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Human Nature Quotes

Browse 4693 quotes about Human Nature.

Human Nature Quotes

“We have no participation in Being, because all human nature is ever midway between being born and dying, giving off only a vague image and shadow of itself, and a weak and uncertain opinion. And if you chance to fix your thoughts on trying to grasp its essence, it would be neither more nor less than if your tried to clutch water.”

Ifs Thinking Giving Trying Humans Would Be Water Born Chance Opinion Dying Human Nature Shadow Weak Essence Thoughtful Uncertain Vague Participation Clutch Midway

Book:The Essays

Source: The Essays

“Nature's law says that the strong must prevent the weak from living, but only in a newspaper article or textbook can this be packaged into a comprehensible thought. In the soup of everyday life, in the mixture of minutia from which human relations are woven, it is not a law. It is a logical incongruity when both strong and weak fall victim to their mutual relations, unconsciously subservient to some unknown guiding power that stands outside of life, irrelevant to man.”

“Human nature is so weak that the honest men who have no religion make me fret with their perilous virtue, as rope-dancers with their dangerous equilibrium.”

Men Humans Virtue Honest Dangerous Human Nature Weak Dancer Rope Equilibrium Honest Man

Author:Francis de Gaston, Chevalier de Levis

“If the basic human nature was aggressive, we would have been born with animal claws & huge teeth -- but ours are very short, very pretty, very weak! That means we are not well equipped to be aggressive beings. Even the size of our mouth is very small. So I think the basic nature of human beings should be gentle.”

Ifs Thinking Should Humans Wells Mean Has Beens Born Human Beings Animal Human Nature Huge Mouths Weak Size Teeth Gentle Aggressive Claws

Author:Dalai Lama

“Italians know about human nature - they understand human nature perhaps better than anyone else does. They know that people are weak and greedy and lazy and dishonest and they just try to make the best of it; to work around it.”

People Knows Trying Humans Doe Human Nature Weak Lazy Greedy Make The Best Of It

Author:Donna Leon

“...in any land, in any country under modern free competition, to lay any class of weak and despised people, be they white, black, or blue, at the political mercy of their stronger, richer, and more resourceful fellows, is a temptation which human nature seldom has withstood and seldom will withstand.”

Source: The Souls of Black Folk: The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois

“Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.”

Men Humans Philosophy Strong History Study Wise Human Nature He Man Weak Silly Trials Incidents Us History

Book:The Complete Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln (Biographically Annotated Edition)

Source: The Complete Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln (Biographically Annotated Edition)

“Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or we grow weak, and at last some crisis shows us what we have become.”

Inspirational Character Shows Eye Lasts Strong Grows Leadership Sleep Courage Human Nature Hero Weak Crisis Occasions Coward Life And Love

Author:Brooke Westcott

“One forms provisional theories and waits for time or fuller knowledge to explode them. A bad habit, Mr. Ferguson, but human nature is weak. Sherlock Holmes speaking with Dr. Watson.”

Humans Form Time Waiting Nature Human Nature Theory Habit Weak Drs Bad Habits Holmes Watson Ferguson Dr Watson

Author:Arthur Conan Doyle

“The best aphorisms are.... portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling. They furnish the largest amount of intellectual stimulus and nutriment in the smallest compass. About every weak point in human nature, or vicious spot in human life, there is deposited a crystallization of warning and protective proverbs.”