Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Human nature   /hjˈumən nˈeɪtʃər/   Listen
Human nature

noun
1.
The shared psychological attributes of humankind that are assumed to be shared by all human beings.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Human nature" Quotes from Famous Books



... From out the jungle of old reckless years, May serpents crawl across our path some day And pierce us with their fangs? Oh, I am not A prude or bigot; and I have not lived A score and three full years in ignorance Of human nature. Much I can condone; For well I know our kinship to the earth And all created things. Why, even I Have felt the burden of virginity, When flowers and birds and golden butterflies In early spring were mating; and I know How loud that call of sex must sound to man Above the feeble ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... deeds performed by Cesare on both sides of the Apennines. He assumes the semblance of an exterminating angel, and performs such hellish iniquities that we can only shudder at the contemplation of the evil of which human nature is capable." ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... boy. He begins to see that the present condition of things is not final, but depends upon one that has gone before, and will be succeeded by another. He becomes a puzzle to himself; and to satisfy his newly-awakened curiosity, asks all manner of inconvenient questions. The needs and tendencies of human nature express themselves through these early yearnings of the child. As thought ripens, he desires to know the character and causes of the phenomena presented to his observation; and unless this desire has been granted ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... might amount to prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his Majesty's negative,—thus preferring the advantages of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States, and to the rights of human nature, deeply ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... "the Illinois Country" began in 1800, and his thorough knowledge of the people and their ways gave him rare opportunities for acquiring great personal popularity. Fairly well educated for the times, gifted with an abundance of shrewdness, and withal an excellent judge of human nature, he soon became a man of mark in the new country. He was at all times and under all circumstances the self-constituted "friend of the people." He affected to be one of the humblest of the sons of men; and his dress, language, and deportment ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... knew whereof he praised. The number of men in this country equal to the great problem of self-government are in a pitiful minority. The anarchic conditions of the States, the disgrace which they have brought upon us, their inefficiency to cope with any problem, the contemptible depths of human nature which they have revealed to the thinking members of the community—all these causes inspire Hamilton, incomparably the greatest brain in the country, with a dread of leaving any power whatever in their hands. He believes ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... he held out that false hope. It could never be! The one unpardonable sin, in the judgment of fallible human creatures like herself, was the sin that Sydney Westerfield had committed. Is there something wrong in human nature? or something wrong in human laws? All that is best and noblest in us feels the influence of love—and the rules of society declare that an accident of position shall decide whether love is ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... Betwixt them two things thar hain't no sich great differ noways. I'd ruther hev ye hate me then not ter give me no thought one way ner t'other.... Ye're liable ter wake up some day an' diskiver thet ye've jest been gittin' ther names of yore feelin's mixed up." He paused in his exposition upon human nature long enough to smile indulgently, then continued: "So long es ye won't abide ter let me even talk te yer, I knows ye're afear'd of me in yore heart—an' thet's because ye're afeared of what yore heart hitself mout ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... this creed," to use the words of our author, "is to direct the aim and purposes of mankind to whatever can exalt human nature and improve human happiness. It represents us as gardeners in a vineyard, or servants entrusted with a variety of means, who are not 'to keep their talent in a napkin,' but to exert their skill and ingenuity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... "you'll make an immense fortune. The world will pay anything, absolutely anything to the man who provides it with a new torture. It's an odd twist in human nature—though I don't know why I should say that. Oddness is really the normal thing ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... dear!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "I will not offend again. I will not even refer to Dido or Zenobia. Only what are we to talk about? I, for my part, object to the discussion of Human Nature, because that is the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... is, Joyce," flashed Afy, her face indignant and her voice passionate, "I have put up with some things from you in my time, but human nature has its limits of endurance, and I won't bear that. I have never set eyes on Richard Hare since that night of horror; I wish I could; I'd help ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... Government had the audacity to charge the Jews continually with the "evasion of their military duty." That a tendency towards such evasion was in vogue among the Jews admits of no doubt. It would have been contrary to human nature if people who were subject to assaults from above and kicks from below, whose right of residence was limited to one-twentieth of the territory of their fatherland, who were robbed of shelter, air, and bread, ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... aloud. Works of science, particularly scientific works in the domain of physics, he delighted in. His imagination was of a most charming character. It was at that time in my life almost a passion with me to analyze human nature—to theorize over the motives and the results of human action; over the probable causes of known or assumed effects, and the reverse—in short, I thought myself a philosopher. I have never met another person whom it so much interested me to study as it did this young American. But after ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... human nature for a classical man, living among classical men, and knowing that there were a dozen and more close to him reading away "like bricks," to be long entirely separated from his Greek and Latin books.—Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... an ambition!—by spasmodic and half-hearted effort. You must begin by making up your mind adequately. You must rise to the height of the affair. You must approach a grand undertaking in the grand manner. You ought to mark the day in the calendar as a solemnity. Human nature is weak, and has need of tricky aids, even in the pursuit of happiness. Time will be necessary to you, and time regularly and sacredly set apart. Many people affirm that they cannot be regular, that regularity numbs them. I think this is true ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett

... were transmitted to his readers in the years to come. If he did not sleep with head pillowed upon the grave of one of De Soto's faithful followers, he at least thought he did, and the fancy served him as the theme of verse. And those varying types of human nature and beast nature—do they not all appear again upon ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... not quite agree with you," answered the American Minister; "but, I still think, that the irritability of human nature will overcome reason, and so, in anger, men seize the sabre while they throw down the pen; but that is only ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... depressed. He had come back to the Pension Malfait the night before feeling quite well, and as cheerful as his disapproval of Sylvia Bailey's proceedings at the Casino allowed him to be. And while thoroughly disapproving, he had yet—such being human nature—been glad that Sylvia had won ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... "efficiency." He did not find—it was hardly likely that he would find—that his contemporaries fulfilled this perfect conception, and he therefore felt it necessary to condemn them for the possession of those weaknesses, or as some would prefer to say, qualities, of which the sum is human nature. ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton

... fairly certain that the invitation was superfluous. If I knew human nature at all I knew that Bayliss, Junior, did not intend to let formality stand in the way of frequent calls ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the Young Doctor was somewhat of an expert in human nature, and he deeply wanted to know the history of this wandering habitant, because he had a great compassionate liking for him. If he could get the little man excited, he might be able to find out what he wanted. During the days in which the wanderer had been in his house, he had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... nom de plume that is known and loved by almost every boy of intelligence in the land. We have seen a highly intellectual and world-weary man, a cynic whose heart was somewhat imbittered by its large experience of human nature, take up one of Oliver Optic's books and read it at a sitting, neglecting his work in yielding to the fascination of the pages. When a mature and exceedingly well-informed mind, long despoiled of all its freshness, can thus find pleasure in a book ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic

... human nature was not at fault. Muriel jumped at the money, and a letter in her handwriting informed Roland next morning that his slate was clean. His gratitude ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... certain remedy. The "glorified circuit rider" was at the head of the Department of State of the United States. If anybody had suggested to him that there were nations which no treaty could bind, he would have answered, in the style of the prayer-meeting exhorter, "Ah! I have a higher faith in human nature." So he worked busily, building himself his niche in the temple of fame, and meanwhile the greatest war in ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... a thief to catch a thief," was based on a shrewd acquaintance with human nature, and convicts are usually very quick in discovering discrepancies of the kind to which I have alluded; and it is not to be wondered at if they put the very worst construction upon them. In any case, if it forms any part of our prison discipline to inculcate ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous

... got to the top of the street, and turned north, we espied a crowd at the Tron Church. "A dog-fight!" shouted Bob, and was off; and so was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over before we got up! And is not this boy-nature? and human nature too? and don't we all wish a house on fire not to be out before we see it? Dogs like fighting; old Isaac says they "delight" in it, and for the best of all reasons; and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight. They see three of ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... the spot, nor to open his mouth until our return. We then hurriedly made for home with the chest; reaching the hut in safety, but after excessive toil, at one o'clock in the morning. Worn out as we were, it was not in human nature to do more immediately. We rested until two, and had supper; starting for the hills immediately afterwards, armed with three stout sacks, which, by good luck, were upon the premises. A little before four we arrived at the pit, divided the remainder of the booty, as equally as might be, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... opposing the authority of the Ruler of the universe. But when Satan heard the declaration that enmity should exist between himself and the woman, and between his seed and her seed, he knew that his efforts to deprave human nature would be interrupted; that by some means man was to be enabled to resist ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... dismayed when death Sets its white seal upon some worshipped face. Poor human nature for a little space Must suffer anguish, when that last drawn breath Leaves such long silence; but let not thy faith Fail for a moment in God's boundless grace. But know, oh know, He has prepared a place Fairer for our dear dead than worlds beneath, Yet not ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... luncheon, which Miss Earle devoured avidly, without its interfering with her flow of reminiscences concerning the girls she hated, Dundee was able to learn nothing more to the detriment of Forsyte's Hamilton alumnae, but he did add considerably to his knowledge and pity of female human nature. ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... talent, will sooner or later come to the surface to his credit and for his good; but that what he swaggers will not even find fair play. There, in brief, he shall find his level—a great matter for most men. There, in fine, he will discover that there being a great deal of human nature in all men, and a great deal that is common to all lives—if he has learned to learn and is good-natured withal, he may live pretty ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... music. I am afraid that the average Christian, when he thinks at all of Christ's coming, takes these three first aspects rather than the last one, and so loses what is meant to be a bright hope and a great stimulus. It is not in human nature to think much about a terrible future. It is not in human nature to avoid thinking a great deal about a blessed future. And although one does not wish to preach carelessness, or the ignoring of the solemn side of that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... us what the animal was, yet the new being was a man and not an ape, because, in addition to its animal soul, it was possessed also of a human soul. We all know that man is an animal. Those modern students of science, who affirm that that is the whole truth of human nature, take a lower view of their own being than the Indian philosophers. Man is an animal plus a human ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... Willemzoon, for so was the Anabaptist called, instinctively obeying the dictates of a generous nature, returned, crossed the quaking and dangerous ice, at the peril of his life, extended his hand to his enemy, and saved him from certain death. Unfortunately for human nature, it cannot be added that the generosity, of, the action was met by a corresponding heroism. The officer was desirous, it is true, of avoiding the responsibility of sacrificing the preserver of his life, but the burgomaster of Asperen sternly reminded ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... properties" (as actors would call them) of any kind: scenes of which the external setting is of the simplest possible character, while the humour is of that deepest and most penetrative kind which springs from the eternal incongruities of human nature, the ever-recurring cross-purposes of ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... taste. All these were collected in the vast Fairy Cabinet, published in 1786, just before the Revolution. Probably their attempt to be simple charmed a society which was extremely artificial, talked about 'the simple life' and the 'state of nature,' and was on the eve of a revolution in which human nature revealed her most primitive traits in ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various

... an idea of the divine mind, declare Mazzini and the mystics' of sociology. Each of these formulas possesses a certain relative truth, but all of them together come short of the whole truth. Nationality, which acts better perhaps than it argues, is one of the great forces of nature and of human nature that have got to be accepted. Nationality will out, and where it exists it will, in spite of all resistance, strain fiercely to express itself in some sort ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... (1555) had been expected to settle the religious question in the Germanies. But in practice it had failed to fix two important matters. In the first place, the provision forbidding further secularization of church property ("Ecclesiastical Reservation") was not carried out, nor could it be while human nature and human temptation remained. Every Catholic ecclesiastic who became Protestant would naturally endeavor to take his church lands with him. Then, in the second place, the peace had recognized only Catholics and Lutherans: meanwhile the Calvinists had increased their numbers, especially ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... all the laws of candor and even of decency: he weighs no authorities, he makes no allowances, he forgets the best authenticated facts in the history of the times, and the most generally recognized principles of human nature." The North British Review, after calling Mitford "a bad scholar, a bad historian, and a bad writer of English," says, farther, that "he was the first writer of any note who found out that Grecian history was a living thing with ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... deceiving his own partner. Whist is a game which requires no ordinary combination of qualities; at the same time, memory and invention, a daring fancy, and a cool head. To a mind like that of Tiresias, a pack of cards was full of human nature. A rubber was a microcosm; and he ruffed his adversary's king, or brought in a long suit of his own with as much dexterity and as much enjoyment as, in the real business of existence, he dethroned a monarch, or ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli

... period of activity at Wurzburg (1848-1856), he had been a consistent free-thinker, and had in a number of able articles (collected in his "Gesammelte Abhandlungen") ("Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur wissenschaftlichen Medizin", Berlin, 1856.) upheld the unity of human nature, the inseparability of body and spirit. In later years at Berlin, where he was more occupied with political work and sociology (especially after 1866), he abandoned the positive monistic position for one of agnosticism and scepticism, and made concessions to the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... this life. There is no one in this world who, if he rightly understand himself, has not to deplore some infidelity to his friend—his love—his better self! The self-love, the miserable egotism of human nature, where is there a corner that it does not slide into? The wretched little I, how it thrusts itself forward! how thoughts of self, designs for self, blot actions which otherwise might be ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... he wouldn't. Nobody can afford to despise a woman with twenty millions. It isn't in human nature. Particularly when you save Mr. James Eustis himself from coming a breakneck cropper, to say ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... yet has to live their life. Cases of this kind are especially pathetic, when, having imbibed European ideals of womanhood, he is obliged to marry some girl chosen by his parents, with whom, however estimable she may be, he has nothing in common. Such is the contrariety of human nature that he usually visits his unhappiness, not on the social system which has resumed its hold upon him, but on the civilization which has killed his belief in it. Then there is the very mischievous type of young Indian who, having been left to his own devices in England, and without any ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... companion, who, though conscious of what she was about to listen to, shrunk, with the waywardness of human nature, from the very declaration she most wished to hear, "hist—there was a movement. Ah! our Ruth and Whittal ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... portion, making the acquaintance of all the new-comers, putting my head into the guillotine, taking a turn in the condemned cell, sitting in Napoleon's carriage, and otherwise informing myself concerning the seamy side of human nature, I determined to be virtuous and devote at least half an hour to the study of the royalties in ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... The unfortunate shorts were wrung dry and drier. In Gretry's office they heard their sentences, and as time went on, and Jadwin beheld more and more of these broken speculators, a vast contempt for human nature grew ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... contend that all other forms of government—the patriarchal system, government by castes, the feudal system, absolute and limited monarchies, oligarchies, and aristocracies—are wholly useless and evil, and were the result of statecraft alone, with no root in human nature or the needs of man. Let one maintain that every system of law (except our own) was an invention of lawyers for private ends. Let one argue in the same way about medicine, and say that this is a pure system of quackery, devised ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... is human nature—determined that she would champion the lovers. She was not going to be bullied by a severe young man. "Yes, they care for one another very much indeed," she said. "I dare say they will tell you about it by-and-by. We heard ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... about the matter, he is," returned the doctor. "A man who has been three years biting his nails on a desert island, Jim, can't expect to appear as sane as you or me. It doesn't lie in human nature. Was it cheese you said he had a ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was faulty, Mr. M'Aulay said, he had no notion of people being in earnest in their good professions, whose practice was not suitable to them. The Doctor grew warm, and said, 'Sir, you are so grossly ignorant of human nature, as not to know that a man may be very sincere in good ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... of my error, I, who am rather a weak-spirited girl, have been so much distressed at his reproofs, that to restore me to my own good opinion, he would make me sensible that pride is a defect inseparable from human nature; shewing me, in our visits to the poorest labourers, how pride would, as he expressed it, "prettily peep out from under their ragged garbs."—My father dearly loved the poor. In persons of a rank superior to our own humble one, I wanted not much assistance from my father's nice discernment ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... and imagination the most commonplace, the everyday-life subject, such as the ills and cares we have to bear, becomes, by a proper exposition of human nature under those conditions, a story both entertaining and instructive. But entertaining first, instructive second; to try to be instructive is to cease to ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... this worthy Negro, not only from regard to the man, but also because they appear to me to demonstrate that he possessed a mind above his condition; and to such of my readers as love to contemplate human nature in all its varieties, and to trace its progress from rudeness to refinement, I hope the account I have given of this poor African ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... since human nature is human nature, and good hearts as well as bad yield sometimes to a fatal weakness, I would add that the facts which I suppress are always facts, and that if I see in you or him any forgetfulness of the gulf that ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... the world's larger hope. Pessimists there are who say that human nature is belligerent, and that war will never be abolished. But international warfare has already seen the handwriting on the wall. Mars has been weighed in the balances and found wanting. The fruitless slaughter of the millions ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... graces, and prerogatives, with which the sovereign plasmator God Almighty hath endowed and adorned human nature at the beginning, that seems to me most singular and excellent by which we may in a mortal state attain to a kind of immortality, and in the course of this transitory life perpetuate our name and seed, which is done by a progeny ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... has been smarting a good deal the last few days," O'Grady admitted, reluctantly, "though I have not said as much to the doctor. I don't know that you are not about right, Terence; but faith, after being kept upon bastely slops by O'Flaherty, it was not in human nature to drink nothing but water when one gets a chance. At any rate, I am not likely to find any great ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty

... Fielding, and Ben Jonson so liberally seasoned their works, and in spite of which, as critics say, they were geniuses, have disappeared from our literature. English fiction became pure, dirty stories were to be heard no more, were no longer procurable. But at this point human nature intervened; poor human nature! when you pinch it in in one place it bulges out in another, after the fashion of a lady's figure. Human nature has from the earliest time shown a liking for dirty stories; dirty stories have formed a substantial part of every literature (I employ the words ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... He knows human nature thoroughly, and he talks to his people of what they have been thinking of during the week, of trials that have perplexed them, and of joys which have blessed them. He takes the clerk and the merchant to task ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... in resentment of an affront; for good sense, as well as religion, is so utterly banished the world, that men glory in their very passions, and pursue trifles with the utmost vengeance, so little do they know that to forgive is the most arduous pitch human nature can arrive at. A coward has often fought, a coward has often conquered; but a coward never forgave." Steele also published a pamphlet, in which he gave a detailed account of the edict of Louis XIV., and the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... does," said Nitocris, remembering what had happened in the morning; "it's only one of the thousand unexplained puzzles of human nature. As you know, my father hates fighting in the physical sense with a hatred which is almost fanatical, and yet, when it comes to a battle of wits, he's like a schoolboy in a ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... kind, but that they were lamentably deficient in size. He began to see that here was the man not only great, but large; many-sided, of vast sympathies, who understood with equal intelligence, the human nature in an habitual drunkard, the ethics of a masterpiece of painting, and the financiering and operation of ten ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... is divided into five books. It is a vast repertory of the knowledge of the ancients relative to this art. Its doctrine is Pythagorean. The first book is divided into thirty-four chapters. In the first he develops the thought of Aristotle, that music is inherent in human nature. He there renders the text of a decree which the Ephori of Sparta rendered against Timotheus of Miletus, but which better critics have regarded as fictitious. The second chapter establishes that there are three sorts of music: the worldly, which is universal harmony; the ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... You got on the inside of things. You were found to have bought up securities that trebled in value over night. Those that decreased in value had been bought by people who were not Napoleons. That was the gist of it. A Napoleonic mind would divine the way. "Napoleon knew human nature like a book," said one of the inspired historians. That was all you needed to know. He resolved to ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... legion of honor, when the latter protested against a clause in the oath. He had said as much to other prelates whom he had just convoked to the Council. It is a serious case for absolute power when it enters into a struggle with the most noble sentiments of human nature. The Emperor Napoleon had come to that point when he regarded as his enemies freedom of thought and freedom of conscience amongst his subjects still suspected of independence, litterateurs ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... on that during all of a dummy hand, sitting low in his chair with his feet thrust far under the table. The show business was going to the bad. Why? Because nobody connected with it knew anything about human nature. He formulated a plan, compounded of liquor and real business acumen, of dressing a chorus, of suggesting the feminine form instead of showing it, of veiling it in chiffons of soft colours and sending a ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... State. For kindred arms and brotherly battalions and common standards,[375] and the manhood and the might of a single state in such numbers, were closing in battle, self-matched against self, an example of the blindness of human nature and its madness, under the influence of passion. For if they had now been satisfied quietly to govern and enjoy what they had got, there was the largest and the best portion of the earth and of the sea subject to them; and if they still wished to gratify their love of trophies and of triumphs, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... burned with the love of uniting Himself to man, it was necessary that He should cover Himself around with a body adapted to reception and conjunction. He therefore descended and assumed a human nature in pursuance of the order established by Him from the creation of the world. That is, He was to be conceived by a power produced from Himself; He was to be carried in the womb; He was to be born, and ...
— The Gist of Swedenborg • Emanuel Swedenborg

... I assure you all these little movements of nature don't affect you one bit when there is something. I understood them. I did not understand the sigh. That was not simple nature; there was meaning in it, feeling, the soul of a creature invisible. This is the thing that human nature trembles at,—a creature invisible, yet with sensations, feelings, a power somehow of expressing itself. I had not the same sense of unwillingness to turn my back upon the scene of the mystery which I had experienced in going to the stables; ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... given, with an appreciation which only it needed to do all its work; the keen delight of one seeking knowledge, who has never been helped and who has for the first time the right kind of help. Indeed, with the selfishness incident to human nature, she forgot all about Mr. Linden's intention to read uninterruptedly, and took without scruple or question, all the time he bestowed upon her. And it was not till some minutes after she had closed her books, that her low, grateful "You ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... from the private dictionary of Cornelius McAuliff) from the more or less arduous and routine and yet interest-holding duties of newspaper-man, Allison's relaxation and refreshment come in studies of human nature in all its mystifying aspects, whether in war or in peace; or in the sports—prize-fighting and baseball; or in the sciences; in politics; in the streets or in the home. Or they come from pleasure in the creation of essays ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

... Mr. Eberstein. "Better bad recitations than bad hearts. Though really there is no necessary connection between my premises and your conclusion. The Bible reckons 'emulations,' Mrs. Thayer, in the list of the worst things human nature knows, and does." ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... very fine and very human. Judas, as the treasurer of the little band, naturally felt indignant at the apparent wanton extravagance which led Mary Magdalene to pour ointment worth 300 pence upon the head of her master. There is real human nature and sound practical common sense in his reply to those who told him not to worry about the money, when he retorted, "Who is there to take care about it if I don't?" Judas never really from first to last meditates betraying his master to death. The ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead

... his vest pocket and glanced sideways at Clymer. The banker hardly noticed his uneasy movements as he sat regarding Helen McIntyre standing in the witness box. Although paler than usual, the girl's manner was quiet, but Clymer, a close student of human nature, decided she was keeping her composure by will power ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... human nature," says M. Louis Blanc, "for almost all our evils; the blame should be laid upon the vicious character of social institutions. Look around you: how many talents misplaced, and CONSEQUENTLY depraved! How ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... if God could not render him sinless, why did He take the trouble of creating man, whose nature was to become corrupt, and which, consequently, had to offend God? On the other side, if God Himself was not able to render human nature sinless, what right had He to punish men for not being sinless? It is but by the right of might. But the right of the strongest is violence; and violence is not suited to the most Just of Beings. God would be supremely unjust if He punished men for not having a portion of the Divine perfections, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... a lantern to convey you home to his own habitation. There is an old legend about a saint who was to choose one of the seven mortal sins, and he chose, as he thought, the least—drunkenness; but in that state he perpetrated all the other six sins. The human nature and the devilish nature mingle. This is the sixth glass; and after that all the germs of evil thrive in us, every one of them spreading with a rapidity and vigour that cause them to be like the mustard-seed in the Bible, 'which, indeed, is the least of all seeds; but when it is grown ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... given them: for as the Stomach is the first part which the Nourishment is received into; so, as that Nourishment is at first favourably receiv'd into the Stomach, so the Tone of the Stomach will ever remain afterwards, unless it could be so clear'd from the first impression by such a Tryal as Human Nature can hardly bear. I guess too, that from this Prejudice in the Stomach proceeds the Aversion which some People have to the Smell of Cheese; and if I may go a little farther this way, I suppose that the Dislike to Cats, and the Antipathy some People bear to ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

... for this, you will have your reward; for the style, though rugged and involved, is throughout, with the exception of the speeches of counsel, eloquent, and at times superb; and as for the matter, if your interest in human nature is keen, curious, almost professional—if nothing man, woman, or child has been, done, or suffered, or conceivably can be, do, or suffer, is without interest for you; if you are fond of analysis, and do not ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell

... of d'Artagnan the untamable, under the lash of the young King. What other novel has such epic variety and nobility of incident? often, if you will, impossible; often of the order of an Arabian story; and yet all based in human nature. For if you come to that, what novel has more human nature? not studied with the microscope, but seen largely, in plain daylight, with the natural eye? What novel has more good sense, and gaiety, and wit, and unflagging, admirable literary ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... copies of it were re-discovered, one of which has been recently translated by that eminent Irish scholar, Mr. Hennessy. Whether regarded from the religious or the philosophic point of view, few things can be more instructive than the picture which it delineates of human nature at a period of critical transition, and the dawning of the Religion of Peace upon a race barbaric, but far indeed from savage. That wild race regarded it doubtless as a notable cruelty when the new Faith discouraged an ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... the eighteenth century in Venice, who was then at the final stage of her moral death. And despite the denial of soul in these Venetians, there is no contempt, no facile "simplification" of a question whose roots lie deep in human nature, since even the animals and plants we cultivate into classes! The sadness is for the mutability of things; and among them, that lighthearted, brilliant way of life, which had so much of ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... plough, what seed to plant, how to space his rows, what fertilizers to use, and the like. If a selected acreage yielded a profitable crop which the farmer could sell at an increased price Dr. Knapp had sufficient faith in human nature to believe that that particular farmer would continue to operate his farm on the new method and that his neighbours, having this practical example of growing prosperity, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... disappeared from the scene, the political stage was left clear for the performance of the heroines. We are now about to see the women, almost by themselves, carry on the civil war, govern, intrigue, fight. A great experience for human nature, a fine historical opportunity for observing that gallant transfer of all power from the one sex to the other—the men lagging behind, led, directed, in the second or third ranks. But those women of rank, young, beautiful, brilliant, and for ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... they're here. So are they in Boston! And every place else! Why, the faults you find in this town are simply human nature, and never will ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... wide streets, enjoying their quiet beauty and regularity, and finding them, despite their empty, melancholy air, full of something that reminded of home. Coming from a land where there is a vast deal of length, breadth, and rectitude in streets, as well as human nature, they could not, of course, feel that wonder in the Mantuan avenues which inspired a Venetian ambassador, two centuries since, to write the Serenest Senate in praise of their marvelous extent and straightness; but they ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... night. He lives in a very strange house, in a stranger garden—the sort of place that no ordinary normal person could possibly live in. And I warn you that you will find nothing ordinary or normal in it. If you are interested in some of the unaccountable vagaries of human nature, ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming

... brought us upon a path of life which makes it inevitable that men will always talk about us, let us be on our guard, to the utmost of our means and ability, that no glaring fault may be alleged to have existed in us. And I am not now urging, what is perhaps difficult in human nature generally, and at our time of life especially, that you should change your disposition and suddenly pluck out a deeply-rooted habit, but I give you this hint: if you cannot completely avoid this failing, because your mind is surprised by anger before cool ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the question, 'What further is to be done with them? join themselves in opposition with those who are actuated by ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet

... his veins the blood of William the Silent, and became the father of our William III. Poor human nature is too easily envious, and some deny the reality, in fact, of the distinction, the grace, of Van Dyck's portrayed men and women. Nevertheless, Van Dyck's vision, guiding his brush, was as rare an endowment as envy is a common one, and has higher authority to show ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway

... most of the wants of mankind are supplied; to produce throughout society a chain of dependence which leads all classes to look to privileged associations for the means of speculation and extravagance; to nourish, in preference to the manly virtues that give dignity to human nature, a craving desire for luxurious enjoyment and sudden wealth, which renders those who seek them dependent on those who supply them; to substitute for republican simplicity and economical habits a sickly appetite for effeminate indulgence and an imitation ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren

... description of an Irish ejectment, "has produced something which never was, and never will be, seen in any part of the world." This criticism is ingenious and plausible, but it is unsound, for it happens to overlook one of the radical facts of human nature—the magnifying delight of the mind in what is long remembered and remote. What was it that the imagination of Goldsmith, in his life-long banishment, could not see when he looked back to the home of his childhood, and his early friends, and the sports ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... enough," returned Mr. Hamblin, with a shrug of his shoulders, "but a fellow doesn't quite relish having a girl thrust upon him. Aunt Marg is set upon my marrying her, and it's human nature, you know, never to want to do anything under compulsion, but to be inclined to do just what you know you must ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... struck me before this that Sir Adrian, with all his kindness of heart, takes but a dismal view of human nature and human destiny; that to him what spoils the face of this world is that strife of life—which to me is as the breath of my nostrils, the absence of which made my convent days so grey and hateful to look ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... Jesuit Vieyra's mission to Maranham is as humiliating to human nature, as his sincere exertions in the cause of the suffering Indians is creditable to himself; but neither his exertions, nor the royal authority, could baffle the selfish cruelty and avarice of the people of that captaincy; they broke out into ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... centaur, whom Virgil designates as Cacus. Further on, the travellers behold three culprits who are alternately men and writhing snakes, always, however, revealing more of the reptile than of the human nature ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... own case poor human nature may be allowed a few misgivings. I look upward and discern no sky, not even an unfathomable void, but only a black, impenetrable nothingness, as though heaven and all its lights were blotted from the system of the universe. It is as if Nature were dead and the world had put ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... political prisoners in itself, was a secondary feature of the case, for "if they were fairly and legally arrested, fairly and legally treated before trial—fairly and legally tried, that was the main matter. For the honor of human nature men would at first receive some statements with incredulity. Men ought to be slow to believe that such things could happen, and happen in a Christian country, the seat of almost the oldest European civilization." But those thus disposed in the beginning ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... any value for practice can be arrived at by direct experience. All true political science is, in one sense of the phrase, a priori, being deduced from the tendencies of things, tendencies known either through our general experience of human nature, or as the result of an analysis of the course of history, considered as a progressive evolution.—MILL, ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton

... that people do sympathise with illness," said the beautiful woman. "When we ourselves are well, we think suffering can't be so very great after all, and when we are ill we are quite sure no one else has to bear so much pain. Human nature is essentially selfish. It is a natural incident of living at all that we should estimate our own life as ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... or good For human nature's daily food, For transient sorrows, simple wiles; Praise, blame, ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various

... are maintained, in a manner almost perpetual, the provincials not being able to dispose of their subordinates with complete liberty, that oldtime strict observance which was planted in those provinces at their first erection has been greatly obscured. Human nature is easily inclined to what promotes liberty; and as St. Bernard teaches, the same ones who love retirement because of their austere training in the rigors of the order from childhood, when they come to taste the life that is not so well regulated, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various

... a Marchioness." The critic, indeed, saw through it all, but he gave his warnings in vain. "In vain critical reflection showed these figures to be merely masks; not characters, but personified characteristics; caricatures and distortions of human nature. The vividness of their presentation triumphed over reflection; their creator managed to communicate to the public his own unhesitating belief." What, however, is the public? Mr Lewes goes on to relate. "Give a child a wooden horse, with hair for mane and tail, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... very young alert within him, something of vague sentimentality that was like an echo from Byronic days. He felt over-shadowed, but not unpleasantly, by a dim and exquisite melancholy, in which he thought of nature and of human nature pathetically, linking them together; those singing voices with the stars, the women who leaned on balconies to listen with the sea that was murmuring below them, the fishermen upon that sea with the deep and marvellous sky ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... its revenge, and carried Taddeo too far. The difficult thing in human nature is to stay in the mean and avoid exaggeration. His methods of illustrating medical truths from many literary and philosophical sources often caused the kernel of observation to be hidden beneath a blanket of speculation or, at least, to be concealed to a great extent. ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... suggestions. She who had carried every force triumphantly with her, and quenched every opposition, bitter and determined though that had been, was now a thrall to be dragged almost by force in an unworthy train. It is evident that she felt the humiliation to the bottom of her heart. It is not for human nature to have the triumph alone: the humiliation, the overthrow, the chill and tragic shadow must follow. Jeanne had entered into that cloud when she offered the armour, that had been like a star in front of the battle, at the shrine of St. Denis.(2) Hers was ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... a hurry to think the worst of everybody, you see!" said Horace. "Now, do try to carry away with you into your seclusion a better opinion of human nature." ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... be. I laugh at the bigotry and prejudices of Spain; I abhor the cruelty and ferocity which have cast a stain of eternal infamy on her history; but I will say for the Spaniards that in their social intercourse no people in the world exhibit a juster feeling of what is due to the dignity of human nature, or better understand the behaviour which it behoves a man to adopt towards ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... to old age, and therefore reaped the whirlwind, receiving the just reward of her deeds. Catherine of Russia, meanwhile, instead of being beautiful and unfortunate, was only handsome and successful. Brand her as a disgrace to human nature. The morals and ways of the two were pretty much on a par, with these exceptions in Catherine's favour— that she had strong passions, Mary none; that she lived in outer darkness and practical heathendom, while Mary had the light shining all round her, and refused it deliberately ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... upon his jealousy, and tempted him by a forged letter, he cried, 'Long live David Rossi!' and died. Oh, it was wonderful. The memory of that moment will be with me always like the protecting and strengthening hand of God. I never knew until to-day what human nature is capable of. ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... its fulfilment would have meant a confession of sacrilege committed by her father and acquiesced in by herself: it would have meant also the establishment of a college beyond the sea, removed from the Founder's supervision and control. No one who knows human nature, or daughters, or Dorothy Wadham, can regard the story as more than an interesting fiction. And yet, is there no foundation for Wood's circumstantial narrative? Does the fact that the Foundress was presented as a Recusant mean nothing? ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson

... it had exhausted her. Though she had had the strength to triumph, at the moment, a partial and secret collapse was the price she had afterwards to pay. Father Arlworth, who had a subtle understanding of human nature, noticed that Domini was changed and slightly hardened by the tragedy she had known, and was not surprised or shocked. Nor did he attempt to force her character back into its former way of beauty. He knew that to do so would be dangerous, that Domini's nature required peace ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... genius is prophetic, inasmuch as it grasps general laws, universal in their range, and unvariable in their operation, the application of which to particular events constitutes prediction. The Hebrew prophets were sagacious observers of human nature, and made very shrewd calculations of the future progress of events by a careful induction of the invariable laws of nature from the history of the past. But there was nothing supernatural in that. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... opposite. That this is so has long been more or less a commonplace of ordinary conversation; that it is scientifically true, one time with another, when we take an extended range of cases, may, I think, be almost demonstrated by sure and certain warranty of human nature. ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... syntactical parsing? 3. How is the following long example parsed in Praxis XII? "A young man studious to know his duty, and honestly bent on doing it, will find himself led away from the sin or folly in which the multitude thoughtlessly indulge themselves; but, ah! poor fallen human nature! what conflicts are thy portion, when inclination and habit—a rebel and a traitor—exert their sway against ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... having become my wife; but I said nothing respecting our immense wealth, merely stating that I was possessed of a comfortable independency, as I wished to ascertain whether they were willing to receive her as a relative, on her own and her mother's account. I regret, for the sake of human nature, to say that the interview was eminently unsatisfactory; and I left their house with a mental resolve that my wife should never, with my consent, enter the doors of ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood

... should have come so soon,' she said, comprehending us both in her level gaze. 'Will you smoke, Mr. Benham? No? You haven't succumbed yet to all of the amiable weaknesses of human nature. They're very mild. Do change your mind. There! I knew ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... pathetic in human nature than its faculty of self-deception. Winding up the alarm clock (the night before) I meditate as to the exact time to elect for its disturbing buzz. If I set it at 6:30 that will give me plenty of time to shave and reach the station with leisure ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... knew there were demons who took note of my swoon, and who could have arrested the vibration at pleasure. Upon my recovery, too, I felt very—oh, inexpressibly sick and weak, as if through long inanition. Even amid the agonies of that period, the human nature craved food. With painful effort I outstretched my left arm as far as my bonds permitted, and took possession of the small remnant which had been spared me by the rats. As I put a portion of it within my lips, there rushed to my mind a half formed thought of joy—of hope. Yet ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... future bliss, or of avoiding future misery; so that the acquiring of languages, the making of tools, and labouring for money, which are all only the means to procure pleasures; and the praying to the Deity, as another means to procure happiness, are characteristic of human nature. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... hear the awful imprecations that father and son, in their impotent rage, called down from heaven upon each other's heads. It was the most shocking exhibition of depraved human nature that I had ever seen. And so I left the bar-room, glad to escape from its stifling ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur

... this disastrous phenomenon lay partly in the circumstances in which they were placed, partly in the inherent tendencies of human nature itself. The Norman nobles entered Ireland as independent adventurers, who, each for himself, carved out his fortune with his sword; and, unsupported as they were from home, or supported only at precarious intervals, divided from one another by large tracts of country, and surrounded by Irish ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... capable, leads us through the most important scenes of human life, and shews us that this stage of our being is full of 'vanity and vexation of spirit[1026].' To those who look no further than the present life, or who maintain that human nature has not fallen from the state in which it was created, the instruction of this sublime story will be of no avail. But they who think justly, and feel with strong sensibility, will listen with eagerness and admiration to its truth and wisdom. Voltaire's Candide, written to refute the system ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... been, compared with this reverend pile, which seems to stand in beautiful loneliness as his sole mausoleum! The solicitude about the grave, may be but the offspring of an overwrought sensibility; but human nature is made up of foibles and prejudices; and its best and tenderest affections are mingled with these factitious feelings. He who has sought renown about the world, and has reaped a full harvest of worldly ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... being able to tell the hour. At another, he would distinctly hear his mother, who was many miles off, calling him by his name. But this was not the worst. A deep melancholy took possession of him, and gave a dark tinge to all his views of human nature and of human destiny. Such wretchedness as he endured has driven many men to shoot themselves or drown themselves. But he was under no temptation to commit suicide. He was sick of life; but he was afraid ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... writer's typical error. A governing body might enact any laws, but they would not be obeyed unless consonant with human nature. ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... the other dramatists of the time, looked at the Puritans as objects of satire, laughing at them instead of gazing into them. They were doubtless grotesque enough in external appearance; but the poet of human nature should have penetrated through the appearance to the substance, and recognized in them, not merely the possibility of Cromwell, but of the ideal of character which Cromwell but imperfectly represented. You may say that Shakespeare's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... easier than the other sorts. I go by a man's eyes and voice, don't you know, and whether his family seems happy, and by what subjects he chooses—and avoids. Well, I was puzzled in the Dreyfus case. Not by the horrible things imputed both ways; I know (though it's not modern to say so) that human nature in the highest places is still capable of being Cenci or Borgia. No—, what puzzled me was the sincerity of both parties. I don't mean the political parties; the rank and file are always roughly ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... troublesome standard that a large portion of historical evidence is sifted. Consistency is no less pertinacious and exacting in its demands. In brief, to write a history, we must know more than mere facts. Human nature, viewed under an introduction of extended experience, is the best help to the criticism of human history. Historical characters can only be estimated by the standard which human experience, whether actual or traditionary, has furnished. To form correct views of individuals we must regard them ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope



Words linked to "Human nature" :   attribute



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com