Mikhail Bulgakov Quotes

I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species.

What is the most interesting thing to people? Other people.

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.

No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.

We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity.

Man has been adjudged a social animal.

It is human nature that rules the world, not governments ...

I think people just like seeing failure.

But I think 'Love, Actually' has a very realistic view of human nature in line with the latest scientific evidence. The opening scene, where Hugh Grant's character talks about the arrivals gate at Heathrow, is about friendship and connection, it's about who we really are as a species.

Cultural activity is what makes us human.

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.

The way you are with others every day, regardless of their status, is the true test of faith.

We all have friends we love dearly that couldn't pass for human in a strict Turing test.

There is reason in the distinction of civil and uncivil. The manners are sometimes so rough a rind that we doubt whether they cover any core or sap-wood at all.

It is a fact of human nature that we derive pleasure from watching others engage in pleasurable acts. This explains the popularity of two enterprises: pornography and cafés.

Our interactions with one another reflect a dance between love and fear.

Let the misanthrope shun men and abjure; the most are rather lovable than hateful.

Man is a social animal.

Manners are just a formal expression of how you treat people.

Society becomes how you behave.

It is the natural disposition of all men to listen with pleasure to abuse and slander of their neighbour, and to hear with impatience those who utter praises of themselves.

The civilization of a country consists in the quality of life that is lived there, and this quality shows plainest in the things that people choose to talk about when they talk together, and in the way they choose to talk about them.

Civilization has taught us to eat with a fork, but even now if nobody is around we use our fingers.

What now on the other hand makes people sociable is their incapacity to endure solitude and thus themselves.

I don't know how people act. I've never understood that.