Inspirational Quotes on Humanity

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feelings for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses ... for in him also Christ 'vere latitat' - the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.”

“This shame has nothing to do with He or She. It's the being mortal - how shall I say it? ... insufficient.”

“Alle Dinge müssen, der Mensch allein ist das Wesen, welches will.”

“Take from a man his freedom or his goods and you may have taken his innocence, almost his humanity, as well.”

“The serious writer was aware of a paradox at the heart of his art: his inner world, the place of the strongest stories, was infinite, but it was also embedded in – if this was possible! – an even more infinite universe of all things to write about. It was like seeing the Grand Canyon from outer space – a huge gorge that looked like a thin trickle, impossible to miss, hard to hit.”

“It's a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I'll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do! Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can't give a warm supper and a bed to poor, starving creatures, just because they are slaves, and have been abused and oppressed all their lives, poor things!" ... "Now, John, I don't know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow.”

“At least for a moment we all saw, I think, that the danger of pluralism is that it becomes factionalism, and that if factions grind their separate axes too vociferously, something mutual, precious, and human is in danger of being drowned out and lost.”

“We should not regard what a man is and what he deserves: but we should go higher – that it is God who has placed us in the world for such a purpose that we be united and joined together. He has impressed his image in us and has given us a common nature, which should incite us to providing one for the other. The man who wishes to exempt himself from providing for his neighbors should face himself and declare that he no longer wishes to be a man, for as long as we are human creatures we must contemplate as in a mirror our face in those who are poor, despised, exhausted, who groan under their burdens . .”

“Man is a vile creature!”

“The amazing aftermath of Birmingham, the sweeping Negro Revolution, revealed to people all over the land that there are no outsiders in all these fifty states of America. When a police dog buried his fangs in the ankle of a small child in Birmingham, he buried his fangs in the ankle of every American. The bell of man's inhumanity to man does not toll for any one man. It tolls for you, for me, for all of us.”

“Events cast their shadows ahead; before a harsh winter, wild animals grow thicker fur, and the beaver puts on a thicker layer of fat. What kind of times and what sort of tasks can lie ahead for a generation that must think so harshly, even at such a young age, in order to survive?”

“Sono proprio i piccoli particolari, di solito, a rovinare ogni cosa...”

“No man is an island entirely of itself. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”

“Jeżeli ludzkość bez wyjątku raz wyrzeknie się Boga (...), to sam przez się, bez ludożerstwa, upadnie cały stary światopogląd, przede wszystkim zaś, cała stara moralność, i nastąpi wszystko nowe. Ludzie zjednoczą się, by wziąć od życia wszystko, co ono dać może dla szczęścia i radości na jednym tylko świecie, na tym świecie. Człowiek wzniesie się do boskiej, tytanicznej dumy i zjawi się człowiek-bóg. Nieustannie pokonując przyrodę, już bez granic, wolą swą i nauką człowiek będzie odczuwał w tym rozkosz tak wzniosłą, że mu zastąpi ona całkowicie dawną nadzieję na niebieskie radości. Każdy pozna, że jest śmiertelny i nie licząc już na zmartwychwstanie, powita śmierć dumnie i spokojnie jak Bóg. Pojmie w dumie swojej, że nie ma co szemrać na to, że życie jest chwilką tylko i pokocha brata swego już bez żadnego wyrachowania na zapłatę. Miłość będzie wypełniała tylko krótki moment życia, lecz samo poczucie jej chwilowości wzmocni jej ogień nieskończenie silniej, niż dziś, gdy rozpływa się w nadziejach na miłość pozagrobową i nieskończoną...”

“Wherever there is animal worship there is human sacrifice.”

“He himself, Anthony went on to think, he himself had chosen to regard the whole process as either pointless or a practical joke. Yes, chosen. For it had been an act of the will. If it were all nonsense or a joke, then he was at liberty to read his books and exercise his talents for sarcastic comment; there was no reason why he shouldn't sleep with any presentable woman who was ready to sleep with him. If it weren't nonsense, if there was some significance, then he could no longer live irresponsibly. There were duties towards himself and others and the nature of things. Duties with whose fulfilment the sleeping and the indiscriminate reading and the habit of detached irony would interfere. He had chosen to think it nonsense, and nonsense for more than twenty years the thing had seemed to be – nonsense, in spite of occasional uncomfortable intimations that there might be a point, and that the point was precisely in what he had chosen to regard as the pointlessness, the practical joke.”

“Pytałem przed chwilą co to jest ojciec i zawołałem, że to słowo wielkie, miano drogocenne. Ale słowa trzeba, panowie, używać uczciwie (...) „ojcowie, nie rozgoryczajcie dzieci waszych”! Albowiem wypełnijmy najpierw sami wolę Chrystusową, a wtedy dopiero stawiajmy wymagania dzieciom naszym. Inaczej nie ojcami, ale wrogami dzieci naszych jesteśmy, one zaś nie dziećmi naszymi, ale wrogami, których samiśmy sobie uczynili! „Jaką miarką mierzycie, taką będzie wam odmierzone” – już nie ja to mówię, lecz Ewangelia – jakże więc obwiniać dzieci, że nam naszą miarką odmierzają? (...) ten, co zrodził, nie jest jeszcze ojcem – ojcem bowiem jest ten, co i zrodził, i zasłużył sobie na miano ojca.”

“- A necessidade de comer e beber é simplesmente o instinto de autoconservação! - Mas não acha que esse instinto de autopreservação por si só é importante? Ora, o instinto de autoconservação é a lei normal da humanidade! - Quem lhe disse isso? Que é uma lei, não há dúvida. Mas não é mais normal do que a lei de destruição, ou mesmo a de autodestruição. Acha que a autoconservação seja a única lei da espécie humana?”

“I can certainly imagine a man without hands, feet, or head, for it is only experience that teaches us that the head is more necessary than the feet. But I cannot imagine a man without thought; he would be a stone or an animal.”

“I used to feel spiritually inferior because I had not experienced the more spectacular manifestations of the Spirit and could not point to any bona fide “miracles” in my life. Increasingly, though, I have come to see that what I value may differ greatly from what God values. Jesus, often reluctant to perform miracles, considered it progress when he departed earth and entrusted the mission to his flawed disciples. Like a proud parent, God seems to take more delight as a spectator of the bumbling achievements of stripling children than in any self-display of omnipotence. From God’s perspective, if I may speculate, the great advance in human history may be what happened at Pentecost, which restored the direct correspondence of spirit to Spirit that had been lost in Eden. I want God to act in direct, impressive, irrefutable ways. God wants to “share power” with the likes of me, accomplishing his work through people, not despite them.”