Natural Inclinations Quotes

In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine. That is why these rules at first seem to be constantly interfering with our natural inclinations.

Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and abilities.

Human nature is not of itself vicious.

The things that are more my own style are something that I don't really have to think about. The only time I have to think about them is if I want to force myself not to do it the way I do it.

It is the nature of stone to be satisfied. It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else.

The modern child may early in his or her existence have natural inclinations toward spirituality. The child may have imagination, originality, a simple and individual response to reality, and even a tendency to moments of thoughtful silence and absorption. All these tendencies, however, are soon destroyed by the dominant culture. The child becomes a yelling, brash, false little monster, brandishing a toy gun or dressed up like some character he has seen on television.

Contrary to what some parents might believe or hope for, children are not born a blank slate. Rather, they come into the world with predetermined abilities, proclivities and temperaments that nurturing parents may be able to foster or modify, but can rarely reverse.

Human beings are endowed by nature with both selfish and unselfish impulses.

Some of us were born to hate and some of us were born to be great.

One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. You don't choose your passions; your passions choose you.

Temperament is fixed, set. The skull, followed by the temperament: the two hardest parts of the body. Follow your temperament. It is not a philosophy, It is a rule, like the Rule of St Benedict.

It is only by following your deepest instinct that you can lead a rich life.

Everyone is passionate about something. Usually more than one thing. We are born with it.

If we didn't want anything, we would never get anything, good or bad. I think our longings are natural, and if we act as nature prompts us we can't go far wrong.

Beware! I'm acting under the influence of human nature.

Ye whose clay-cold heads and luke-warm hearts can argue down or mask your passions--tell me, what trespass is it that man should have them?... If nature has so wove her web of kindness, that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece--must the whole web be rent in drawing them out?

You don't choose your passions; your passions choose you.

There are in this world two kinds of natures, - those that have wings, and those that have feet, - the winged and the walking spirits. The walking are the logicians; the winged are the instinctive and poetic.

We make allowance for a certain degree of selfishness in men; because we know it to be inseparable from human nature, and inherent in our frame and constitution. By this reflexion we correct those sentiments of blame, which so naturally arise upon any opposition.

Our blindest impulses become evidence of perspicacity when they fall in with the course of events.

Take mankind as they are, and what are they governed by? Their passions.

Our appetites, of one or another kind, are excellent spurs to our reason, which might otherwise but feebly set about the great ends of preserving and continuing the species.

Unteachable from infancy to tomb — There is the first & main characteristic of mankind.

Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!

Human nature is largely something that has to be overcome.