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Homo Sapiens Quotes and Quotations
 I am mortal, born to love and to suffer.  I am a man; nothing human is alien to me. - Terence Few men are of one plain, decided colour, most are mixed, shaded, and blended; and vary as much, from different situations as changeable silks do from different lights. I often marvel how it is that though each man loves himself beyond all else, he should yet value his own opinion of himself less than that of others. It is more comfortable to feel that we are a slight improvement on a monkey than such a fallin' off fr'm th' angels. It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. Man is at the bottom an animal, midway, a citizen, and at the top, divine. But the climate of this world is such that few ripen at the top. Man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start. Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. Man partly is and wholly hopes to be. Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction. Mankind is an unco squad And muckle he may grieve thee. Many people believe they are attracted by God, or by Nature when they are only repelled by Man. Most human beings have an absolute and infinite capacity for taking things for granted. The cultivated man, wise to know and bold to perform, is the end to which nature works. The middle class prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire. The question is this: Is man an ape or an angel? I, my lords, am on the side of the angels. There are 193 living species of monkeys and apes. 192 of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape, self-named Homo Sapiens. We fancy men are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history. We should expect the best and the worst from mankind, as from the weather. Whosoever would be a man must be a non-conformist. Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself: and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as a mere means for some external purpose. The race of man, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity. Men are cruel, but man is kind. In this world, a man must either be anvil or hammer. I believe I've found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us. A human being isn't an orchid, he must draw something from the soil he grows in. He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again. I am a member of the rabble in good standing. The strongest human instinct is to impart information, the second strongest is to resist it. Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody. God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man. Darwinian Man, though well-behaved, At best is only a monkey shaved! Each man is his own absolute lawgiver and dispenser of glory or gloom to himself, the maker of his life, his reward, his punishment. Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied. Most people in action are not worth very much; and yet every human being is an unprecedented miracle. People are too durable, that's their main trouble. They can do too much to themselves, they last too long. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. A man is a kind of inverted thermometer, the bulb uppermost, and the column of self-valuation is all the time going up and down. To be reborn is a constantly recurring human need. Man's most valuable trait Is a judicious sense of what not to believe. The natural man has only two primal passions: to get and to beget. A humanist is anyone who rejects the attempt to describe or account for man wholly on the basis of physics, chemistry or animal behaviour. Man is a wanting animal - as soon as one of his needs is satisfied, another appears in its place. This process is unending. It continues from birth to death. The forgotten man. He is the clean, quiet, virtuous domestic citizen who pays his debts and his taxes and is never heard of outside his little circle. ... He works, he votes, generally he prays, but his chief business in life is to pay. Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires, man is a fallen god who remembers heaven. Man is a make-believe animal - he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part. Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither; ripeness is all. Every man in the world is better than someolne else and not as good as someone else. The voice is a second signature. It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility. Know then thyself, presume not God to scan: The proper study of mankind is man. Man, an animal that makes bargains. Man is a reasoning, rather than a reasonable animal. Man will ever stand in need of man. We are members one of another. - Bible Man is only a reed, the weakest thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they might have been. To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think What Man has made of Man. Admire, exult, despise, laugh, weep - for here There is such matter for all feelings: - Man! Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear. The dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its meaningless-ness. If heaven made him, earth can find some use for him. Everything in space obeys the laws of physics. If you know these laws, and obey them, space will treat you kindly. And don't tell me man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go - and he'll do plenty well when he gets there. An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: 'There is very little difference between one man and another, but what there is is very important.' One of the laws of paleontology is that an animal which must protect itself with thick armour is degenerate. It is usually a sign that the species is on the road to extinction. The Family of Man is more than three billion strong. It lives in more than one hundred nations. Most of its members are not white. Most of them are not Christians. Most of them know nothing about free enterprise, or due process of law, or the Australian ballot. Man is as full of potentiality as he is of impotence. That man is an aggressive creature will hardly be disputed. With the exception of certain rodents, no other vertebrate habitually destroys members of its own species. Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again. Man is a gaming animal. He must be always trying to get the better in something or other. Man makes holy what he believes, as he makes beautiful what he loves. Man is an abyss, and I turn giddy when I look down into it. There is a secret person undamaged in every individual. We are governed not by armies and police but by ideas. For seasons and seasons and seasons all our movement has been going against our self, a journey into our killer's desire. 
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