No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
George EliotRead
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No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
Human reason is like a drunken man on horseback; set it up on one side, and it tumbles over on the other
The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It's a battle you can't hope to win - it's a battle that's going to go on forever. It's part of the human condition.
That the sum of a man's life was not where he wound up but in the details that brought him there. That we made mistakes. I closed my eyes, sick of the riddles, and to my surprise all I could see were dandelions-as if they had been painted on the fields of my imagination, a hundred thousand suns. And I remembered something else that makes us human: faith, the only weapon in our arsenal to battle doubt.
Every man is a moon; he has a side no one sees.
To be able to rise from the earth; to be able, from a station in outer space, to see the relationship of the planet earth to other planets; to be able to contemplate the billions of factors in precise and beautiful combination that make human existence possible; to be able to dwell on an encounter of the human brain and spirit with the universe
Quite apart from anything else, my experience is trying to change things for the better makes you feel better, healthier. Humans are communicative animals: when you do good in a community, the benefits eventually get back to you.
We were born to unite with our fellow men, and to join in community with the human race.
One of the amazing things we have been given as humans is the unquenchable desire to have dreams of a better life, and the ability to establish goals to live out those dreams.
And the greatest calamity that has happened to the human mind is that he is against death. Being against death means you will miss the greatest mystery. And being against death also means that you will miss life itself - because they are deeply involved into each other; they are not two. Life is growing, death is the flowering of it. The journey and the goal are not separate; the journey ends in the goal.
Intellect takes us along in the battle of life to a certain limit, but at the crucial moment it fails us. Faith transcends reason. It is when the horizon is the darkest and human reason is beaten down to the ground that faith shines brightest and comes to our rescue.
In the beautiful, man sets himself up as the standard of perfection; in select cases he worships himself in it. Man believes that the world itself is filled with beauty -he forgets that it is he who has created it. He alone has bestowed beauty upon the world -alas! only a very human, an all too human, beauty.
Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group Groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together [is] surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.
It was kind of a beautiful day, finally real summer in Indianapolis, warm and humid - the kind of weather that reminds you after a long winter that while the world wasn't built for humans, we were built for the world.
Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as right in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as brute force.
John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?
I believe all religions pursue the same goals, that of cultivating human goodness and bringing happiness to all human beings. Though the means might appear different the ends are the same.
the more i live, the more i realize what strange creatures human beings are. some of them might just as well have a hundred legs, like a centipede, or six, like a lobster. the human consistency and dignity one has been led to expect from one's fellow-man seem actually non-existent. one doubts if they exist to any startling degree even in oneself.
We are passing into a social phase in which unless a heroic effort is made for human dignity and freedom, gold will be the sole method of government and therefore the sole standard of manners.
America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government.
When you consider it from a human perspective, and clearly it would be difficult for us to do otherwise, life is an odd thing. It couldn't wait to get going, but then, having gotten going, it seemed in very little hurry to move on.
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