"Human nature" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... language of this kind violate the essential principle both of nationality and democracy. The foundation of nationality is mutual confidence and fair dealing, and the aim of democracy is a better quality of human nature effected by a higher type of human association. Hearstism, like Abolitionism, is the work of unbalanced and vindictive men, and increases enormously the difficulty of the wise and effective cure ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... interest have made you take up the cry of justice—a consideration which no one ever yet brought forward to hinder his ambition when he had a chance of gaining anything by might. And praise is due to all who, if not so superior to human nature as to refuse dominion, yet respect justice more than their position compels them ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... this comprehensive scale, the study of history is the study of human nature. But some have continued to reject it, not upon any objection to the quality of the knowledge gained—but simply on the ground of its limited extent; contending that in public and political transactions, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... a principle in human nature which rebels against repetitions. Who likes to fall asleep, thinking that to-morrow morning he must get up and do exactly the same things that he did to-day, the next day ditto, and so forth, until the chapter of earthly existence ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... with the purity of the highest castes. The sea deserved to be hated by the old aristocracies, inasmuch as it has been the mightiest instrument in the civilisation of mankind.' But the old oligarchies had their own work, as we now know. They were imposing a fashioning yoke; they were making the human nature which after times employ. They were at their labours, we have entered into these labours. And to the unconscious imitation which was their principal tool, no impediment was so formidable as foreign intercourse. Men imitate what is before their eyes, if it is before ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... is interesting to form some idea of the different systems which have existed for so many ages, and which, though proved alike by reason and revelation to be of human origin and unequal to the wants of human nature, have yet maintained their influence to the present day, and hold among their votaries still such zealous ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... or not felt such an unlucky antipathy to the "snug lying in the Abbey"; and as for Captain Bobadil, he never had an opportunity of putting his plan for vanquishing an army into practice. We fear, indeed, that neither his character nor Ben Jonson's knowledge of human nature is properly understood; for it certainly could not be expected that a man whose spirit glowed to encounter a whole host could, without tarnishing his dignity, if closely pressed, condescend to fight an individual. But as these remarks on courage may be felt by the reader ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... may count upon any aid which I am competent to bestow to forward the object of your league. As a member of Congress, you shall have my best endeavors for your success, for a cause more honorable to human nature or one that promised more benefit to the world, never called forth the efforts of the patriot or philanthropist." From Major-General Rosecrans came the message: "The cause in which you are engaged is sacred, and would ennoble mean and sanctify common things. You have ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... arms,—will they grudge to attribute their mite?" They planted by your care! No; your oppressions planted them in America! They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable; and, among others, to the cruelties of a savage foe the most subtle, and I will take upon me to say the most formidable, of any people upon the face of the earth; and yet, actuated by principles of true English liberty our American brethren ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... It appears that human nature was much the same two hundred years ago as at present. It is said of Robert Livingston, first lord of the manor, that he "was shrewd, persistent and very acquisitive; his zeal in this direction leading him sometimes to adopt questionable methods to advance his interests. He always exerted ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... want our people to devote themselves entirely to the art of being agreeable. If we could conceive of a world where everybody was perfectly polite and smiling all the time we should hardly like to live in it. It is human nature not to like perfection, and most of us, if brought face to face with that model of behavior, Mr. Turveydrop, who spent his life serving as a pattern of deportment, would sympathize with the delightful old lady who looked at him in the full flower of his glory ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... twelve hours needs to allow for the wind or he will bring up a mile or two to leeward of the point he is aiming at. And yet the first complaint a Washoe visitor to San Francisco makes, is that the sea winds blow so, there! There is a good deal of human nature ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... curious mixture of people whom Felix Brand had bidden to the theatre party and house-warming with which he celebrated the setting up of his bachelor household gods in a studio apartment house. But the varied contents of that mixture were not so much indicative of catholic tastes in human nature as of an underlying trait of his own character, a trait which led him to look first, in whatever he did, for his own advantage. But whatever their differing attitudes toward life there were few of his guests who did ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... but a ceaseless and unworthy rotation, in which the bad are always to the fore, and the good fall behind ... as pessimism, melancholy, world pain (Weltschmerz)—that tormenting feeling which mocks all attempt at definition, and is too vitally connected with erring and striving human nature to be curable—that longing at once for human fellowship and solitude, for active work and a ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... character of a man or woman, tends to loosen the whole. But do not let us feed ourselves upon phrases. This organic coherency, what does it come to? It signifies in a general way, to describe it briefly, a harmony between the intellectual, the moral, and the practical parts of human nature; an undisturbed cooperation between reason, affection, and will; the reason prescribing nothing against which the affections revolt, and proscribing nothing which they crave; and the will obeying the joint impulses of these two directing forces, without liability to capricious or extravagant ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... profuse and prodigal a poet as Shakespeare, and one so bold in his dealings with human nature, should seldom or never make a mistake in his dealings with physical nature, or take an unwarranted liberty with her. True it is that his allusions to nature are always incidental,—never his main purpose or theme, as with many later poets; yet his accuracy and ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... of, or who can? Yet, after all, I know not, so sad a fellow art thou, and so vile an husband mightest thou have made, whether her virtue is not rewarded in missing thee: for things the most grievous to human nature, when they happen, as this charming creature once observed, are often the happiest for us ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... have a character. It absolutely enables one to upset the laws of human nature. But still I do say, Mr. Solicitor, that the majority of them were ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... Romantic writers, who were always "sighing like a furnace," delighting in solitude, cold eternity, and moonshine, deluging the world with their heart-gushings, and calling on the heavens and the earth to stand aghast at their Promethean agonising or their Wertherean despair. Healthy human nature revolted against the poetical enthusiasts who had lost the faculty of seeing things in their natural light, and who constantly indulged in that morbid self-analysis which is fatal to genuine feeling and vigorous action. And in this healthy reaction the philosophers ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... ne'er saw," in some elysium where imperfection and distress were never heard of! Such arguments resemble some which we often hear against the Bible, holding that book responsible as if it originated certain facts on the shady side of human nature or the apparently darker lines of Providential dealing, though the facts are facts of common observation and have to be confronted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... they worked very hard with hand and brain, as well as with soul, and so they got variety of occupation, which is as good as a holiday. The basis of wise St Benedict's Rule was a nicely adjusted combination of variety with regularity; for he knew human nature. Thus monks and nuns did not find the services monotonous, and indeed regarded them as by far the best part of the day. But in the later Middle Ages, when Chaucer lived, young people had begun to enter monastic houses rather as a profession than as a vocation. Many truly spiritual men ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... imply a radical change in the basic attributes of human nature. Humanity, to justify them, must become some sort of super-humanity; and a new world inhabited by a new race must take the place of the world we know. Such an attempt to substitute a new humanity for the old is already conscious of itself ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... every great, strong man and woman, who has lived, thought, worked in the Nation, has it not entered into the Nation's life? Is not here yet, a part of the Nation's influence? Every great, distinct type of human nature grown in the Nation becomes forever a mould in which to cast men. Every great deed done, every strong thought uttered, every noble life lived, is committed to the stream of this national tradition. Every great victory won, every terrible ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Human nature being what it is, however, it tends to seek its motivation in the agreeable rather than in the disagreeable, in direct pleasure rather than in alternative pain. And so has come up the modern theory and practice of the "interesting," in the false sense of that term. The material ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... observed, to her credit, that she put on no airs of pride, but was as sociable as ever, and made nothing of taking out her teeth and handing them around for inspection among her curious and admiring visitors. On that principle of human nature which glories in calling attention to the weakest part, she delighted in tough meats, stale bread, green fruits, and all other eatables that test the biting quality of the teeth. But finally destruction came upon them in a way that no one could have foreseen. ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... for her, and yet oddly without anything to say. He had lived so long and seen so much of life and had got so far above its changes; more, he had lived so much in his study and felt life so little except in contemplation, and with so small an admixture of practical experience of human nature, that he looked at the young thing before him and was conscious of his unreadiness, and in some sort of his unfitness, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... great factors which were combined and evolved in the wonderful nationality of Greece, a power as vividly felt at this hour as it was three thousand years ago. But if Phoenicia conveyed the seed, the soil was Achaian, and on account of its richness that peninsula surpassed, in its developments of human nature and action, the southern and eastern growths. An Achaian civilization was the result, full of freshness and power, in which usage had a great sacredness, religion was a moral spring of no mean force, slavery though it existed was not associated with cruelty, the worst extremes of sin had no place ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... one great cry of human nature. We dare not ask for justice, we can only plead for mercy. David, after his great sins, could utter nothing but the mournful cry, the model for all penitent sinners, "Have mercy upon me, O God, after Thy great goodness." The publican standing afar off, ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... were called) used formerly to assemble; that is to say, five or six men who had writ plays or at least prologues, or had a share in a miscellany, came thither, and entertained one another with their trifling composures, in so important an air as if they had been the noblest efforts of human nature, or that the fate of kingdoms depended ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... TIMES.—"A strong knowledge of human nature, for which Mr. Hocking is famous, is well portrayed in the pages of this novel, and this, in conjunction with the interesting nature of the plot, renders it particularly successful. The book will ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... forbearing to give JUST causes of war to other nations, but also on their placing and continuing themselves in such a situation as not to INVITE hostility or insult; for it need not be observed that there are PRETENDED as well as just causes of war. It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... generally so constituted, that he takes pity on those who fare ill, and envies those who fare well with an amount of hatred proportioned to his own love for the goods in their possession. Further, we see that from the same property of human nature, whence it follows that men are merciful, it follows also that they are envious and ambitious. Lastly, if we make appeal to Experience, we shall find that she entirely confirms what we have said; more ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... studied human nature long enough to realize that even a stranger's faith may make a supreme difference in the hour of a man's ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... yet contrive to make your portrait independent of you; so that you may sink the original and not hurt the picture. No, no; the merit of these is the inveterate likeness—all stiff and awkward as the originals, and like nothing in human nature besides. ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... Schneiderin, as they call them over there, and ran a fairly big business in the Praguer Strasse. I've always been told that German husbands are the worst going, treating their wives like slaves, or, at the best, as mere upper servants. But my experience is that human nature don't alter so much according to distance from London as we fancy it does, and that husbands have their troubles same as wives all the world over. Anyhow, I've come across a German husband or two as didn't carry about with ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... Bacanus maintains Harpocrates and Cupido, son of Venus Uranis, to be one and the same hieroglyphical character. I shall now endeavour to explain the symbolism and dedication of the Rose. This "flower of flowers" adumbrates the highest faculty of human nature—Reason, and Silence, or the rest of the reasoning powers, which is indicated by the Greek term [Greek: epistaemae], science. (See Harris's Philosoph. Arrang. p. 444., and Hermes, p. 369.). To whom, then, could the hieroglyphical rose have been ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... see human nature reassert itself in this fashion. However, when they had got to the lower part of the boulevard near the Grotto, his feelings were hurt at sight of the desperate eagerness displayed by the female vendors of tapers and bouquets, who with the rough ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... for these defects despair of our republic. We are not at the mercy of any waves of chance. In the strife of ferocious parties, human nature always finds itself cherished; as the children of the convicts at Botany Bay are found to have as healthy a moral sentiment as other children. Citizens of feudal states are alarmed at our democratic institutions lapsing into anarchy, and the older and more cautious ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... from that which had now become the vulgar mode of writing, by the use of the alphabet. This is perhaps the source of that ancient, vast and variegated system of false religion, with all its host of errors and miseries, which has so long and so grievously weighed upon the character of human nature. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... Lady Tressady, and Lady Tressady's gowns, and Lady Tressady's affairs. What eagerness, what malice, what feminine subtlety and acuteuess! After listening for a few seconds, it seemed to him as though a score of new and ugly lights had been thrown alike upon his mother and on human nature. He stole ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had not noticed this the first few days of our residence here, and could only account for it by our being so much taken up with the more obvious wonders of our novel situation. I have since learned, however, that this want of observation is a sad and very common infirmity of human nature, there being hundreds of persons before whose eyes the most wonderful things are passing every day, who nevertheless are totally ignorant of them. I therefore have to record my sympathy with such persons, and to recommend to them a course of conduct which I have now for a long time myself adopted,—namely, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... struck me before this that Sir Adrian, with all his kindness of heart, takes but a dismal view of human nature and human destiny; that to him what spoils the face of this world is that strife of life—which to me is as the breath of my nostrils, the absence of which made my convent days so grey and hateful ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... faith in such elements of witchcraft as metamorphosis, and power to cause tempest or drought. To study such themes is 'impious,' or 'superstitious,' or 'useless'. Yet to a pathologist, or anthropologist, the survivals of beliefs must always be curious and attractive illustrations of human nature. ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... remember in one of the old novels, where a sister enumerates in a letter to her brother the charms of the young lady she wishes him to marry? At the end of the list she adds that the lady has 'just as much religion as my William likes.' Now isn't that human nature and you and I ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... unparalleled; and in the preface to an edition of his works published under the comprehensive and presumptuous title of "La Comedie Humaine," he puts himself on a level with the first of poets and philosophers, proposing himself the modest aim of portraying human nature in every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... in human nature," said Barbara, bluntly. "If we be no Christians short of that, there be right few Christians in all ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... Earl of Oxford was passed in Mr. Secretary St. John's office; so to-morrow or next day, I suppose, he will be declared Earl of Oxford, and have the staff.(21) This man has grown by persecutions, turnings out, and stabbing. What waiting, and crowding, and bowing will be at his levee! yet, if human nature be capable of so much constancy, I should believe he will be the same man still, bating the necessary forms of grandeur he must keep up. 'Tis late, sirrahs, and I'll ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... not too bright or good For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... which inspires a desire for a dissolution of an intolerable matrimonial alliance, is as fundamental to human nature as the one which inspires a desire for marriage, and is oft times far more moral. Therefore, to require the commission of immoral and degrading acts on the part of one of the parties to a marriage before a divorce can be granted, regardless of why it is desired, places an unwarranted ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... working of the same tendency in mankind at large which has been occasionally noticed in the sons of ministers and other eminently worthy people, by many ascribed to that intense congenital hatred for goodness which distinguishes human nature from that of the brute, but perhaps as readily accounted for by considering it as the yawning and stretching of a young soul cramped too long in one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... discriminate between the guilty and the innocent. Would he have sat in court; would he have uttered sentences; would he have kept his seat upon the bench for all these years, if he had borne within his breast this secret of personal guilt? No. It is not in human nature to play such a part. I was guilty—and I fled. Let the act speak for itself. The respect due my father must ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... while on all other points there was discord, they were firmly united in opposing the authority of the Ruler of the universe. But when Satan heard the declaration that enmity should exist between himself and the woman, and between his seed and her seed, he knew that his efforts to deprave human nature would be interrupted; that by some means man was to be enabled to resist ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... It went now to one side and now to the other, then again it stood still and clasped its head in its hands. Antinous shuddered, he could not help thinking of the Daimons of which Hadrian so often spoke. They were said to be of half-divine and half-human nature, and sometimes appeared in the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... extension and improvement of them, he may eventually generate new ones, yet some traces cannot but remain of what was originally lodged in the mind, and will come into play as occasion may call them forth. Shakspeare was a perfect master of human nature, but he was a master of our language as well; he was indeed one of those who have improved it, but he could never have himself arrived at the degree of perfection in which he found it, had he not derived assistance from others, and made himself intimately acquainted with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... she (Grace Aguilar) has effected is acknowledged on all hands, and it cannot be doubted but that the appearance of this volume will increase the usefulness of one who may yet be said to be still speaking to the heart and to the affections of human nature."—Bell's Messenger. ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... have believed that human nature could become so depraved, as an instance I witnessed with my own eyes convinced me it might be. I saw two Irishmen, who had their wives and families on board, slip over the ship's side, and drop down towards the boat, with ropes in their hands. Little as they deserved it, they were not prevented ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... entertainment, but of influence above all. The orator should be taught self-mastery. The orator who is not moved by high moral sense is a trickster or a hypocrite; the former juggles with human susceptibility for unworthy or inadequate ends, and the latter poses for motives he has not. So complex is human nature that this can be done by a good actor so as to deceive the judgment and feelings; but the influence will ultimately reveal the truth, if the auditor will use intuition and not be taken off guard by the psychic influence of a strong will bent ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... for the artist in him. Mr. Baring admits these faults, but he does not sufficiently dwell on them. He glances at them and leaves them, with the result that the final impression given by his essay is apt to be a false one. Nobody, perhaps, ever understood and sympathized with human nature as Dostoievsky did. Indubitably nobody ever with the help of God and good luck ever swooped so high into tragic grandeur. But the man had fearful falls. He could not trust his wings. He is an adorable, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... then, as Virginia came shyly in, he held out his other hand, and accused her of stealing his boy's heart away from him. "But we old folks must give place to the young," he continued cheerfully; "it's nature, and it's human nature, too." ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... man to fall pleading upon his knees, but such is the nobility of human nature that he remained standing—even blew again into the air, partly from nervousness, partly, no doubt, with some vague hope of ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... stupefied mob, their faces blanched with horror and dripping with sweat, too terrified, many of them, to reload their firelocks. The general rode up and down the line, exposing himself with the utmost recklessness, but the men were long past the reach of discipline. After all, human nature has its depths which no drill-master can touch. Four horses were shot under him, and even while I cursed his folly, I could not but admire his courage. Nor was the conduct of his officers less gallant. Throwing ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... chin. "What's the big idea? That's plumb crazy—it ain't human nature. I had an Indian working for me once—and come to think of it, it didn't take us long to strike much the same bargain—and he was the best man I ever had working for me. If there's a tribe like you and him, I'll engage the ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... ardent insistency of conviction, a special analysis for each. In fact, having observed in almost every type of created thing two separate motions, he assumed, nay, he asserted, their existence in our human nature, and designated this ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... an emblem of all that is deceitful and false, smiling most blandly when preparing to devour you; and the wind is only one shade more respectable—nay, perchance the worse of the two; for the waters, in the self-justifying, neighbour-condemning spirit, apparently inherent in human nature—and for which Father Adam be thanked—may very possibly lay the blame of their fickleness upon it, and bring a host of witnesses into court to testify to their general good behaviour—their calmness, and amenity, and inoffensiveness, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... had completely lost his head, and all considerations were swept away by this overmastering passion, which his knowledge that Bluebell did not fully return only seemed to augment. His uncle was a selfish, exacting old man, but he had been kind enough to this boy who, with the usual ingratitude of human nature, forgot everything to gratify ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... far less than she would have thought. It was that her idol was shattered. Only in the last few weeks had she begun to see Clarence Mayfair as he really was. It was a wonderfully deep insight into human nature that Beth had; but she had never applied it where Clarence was concerned before, and now that she did, what was it she saw?—a weak, wavering, fickle youth, with a good deal of fine sentiment, perhaps, but without firm, manly strength; ambitious, ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... finally, that it has ever been the pride and the boast of America that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... considered as revolting as that which had so recently been abolished. Some long conversations with Henry George, while he was on a visit to Yasnaya Polyana, gave additional strength to Tolstoy's conviction that in these theories lay the elements essential to the transformation and rejuvenation of human nature, going far towards the levelling of social inequalities. But to inoculate the landed proprietors of Russia as a class with those theories was a task which even his genius could ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... the shore of the New World, with noble manliness and sturdy statesmanship enough in him to uphold the whole future of a great people. When Hawthorne came, therefore, his utterance was a culmination of the two preceding centuries. An entire side of the richly endowed human nature to which we owe the high qualities of New England,—a nature which is often so easily disposed of as meagre, cold, narrow, and austere,—this side, long suppressed and thrown into shade by the more active front, found expression at last in ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... reassure me, and yet they did not. I was still anxious for her safety to an irrational extent; and to sum up the whole in a most weighty line of Shakspeare, I lived under the constant presence of a feeling which only that great observer of human nature (so far as I am aware) has ever noticed, viz., that merely the excess of my happiness made me jealous of its ability to last, and in that extent less capable of enjoying it; that in fact the prelibation of my tears, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... inconsistent was the man—as far as it goes, truthful. Speaking of him one day soon after his death, with the late Mrs. Osgood, the beauty of whose character had made upon Poe's mind that impression which it never failed to produce upon minds capable of the apprehension of the finest traits in human nature, she said she did not doubt that my view of Mr. Poe, which she knew indeed to be the common view, was perfectly just, as it regarded him in his relations with men; but to women he was different, and she would write for me some recollections of him, to be placed beside my ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... you that?" he demanded. "Human nature hasn't changed for two thousand years. The instinct to kill is as strong as ever, or wars would be impossible. If any man or woman could commit one cold-blooded murder, there is no reason why he or she should not commit a hundred. ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... we say, may be realised—this consciousness of sin on the one hand, and of a living Righteousness and Love far more powerful than our sins, and able to save us from them. These roots of religion are deeply planted in human nature. They answer to its highest experiences. The purest and noblest natures in whom all the impulses of a comprehensive humanity have been strongest, have felt and owned them. The missionary preacher, wherever he has ...
— Religion and Theology: A Sermon for the Times • John Tulloch
... ill with his critics, who, when in quest of explanations of his changeful courses, sought for them, as is the wont of the average politician, in the least noble parts of human nature. In his case they felt especially repelled by his imperial aloofness, the secrecy of his deliberations, and the magisterial tone of his judgments, even when these were in flagrant contradiction with one another. Obstinacy was also included among the traits which ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... perverse all courtships probably are quaint; but if ever human nature may be allowed the full range of originality, it may very well be in the exciting and very personal moments of making love. Our own peculiar social structure, in which the sexes have so much innocent freedom, and youth is left almost entirely ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... have been introducing the venom of serpents, under the learned title of Lachesis, and outraging human nature with infusions of the pediculus capitis; that is, of course, as we understand their dilutions, the names of these things; for if a fine-tooth-comb insect were drowned in Lake Superior, we cannot agree with them in thinking that every drop of its waters would be impregnated ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... are a Being, composed of all the Virtues and Vices, Wisdom and Folly of Human Nature. All Men dread you; all Men Court you; All Men love You— and yet All Men strive to be independent of You. For you are so inconsistent, that you are Constant in nothing, but Inconstancy—— So good Natur'd, so techy, so wise— and sometimes so otherwise— In Short, ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... very elevating nature,—the anti-spiritual doctrines of the Sophist in this Romance[54] being what chiefly, I suspect, attracted his attention to its pages, as not unlikely to supply him with fresh argument and sarcasm for those depreciating views of human nature and its destiny, which he was now, with all the wantonness of unbounded ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Clinton's knowledge of human nature that he selected Daniel D. Tompkins for a gubernatorial candidate, if he sought a man whom he might control. The memory of the constitutional convention, or a glance into the history of the elder Tompkins, who had stood firm and unyielding in ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... old man staggered out of the shop, preserved by Leander's unremitting watchfulness from the wrath of the goddess. Yet, such is the ingratitude of human nature, that he left the place vowing to return no more. "I thought I'd got a clown behind me, sir!" he used to say afterwards, in ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... people. The best practical discourses often are those which a congregation help their minister to prepare. By constant and loving intercourse with the individuals of his church he becomes acquainted with their peculiarities, and this enlarges his knowledge of human nature. It is second only to a knowledge of God's Word. If a minister is a wise man (and neither God nor man has any use for fools) he will be made wiser by the lessons and suggestions which he can gain from constant and close intercourse with the immortal ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... or retreat backwards, she stood trembling and calling for help, and it was impossible to avoid feeling amused at the absurdity of that big girl being intimidated by such a mite—who, with the original depravity of human nature, was enjoying ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... cloud had ever arisen to disturb the perfect union in each of admiration and affection for the other. It had never occurred to these two great soldiers to ask what their relative position was in the public eye—which was most spoken of and commended or admired. Human nature is weak at best, and the fame of Jackson, mounting to its dazzling zenith, might have disturbed a less magnanimous soul than Lee's. There is not, however, the slightest reason to believe that Lee ever gave the subject a thought. Entirely free from that vulgar ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... easy-going, cheerful individual whom Seth had found asleep on the beach, the lightkeeper's suspicions were ended. It was true that Brown was as mysterious and secretive as ever concerning his own past, but that had been a part of their bargain. Atkins, who prided himself on being a judge of human nature, decided that his helper was a young gentleman in trouble, but that the trouble, whatever it might be, involved nothing criminal or dishonest. That he was a gentleman, he was sure—his bearing and manner proved that; but he was a gentleman who did not "put ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... needs be still in one place; and that Christ hath given majesty unto His body, but yet hath not taken away from it the nature of a body; and that we must not so affirm Christ to be God that we deny Him to be man: and, as the Martyr Vigilius saith, that Christ hath left us as touching His human nature, but hath not left us as touching His Divine nature; and that the same Christ, though He be absent from us concerning His manhood, yet is ever present ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... are not forced into church! No: but we desire more than that. We desire not to be forced to stay away. We desire, nay, we are resolute, to enjoy the comfort of public worship; but we desire also that we may do so without an amount of tedium which ordinary human nature cannot endure with patience; that we may be able to leave the house of God without that anxious longing for escape, which is the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... with rare delight the novels of Augusta Evans? Her strange, wonderful, and fascinating style; the profound depths to which she sinks the probe into human nature, touching its most sacred chords and springs; the intense interest thrown around her characters, and the very marked peculiarities of her principal figures, conspire to give an unusual interest to the works of this eminent ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... his loose way, estimates the Procession and assistants at two hundred thousand. He says it was one boundless inarticulate Haha;—transcendent World-Laughter; comparable to the Saturnalia of the Ancients. Why not? Here too, as we said, is Human Nature once more human; shudder at it whoso is of shuddering humour: yet behold it is human. It has 'swallowed all formulas;' it tripudiates even so. For which reason they that collect Vases and Antiques, with figures of Dancing Bacchantes 'in wild and all but impossible positions,' may ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... would draw the heart from a sphinx; for the friends have been congratulating each other over the coming opening of Haughton Hall, over the intense pleasure of again being under the same roof daily with Lady Esmondet and Vaura, with their charming knowledge of human nature, causing a great charity and pleasant cynicism with no malice in it of the shams and ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... potatoes," she had once thought to herself, "I could have contented myself to live on the parings." She said nothing of this however to Caroline. Their dispositions she knew were different. After all, it may be that Miss Waddington had a truer knowledge of human nature. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... anything about human nature" Ned answered, "those two people ahead of us are honest. If it is a frame-up, they are not ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the music reproduced by a phonograph is not always of the highest order does not, in the least, detract from the interest and wonder of the instrument. It can reproduce what it is called upon to reproduce, and if human nature demands the commonplace, the instrument will be made to satisfy the demand. On the other hand, speeches of famous men, national songs, magnificent opera selections, and other pleasing and instructive productions can be reproduced fairly accurately. In this way the phonograph, perhaps ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... beautiful are many of these things as works of art; but it is only as works of art that any Christian can admire them. As I gazed on the rich tissues and golden insignia, I mourned for poor corrupt human nature, to which alone such gewgaws could be acceptable. How would Paul or Peter have stared, had they been required to don such glittering pontificals as are here to be seen! While I feel great respect for Pugin's ability as an architect ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... recovered his suavity. "Do I appear bitter? I beg your pardon for exhibiting so ungentlemanly a phase of human nature; yet hypocrisy does move me to—" And then occurred one of those sudden periods with which Dr. Douglass always seemed to stop himself when any thing not quite courteous was being said. "Just forget that last sentence," he added. ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... appearance would not be found in this cruel position. Depend on our authority to protect thee, should the danger thou seemest to apprehend really occur. Still the laws must be respected, though not always of the rigid impartiality that we might wish. Thou hast owned the imperfection of human nature, and it is not wonderful that ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... often foolishly of the necessities of things, and we blame circumstances for the consequences of our own follies and vices; but there are faults which are not faults of will, but faults of mere inadequacy to some unforeseen position. Human nature is equal to much, but not to everything. It can rise to altitudes where it is alike unable to sustain itself or to retire from them to a safer elevation. Yet when the field is open it pushes forward, and moderation in the pursuit of greatness is never learnt ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... be a good mistress as it is to be a good servant. Both duties require a keen understanding and appreciation of human nature, a kindliness of spirit and a desire to be helpful. Both the servant and the mistress have their trials and troubles, but they should remember that it is only through mutual helpfulness and consideration, an exacting attention to duties and responsibilities, a wise supervision and ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... the next morning. The detective must have been thinking, too, for his glance at Mark held a trifle of suspicion. Mark was too old a student of human nature to miss the significance of the look, and Saunders was too young at his business entirely to conceal his own feelings. He tried—but too late—and was foolish enough to think he had not ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... what had especially annoyed Father Tom was that his uncle seemed to deplore the slitting of the drum in the same way as he deplored that the Kavanaghs had a barrel of porter in every Saturday, namely, as one of those regrettable excesses to which human nature is liable. On being pressed he had agreed with his nephew that dancing and drinking were no preparation for the Sabbath, but he would not agree that evil could be suppressed by force. He had even hinted that too strict a ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... endowed schools or libraries, and a minority received what the laws allowed them and upon an assertion of their right to receive it. Outside of the criminal classes there has but seldom been a more melancholy exhibition of the weakness of human nature. The members seemed not to realize that the wrong was in the votes for which those members were alone responsible who had sustained the bill, and that the acceptance of the salary which the law allowed was not only a right but a duty. At the end those ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... like the study of poetry, brings us face to face with the fundamental principles of human nature. Religion, whether it be natural religion or that which is formulated in a book, is as universal as poetry, and like poetry, existed before letters and writing. It is only in a serious and sympathetic frame of mind that we should approach the rudest forms of these ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... animation of style, good spirits, a gift of agreeable and enlivening expression, and a certain charm which may be called companionableness. To travel, with him must have been a particular pleasure. He has sense of humor, a way of getting over rough places, and understanding of human nature. There is not a dull chapter in ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... want to have this out about KROGSTAD. I can't take him back, because many years ago he forged a name. As a lawyer, a close observer of human nature, and a Bank Manager, I have remarked that people who forge names seldom or never confide the fact to their children—which inevitably brings moral contagion into the entire family. From which it follows, logically, that KROGSTAD has been poisoning his children for years ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... was wont to dwell on the weakness of genius, as of a point of least resistance in human nature, an opening through which the force of Nature might enter the human world. "Where there is nothing there is God," and it may be that this weakness is no accident but an essential fact in the very structure of genius. Weakness may be as necessary to the man of genius as it ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... Raphael our starting-point. From the same master whose influence led him to the study of external nature, he learned also the study of human nature. To the interpretation of mother-love he brought all the fresh ardor of youth, and a sunny temperament which saw only joy in the face of Nature. One after another of the series of his Florentine pictures gives ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... across three thousand miles of ocean seemed insuperable; the differing traditions of her population would make it impossible for her to concentrate her will in so unusual a direction. Basing their arguments on a knowledge of the deep-seated selfishness of human nature, Hun statesmen were of the fixed opinion that no amount of insult would compel America to take ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... use studying Human Nature. You can't study a thing that changes by day and by night, and is so uncertain you never know what it is going to do. Now, here is Mary Cary, mostly Martha, who would rather get on a train or a boat and go somewhere—she don't care where—than to do any other thing ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... find the advantage of having made one at the regatta.... It is the good of public life that it supplies agreeable topics and general conversation. Therefore wherever you are, and whatever you see, talk not of the Punic War; nor of the depravity of human nature; nor of the slender motives of human actions; nor of the difficulty of finding employment or pleasure; but talk, and talk, and talk of the regatta.' Ib. p. 260. He was no doubt sick of the constant reference made by writers and public speakers to Rome. For instance, in Bolingbroke's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... another,[2209] a Frenchman from a Papuan, a modern Englishman from a Briton in the time of Caesar, and by retaining only the part which is common to all.[2210] The essence thus obtained is a prodigiously meager one, an infinitely curtailed extract of human nature, that is, in the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... "how fortunate they must be to have such immaculate servants that they can so entirely depend upon them: we should be very happy if we could have such as did not require looking after, but unfortunately French servants partake too much of human nature for mistresses to be able to ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... confirm in the eyes of the multitude, from the very fact that he will, to all appearance, work miracles. Nor need we query that such a thing can take place. Look at some of the facts of our own day, and see how pliable human nature is. There are millions of people who sincerely believe that Leo XIII. is God's vicegerent, and that he is infallible. Take into account the Mormonism of this day, and see how terrible a thing in the name of Christianity can be established and maintained. ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... to "take the nonsense out of a man," and give to all his enterprises a practicable character. But here was a man whose wealth was more like the gas to a balloon than ballast to a ship; and he flung it around with an ignorance of human nature most astonishing in a person so able and intelligent. There was room in the world for one Gerrit Smith, but not for two. If we had many such, benevolence itself would be brought into odium, and we should reserve all ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... limited portion of the community which has been active in establishing them. To give it its most favorable interpretation, it is a sort of crazy counsel of perfection, incompatible with the healthy tenor and contents of human nature, and sure in the end to involve in its errant tentacles not only those who are the avowed objects of its pursuit, but likewise the lawmakers and enforcers themselves. Like all abuses, in its own entrails are the seeds ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... strictly temperate, and for human nature's sake, abstain from the erroneous idea that some sort of malt or spirituous drink is necessary. This is not the case; and I am certain that much of the disease and dire mortality charged against Africa, as a "land ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... young affection that it was a hard awakening, and she was too young, too cruelly involved, to feel for his easy humors that amused tolerance of larger acquaintance with human nature. She had grown swiftly bitter and ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... vision of an entire social epoch—the eighteenth century; and the eighteenth century in Venice, who was then at the final stage of her moral death. And despite the denial of soul in these Venetians, there is no contempt, no facile "simplification" of a question whose roots lie deep in human nature, since even the animals and plants we cultivate into classes! The sadness is for the mutability of things; and among them, that lighthearted, brilliant way of life, which had so much of charm amid ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... arranged for defence, as I considered that hostilities in this country could not be possible. Although black human nature is the darkest shade of character, I never could have believed that even Kabba Rega could have harboured treacherous designs against us, after the benefits that both he and his people had received from me. The country had been relieved from the slave-hunters, and ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... neighbors, on such occasions collected together. This he did, the morning after that on which he had visited Grilston, accompanied, at their earnest entreaty, by Mrs. Aubrey and Kate. I am not painting angels, but describing frail human nature; and truth forces me to say, that Kate had a kind of a notion that on such occasions she did not appear to disadvantage. I protest I love her not the less for it! Is there a beautiful woman under the sun who is not really aware of her charms, and of the effect they produce upon ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... personal property in the angels, as he is their Creator and Lord; and as they are his creatures and willing servants,—"mine angel."—This is perfectly reasonable; for he is the "Root of David" in his divine nature; and the "Offspring of David," in his human nature, (Rom. i. 3.)—God-Man, Mediator. And here let it be remarked, that in speaking or writing of our Redeemer there appears to be no scriptural warrant for the popular phrases,—"the union of the ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... reminds us that the England of that day must have been less like Protestant England, as we know it, than like the Italy of some thirty years ago. But however the outward face of society may have changed, the Canterbury pilgrims remain, in Chaucer's description, living and universal types of human nature. The Canterbury Tales are twenty-four in number. There were {38} thirty-two pilgrims, so that if finished as designed the whole collection would have numbered ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... You're pretty and you're young. Some of them will try to take it out of you. That's human nature. ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... deleterious both to body and mind, and this system, instituted with philanthropic purpose, and commended on grounds that seemed intimately connected with the reformation of the guilty, is now generally repudiated as doing violence to human nature. Even for the insane, society, with judicious classification and restriction, is an essential part of curative treatment, and the success of asylums, as compared with the most skilful and humane private treatment, is due in great part ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... can go straight to the last theorems. You will be sure to have intuitive understanding of what he says about the soul's repose. Yes, those are moments experienced by us too rarely in our weakness, but they suffice to let us discover in ourselves, through the blows and buffetings of our poor human nature, a certain tendency towards what is permanent and what is final; and we realise the splendid inheritance of divinity to which we ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... Beer may have been partly the cause of this peculiar mental condition, but not entirely, for sober persons felt the contagion. We may laugh at it if we please, and no doubt it is evidence of the weakness of human nature; but, like much more evidence of the same order, it is double-voiced, and testifies ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... great mistake in the world. Uriah Heap's father was a very poor judge of human nature, or he would not have told his son, as he did, that people liked humbleness. There is nothing annoys them more, as a rule. Rows are half the fun of life, and you can't have rows with humble, meek-answering ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... "from long experience in the financial centers of the country, I have got to be a man what understands human nature. The minute I looked at you, I seen it in your eye that there wasn't no use in tryin' to bluff you. What's more, I don't want to. Once he gets with a congenial crowd, there ain't a feller anywheres that will do more in the cause o' friendship than old ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... is," said Clovis to his aunt, "all these days of intrusive remembrance harp so persistently on one aspect of human nature and entirely ignore the other; that is why they become so perfunctory and artificial. At Christmas and New Year you are emboldened and encouraged by convention to send gushing messages of optimistic goodwill and servile affection to people whom you would ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki |
