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Human Nature Quotes

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Human Nature Quotes

“Pride of origin, whether high or low, springs from the same principle in human nature; one is but the positive, the other the negative, pole of a single weakness.”

Humans Principles Human Nature Pride Spring Lows Weakness Negative Ancestry

Book:Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)

“Human nature is good, just as water seeks low ground. There is no man who is not good, just as there is no water that does not flow downward.”

Men Humans Doe Humanity Water Human Nature Goodness Lows Flow

Author:Mencius

“A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.”

Humans Littles Romance Human Nature Lows Dignity Ill Preserves Ingredients Grain Vicious Degenerates

Book:The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: With Cop'ous Notes and Additions

Source: The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: With Cop'ous Notes and Additions

“the curse of human nature is imagination. When a long anticipated moment comes, we always find it pitched a note too low, for the wings of imagination are crushed into its withering sides under the crowding hordes of petty realities.”

Humans Long Moments Reality Sides Imagination Human Nature Lows Wings Notes Curse Petty Crushed Horde Withering

Author:Gertrude Atherton

“We liked the idea that it was a low-tech future. But everything always repeats the past. If you look today and look at something in the middle east where you got people getting beheaded it's like the crusades with Twitter. It's crazy, human nature does the same thing. In a way, even though you're in the future people wanted order so this sort of system rose up.”

People Ifs Way Humans Looks Doe Ideas Today Wanted Past Order Crazy Middle Human Nature Lows Rose East Repeats Middle East Crusades

Author:Alfred Gough

“Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial, but generally speaking it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber; it is selfishness and impatience rather than generosity and fortitude, that one hears of. There is so little real friendship in the world! – and unfortunately' (speaking low and tremulously) 'there are so many who forget to think seriously till it is almost too late.”

Source: Persuasion In Modern English

“Can human nature ever be wholly and radically transformed? Can the man whom God made good be made wicked by man? Can the soul be reshaped in its entirety by destiny and made evil because destiny is evil? Can the heart become misshapen and afflicted with ugly, incurable deformities under disproportionate misfortune, like a spinal column bent beneath a too low roof?”

Men Humans Heart Made Soul Evil Destiny Human Nature Lows Ugly Wicked Misfortunes Transformed Roof Bent Columns Entirety Deformity

Author:Victor Hugo

“Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for never is life so low or so little as when occupied with the present.”

Life Humans Looks Littles Nature Human Nature Future Lows Looking To The Future

Author:Walter Savage Landor

“Men are always more inclined to pitch their estimate of the enemy's strength too high than too low, such is human nature.”

Men Humans Enemy Human Nature Lows

Book:On War

Source: On War

“The ordinary politician has a very low estimate of human nature. In his daily life he comes into contact chiefly with persons who want to get something or to avoid something. Beyond this circle of seekers after privileges, individuals and organized minorities, he is aware of a large unorganized, indifferent mass of citizens who ask nothing in particular and rarely complain. The politician comes after a while to think that the art of politics is to satisfy the seekers after favors and to mollify the inchoate mass with noble sentiments and patriotic phrases.”

Source: The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy