Human Expression Quotes & Sayings

He always reminded us that every atom in our bodies was once part of a distant star that had exploded. He talked about how evolution moves from simplicity toward complexity, and how human intelligence is the highest known expression of evolution. I remember him telling me that a frog's brain is much more complex than a star. He saw human consciousness as the first neuron of the universe coming to life and awareness. A spark in the darkness, waiting to spread to fire. — Greg Iles

Today [the voice of women] is being heard loud and clear. But I do not read the welcome triumph of feminism, social, economic, and creative, as a brief for postmodernism. The advance, while opening new avenues of expression and liberating deep pools of talent, has not exploded human nature into little pieces. Instead, it has set the stage for a fuller exploration of the universal traits that unite humanity. — E. O. Wilson

Fawn face, the expression a deer makes not when it's caught in headlights but when it catches a human looking at it in wonder. The deer looks back, acknowledging not only its own terror but its own grace, and it shows off for a moment in front of the human. It flirts. — Meg Wolitzer

Fear, anxiety, stress and panic, all these are basic evolutionary expression of the human brain. They are part of the normal human condition. — Abhijit Naskar

We have the tools, the intellect, the will to create a caring global culture. It isn't going to come without a recognition of the power of the psychedelic experience. The psychedelic experience is the birth right of every human being on the planet. It is as much a basic part of each and every one of us as our sexuality, our national identity, our consciousness of self. And any society which attempts to hold back or impede this dimension of self-expression, when the history of that society is written, it will be called barbarous. — Terence McKenna

The inviolability of the person which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, finds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life. Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights-for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture- is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination. — Pope John Paul II

Sometimes they need to prove to themselves that they still own themselves, that they can still care for themselves, that they still have things - customs - that are their own."
"Sounds like an expression of the Human conflict," Aaor said.
"It is," I agreed. "They're proving their independence at a time when they're no longer independent ... — Octavia E. Butler

A happy marriage perhaps represents the ideal of human relationship
a setting in which each partner, while acknowledging the need of the other, feels free to be what he or she by nature is: a relationship in which instinct as well as intellect can find expression; in which giving and taking are equal; in which each accepts the other, and I confronts Thou. — Anthony Storr

Technology will never last if it ignores human beings' basic instinct to express and discover through expression. — Lemn Sissay

Strong emotions are present in all people. Without feeling, we would not be human. It's unnatural for man to hide what he's feeling, though if taught to do so, he can learn. Love teaches a man to show what he is feeling. Love never presupposes that it can be discerned or felt without expression ... — Leo Buscaglia

As a composer I might class myself as a Neo-Romantic, inasmuch as I have always regarded music as a highly personal and emotional form of expression. I like to write music which takes its inspiration from poetry, art and nature. I do not care for purely decorative music. Although I am in sympathy with modern idioms, I abhor music which attempts nothing more than the illustration of a stylistic fad. And in using modern techniques, I have tried at all times to subjugate them to a larger idea or a grander human feeling. — Bernard Herrmann

Humanism is the purest expression of your soul as a human. It has no God to be concerned with, except for the living Gods, that is the humans. It has no doctrine to abide by, except for the natural doctrine of love and benevolence. That's the religion we need my friend. — Abhijit Naskar

While it is generally agreed that the visible expressions and agencies are necessary instruments, civilization seems to depend far more fundamentally upon the moral and intellectual qualities of human beings-upon the spirit that animates mankind. — Mary Ritter Beard

Both sex and death are eternal themes. You could make thousands of movies on this theme, and whether you have a human being who is painting, singing, making a film, writing, these are the themes that you will come back to and return to. If you don't have any of these artistic expressions, sex is one of the only gifts that nature gave you for free, so it is very important to celebrate it. And then, with death, we are condemned to that. This is absolutely present in our lives. — Pedro Almodovar

The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind chance. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of the human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity. — Hermann Hesse

Art is the highest expression of the human spirit. — Joyce Carol Oates

You don't understand. Speaking, talking
language, that is
represents the most orderly, civilized, and rational expression of human nature. All this foul-mouthed cussing is a gap where you can't think of anything to say. It's the opposite of being rational and ordered. The very opposite. It wants to unpick civilized behavior, rationality, and order. — Graham Joyce

The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet. — Jeffrey Tate

Chess is one thing, but if we get to the point computers can best humans in the arts-those splendid, millennia-old expressions of the heart and soul of human existence-then why bother existing? to produce human art a computer would have to find, feel, absorb reality to the point it is overcome, to the point it sobs for release. A computer perhaps could replicate every possibility but could never transfer the energy art requires to exist in the first place. — Jonny Lee Miller

The music and the dance themselves are the 'drug'. Once the three portals of the human's being are in synch; once the music fills the heart and the mind and the soul of the individual, the body automatically takes over in a free form expression of the self. It's an incredible feeling that permeates every fiber of your being. — Dennis DeRoche

Let us concede at the outset that, in a free society, freedom will frequently be used badly. Freedom, by definition, includes freedom to do good or evil, to act nobly or basely. Thus we should not be surprised that there is a considerable amount of vice, licentiousness, and vulgarity in a free society. Given the warped timber of humanity, freedom is simply an expression of human flaws and weaknesses. But if freedom brings out the worst in people, it also brings out the best. — Dinesh D'Souza

No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race. — Richard Feynman

The Church is the only entity equipped to penetrate to the spiritual roots of our moral illnesses. We are to call out the fruit of the Holy Spirit in the economy, enlisting the weapons of love, joy, patience, goodness, kindness and self-control, which are the foundation of true freedom. Many Christian teachers rightly point out that our society's willingness to take on the slavery of debt in exchange for stuff is an expression of the deep emptiness that people are seeking to fill within themselves. One of the most powerful aspects of the Gospel is that this emptiness can only be filled by the loving reconnection with the Father that Jesus offers. For this reason, it is less critical that we condemn the world's decadence than that we make an appeal to human desire and how it is genuinely fulfilled. — Stephen K. De Silva

Fashion has a reason to be, because in fashion you can find new kinds of expression about human beings. It's my way to communicate. — Ann Demeulemeester

Every child has a right to know how to achieve control of his body in order that he may use it to the limit of his ability for the expression of his own reactions to life. Even if he can never carry his efforts far enough to realize dance in its highest forms, he may experience the sheer joy of the rhythmic sense of free, controlled, and expressive movement, and through this know an addition to life to which every human being is entitled. — Margaret H'Doubler

Art is the most valued thing in the world ... it is the expression of the highest form of human energy,the creative power nearest to the divine.The power is within - the question is how to reach it. — Arthur Wesley Dow

Why do so many ingenious theorists give fresh reasons every year for the decline of letter writing, and why do they assume, in derision of suffering humanity, that it has declined? They lament the lack of leisure, the lack of sentiment ... They talk of telegrams, and telephones, and postal cards, as if any discovery of science, any device of civilization, could eradicate from the human heart that passion for self-expression which is the impelling force of letters. — Agnes Repplier

We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. The third is freedom from want. The fourth is freedom from fear. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

In the final analysis, poverty means death: lack of food and housing, the inability to attend properly to health and education needs, the exploitation of workers, permanent unemployment, the lack of respect for one's human dignity, and unjust limitations placed on personal freedom in the areas of self-expression, politics, and religion. — Gustavo Gutierrez

The themes of metamorphosis (transformation-particularly
human transformation-and identity (particularly human identity) are drawn from the treasury of pre-class world folklore. The folkloric image of man is intimately bound up with transformation and identity. This combination may be seen with particular clarity in the popular folktale )skazkaj. The folktale image of man-throughout the extraordinary variety of folkloric narratives-always orders itself around the motifs of transformation and identity (no matter how varied in its turn the concrete expression of these motifs might be). — Mikhail Bakhtin

Creativity cannot be placed in a box. There is no right or wrong, just a human being daring to share their idea of beauty. Their unique expression will either delight and resonate with you or it won't. But every creation is beautiful to someone, if only its maker, and that is enough. — Gabriel Lea

The eye is continually influenced by what it cannot detect; nay, it is not going too far, to say that it is most influenced by what it detects least. Let the painter define, if he can, the variations of lines on which depend the change of expression in the human countenance. — John Ruskin

I have marked in traveling how lonely houses change their expression as you come near, pass, and leave them. Some frown, others smile. The Bible buildings had life of their own and human diseases; the priests cursed or blessed them as men. — Emma Frances Dawson

The animals feel that this urgency is mutual. Their own suffering has made them aware of human suffering. More frequent contact with us has sensitized them to what troubles us. They feel our anxiety and our confusion and, most of all, our loneliness. The pain of being disconnected from the Earth, from each other, from our fellow creatures, and from the Source of all life is the worst pain they can imagine, and they are concerned about us. They understand even better than we do that the suffering we inflict on them is an expression of our own suffering, and that their physical situation cannot get better unless the human spiritual condition gets better. They want to help. — Linda Bender

Terence: nihil humanum alienum a me-"nothing human is alien to me," the greatest expression of ancient megalopsychia or great-souled and cosmopolitan "magnanimity." — Kenny Smith

The human erotic imagination is a vast wilderness of sexual possibilities. We are each capable of enjoying a pleasurable, satisfying and potentially ecstatic sex life. Yet our culture encourages us to keep the window of possibility very narrow, limiting our erotic expression to a short list of approved activities and energies. To truly experience sexual freedom, you must reclaim your erotic imagination and allow yourself to make your sex life a work of art, your very own creation designed to fulfill your unique needs and desires. — Chris Maxwell Rose

Zakalwe, in all the human societies we have ever reviewed, in every age and every state, there has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots."' He — Iain M. Banks

In science, law is not a rule imposed from without, but an expression of an intrinsic process. The laws of the lawgiver are impotent beside the laws of human nature, as to his disillusion many a lawgiver has discovered. — Clifford Allbutt

I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza ... I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason. — Albert Einstein

I am seeking that dance which might be the divine expression of the human spirit through the medium of the body's movement. — Isadora Duncan

It is only the expression of equivalence between different sorts of commodities which brings to view the specific character of value-creating labour, by actually reducing the different kinds of labour embedded in the different kinds of commodity to their common quality of being human labour in general. (142) — David Harvey

The eyes of a dog, the expression of a dog, the warmly wagging tail of a dog and the gloriously cold damp nose of a dog were in my opinion all God-given for one purpose only-to make complete fools of us human beings. — Barbara Woodhouse

No theory of the universe can be satisfactory which does not adequately account for the phenomena of life, especially in that richest form which finds expression in human personality. — Burnett Hillman Streeter

An artist in my eyes, is someone who can lighten up a dark room. I have never and will never find difference between the pass from Pele to Carlos Alberto in the final of the World Cup in 1970 and the poetry of the young Rimbaud, who stretches cords from steeple to steeple and garlands from window to window. There is in each of these human manifestations an expression of beauty which touches us and gives us a feeling of eternity. — Eric Cantona

To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons. — Ma Jian

It seemed to me that transhumanism was an expression of the profound human longing to transcend the confusion and desire and impotence and sickness of the body, cowering in the darkening shadow of its own decay. This longing had historically been the domain of religion, and was now the increasingly fertile terrain of technology. — Mark O'Connell

Bruce Lee loved all different styles of martial arts. He believed that you shouldn't limit yourself to one style, because martial arts is just another form of human expression. — Jake Shimabukuro

We read off the many signals that our companions' clothes transmit to us in every social encounter. In this way, clothing is as much a part of human body language as gestures, facial expressions and postures.Even those people who insist that they despise attention to clothing, and dress as casually as possible, are making quite specific comments on their social roles and their attitudes towards the culture in which they live. — Desmond Morris

Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul. — Friedrich Frobel

There is a tendency to consider anything in human behavior that is unusual, not well known, or not well understood, as neurotic, psychopathic, immature, perverse, or the expression of some other sort of psychologic disturbance. — Alfred Kinsey

I have heard people say that the short story was one of the most difficult literary forms, and I've always tried to decide why people feel this way about what seems to me to be one of the most natural and fundamental ways of human expression. After all, you begin to hear and tell stories when you're a child, and there doesn't seem to be anything very complicated about it. I suspect that most of you have been telling stories all your lives, and yet here you sit - come to find out how to do it.
Then last week, after I had written down some of these serene thoughts to use here today, my calm was shattered when I was sent seven of your manuscripts to read.
After this experience, I found myself ready to admit, if not that the short story is one of the most difficult literary forms, at least that it is more difficult for some than for others. — Flannery O'Connor

Those eyes had seen people weep, and had cared, and had hurt them again anyway. It's a look that no human eyes should ever have. — Orson Scott Card

Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed ... It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality. — Richard Wright

My father's face, when he said that, dissolved into a stillness, a sad expression, sadder than human feeling. — Jonathan Safran Foer

The universe must be experienced as the Great Self. Each is fulfilled in the other: the Great Self is fulfilled in the individual self, the individual self is fulfilled in the Great Self. Alienation is overcome as soon as we experience this surge of energy from the source that has brought the universe through the centuries. New fields of energy become available to support the human venture. These new energies find expression and support in celebration. For in the end the universe can only be explained in terms of celebration. It is all an exuberant expression of existence itself.. — Thomas Berry

In the life of the human spirit, words are action, much more so than many of us realize who live in countries where freedom of expression is taken for granted. The leaders of totalitarian nations understand this very well. The proof is that words are precisely the action for which dissidents in those countries are being persecuted. — Jimmy Carter

Playing God is actually the highest expression of human nature. The urges to improve ourselves, to master our environment, and to set our children on the best path possible have been the fundamental driving forces of all of human history. Without these urges to 'play God', the world as we know it wouldn't exist today. — Ramez Naam

The most important tribute any human being can pay to a poem or a piece of prose he or she really loves is to learn it by heart. Not by brain, by heart; the expression is vital. — George Steiner

Anarchism is no patent solution for all human problems, no Utopia of a perfect social order, as it has often been called, since on principle it rejects all absolute schemes and concepts. It does not believe in any absolute truth, or in definite final goals for human development, but in an unlimited perfectibility of social arrangements and human conditions which are always straining after higher forms of expression, and to which for this reason one can assign no definite terminus nor set any fixed goal. — Rudolf Rocker

Of course, now I had the problem of communicating what I needed. Marlen was still beating on the door, and Dimitri would be up in a couple of minutes. I glared at the human, hoping I looked terrifying. From his expression, I did. I attempted the caveman talk I had with Inna ... only this time the message was a little harder.
"Stick," I said in Russian. I had no clue what the word for stake was. I pointed at the silver ring I wore and made a slashing motion. "Stick. Where?"
He stared at me in utter confusion and then asked, in perfect English, "Why are you talking like that?"
"Oh for God's sake," I exclaimed. "Where is the vault?"
"Vault?"
"A place they keep weapons?"
He continued staring.
"Oh," he said. "That." Uneasily, he cast his eyes in the direction of the pounding. — Richelle Mead

Once upon a time ... the only autonomous intelligences we humans knew of were us humans. We thought then that if humankind ever devised another intelligence that it would be the result of a huge project ... a great mass of silicon and ancient transistors and chips and circuit boards ... a machine with lots of networking circuits, in other words, aping-if you will pardon the expression-the human brain in form and function. Of course, AIs did not evolve that way. They sort of slipped into existence when we humans were looking the other way. — Dan Simmons

As a poet there is something about joy I find hard to express, whereas every other emotion is rather simple. For instance, you never feel so bad that you can't describe how bad you feel, but joy on the other hand is far too divine for human language. — Criss Jami

All different forms of human expression, art, science, are going to become expanded, by expanding our intelligence. — Ray Kurzweil

From a social psychological standpoint, the selfie phenomenon seems to stem from two basic human motives. The first is to attract attention from other people. Because people's positive social outcomes in life require that others know them, people are motivated to get and maintain social attention. By posting selfies, people can keep themselves in other people's minds. In addition, like all photographs that are posted on line, selfies are used to convey a particular impression of oneself. Through the clothes one wears, one's expression, staging of the physical setting, and the style of the photo, people can convey a particular public image of themselves, presumably one that they think will garner social rewards. — Mark R. Leary

The most serious charge that can be brought against modern benevolence is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression. — Margaret Sanger

The use of "religion" as an excuse to repress the freedom of expression and to deny human rights is not confined to any country or time. — Margaret Atwood

There is a danger in monotheism, and it's called idolatry. And we know the prophets of Israel were very, very concerned about idolatry, the worship of a human expression of the divine. — Karen Armstrong

The happy individual is able to renew daily and with full consciousness all the basic expressions of human identity: work, love, communication, play, and rest. — Robert Grudin

There is a power in names. Olakunde told us of ashe-the power which runs through all things, subtle and flexible, which find its most potent expression in human utterance; so that it is a terrible thing to call down imprecations on an enemy, or to wish for anything but good, for what is said out loud is forged into truth. — M T Anderson

The frankest and freest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter; the writer gets his limitless freedom of statement and expression from his sense that no stranger is going to see what he is writing. — Mark Twain

True realism lies in the search for the expression of forms faithful to their content. But there is no content detached from human interest. — Asger Jorn

The First Amendment serves not only the needs of the polity but also those of the human spirit- a spirit that demands self-expression . — Thurgood Marshall

Technology is us. There is no separation. It's a pure expression of human creative will. It doesn't exist anywhere else in the universe. I'm rather sure of that. — David Cronenberg

I have tried to keep some hold on the religion of my youth by interpreting its basic doctrines as symbols that gave popular expression to philosophic truths. I can rephrase "original sin" as man's inherited disposition to follow those instincts of pugnacity, sexual promiscuity, and greed which may have been necessary in the hunting stage of human history, but which need a variety of controls in an organized society that guarantees its members protection against violence, theft, and rape; we are born with the taint of ancestral passions in our blood. — Will Durant

I think both freedom of religion and freedom of expression are both fundamental human rights, everyone has not only the freedom and the right but the obligation to say what Pope Francis thinks for the common good ... we have the right to have this freedom openly without offending. — Pope Francis

Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth. — Liu Xiaobo

To me, science is an expression of the human spirit, which reaches every sphere of human culture. It gives an aim and meaning to existence as well as a knowledge, understanding, love, and admiration for the world. It gives a deeper meaning to morality and another dimension to esthetics. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. — Mark Rothko

What we are engaged in creating is the opportunity for people to participate in the transformation of peoples' lives and of life itself. This context of transformation is a context of freedom and opportunity, of empowerment and human joy, of contribution and of participation. Participation in this transformation is, for me, the fullest expression of being. — Werner Erhard

Think of your career as your ministry. Make your work an expression of love, in service to mankind. Within the worldly illusion, we all have different jobs. Some of us are artists, some of us are business people, some of us are scientists. But in the real world that lies beyond all this, we all have the same job: to minister to human hearts. — Marianne Williamson

Music, it seemed, could appear in many voices, and had all of the emotions and array of vocabulary as a human.. — Esther Dalseno

A Midsummer Night's Dream remains an enchanting work after four hundred years, but few would argue that it cuts to the very heart of human behaviour. What it does do is take, and give, a positive satisfaction in the joyous possibilities of verbal expression. — Bill Bryson

The search for truth is, as it always has been, the noblest expression of the human spirit. Man's insatiable desire for knowledge about himself, about his environment and the forces by which he is surrounded, gives life its meaning and purpose, and clothes it with final dignity ... And yet we know, deep in our hearts, that knowledge is not enough ... Unless we can anchor our knowledge to moral purposes, the ultimate result will be dust and ashes- dust and ashes that will bury the hopes and monuments of men beyond recovery. — Raymond B. Fosdick

To get the best picture of a captured prisoner, you have to get him just as he is captured. The expression he wears then is lost forever ... The human mechanism is remarkably recuperative. A half hour later, the expressions are gone, the faces have changed. The mother with the dead baby in her arms does not look griefstruck anymore, no matter what she feels. — Horst Faas

There are many things which can not be expressed by words.
There are many words which can not be spelled by human tongue.
There are many tongues which utter one single truth. — Toba Beta

That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted. — George Boole

In short, Beauty is everywhere. It is not that she is lacking to our eye, but our eyes which fail to perceive her. Beauty is character and expression. Well, there is nothing in nature which has more character than the human body. In its strength and its grace it evokes the most varied images. One moment it resembles a flower: the bending torso is the stalk; the breasts, the head, and the splendor of the hair answer to the blossoming of the corolla. The next moment it recalls the pliant creeper, or the proud and upright sapling. — Auguste Rodin

What they used to call soul. What they used to call spirit. Indivisible, complete, that thing made of mind, distinct from body.
He thought he had one - a soul, a spirit, a nature, an essence. He thought his mind was proof of it.
If mood, facial expression, hunger pain, love of color, if everything human and happenstance came not from the soul, the core of self, but from synapses firing and electrical signals, from the stuff in the brain that could be manipulated and X-rayed, what could he say about himself with any degree of certainty? Was mind just body more refined?
He refused to believe that. — Joshua Ferris

The suckling relationship is one of the sources of real sweetness that we have in human existence ... The suckling baby can teach adults about the expression of sweet love and gratitude in a way no words can. — Ina May Gaskin

We sense that the human body is a precious thing, worthy of our reverence. It is not a tool, not an object of consumption like a steak or a keg of beer, not an animate provider of pleasure. It is the outward expression of a profound mystery, that of another human being. — Anthony Esolen

The first time I read Isaac Babel was in a college creative writing class. The instructor was a sympathetic Jewish novelist with a Jesus-like beard, an affinity for Russian literature, and a melancholy sense of humor, such that one afternoon he even "realized" the truth of human mortality, right there in the classroom. He pointed at each of us around the seminar table: "You're going to die. And you're going to die. And you're going to die." I still remember the expression on the face of one of my classmates, a genial scion of the Kennedy family who always wrote the same story, about a busy corporate lawyer who neglected his wife. The expression was confused. — Elif Batuman

I want to put it back together now, this artistic expression that contains religious feeling. I want to investigate: What was the origin? What's happened in the human mind? Can we trace back the moment of the creation of human consciousness? And why did only humans gain consciousness, not other animals? So, evolution? I don't know whether or not I can believe evolution. Maybe we wait for another 100,000 years and then apes get consciousness. — Hiroshi Sugimoto

Why do women spend so much time in talking to their female peers? The answer can again be found in the process of biological evolution of the human mind. Just like the evolutionary expression of aggression in men, gossiping is an evolutionary feature of the female psychology. Women trade various secrets from their personal experiences through gossiping in order to create connection and intimacy with their female peers. — Abhijit Naskar

Every transformation of humanity has rested upon deep stirrings and intuitions, whose rationalized expression takes the form of a new picture of the cosmos and the nature of the human. — Lewis Mumford

This book tells the story of that moment in time. It is a story of high adventure set during the age of exploration - when Francis Drake, Henry Hudson, and Captain John Smith were expanding the boundaries of the world, and Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Galileo, Descartes, Mercator, Vermeer, Harvey, and Bacon were revolutionizing human thought and expression. — Russell Shorto

Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable. — James Thurber

Rather than being medicalized or romanticized, mental disorders, or mental dis-eases, should be understood as nothing less or more than what they are, an expression of our deepest human nature. By recognizing their traits in ourselves and reflecting upon them, we may be able both to contain them and to put them to good use. This is, no doubt, the highest form of genius. — Neel Burton

Humankind is an instinctive creature that is capable of feelings and rational thoughts, which accounts for why such a rich diversity exists amongst human nature. A person's unique personality is simply a crystallization of particular aspects of human nature. Freedom of thought and expression ensures that no person replicates another person's exact persona. Every person is a creature of predicable needs and impulses, infused with the poetry of multifaceted feelings, and ruled by a scientifically calculated instrument capable of precision of thought. — Kilroy J. Oldster

It may be our actions that define us, but it is our reaction that changes the course of things. — Dianna Hardy

One day we shall domesticate him into a human being & then I shall be able to sketch him. For this is what we have done with ourselves & with God. The little boy will assist his own domestication; he is diligent & cooperative. He cooperates without knowing that the assistance we expect of him is for his own self-sacrifice. Recently, he has had much practice. And so he will go on progressing until little by little
because of essential goodness with which we achieve our salvation
he will pass from actual time to daily time, from meditation to expression, from existence to life. Making the great sacrifice of not being mad. I am not mad out of solidarity with thousands of people who, in order to construct the possible, have also sacrificed the truth which would constitute madness. — Clarice Lispector