2,272 Quotes About Human-nature

It is easier for a man to burn down his own house than to get rid of his prejudices.

Starved beasts are easy to please. [She] is a lover, and in some convoluted, twisted way, she is human; and that is precisely what makes her so dangerous.

As in a tree, there is more sap in an Arm of the tree, than in a little sprig; but the sprig hath the same sap for kind that the Arm of the tree hath, and it all comes from the same root. So though there be more venom in some gross, crying sins, than in some others; yet there is no sin but hath the same sap, and the same venom, for the kind, that every sin hath, that the worst sin hath.

I shall love my kind of love anyway, doggedly, for I must certainly do the best I can with my own nature and if my nature is to love too well or from afar or to be grateful for crumbs...well, so be it.

Just as dogs were thwarted wolves, parks were thwarted forests. Humans loved both, possibly because humans were, well, thwarted.

οὕτω ὦν Κροῖσε πᾶν ἐστι ἄνθρωπος συμφορή.""You can see from that, Croesus, that man is entirely a creature of chance” (Trans. de Sélincourt)

Though he has watched a decent age pass by,A man will sometimes still desire the world.I swear I see no wisdom in that man.The endless hours pile up a drift of painMore unrelieved each day; and as for pleasure,When he is sunken in excessive age,You will not see his pleasure anywhere.- Choral Poem between Scenes V & VI, Oedipus at Colonus

Every time you forgive someone for a serious wrong, they may begin to love you a little more, but you'll begin loving them a little less. On the very day when they love you the most, you may not feel anything for them at all.

It is a mistake,” he said, “to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort.