Human Nature Quotes

"It is, as Mr. Rokesmith says, a matter of feeling, but Lor how many matters ARE matters of feeling!" ~ Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens Strange indeed is human nature. Here were these men, to whom murder was familiar, who again and again had struck down the father of the family, some man against whom they had no personal feeling, without one thought of compunction or of compassion for his weeping wife or helpless children, and yet the tender or pathetic in music could move them to tears. ~ The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them." ~ The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot She understood how much louder a cock can crow in his own farmyard than elsewhere. ~ The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope 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. ~ Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds. ~ Adam Bede by George Eliot "Winwood Reade is good upon the subject," said Holmes. "He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. " ~ The Sign of The Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. ~ The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. ~ The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves. ~ Emma by Jane Austen