Post by Tamrin on Oct 24, 2010 12:05:02 GMT 10
What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering
out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts
*
So complex is the human spirit that it can itself scarce
discern the deep springs which impel it to action
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
**
We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones
Jules Verne
**
Human nature is not obliged to be consistent
Lucy Maud Montgomery
**
Are there, infinitely varying with each individual, inbred forces of Good
and Evil in all of us, deep down below the reach of mortal encouragement
and mortal repression — hidden Good and hidden Evil, both alike at the
mercy of the liberating opportunity and the sufficient temptation?
Wilkie Collins
**
Man's cleverness is almost indefinite, and stretches like an elastic band,
but human nature is like an iron ring. You can go round and round it,
you can polish it highly, you can even flatten it a little on one side,
whereby you will make it bulge out the other, but you will NEVER,
while the world endures and man is man, increase its total circumference
Sir H. Rider Haggard
**
It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfish-
ness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates
Nathaniel Hawthorne
**
Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one
of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary
faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man
Edgar Allan Poe
**
So much has religion done for me; turning the original materials to the
best account; pruning and training nature. But she could not eradicate
nature: nor will it be eradicated 'till this mortal shall put on immortality
Charlotte Bronte
**
Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural
William Makepeace Thackeray
**
We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness, and no pictures that
represent us otherwise can be true, though, happily, for human nature,
gleamings of that pure spirit in whose likeness man has been fashioned are
to be seen, relieving its deformities, and mitigating if not excusing its crimes
James Fenimore Cooper
**
What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no
evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too
uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat
what they are told — and become upset if they are exposed to any differ-
ent view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity,
and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for
territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings
fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which
has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when
our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume
we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conform-
ists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion
Michael Crichton
**
Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those
circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live
Marcus Tullius Cicero
**
The existence of any pure race with special endowments is a myth, as is the belief
that there are races all of whose members are foredoomed to eternal inferiority
*
If we were to select the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic,
and emotionally stable third of mankind, all races would be present
Franz Boas
***
out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts
*
So complex is the human spirit that it can itself scarce
discern the deep springs which impel it to action
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
**
We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones
Jules Verne
**
Human nature is not obliged to be consistent
Lucy Maud Montgomery
**
Are there, infinitely varying with each individual, inbred forces of Good
and Evil in all of us, deep down below the reach of mortal encouragement
and mortal repression — hidden Good and hidden Evil, both alike at the
mercy of the liberating opportunity and the sufficient temptation?
Wilkie Collins
**
Man's cleverness is almost indefinite, and stretches like an elastic band,
but human nature is like an iron ring. You can go round and round it,
you can polish it highly, you can even flatten it a little on one side,
whereby you will make it bulge out the other, but you will NEVER,
while the world endures and man is man, increase its total circumference
Sir H. Rider Haggard
**
It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfish-
ness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates
Nathaniel Hawthorne
**
Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one
of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary
faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man
Edgar Allan Poe
**
So much has religion done for me; turning the original materials to the
best account; pruning and training nature. But she could not eradicate
nature: nor will it be eradicated 'till this mortal shall put on immortality
Charlotte Bronte
**
Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural
William Makepeace Thackeray
**
We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness, and no pictures that
represent us otherwise can be true, though, happily, for human nature,
gleamings of that pure spirit in whose likeness man has been fashioned are
to be seen, relieving its deformities, and mitigating if not excusing its crimes
James Fenimore Cooper
**
What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no
evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too
uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat
what they are told — and become upset if they are exposed to any differ-
ent view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity,
and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for
territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings
fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which
has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when
our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume
we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conform-
ists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion
Michael Crichton
**
Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those
circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live
Marcus Tullius Cicero
**
The existence of any pure race with special endowments is a myth, as is the belief
that there are races all of whose members are foredoomed to eternal inferiority
*
If we were to select the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic,
and emotionally stable third of mankind, all races would be present
Franz Boas
***