Henry David Thoreau Quotes

For me, when we're all human beings, it's just interesting that we cannot understand the other person or how they think. That's one part of the human aspect that fascinates me.

In a non-supernatural universe, there's just character, and it's humanity and human beings and how they relate to each other.

Because you know what happens when you say 'hello' or 'good morning?' You make a connection. And isn't that what being human is all about?

Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others. Sometimes it does. But the danger is, that while a man grows better pleased with himself, he may be growing less pleasing to others. Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has presented.

Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it.

We all give ourselves a lot of leeway, but we want consistency from other people.

If He asks much of you, it is because He knows you can give much.

Nature has left every man a capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both who, by a very few faults, that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable.

Others are to us like the characters in fiction, eternal and incorrigible; the surprises they give us turn out in the end to have been predictable and unexpected variations on the theme of being themselves.

The one thing I’ve always had going for me was people’s low expectations. Nobody ever expects a whole hell of a lot from me.

It's human nature for people to expect people to be what they see on the screen.

There is a sort of knowledge beyond the power of learning to bestow, and this is to be had in conversation; so necessary is this to the understanding the characters of men, that none are more ignorant of them than those learned pedants whose lives have been entirely consumed in colleges and among books; for however exquisitely human nature may have been described by writers the true practical system can be learned only in the world.

I'm very interested in people, so if a character happens to be real, there's that much more to look at.

People don't really change. Not fundamentally. When they surprise us, it is because we failed to recognize their potentialities.

Surely people should eventually cease to be surprised at anything? And yet they continue to be.

I'm very interested in people, in general.

A strange species we are; we can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, sick.

when the human race is not grotesque it is because it is asleep and losing its opportunity.

A person of “good character” was one who acted in accordance with the expectations of his community

Customs are made for customary circumstances, and customary characters.

The only way of really finding out a man's true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does the cloven hoof so quickly display itself.

The first thing you should know about people is that you don’t know the first thing about them.

Is anyone human actually normal? I'm beginning to think being normal is actually abnormal.

You take a normal guy, give him a wife, give them time, and you've got AN IDIOT!

Men of perverse opinion do not know the excellence of what is in their hands, till someone dash it from them.