human nature quotes

A perfect tragedy is the noblest production of human nature.

-Joseph Addison
  In The Spectator, no.39.

Cricket, like the novel, isgreat when it presents men in the round, when it shows the salty quality of human nature.

-Aristotle
  Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

Oh! it is onlya novel!†only some work in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineationof itsvarieties,theliveliesteffusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.

-Jane Austen
  Northanger Abbey, ch.5.

The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.

- Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
  Essays, no.1,'Of  Truth'.

   There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.

- Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
  Essays, no.12,'Of Boldness'.

In a profound sense we may say that the crucifixion, howeverelse we may interpret it, accuseshumannature, accuses all of us in the very things that we think are our righteousness.

- Sir Herbert Butterfield
History and Human Relations.

'I was ruminating,'said Mr Pickwick,'on the strange mutability of human affairs.' 'Ah! I seein at the palace door one day, out at the window the next. Philosopher, Sir?' 'An observer of human nature, sir,'said Mr Pickwick.

- CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
^7  Pickwick Papers, ch.2.

   Subdue yourappetites, mydears, and you've conquered human nature.

- CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
^9  Nicholas Nickleby, ch.5.

Igot disappointed in human nature as well and gave it up because I found it too much like my own.

-J(ames) P(atrick) Donleavy
  A Fairy  Tale of NewYork, ch.18.

Humannature will not flourish, any morethana potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil.

- Nathaniel Hawthorne
  The Scarlet Letter,'The Custom-House'.

He writes as fast as they can read, and he does not write himself down† His worst is better than any other person's best† His works (taken together) are almost like a new edition of human nature. This is indeed to be an author!

-William Hazlitt
  Spirit of the Age,'Sir Walter Scott'.

'Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his; In the good old time 'twas hanging for the colour that it is; Though hanging isn't bad enough and flaying would be fair For the nameless and abominable colour of his hair.

- A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
'Additional Poems', no.18, in Collected Poems (1939).

Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction, as even to excite a murmur among the zealots.

- David Hume
  My Own Life, ch.1.

To charge all unmerited praise with the guilt of flattery, and to suppose that the encomiast always knows and feels the falsehood of his assertions, issurely to discover great ignorance of human nature and human life. In determinations depending not on rules, but on experience and comparison, judgement is always to some degree subject to affection.Very near to admiration is the wish to admire.

- Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
^81 Lives of the English Poets,'Halifax'.

Scenery is finebut human nature is finer.

-John Keats
  Letter to Benjamin Bailey,13 Mar.

We hardly know any instance of the strength and weakness of humannaturesostriking, and sogrotesque, as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stockinghalf Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison inone pocket, and a quire of bad verses in the other.

-1st Baron
  Of Frederick the Great. Historical Essays.'Frederic the Great', in the Edinburgh Magazine,  Apr.

Henry VIII perhaps approached as nearly to the ideal standard of perfect wickedness as the infirmities of human nature will allow.

- SirJames Mackintosh
  Of Henry's actions in executing Thomas More and  Anne Boleyn. History of England, vol.2.

What isgovernment itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

-James Madison
  The Federalist,  Jan.

Promiscuous reading is necessary to the constituting of human nature. The attempt to keep out evil doctrine by licensing is like the exploit of that gallant man who thought to keep out the crows by shutting the park gate.

-John Milton
  Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this, it requires the highest type of human naturea type nowhere at present existing.

- Herbert Spencer
'TheAmericans', collected in Essays (1891).

Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris. It is part of human nature to hate a man you have hurt.

-Tacitus
Agricola, ch.42.

Human nature is the same everywhere; it deifies success, it has nothing but scorn for defeat.

- Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens Twain
  Joan of Arc, bk.1, ch.8.

The essence of Christianity is the appeal to the life of Christ as a revelation of the nature of God and of his agency in the world. The record is fragmentary, inconsistent and uncertain† But there can be no doubt as to the elements in the record that have evoked the best in human nature. The Mother, the Child and the bare manger: the lowly man, homeless and self- forgetful, with his message of peace, love and sympathy: the suffering, the agony, the tender words as life ebbed, the final despair: and the whole with the authority of supreme victory.

- Alfred North Whitehead
 Adventures of Ideas.