Quotes & Sayings About Every Human Life

If every human being disappeared off the face of the earth in an instant, the earth would still keep spinning and the planet would develop new life forms. — Graham Nash

I want to see the king," I said, after explaining who I was.
"Wonderful," said the ancient Nkumai who sat on a cushion near the corner pole of the house. "I'm glad for you."
That was all, and apparently he meant to say no more. "Why are you so glad?" I asked.
"Because it's good for every human being to have an unfulfilled wish. It makes all of life so poignant. — Orson Scott Card

The child, who is decked with prince's robes and who has jewelled chains round his neck loses all pleasure in his play; his dress hampers him at every step. In fear that it may be frayed, or stained with dust he keeps himself from the world, and is afraid even to move. Mother, it is no gain, thy bondage of finery, if it keep one shut off from the healthful dust of the earth, if it rob one of the right of entrance to the great fair of common human life. — Rabindranath Tagore

Faith in the resurrection of Jesus says that there is a future for every human being; the cry for unending life which is a part of the person is indeed answered ... God exists: that is the real message of Easter. Anyone who even begins to grasp what this means also knows what it means to be redeemed. — Pope Benedict XVI

It is an inevitability that masquerades as a decision. That is the way of a drunkard. He grants himself the dignity of choice, as if there is another option. But then is there really any choice in the world? Could it be that every human action is merely an inevitability masquerading as a human decision, life granting dignity to its addicts through the delusion of choice? — Manu Joseph

I know that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without distrubing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame.
I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it, neither has any other human brain. But I do know that in back of it is a power that made it, that power alone can tell, and if there is no power, then it is an infinite chance which man cannot solve. — Marianne Wiggins

You cannot resist something to which you grant no reality. The act of resisting a thing is the act of granting it life. When you resist an energy, you place it there. The more you resist, the more you make it real-whatever it is you are resisting." "Every human being is as special as every other human being who has ever lived, lives now, or every will live. You are all meesengers. Every one of you. You are carrying a message to life about life every day. Every hour. Every moment. — Neale Donald Walsch

Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture. — William Blackstone

So who is God? No one can finally say. That is not within human competence. All we can ever say is how we believe we have experienced God, doing our best to dispel our human delusions. Let me try to do just that. I experience God as the source of life calling me to live fully and thus to respect life in every form as embodying the holy. — John Shelby Spong

We have been living amidst one of the great revolutions of human history, and we hardly know it: the penetration of the State into every aspect of human life and society. Some people regard this as good and "progressive," others regard it as tyrannical; but either way, it's a fact, a transformation as great as, say, the Industrial Revolution. Absolutely nothing is now beyond the scope of State power. — Joseph Sobran

It is not sufficient to live, there must be a destiny that does not have to wait for death. It is therefore
justifiable to say that man has an idea of a better world than this. But better does not mean different, it
means unified. This passion which lifts the mind above the commonplaces of a dispersed world, from
which it nevertheless cannot free itself, is the passion for unity. It does not result in mediocre efforts to
escape, however, but in the most obstinate demands. Religion or crime, every human endeavor in fact,
finally obeys this unreasonable desire and claims to give life a form it does not have. The same impulse,
which can lead to the adoration of the heavens or the destruction of man, also leads to creative literature,
which derives its serious content from this source. — Albert Camus

Rhythmic motion has become the carrier and creator of almost every ecstatic mood of any significance in human life. — Curt Sachs

There are certain things which are human nature," he asserted with an owl-like look, "which always have been and always will be, which can't be changed."
Amory looked from the small man to the big man helplessly. "Listen to that! That's what makes me discouraged with progress. Listen to that! I can name offhand over one hundred natural phenomena that have been changed by the will of man
a hundred instincts in man that have been wiped out or are now held in check by civilization. What this man here just said has been for thousands of years the last refuge of the associated mutton-heads of the world. It negates the efforts of every scientist, statesman, moralist, reformer, doctor, and philosopher that ever gave his life to humanity's service. It's a flat impeachment of all that's worth while in human nature. Every person over twenty-five years old who makes that statement in cold blood ought to be deprived of the franchise. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The life of every man is a way to himself, an attempt at a way, the suggestion of a path. No man has ever been utterly himself, yet every man strives to be so, the dull, the intelligent, each one as best he can. Each man to the end of his days carries round with him vestiges of his birth - the slime and egg-shells of the primeval world. There are many who never become humans; they remain frogs, lizards, ants. Many men are human being above and fish below. Yet each one represents an attempt on the part of nature to create a human being. — Hermann Hesse

Every human life is precious in God's sight and no effort should be spared in the attempt to promote throughout the world a genuine respect for the inalienable rights and dignity of individuals and peoples everywhere. — Pope Benedict XVI

Whether the result of wear, tear, and exhaustion of resources or whether genetically programmed, all life has a finite span and each species has its own particular longevity. For human beings, this would appear to be approximately 100 to 110 years. This means that even were it possible to prevent or cure every disease that carries people off before the ravages of senescence do, virtually no one would live beyond a century or a bit more. — Sherwin B. Nuland

It seems to me that the whole of human life can be summed up in the one statement that man only exists for the purpose of proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not an organ. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

John 3:6, Jesus says, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." The flesh does have a kind of life. Every human being is living flesh. But not every human being is living spirit. To be a living spirit, or to have spiritual life, Jesus says, we must be "born of the Spirit. — John Piper

This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You've got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. This is no time for anything else than the best that you've got. — Toni Morrison

Whatever their conscious motives, these men cannot know why they are as they are. As sickening as I find their behavior, I have to admit that if I were to trade places with one of these men, atom for atom, I would be him: There is no extra part of me that could decide to see the world differently or to resist the impulse to victimize other people. Even if you believe that every human being harbors an immortal soul, the problem of responsibility remains: I cannot take credit for the fact that I do not have the soul of psychopath. If I had truly been in Komisarjevsky's shoes on July 23,2007 - that is, if I had his genes and life experience and identical brain (or soul) in an identical state - I would have acted exactly as he did. There is simply no intellectually respectable position from which to deny this. — Sam Harris

I do not believe that Mr. Jefferson ever hated me. On the contrary, I believe he always like me: but he detested Hamilton and by whole administration. Then he wished to be President of the United States, and I stood in his way. So he did everything that he could to pull me down. But if I should quarral with him for that, I might quarrel with every man I have had anything to do with in life. This is human nature ... I forgive all my enemies and hope they may find mercy in Heaven. Mr. Jefferson and I have grown old and retired from public life. So we are upon our ancient terms of goodwill. — John Adams

It has always been a favorite idea of mine, that there is so much of the human in every man, that the life of any one individual, however obscure, if really and vividly perceived in all its aspirations, struggles, failures, and successes, would command the interest of all others. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

In every aspect of life, purity and holiness, cleanliness and refinement, exalt the human condition ... Even in the physical realm, cleanliness will conduce to spirituality. — Abdu'l- Baha

The secret of a full life is to live and relate to others as if they might not be there tomorrow, as if you might not be there tomorrow. It eliminates the vice of procrastination, the sin of postponement, failed communications, failed communions. This thought has made me more and more attentive to all encounters. meetings, introductions, which might contain the seed of depth that might be carelessly overlooked. This feeling has become a rarity, and rarer every day now that we have reached a hastier and more superficial rhythm, now that we believe we are in touch with a greater amount of people, more people, more countries. This is the illusion which might cheat us of being in touch deeply with the one breathing next to us. The dangerous time when mechanical voices, radios, telephones, take the place of human intimacies, and the concept of being in touch with millions brings a greater and greater poverty in intimacy and human vision. — Anais Nin

If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling. Even the idea of being man or woman, or even human should be discarded. The ocean of life contains all, not only humans. So, first of all abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such or so-and-so, this or that. Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now, you need absolutely nothing. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

There are very few people who have committed more to the pro-life discourse than Rob has. He's spent time in jail. He has really lived it. He has committed everything he's had to it. If in fact he believes that every human life was sacred, I knew that if he had his conscious awakened, I knew he wouldn't be able to close his eyes to it. — Abigail Disney

IT SEEMS DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE, but there was once a time when human beings did not feel the need to share their every waking moment with hundreds of millions, even billions, of complete and utter strangers. If one went to a shopping mall to purchase an article of clothing, one did not post minute-by-minute details on a social networking site; and if one made a fool of oneself at a party, one did not leave a photographic record of the sorry episode in a digital scrapbook that would survive for all eternity. But now, in the era of lost inhibition, it seemed no detail of life was too mundane or humiliating to share. In the online age, it was more important to live out loud than to live with dignity. Internet followers were more treasured than flesh-and-blood friends, for they held the illusive promise of celebrity, even immortality. Were Descartes alive today, he might have written: I tweet, therefore I am. — Daniel Silva

We are beginning to shift into life code. And in the process of shifting into life code, every life form on this planet is coded in a double helix with a sugar phosphate backbone. And that codes whether you become a bacteria, an orange, a lemon, a Lemur, a Cow, a sheep, a human being, a politician, any one of these things is all coded in this four-letter code. — Juan Enriquez

My dear friends, God's creation is one and it is good. The concerns for nonviolence, sustainable development, justice and peace, and care for our environment are of vital importance for humanity. They cannot, however, be understood apart from a profound reflection on the innate dignity of every human life from conception to natural death: a dignity conferred by God himself and thus inviolable. — Pope Benedict XVI

Happy people don't fight for the sake of fighting.Happy people don't hurt each other.Sadness must be inside every human being.That made it lighter to bear the burden of a less than fulfilled life. — K.J. Kilton

However global I strove to become in my thinking over the past twenty years, my sons kept me rooted to an utterly pedestrian view,intimately involved with the most inspiring and fractious passages in human development. However unconsciously by now, motherhood informs every thought I have, influencing everything I do. More than any other part of my life, being a mother taught me what it means to be human. — Mary Blakely

He that would travel for the entertainment of others, should remember that the great object of remark is human life. Every nation has something peculiar in its manufactures, its works of genius, its medicines, its agriculture, its customs, and its policy. He only is a useful traveller, who brings home something by which his country might be benefitted; who procures some supply of want, or some mitigation of evil, which may enable his readers to compare their condition with that of others, to improve it whenever it is worse, and whenever it is better to enjoy it. — Samuel Johnson

We shall not weary, we shall not rest, as we stand guard at the entrance gates and the exit gates of life, and at every step along way of life, bearing witness in word and deed to the dignity of the human person-of every human person ... — Richard John Neuhaus

Eight hours daily labour is enough for any human being, and under proper arrangements sufficient to afford an ample supply of food, raiment and shelter, or the necessaries and comforts of life, and for the remainder of his time, every person is entitled to education, recreation and sleep. — Robert Owen

Prison is designed to break one's spirit and destroy one's resolve. To do this, the authorities attempt to exploit every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality
all with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are. — Nelson Mandela

The Arts and Sciences, essential to the prosperity of the State and to the ornament of human life, have a primary claim to the encouragement of every lover of his country and mankind. — George Washington

The limbic connectedness of a working psychotherapy requires uncommon courage. A patient asks to surrender the life he knows and to enter and emotional world he has never seen; he offers himself up to be changed in ways he can't possibly envision. As his assurance of successful transmutation he has only the gossamer of faith. At the journey's end, he will no longer be who he was, and his guide is someone he has every reason to mistrust ... only human love keeps this from being the act of two madmen. (190) — Thomas Lewis

Everyone's looking for the perfect teacher, but although their teachings might be divine, teachers are all too human, and that's something people find all too hard to accept. Don't confuse the teacher with the lesson, the ritual with the ecstasy, the transmitter of the symbol with the symbol itself. The Tradition is linked to our encounter with the forces of life and not with the people who bring this about. But we are weak: we ask the Mother to send us guides, and all she sends are signs to the road we need to follow.
Pity those who seek for shepherds, instead of longing for freedom! An encounter with superior energy is open to anyone but remains far from those who shift responsibility onto others. Our time on earth is sacred and we should celebrate every moment. — Paulo Coelho

The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth. — Harry Emerson Fosdick

Opera is the most complete art form. It includes drama, acting, technology (lighting), art (the sets), dance, and the epitome of the human voices. But mostly, go for the glorious music. The arts are crucial to the life of every community. — Karen DeCrow

When I was in Kansas City everything was going well for me. My marriage was good and I was very successful in baseball but something was missing in my life. That something was Christ. Every human being is born with a little defect in his heart. That defect is a hole in the heart that can only be filled by Jesus Christ. — Carlos Beltran

With shrieks of adoration it flung itself on human breasts, 'to crush you, to suck your life away. I cannot drag my own weight over the crust of the earth so you must carry me on your back so that in time you will be crippled with my weight.' These words are in every heart in the mating season. — Leonora Carrington

The unavoidable has touched the life of every human being on the face of the earth. Some have rebounded, others have given up
but all of us have felt the wings of tragedy brushing against us. — Paulo Coelho

There is good and there is bad in every human heart, and it is the struggle of life to conquer the bad with the good. — Susan Glaspell

Christ does not fulfill the human element, but he certainly fulfills every other need in your life. As far as I'm concerned, there's no better love affair. — Gloria Gaynor

We need others to bring us back into the comity of human life. This appears to have been the final lesson for me - to appreciate someone's embrace not as forgiveness or as an amicable judgment but as an acknowledgment that from time to time private life becomes brutally hard for every one of us, and that without one another, without some sort of community, the nightmare is prone to lurk, waiting for an opening. — John Jeremiah Sullivan

The misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who's confronted with it. — Joss Whedon

We must be educated in inner human modesty, so we can recognize that we are not, even for a moment, complete as human beings. Instead, we continue to develop from birth until death. We must recognize that every day of life has a special value, that it is not without purpose that we must learn to live through our thirties right after we have just gone through our twenties. We need to learn that each new day and each new year offers continual revelation. — Rudolf Steiner

Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we're a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that's our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase. — Michael Crichton

Another basic characteristic of liberalism which constitutes a formidable obstacle to an oppressed group's liberation is its conception of human nature. If selfishness, aggressiveness, the drive to conquer and dominate, really are among defining human traits, as every liberal philosopher since Locke tries to convince us, the oppression in civil society - i.e. in the social sphere not regulated by the state - is a fact of life, and the basic civil relationship between a man and a women will always remain a battlefield. Woman, being less aggressive, is then either the less human of the two and doomed to subjugation, or else she must get more power-hungry herself and try to dominate man. Liberation for both is not feasible. — Mihailo Markovic

Religion is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who can subject you to total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life, before you're born and, even worse and where the real fun begins, after you're dead. A celestial North Korea. Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate? I've been to North Korea. It has a dead man as its president, Kim Jong-Il is only head of the party and head of the army. He's not head of the state. That office belongs to his deceased father, Kim Il-Sung. It's a necrocracy, a thanatocracy. It's one short of a trinity I might add. The son is the reincarnation of the father. It is the most revolting and utter and absolute and heartless tyranny the human species has ever evolved. But at least you can f#$%ing die and leave North Korea! — Christopher Hitchens

Nikolushka and his upbringing, Andre, and religion were Princess Marya's comforts and joys; but, besides that, since every human being needs his personal hope, Princess Marya had in the deepest recesses of her soul a hidden dream and hope, which provided the main comfort of her life. — Leo Tolstoy

People crave what they have always craved: to be known and loved, to belong somewhere. Community is such a basic human need. It helps us weather virtually every storm. If Jesus' basic marching orders were 1.) to love God and 2.) to love people, then the fruit of that obedience includes being loved by God and loved by people. We give and get here. According to Jesus, the love of God and people is the substance of life. — Jen Hatmaker

Every man is sensitive. Some cover it up with brutality, others with cowardice and vanity, but a small few wear it bravely like armor — Solange Nicole

Every human being is tried this way in the active service of expectancy. Now comes the fulfillment and relieves him, but soon he is again placed on reconnaissance for expectancy; then he is
again relieved, but as long as there is any future for him, he has not yet finished his service. And while human life goes on this way in very diverse expectancy, expecting very different
things according to different times and occasions and in different frames of mind, all life is again one nightwatch of expectancy. — Soren Kierkegaard

I'm pro-life. I'll do all I can to see every baby is created with a future and potential. The legislature should do all it can to protect human life. — Sarah Palin

Most people believe, more or less, that the value of a human life is the same, irrespective of where on the planet it happens to find itself. But, of course, not every life has the same value for us. — Julian Baggini

Ways that God's army will not be like a human army: 1) It will fight to give life, not take it. 2) It will fight to free people, not conquer them. 3) Its victory is not the destruction of those controlled by the enemy, but rather the tearing down of strongholds that are keeping them in bondage so as to set them free. 4) Its weapons are not carnal, but spiritual. 5) The battles, objectives, strategies, and tactics will be spiritual, not physical. The above is corroborated in a number of Scriptures, but we will review just a few, beginning with II Corinthians 10:3-6: For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled (NKJV). — Rick Joyner

There's something inherent in human nature that has us constructing narratives to explain a world that is otherwise chaotic and opaque. Life is little more than a series of overlapping stories about who we are, where we came from, and how we struggle to survive. What we call news isn't news at all: wars, murders, famines, plagues - death in all its forms. It's folly to assign meaning to every chance event, yet we do it all the time. — Sue Grafton

If it turns out that physical death truly results in the absolute cessation of consciousness, then it would seem to me that in the grand truth of things, every human who has ever lived, who has not committed every minute of their lives toward an effort in finding a cure for mortality, has died as an utter and miserable failure. — Derek R. Audette

Every human life had its pattern that had to be worked out slowly to its ultimate conclusion. — Irving Stone

Not every story has a happy ending, ... but the discoveries of science, the teachings of the heart, and the revelations of the soul all assure us that no human being is ever beyond redemption. The possibility of renewal exists so long as life exists. How to support that possibility in others and in ourselves is the ultimate question. — Gabor Mate

All life is created in love, and thus in the depths of every human being lies a good heart. Some have lost their path from this love, so it up to us to show them the way. — Julia Butterfly Hill

No prophet or apostle has lived a celibate life is what I'd like to tell her. No one who's ever told me celibacy is a viable option has ever been celibate. They don't even use the word. They say 'abstinent,' which implies there will be an end. They don't consider what my life will be like, if I never marry. Which is likely, given who I am, and the ways I'm different. People stand at the pulpit, or they come to my house, and tell me not to need what every human needs. Afterward, they go home and undress. They lie down next to the person they love most, or once did. — Nicole Hardy

Every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The extreme inequality of our ways of life, the excess of idleness among some and the excess of toil among others, the ease of stimulating and gratifying our appetites and our senses, the over-elaborate foods of the rich, which inflame and overwhelm them with indigestion, the bad food of the poor, which they often go withotu altogether, so hat they over-eat greedily when they have the opportunity; those late nights, excesses of all kinds, immoderate transports of every passion, fatigue, exhaustion of mind, the innumerable sorrows and anxieties that people in all classes suffer, and by which the human soul is constantly tormented: these are the fatal proofs that most of our ills are of our own making, and that we might have avoided nearly all of them if only we had adhered to the simple, unchanging and solitary way of life that nature ordained for us. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The love of husband and wife, which is creative of new human life, is a marvellously personal sharing in the creative love of God who brings into being the eternal soul that comes to every human being with the gift of human life. — Vincent Nichols

That perhaps is your task
to find the relation between things that seem incompatible yet have a mysterious affinity, to absorb every experience that comes your way fearlessly and saturate it completely so that your poem is a whole, not a fragment; to re-think human life into poetry and so give us tragedy again and comedy by means of characters not spun out at length in the novelist's way, but condensed and synthesized in the poet's way
that is what we look to you to do now. — Virginia Woolf

Every stage of human life, except the last, is marked out by certain and defined limits; old age alone has no precise and determinate boundary. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The poor Geordies are in the process of being rebuffed by every sentient human being whose ambition in life is more than simply to pocket six million quid for having been a failure and run for the hills. They want beautiful, flowing football and tangible success, at St James' Park. Fine. I, meanwhile, want Jessica Alba and the Nobel prize for literature. I make my prospects slightly more realistic. — Rod Liddle

Human, you are a machine, an organism, an animal, a primate, an artist, an athlete, a thinker, a sponge, a spirit, a comedian, a connoisseur, a cycle of breath in and breath out, an inventor, an expressor, an orator, a lover, an explorer, a creator, evolved. Your mind paints the flowers and the sky using the mind's eye as a paintbrush and light as paint. Splashing life across the blank canvas of reality. That's what you do. Every moment of every day. — Laren Grey Umphlett

Nonviolence is a way of life, where the task is to awaken the underlying goodness of every human being. — Amit Ray

I think in the heart of every human being there burns an ember of hope that warmly entices us to believe everything will eventually come together into one perfect day, and that potentially the hours in this day will stretch on indefinitely. And so we live our lives in hopeful anticipation, dreaming and praying to reach this wondrous day, while in the process we miss out on the anxious affair that life truly is. Life is not perfection; it is everything else. We must taste and experience heartaches and trials in order to feel the genuine joy that comes from enduring them well. We then move on, wiser and more capable of charity - this being pure love and the reason for life's trials altogether. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Success in L.A. is completely arbitrary. One day you're the brilliant genius of life, the next day people act like there's a bad smell when you approach. Lots of expensive, late-model cars are offered in the L.A. Times every day by people who have suddenly begun to smell bad. The stakes are just too high for human dignity. — Cynthia Heimel

Let the Common School be expanded to its capabilities, let it be worked with the efficiency of which it is susceptible, and nine tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged; men would walk more safely by day; every pillow would be more inviolate by night; property, life, and character held by a stronger tenure; all rational hopes respecting the future brightened. — Horace Mann

He thought about science, about faith, about man. He thought about how every culture, in every country, in every time, had always shared one thing. We all had the Creator. We used different names, different faces, and different prayers, but God was the universal constant for man. God was the symbol we all shared ... the symbol of all the mysteries of life that we could not understand. The ancients had praised God as a symbol of our limitless human potential, — Dan Brown

Self-denial is a necessary aspect of a Christian life; that the cross is central to human understanding; and that, without the atonement, every one of us would stand forever in the role of Judas. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest for sexual love - is well known and well charted, its vagaries form the staple of music and literature, it is socially accepted and celebrated. The second - the story of our quest for love from the world - is a more secret and shameful tale. If mentioned, it tends to be in caustic, mocking terms, as something of interest chiefly to envious or deficient souls, or else the drive for status is interpreted in an economic sense alone. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first, it is no less complicated, important or universal, and its setbacks are no less painful. There is heartbreak here too. — Alain De Botton

The light of Christ illuminates the laboratory, his speech is the fount of communication, he makes possible the study of humans in all their interactions, he is the source of all life, he provides the wherewithal for every achievement of human civilization, he is the telos of all that is beautiful. He is, among his many other titles, the Christ of the academic road. — Mark Noll

You're only human. You don't have to have it together every minute of the day. — Anne Hathaway

A major theme for Bonhoeffer was that every Christian must be "fully human" by bringing God into his whole life, not merely into some "spiritual" realm. To be an ethereal figure who merely talked about God, but somehow refused to get his hands dirty in the real world in which God had placed him, was bad theology. Through Christ, God had shown that he meant us to be in this world and to obey him with our actions in his word. So Bonhoeffer would get his hands dirty, not because he had grown impatient, but because God was speaking to him about further steps of obedience. — Eric Metaxas

There is a vital lesson to be learned here, a truth our society must not lose sight of, and that is the sanctity of every human life and the dignity of every individual. Increasingly, in a world that seeks to establish its own knowledge and values without God, we find our concept of humanity falling through the cracks. If, as our children are so often taught, we are nothing but a cosmic accident that arose for no reason out of primordial slime, and that the stronger among us are necessarily the better among us, then where does love fit in, or kindness to those in need, or simply going out of our way to lend a hand to a fellow human being? — Frank E. Peretti

In every artist's life, there comes a person who lifts the
curtain on creativity. It is the closest you come to seeing
me again.
The first time, when you emerge from the womb, I am a
brilliant color in the rainbow of human talents from which
you choose. Later, when a special someone lifts the curtain,
you feel that chosen talent stirring inside you, a bursting
passion to sing, paint, dance, bang on drums. And you are never the same. — Mitch Albom

There are species on this planet we've never seen. They live in lands and seas that no human has ever explored, and they are struggling to survive in a world unknown to us...We destroy their homes. And then they are gone, before we even have a chance to meet them.
Every species on this planet tells a story, an evolutionary novel packed with generations upon generations of knowledge. Letting those species disappear is like setting fire to every library on earth...the key to understanding life itself- is right here: millions of years of trial and error, data we can never even hope to accrue on our own...The only way we will ever learn what animals have to teach us about ourselves- about life- is if we keep them around. — Christie Wilcox

No matter what your background, no matter how low your station in life, there must be no limit on your ability to reach for the stars, to go as far as your God-given talents will take you. Trust the people; believe every human being is capable of greatness, capable of self-government ... only when people are free to worship, create, and build, only when they are given a personal stake in deciding their destiny and benefiting from their own risks, only then do societies become dynamic, prosperous, progressive, and free. — Ronald Reagan

All philosophic propositions, every attempt to think including all acts of oral or written articulation of an argument and metaphorically expressed ideas, are subject to the dynamics and limitations of human language. The spoken thought is only part of any philosophic message; the other part is unsaid because it is unsayable. The crux of any philosophic proposition reverberates in the echo of silence, the thought that lies in-between the lines. — Kilroy J. Oldster

We as human being do dream & do expect a lot for what we are not entitled but there comes a phase when we get what we have never expected or dreamt of ... So, Accept every little thing that life offers cause might be this is what we deserve ... — Anonymous

The swing between confronting the dangerous or brutal and the beautiful or the kind is one of the elements of being human that I have battled with all my life. That mixture of love and savagery is there in every important relationship in our lives: with parents, siblings, lovers, our closest friends. I have always wanted to be faithful to that truth. — Christos Tsiolkas

This was Shakespeare's form; who walked in every path of human life, felt every passion; and to all mankind doth now, will ever, that experience yield which his own genius only could acquire. — Mark Akenside

Picture a bird perched on a thin branch, she [Miss Saeki] says. 'The branch sways in the wind, and each time this happens the bird's field of vision shifts. You know what I mean?'
I nod.
'When that happens, how do you think the bird adjusts?'
I shake my head. 'I don't know.'
'It bobs its head up and down, making up for the sway of the branch. Take a good look at birds the next time it's windy. I spend a lot of time looking out that window. Don't you think that kind of life would be tiresome? Always shifting your head every time the branch you're on sways?'
'I do.'
'Birds are used to it. It comes naturally to them. They don't have to think about it, they just do it. So it's not as tiring as we imagine. But I'm a human being, not a bird, so sometimes it does get tiring. — Haruki Murakami

I am the cockroach, I am my leg, I am my hair, I am the section of brightest light on the wall plaster - I am every Hellish piece of myself - life is so pervasive in me that if they divide me in pieces like a lizard, the pieces will keep on shaking and writhing. I am the silence etched on a wall, and the most ancient butterfly flutters in and looks at me: just the same as always. From birth to death is what I call human in myself, and I shall never actually die. But this is not eternity, it is condemnation.
How opulent this silence is. It is the accumulation of centuries. It is the silence of the cockroach looking. The world looks at itself in me. Everything looks at everything, everything experiences the other; in this desert things know things. — Clarice Lispector

A newly born genre never supplants or replaces any already existing genres. Each new genre merely supplements the old ones, merely widens the circle of already existing genres. For every genre has its own predominant sphere of existence, in which it is irreplaceable. Thus the appearance of the polyphonic novel does not nullify or in any way restrict the further productive development of monologic forms of the novel (biographical, historical, the novel of everyday life, the novel-epic, etc.), for there will always continue to exist and expand those spheres of existence, of man and nature, which require precisely objectified and finalizing, that is monological, forms of artistic cognition. But again we repeat: the thinking human consciousness and the dialogic sphere in which this consciousness exists, in all its depth and specificity, cannot be reached through a monologic artistic approach. — Mikhail Bakhtin

I have no personal stake in these people, Jean-Claude, but they are people. Good, bad, or indifferent, they are alive, and no one has the right to just arbitrarily snuff them out."
"So it is the sanctity of life you cling to?"
I nodded. "That and the fact that every human being is special. Every death is a loss of something precious and irreplaceable. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Man is merely a frequent effect, a monstrosity is a rare one, but both are equally natural, equally inevitable, equally part of the universal and general order. And what is strange about that? All creatures are involved in the life of all others, consequently every species ... all nature is in a perpetual state of flux. Every animal is more or less a human being, every mineral more or less a plant, every plant more or less an animal ... There is nothing clearly defined in nature. — John Dewey

I would say that I'm a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you ... because no one has the right to take the life of another human being. — Joan Baez

Why should it be thought incredible that the same soul should inhabit in succession an indefinite number of moral bodies? Even during this one life our bodies are perpetually changing, through a process of decay and restoration; which is so gradual that it escapes our notice. Every human being thus dwells successively in many bodies, even during one short life. — Francis Bowen

Namaste is a term that finds its origin in India means the God in me salutes the God in you. This means that every human being has a God in her or him. I wonder where in time we forgot this wisdom and started treating fellow human beings as untouchables and backward classes. — Jeroninio Almeida

Human life has dignity at every age the taking of innocent human life is always wrong. I believe our nation at every level of government must reject any scheme to permit or promote assisted suicide and euthanasia. — Gary Bauer

How precious is the family as the privileged place for transmitting the faith! Speaking about family life, I would like to say one thing: today, as Brazil and the Church around the world celebrate this feast of Saints Joachim and Anne, Grandparents Day is also being celebrated. How important grandparents are for family life, for passing on the human and religious heritage which is so essential for each and every society! How important it is to have intergenerational exchanges and dialogues, especially within the context of the family. — Pope Francis

Men and women make their own beauty or their own ugliness. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton speaks in one of his novels of a man "who was uglier than he had any business to be;" and, if we could but read it, every human being carries his life in his face, and is good-looking or the reverse as that life has been good or evil. On our features the fine chisels of thought and emotion are eternally at work. — Alexander Smith