectator

Source: The spectator

“...in the acquisition of this blessing human nature can find no better helper than Love. I declare that it is the duty of every man to honour Love, and I honour and practice the mysteries of Love in an especial degree myself, and recommend the same to others, and I praise the power and valour of Love to the best of my ability both now and always.”

Men Humans Ability Practice Mystery Human Nature Duty Blessing Degrees Praise Every Man Honour Acquisition Helpers Valour Mystery Of Love

Author:Socrates

“We make allowance for a certain degree of selfishness in men; because we know it to be inseparable from human nature, and inherent in our frame and constitution. By this reflexion we correct those sentiments of blame, which so naturally arise upon any opposition.”

Knows Men Humans Certain Human Nature Degrees Constitution Blame Arise Selfishness Opposition Sentiments Inherent Inseparable Allowance

Book:A Treatise of Human Nature

Source: A Treatise of Human Nature

“There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most people take less trouble about learning. An art school is a place where about three people work with feverish energy and everybody else idles to a degree that I should have conceived unattainable by human nature.”

People Should Humans Art School Three Energy Trouble Human Nature Painting Degrees Should Have Harder Unattainable Art School

Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton

“The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society.”

Men Different Causes Human Nature Circumstances Activity Degrees Civil Society Factions Nature Of Man Latent Federalist Papers

Book:The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution

Source: The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution

“As riches increase and accumulate in few hands, as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard. This is the real disposition of human nature; it is what neither the honorable member nor myself can correct. It is a common misfortunate that awaits our State constitution, as well as all others.”

Source: The Works of Alexander Hamilton: Miscellanies, 1774-1789: A full vindication; The farmer refuted; Quebec bill; Resolutions in Congress; Letters from Phocion; New-York Legislature, etc

“The inhabitants of territories, often the theatre of war, are unavoidably subject to frequent infringements on their rights, which serve to weaken their sense of those rights; and by degrees, the people are brought to consider the soldiery not only as their protectors but as their superiors.”

People War Rights Subjects Human Nature Degrees Theatre Superiors Territory Protector Infringement

Book:The Federalist, on the New Constitution ... by A. Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. With an Appendix Containing the Letters of Pacificus (A. Hamilton) and Helvidius (J. Madison), on the Proclamation of Neutrality of 1793; the Original Articles of Confederation ... Sixth Edition, Etc

Source: The Federalist, on the New Constitution ... by A. Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. With an Appendix Containing the Letters of Pacificus (A. Hamilton) and Helvidius (J. Madison), on the Proclamation of Neutrality of 1793; the Original Articles of Confederation ... Sixth Edition, Etc