Human Nature Quotes

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

The superior man is satisfied and composed; the mean man is always full of distress.

By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.

No one accuses without an underlying notion of punishment and revenge, even when he accuses his fate or himself. All complaint is accusation, all self-congratulation is praise.

Whoever has witnessed another's ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

There is nothing we like to communicate to others as much as the seal of secrecy together with what lies under it.

Man would sooner have the void for his purpose than be void of purpose.

Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession.

Every man has his price. This is not true. But for every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.

Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious.

What we do is never understood, but always merely praised or blamed.

Anti-theses.- The most senile thing ever thought about man is contained in the celebrated saying 'the ego is always hateful'; the most childish is the even more celebrated 'love thy neighbor as thyself'. - In the former, knowledge of human nature has ceased, in the latter it has not yet even begun.

A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us.

He who denies himself much in great matters will readily indulge himself in small things.

We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.