Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

There are some people who need to wear a label round their necks to show that they are Christians at all, or else we might mistake them for sinners, their actions are so like those of the ungodly.

Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

It’s sometimes comical to hear the younger generation ask their peers to repeat themselves.

One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That’s how the human species has done as well as it has.

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.

If you’re in favour of any policy – reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever – if you’re at least minimally moral, it’s because you think it’s somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together.

I realized, ‚Yo, I can’t do anything in moderation. I don’t know how.‘

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.

Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.

It’s not just human nature to associate in tribes. It’s deeper than that.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

I do a little thing about the way people shake the sweetener packet. You know, like they’re all excited. I want to get all the granules down to one end. I love all these rituals.

There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.

Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

Listen to many, speak to a few.

I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don’t want to meet them.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.

I have always had a talent for irritating women since I was fourteen.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies.

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

I grew up in an environment where being polite was taken as a weakness. So I just fought everybody.

Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild; In Wit a man; Simplicity, a child.

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust.

I’ve never been reckless – it’s always calculated. I’m mischievous, but I’m calculated.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness… and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.

Seemingly, man has learned to live without God, preoccupied and indifferent toward Him and concerned only about material security and pleasure.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

I think that more flow of information, the ability to stay connected to more people makes people more effective as people. And I mean, that’s true socially. It makes you have more fun, right. It feels better to be more connected to all these people. You have a richer life.

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

Life is about conduct and how we conduct ourselves. But two wrongs never make a right.

If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.

I am not a victim of emotional conflicts. I am human.

Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.

I see clearly that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity.

Don’t create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.

Home, more than anything, means warmth and bed.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

I have a slight bit of OCD, I think. I’m not walking around flipping light switches. But when I say I’m going to do something, I have to do it.

Strength and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

Cyberspace is – or can be – a good, friendly and egalitarian place to meet.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.