Humanly Quotes & Sayings

I don't like desperate people. They tend to do desperate things. Desperate people should be placated until you can get as far away from them as humanly possible, because desperate people had a bad tendency of blowing up and taking you with them. I — Donna Augustine

The Bible describes a God who is a thousand things to His children, even though some of these are beyond our ability to understand. So when people insist on humanly reasonable theologies to satisfy their need to believe, the lesser god they're buying is not the God of Scripture. We must beware of recreating an image of God that makes us feel better. — Beth Moore

Our shared world is humanly unquantifiable and ideologically confused. Which one of them is capable of implementing the most recognizable harm or good? — James Ellroy

We will act to build a better world. We always have, we always will. We will act to lend a helping hand, not just here but wherever we humanly can. — Tony Abbott

I won't wax poetic about the land in a perfectionist sense: we work hard out here, and things constantly threaten the tiny equilibrium we've established in the market garden. Whatever peace we find is often hard won. But I stand firmly with Berry and Kingsolver and so many other writers who possess a deep need to step outside the city to find a place of calm. I don't like the word "authentic"; at best, it's divisive and antagonistic, implying one way of being is intrinsically better than another. But I do very much favour the notion of alignment. I'm convinced that at the heart of the matter lies a desire to draw what we do into alignment with how we live. Some of us aren't in a place where we can live consistently on the land that holds our hearts, but come mishaps or miracles, we're bound and determined to make that land as much a part of who we are as humanly possible. — Jenna Butler

Jeeves," I said. "A rummy communication has arrived. From Mr. Glossop."
"Indeed, sir?"
"I will read it to you. Handed in at Upper Bleaching. Message runs as follows:
When you come tomorrow, bring my football boots. Also, if humanly possible, Irish water-spaniel. Urgent. Regards. Tuppy.
"What do you make of that, Jeeves?"
"As I interpret the document, sir, Mr. Glossop wishes you, when you come tomorrow, to bring his football boots. Also, if humanly possible, an Irish water-spaniel. He hints that the matter is urgent, and sends his regards."
"Yes, that is how I read it. But why football boots?"
"Perhaps Mr. Glossop wishes to play football, sir. — P.G. Wodehouse

I'm just trying to show the world what an imagination can do when it isn't strained by humanly limitations. — Lu Groblebe

Mountains seem to answer an increasing imaginative need in the West. More and more people are discovering a desire for them, and a powerful solace in them. At bottom, mountains, like all wildernesses, challenge our complacent conviction - so easy to lapse into - that the world has been made for humans by humans. Most of us exist for most of the time in worlds which are humanly arranged, themed and controlled. One forgets that there are environments which do not respond to the flick of a switch or the twist of a dial, and which have their own rhythms and orders of existence. Mountains correct this amnesia. By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes. They induce, I suppose, a modesty in us. — Robert Macfarlane

True repentance is a turning from sin ... Humanly speaking, it is our small part in the plan of salvation. Our part is repenting. God will do the converting, the transforming, and the forgiving. — Billy Graham

Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible. — Hannah Arendt

[Speaking of marriage and family] In this entire world there is not a more perfect, more complete image of God, Unity and Community. There is no other human reality which corresponds more, humanly speaking, to that divine mystery. — Pope John Paul II

You know, if it's humanly possible, I'll get it for you. And if it ain't humanly possible, I'l die trying. — Jeannette Walls

That's always been Guillermo's preference, is to have as much there practically as is humanly possible, and that digital graphic images are more a punctuation mark than they are a replacement. — Ron Perlman

So we have to recognize that species concepts are humanly produced categories which may or may not always work when compared with the reality of nature. — Chris Stringer

Less than a decade after the explosion of the first atom bomb the megamachine had expanded to a point where it began to dominate key areas of the whole economy of the United States: its system of control reached beyond the airfields, the rocket sites, the bomb factories, the universities, to a hundred other related areas, tying the once separate and independent enterprises to a central organization whose irrational and humanly subversive policies ensured the still further expansion of the megamachine. Financial subventions, research grants, educational subsidies, all worked unceasingly for the 'Life, Prosperity, Health' of the new rulers, headed by Goliaths in brass armor bellowing threats of defiance and destruction at the entire world. In a short time, the original military-industrial-scientific elite became the supreme Pentagon of Power, for it incorporated likewise both the bureaucratic and the educational establishments. — Lewis Mumford

I'm building a career as big as humanly possible so I can be in a 'Star Wars' project. My life goal is to have a character in the 'Star Wars' universe, film or other media. I just want to go to my grave knowing I played some character or some character based on my likeness was part of that world. — Rahul Kohli

It isn't humanly possible for the things radical leftists want to bring about the desired results that they choose. They claim they want a utopian happiness, and they are further and further away from it the more successful they are. — Rush Limbaugh

I write every moment that is humanly possible. I write every day and every night. The only discipline I lack is the discipline is to quit. — Barbara Kingsolver

The root of humanly caused evil is not man's animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image. Our desire for the best is the cause of the worst. — Sam Keen

It is not for nothing that the king of a commonwealth is called "Sire"; humanly speaking, of the callings of fatherhood and kingship, the deeper and more primordial is fatherhood. — J. Budziszewski

To us, your power comes from one simple thing: you're a woman, and we men will do
anything humanly possible to impress you so that, ultimately, we can be with you. You're the driving force behind why we wake up every day. Men go out and get jobs and hustle to make
money because of women. We drive fancy cars because of women. We dress nice, put on cologne, get haircuts and try to look all shiny and new for you. We do all of this because the more our game is stepped up, the more of you we get. You're the ultimate prize to us. — Steve Harvey

I need good coffee!" I say in horror. "It's my only luxury!"
I can't live with my parents and drink bad coffee. It's not humanly possible.
Becky talking about cutting back with her parents. — Sophie Kinsella

The universe cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth. This — Marcus Du Sautoy

One of the big mysteries of music is, if you take music without words, it means something to us because we know it's about something. It's about something important humanly, but since there are no words, nobody knows what it's about. — Tod Machover

Sighing dismally, she acknowledged that some things just weren't humanly possible - not even Martha Stewart could fold fitted sheets. — Karen Marie Moning

Back in the day, I had this plan for the off chance that I was around for the whole end-of-the-world thing. It involved climbing up on my roof and blasting R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" as loud as humanly possible, but real life rarely turns out that cool. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

But when the crowd caught sight of the murderers, with their escort of blue-coated highway patrol-men, it fell silent, as though amazed to find them humanly shaped. — Truman Capote

I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect — Fernando Pessoa

Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words, with which people transform the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. People are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection. — Paulo Freire

Looking back, I think I really was at least slightly out of my mind. I viewed narcotics as most people regard food. I wore my guns as today I wear my neckties. Deep down, I actually believed that after living as fully as humanly possible, one should then die violently. I expected then, as I still expect today, to die at any time. But then, I think I deliberately invited death in many, sometimes insane, ways. — Malcolm X

Not every advance is progress. Not every new thing is better for us humanly. — Sherry Turkle

Common sense was exactly what kingship, almost by definition, lacked: when the king's orders were executed no one dared to tell him honestly how they had turned out. With the absolute powers bestowed by kingship came an arrogance, a ruthlessness, an inflexibility, a habit of compulsion, an unwillingness to listen to reason, that no small community would have endured from any of its members-though the aggressive and humanly disagreeable qualities that make for such ambitious leadership might be found anywhere-as Margaret Mead discovered among the Mundugumor, whose leaders were known to the community as "really bad men," aggressive, gluttonous for power and prestige. — Lewis Mumford

Ultimately the most profound problems with psychotherapy have always been that instead of possessing any contrarian or transcendent values to enable it to produce insights countervailing against our dysfunctional and incoherent and humanly destructive culture, its "therapists" have been virtually all shills or agents for this culture, trying to accommodate their patients to a fundamentally unhealthy and insane way of life. — Kenny Smith

I try to stay out of the spotlight as much as humanly possible, because I think that when actors, whether or not they've chosen it or it has been thrust upon them, are living very public lives, it affects your ability to get lost in their performances. — Anne Hathaway

A Devil, a born Devil on whose nature, nurture can never stick, on whom my pain, humanly taken, all lost, quite lost ... — William Shakespeare

When I have a wrong attitude, I look at life humanly. When I have a right attitude, I look at life divinely. — Charles R. Swindoll

You learn a lot about each other from a tour, musically and humanly. — Gustavo Dudamel

He'd sworn off sex, remember? Not unless he could do it properly, humanly, heartfully. — Dev Bentham

But, it was all true. I love you, more than my own life. More than anyone can humanly love anyone else. Every inch of you ... I breathe you, everyday. I live only to be with you. Hearing him confessing his devotion, made every part of my body tingle. — Jordan Deen

I visit the island [Puerto Rico] as often as I humanly can. And I visit with community as frequently as possible, given the demands on me. I meet with kids. I meet with adults. I try to spend time and to listen to people talk about their lives. — Sonia Sotomayor

What plethora of material goods can possibly atone for a waking life so humanly belittling, if not degrading, as the push-button tasks left to human performers? — Lewis Mumford

I have seen Christians in Communist prisons with fifty pounds of chains on their feet, tortured with red-hot iron pokers, in whose throats spoonfuls of salt had been forced, being kept afterward without water, starving, whipped, suffering from cold
and praying with fervor for the Communists. This is humanly inexplicable! It is the love of Christ, which was poured out in our hearts. — Richard Wurmbrand

Ahimsa is the highest duty. Even if we cannot practice it in full, we must try to understand its spirit and refrain as far as is humanly possible from violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

I want people to say when No. 9 was out on the field, he did everything humanly possible to win a ballgame. — Steve McNair

We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible. — George Santayana

A source of permanent, accessible pleasure, our genitals exist. The god who created our misfortune, who made us short-lived, vain and cruel, has also provided this form of meagre compensation. If we couldn't have sex from time to time, what would life be? A futile struggle against joints that stiffen, caries that form. All of which, moreover, is as uninteresting as humanly possible - the collagen which makes muscles stiffen, the appearance of microbic cavities in the gums. — Michel Houellebecq

We all know, intuitively, that if something is humanly possible, it is possible for ourselves. — Vironika Tugaleva

He extends a hand, larger than a dinner plate, and I have no choice but to shake it. I think I can feel my metacarpals shattering. Julian jumps to summon our waitress again, mostly to avoid shaking hands with this Goliath. "And a pitcher of mimosas, as soon as humanly possible. — Kristopher Jansma

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these one is wandering in a dark labyrinth. - Galileo Galilei, The Assayer, 1623 — Max Tegmark

It was humanly impossible for the disciples to free themselves from their selfish pursuit of self-exaltation, just as it's impossible for us to free ourselves from the very same sins. — C.J. Mahaney

Like a god, like an ogre? The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to suppress in myself, to eliminate for good. I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront, immediately and directly if it's possible, the bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the categories of scientific description. To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a non-human world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock. — Edward Abbey

I have no desire to dress up my poetry and make it fancy. I want the poem to be as true as humanly possible to the feeling that inspired it. That's my only concern. Everything else seems wrong. — Adelia Prado

I just wanted to get the hell out of my town. I wanted to leave with reckless abandon. I didn't care where I ended up, as long as I saw as much as humanly possible. — Billie Joe Armstrong

Oh, God," he prayed once again, "by all means test us to the limit of our endurance, but please make it humanly possible to go on. Please let there be some sort of path". — Piers Paul Read

I feel as if one would only discover on one's death-bed what one ought to have lived for, and realise too late that one's life has been wasted. Any passionate and courageous life seems good in itself, yet one feels that some element of delusion is involved in giving so much passion to any humanly attainable object. And so irony creeps into the very springs of one's being. — Bertrand Russell

The silly ass had left the kitchen door open, and I hadn't gone two steps when his voice caught me squarely in the eardrum.
'You will find Mr Wooster', he was saying to the substitue chappie, 'an extremely pleasant and amiable young gentleman, but not intelligent. By no means intelligent. Mentally he is negligible - quite negligible'.
Well, I mean to say. What!
I suppose, strictly speaking, I ought to have charged in and ticked the blighter off properly in no uncertain voice. But I doubht whether it is humanly possible to tick Jeeves off. — P.G. Wodehouse

The very first as a cardinal rule for a person to build trust is to do must only that what is humanly just as that helps to wipe and wither away those parasitic people stuck to his life as dirt and dust. — Anuj

An act of forgiveness sets the victim apart from the perpetrator, who failed to act humanly towards the victim at the time he committed his crime. — Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

The power of one man doesn't amount to much. But, however little strength I'm capable of ... I'll do everything humanly possible to protect the people I love, and in turn they'll protect the ones they love. It seems like the least we tiny humans can do for each other — Hiromu Arakawa

Every time I sit for a song, I feel I am finished. It's like a beggar sitting waiting for God to fill your bowl with the right thought. In every song, I ask help from Him. Everybody around is so good, so to create music that will connect with so many people is not humanly possible without inspiration. — A.R. Rahman

My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours ... it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us more powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually. — Frederick Buechner

A tension or difficulty can signal the approach of a new grace of God. But it has to be looked at wisely and humanly. — Jean Vanier

Nature, at all events, humanly speaking, is manifestly very fond of color; for she has made nothing without it. Her skies are blue; her fields, green; her waters vary with her skies; her animals, vegetables, minerals, are all colored. She paints a great any of them in apparently superfluous hues, as if to show the dullest eye how she loves color. — Leigh Hunt

Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; and if it is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach. — Marcus Aurelius

The emerging church, reformed according to the needs of self-esteem-starved-souls under the Lordship of Christ ... will help us to affirm the concept that 'While god's ideas may seem humanly impossible, he will give us these ideas which will lead to glorious, self-esteem-generating success. — Robert H. Schuller

He who makes God act humanly, declares human activity to be divine[.] — Ludwig Feuerbach

Hey, you coming to the bar tonight?" he called out after me.
I stopped and turned around, "Maybe, I don't know. I have to see how I feel after a shower."
A smile burst onto his face, making him more stunning than it was humanly possible. "Do you need help with that? I'd like to see how you feel after a shower too ... — Christine Zolendz

The fear of failure, the fear of being imperfect (perfectionism), and the fear of impossible expectations (being overwhelmed) that prevent us from acting on and attaining humanly possible goals and relationships. — Neil A. Fiore

Humans create their own boundaries, their own limitations. We say what is humanly possible, and what is not possible. Then just because we believe it, it becomes truth for us. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

There is nothing more humanly beautiful than a woman's breasts. Nothing more humanly beautiful, nothing more humanly mysterious than why men should want to caress, over and over again, with paintbrush or chisel or hand, these oddly curved fatty sacs, and nothing more humanly endearing than our complicity (I mean the complicity of women) in their obsession. — J.M. Coetzee

Be joyful because it is humanly possible. — Wendell Berry

I tell my girls when you have done everything humanly possible, when you have fought with everything in you for something you truly believe in and it is still out of reach, it's time to become a feather. Let the wind guide you for awhile ... — Susan Goldsmith

Humility and level-headedness are traits, which have accrued upon me over the years, during the rites of my passage through time. They were thrust down my throat by the hands of Destiny and the Almighty, both of who are far greater, far grander, and far more mysterious and mystic, than all that we ordinary mortals can ever humanly conceive or comprehend.
- Bhakti Vedanta Anandamurthy Thiruvadiar. ( A Character in the book) — Biju Vasudevan

Thirty thousand a year was all right, but dyspepsia and inability to be humanly happy robbed such princely income of all its value. — Jack London

Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be, of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced and felt. — Jose Saramago

The direction in which the culture of an age develops is, humanly speaking, chosen by a few exceptionally intelligent men. The popular authors then pick up some of the main ideas, usually distorting and diluting them considerably, and finally fifty years or a century later the general viewpoint has seeped down to the whole populace. — Gordon H. Clark

Minimizing the importance of transformed feelings makes Christian conversion less supernatural and less radical. It is humanly manageable to make decisions of the will for Christ. No supernatural power is required to pray prayers, sign cards, walk aisles, or even stop sleeping around. Those are good. They just don't prove that anything spiritual has happened. Christian conversion, on the other hand, is a supernatural, radical thing. The heart is changed. And the evidence of it is not just new decisions, but new affections, new feelings. — John Piper

The inducements of interest for observing [neutral] conduct ... has been to endeavour to gain time to our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions, and to progress without interruption, to that degree of strength and consistency, which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes. — George Washington

If you have information you've got the world by the balls. But we have to convert information into knowledge in order to make it humanly useful. — Aleksandar Hemon

The brain is the man; its health is essential for normal living; its disorders are surely the most profound of human miseries; and its destruction annihilates a person humanly, however intact his body. — H. Chandler Elliott

Nicky, ten, reported in an offhand way (while I was rushing to make dinner and go out) that three of his textbooks were missing and I had to send in nine dollars. I totally blew up. My first impulse was to hit him or punish him. But, even though I was over the edge with anger, I somehow managed to get hold of myself and start my sentences with the word "I." I think I was screaming as loud as is humanly possible: "I am furious! I am enraged! Three books are lost and now I have to cough up nine dollars for it! I'm so angry I feel like I'm going to explode! And to hear this when I'm rushing to make dinner and go out, and now I — Anonymous

We are bodies which think, and we're at home with steampunk because it is an ethos of design and creativity which acknowledges the humanly physical: that which we can understand with our fingers. — Nick Harkaway

Of all human activities, only labor, and neither action nor work, is unending, progressing automatically in accordance with life itself and outside the range of willful decisions or humanly meaningful purposes. — Hannah Arendt

When you're doing superhero stunts, the objective is to look as cool as humanly possible. — J. August Richards

One thing about having a baby is that each step of the way you simply cannot imagine loving him any more than you already do, because you are bursting with love, loving as much as you are humanly capable of- and then you do, you love him even more. — Anne Lamott

In the Christian tradition, for example, the only model for faith is Jesus of Nazareth. His proclamation, one observes in the New Testament, was not particularly religious: he spoke of God, certainly, but only in relation to ordinary human life with its quotidian struggle and suffering. Nor did he speak or preach in especially religious or secretarian terms; in fact, it maybe be said that Jesus came to set the world free from enslavement to and obsession with mere (humanly made) religion. "He went about doing good" is the biblical summary of his life and mission, and no words are more moving or provocative. — Donald Spoto

And how long would the life in me stay alive if it did not find new roots?
I behaved like a starving man who knows there is foot somewhere if he can only find it. I did not reason anything out. I did not reason that part of the food I needed was to become a member of a community richer and more various, humanly speaking, than the academic world of Cambridge could provide: the hunger of the novelist. I did not reason that part of the nourishment I craved was all the natural world can give - a garden, woods, fields, brooks, birds: the hunger of the poet. I did not reason that the time had come when I needed a house of my own, a nest of my own making: the hunger of the woman. — May Sarton

If something is difficult for you to accomplish, do not then think it impossible for any human being; rather, if it is humanly possible and corresponds to human nature, know that it is attainable by you as well. — Marcus Aurelius

We can set no limit to human potentialities; all that is best in man can be bettered; it is not a question of producing a highly efficient machine, ... but of quickening all the distinctly human features, all that is best in man, all the different qualities, some obvious, some infinitely subtle, which we recognize as humanly excellent. — Ronald Fisher

Woman, above all other educators, educates humanly. Man is the brain, but woman is the heart, of humanity. — Samuel Smiles

Would you want to rule the world?" Eve asked Roarke. "Or even the country?"

"Good God, no. Too much work for too little remuneration, and very little time left over to enjoy your kingdom." He glanced over. "I much prefer owning as much of the world as humanly possible. But running it? No thanks. — J.D. Robb

For the problem of decision-making in our complicated world is not how to get the problem simple enough so that we can all understand it; the problem is how to get our thinking about the problem as complex as humanly possible
and thus approach (we can never match) the complexity of the real world around us. — Harlan Cleveland

For the lesson of such stories [of resistance to Nazi atrocities] is simple and within everybody's grasp. Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror, most people will comply but some people will not , just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that "it could happen" in most places but it did not happen everywhere . Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation. — Hannah Arendt

The law is the survival of the fittest ... The law is not the survival of the 'better' or the 'stronger,' if we give to those words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival. — Herbert Spencer

I always try to look at conflicts from as many different angles as is humanly possible, and in a lot of ways there is no one answer. — Joe Rogan

If the grandeur of the aim, the smallness of the means, the immensity of the result are the three measures of a man's genius, who would dare humanly compare a great man of modern history with Muhammad? — Alphonse De Lamartine

Wood is universally beautiful to man. It is the most humanly intimate of all materials. — Frank Lloyd Wright

The way a good rod first flexes and then extends its muscles as the line quickens, tightens, rises off the water and does figure eights in mid-air is one of the miracles of humanly applied dynamics. — John Hillaby

This type of psychological loneliness is perhaps felt most acutely when we are as close to another person's body as is humanly possible. As the poet William Butler Yeats wrote rather dramatically, The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul. — Jesse Bering

I am humanly unable to correct my negative self-image until I encounter a life-changing experience with non-judgmental love bestowed upon me by a Person whom I admire so much that to be unconditionally accepted by Him is to be born again. — Robert H. Schuller