Quotes to inspire and reflect

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.

Society is smoothed to that excess, / That manners hardly differ more than dress.

Manners maketh man. Yes, but they make woman still more.

The noblest work of God? Man. Who found it out? Man.

Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with man is Man.

The fish in the water is silent, the animal on the earth is noisy, the bird in the air is singing. / But Man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth and the music of the air.

I will confess that I have no more sense of what goes on in the mind of mankind than I have for the mind of an ant.

The mass of mankind is divided into two classes, the Sancho Panzas who have a sense for reality, but no ideals, and the Don Quixotes with a sense for ideals, but mad.

What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving

What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depository of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe!

A man has many parts, he is virtually everything, and you are free to select in him that part which pleases you.

Alas for this mad melancholy beast man! What phantasies invade it, what paroxysms of perversity, hysterical senselessness, and mental bestiality break out immediately, at the very slightest check on its being the beast of action.

For in fact what is man in nature? A Nothing in comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.

Man, in good earnest, is a marvelous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment.

Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler’s helmet. Stay inside or you perish.

Every man carries the entire form of human condition.

I have never seen greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly. He is like a watch of which the most that can be said is that its cosmetic effect is good.

Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.

Whatever profits man, that is the truth. In him all nature is comprehended, in all nature only he is created, and all nature only for him. He is the measure of all things, and his welfare is the sole and single criterion of truth.

i suppose the human race / is doing the best it can / but hells bells thats / only an explanation / its not an excuse.

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.

Among all creatures that breathe on earth and crawl on it / there is not anywhere a thing more dismal than man is.

It were no slight attainment could we merely fulfil what the nature of man implies.

Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.

The majority of mankind is lazyminded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith.

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 not only a contributary creature, but a total creature; he does not only make one, but he is all; he is not a piece of the world, but the world itself; and next to the glory of God, the reason why there is a world.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust.

Every people is a chosen people in its own mind. And it is rather amusing that their name for themselves usually means mankind.

Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals: so that, unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape—he is a shaper of the landscape.

Man is unique not because he does science, and he is unique not because he does art, but because science and art equally are expressions of his marvelous plasticity of mind.

Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, / And in that more lie all his hopes of good.

One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortunate than when they triumph.

When malice has reason on its side it becomes proud, and parades reason in all its splendour.

Malicious tongues spread their poison abroad and nothing here below is proof against them.

Man loves malice, but not against one-eyed men nor the unfortunate, but against the fortunate and proud.

The malicious have a dark happiness.

Malice often takes the garb of truth.

Man’s life is a warfare against the malice of men.

I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.

What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly from them.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet / Are of imagination all compact.

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

A body seriously out of equilibrium, either with itself or with its environment, perishes outright. Not so a mind. Madness and suffering can set themselves no limit.

Here’s an object more of dread / Than aught the grave contains— / A human form with reason fled, / While wretched life remains.

Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.