#human-nature

To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying, but a mighty, human, all-too-human fundamental proposition.

Great debts do not make for gratitude, but for revenge; and if a little benefit is not forgotten, it becomes a gnawing worm.

We need more psychology, we need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself.

The comic and the tragic lie alongside each other; he who knows how to write the one should also know how to write the other.

No one would choose a life of possessing all good things on condition of being solitary, for man is a social being and naturally disposed to live with others.

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

Psychotherapy has too long viewed man as a creature driven by base impulses; it is time to recognize man as pulled by higher values.

In the concentration camps, we watched our comrades behave either like animals or like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which is actualized depends on decisions, not on conditions.

Human beings have a tendency to perceive only what accords with their pre-existing interests.

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

Whatever discoveries have been made in the region of self-love, there remain many uncharted territories there.

Interest speaks all sorts of tongues, and plays all sorts of characters; even that of disinterestedness.

Passions are the only orators that always convince; they are like an art of nature that never fails.

Virtues lose themselves in self-interest, as streams lose themselves in the sea.

Nothing is given so profusely as advice.

True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.

We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not speak of ourselves at all.

Pride does not wish to owe, and vanity does not wish to pay.

Almost all the world takes pleasure in paying small debts; many show gratitude for moderate benefits; but almost everyone is ungrateful for immense ones.

It is more necessary to study men than books.

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

There is in every one of us, even those who seem most respectable, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.

It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.

Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall meet with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they cannot distinguish good from evil.

You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.