2,272 Quotes About Human-nature

All people have three characters, that which they exhibit, that which they are, and that which they think they are.

There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle.

Indeed, the condition of human nature is just this; man towers above the rest of creation so long as he realizes his own nature, and when he forgets it, he sinks lower than the beasts. For other living things to be ignorant of themselves, is natural; but for man it is a defect.

You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there’s no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots.

I'm human. That's how humans spend their time, doing shitty things.

That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them.

Human nature is the same in all professions.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.