For all their simplicity, humans could be remarkably perceptive, though they didn’t know it most of the time, and their ability to thrust straight through deception and see to the heart of truth was often...

For Mercy has a human heart;Pity, a human face;And Love, the human form divine:And Peace the human dress.Songs of InnocenceCruelty has a human heartAnd jealousy a human face,Terror the human form divine,And secrecy the human...

All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness...

No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance. The existence of the chance makes the difference… between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a...

He had been dazzled. Because of the dazzling brightness, he had had to kill [Seigen]. All who had encountered Seigen had had their hearts stolen by that brightness. That envy had turned to malice.

Wonder of time,’ quoth she, ‘this is my spite,That, thou being dead, the day should yet be light.’Since thou art dead, lo, here I prophesy:Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend:It shall be waited on with...

It’s our nature, isn’t it? Again and again, we cling to the foolish belief taht simple solutions exist

The voice of human nature is nothing but one prolonged cry.

I wasn’t sure which I appreciated less—the insincere concern or the genuine indifference.

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first – the story of our quest for sexual love – is well known and well charted, its vagaries form...

Unfortunately, we-especially in the United States-have become increasingly mechanized, so that today we feel very strongly that if we can take anything out of human hands and especially out of the human heart and put...

I’m Noah, and you are the ship coasting along the banks and as long as you are my valentine I will sail between your eyes..

I’m not in search of sanctity, sacredness, purity; these things are found after this life, not in this life; but in this life I search to be completely human: to feel, to give, to take,...

Happiness is the province of those who ask few questions.

When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.

It is only because of their stupidity that they are able to be so sure of themselves.

Ginny Cupper took me in her car out to the spread fields of Indiana. Parking near the edge of woods and walking out into the sunny rows of corn, waving seeds to a yellow horizon....

If we are to know ourselves, philosophy needs to maintain an ongoing dialogue with the sciences of mind.

How wrong and petty any life is.

I like living in my head because in there, everyone is kind and innocent. Once you start integrating yourself into the world, you realize that people are nasty, mean creatures. They’re worse than zombies. People...

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

WHETHER IT’S A CHILD’S TOY OR A NATION’S OIL, IT’S ALL THE SAME, the Red Rider said. YOU FIGHT FOR WHAT YOU WANT. AGGRESSION. IT’S THE SPICE OF LIFE. War was right: people had to...

Human nature is universally imbued with a desire for liberty, and a hatred for servitude.

Strange combination, isn’t it–gratitude and resentment? But this is the way I think. Actually, I think everybody thinks that way. Even the children of the humans who died long ago, I think they lived their...

On Kwajalein, Louie and Phil leared a dark truth known to the doomed in Hitler’s death camps, the slaves of the American South, and a hundred other generations of betrayed people. Dignity is as essential...

Auch wenn wir das Meer vor vierhundert Millionen Jahren (nach meinem Kalender) verlassen haben, das Meer hat uns nicht verlassen. Es ist immer noch in uns, in unserem Blut, in unserem Schweiß, in unseren Tränen.

Human nature is the same in all professions.

I really can’t handle talking about this for too long because it hurts too much, but I want to say that there is one thing I’ve learned about people they don’t get that mean and...

After 30 years of marriage, isn’t it amazing when you look at your partner sound asleep next to you and think they’ve still got potential.

While it is absurd to blame Marx for something he did not foresee and certainly would have condemned if he had foreseen it, the distanced between Marx’s predicted communist society and the form taken by...

No doubt, humans will do a lot of damage before we ultimately destroy ourselves. But life will continue without humans. New forms of intelligence will emerge long after this human experiment is over.

[On Schopenhauer in Black and White] Schopenhauer’s views of love are flawed. Love can’t be merely an illusion of the mind to aid in procreation, but the path to redemption for an otherwise violently selfish...

He knelt among the shadows and felt his isolation bitterly. They were savages it was true; but they were human.

…the tongues of men are not much leashed by concerns for accuracy or truth.

I wish I knew all the answers, how to be perfect, attractive and witty. But I’m just a human being with all the regular faults and it seems no matter how hard I try, I...

Humans are strange. … They value punishment because they think it means their actions are important—that they are important. … it’s vanity.

Human beings, in a sense, may be thought of as multidimensional creatures composed of such poetic considerations as the individual need for self-realization, subdued passions for overwhelming beauty, and a hunger for meaning beyond the...

The wounded can inflict the most painful wound without hesitation.

People have been bred to hate for generations — eons, maybe. Some fundamental urge. Something implicit in the human condition.

Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder — just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for...

People were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way.

National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent...

We are built to desire free will and to choose our own destiny. It’s not about being right or wrong; it’s about the celebration of life, your free will. The human spirit must constantly be...

There’s no snobbery like that of the poor toward one another.

Why do people, when they are wrong, twist the conversation around and place the blame on someone else?

The idea that I can’t share my problems with other people makes me not give a shit about their problems.

People have always wanted to ‘improve’ human beings; for the most part, this has been called morality.

Love. Passion. Belief. Duty. The lines blur sometomes. There are ove fifteen recognised mjor religions on this planet. One religion believes something different from another, and yet so often it’s just the same thing with...

It is the task of the “science of man” to arrive eventually at a correct description of what deserves to be called human nature. What has often been called “human nature” is but one of...

Pride,’ observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, ‘is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed;...