Human Folly Quotes

Death is more merciful than hope itself! There is nothing surprising in this, for death is divinely appointed, while hope is the creation of human folly. Both end in frustration. Am I destined to lead a life of endless frustration?
-(The Beginning and the End) ~ Naguib Mahfouz

Prayer girds human weakness with divine strength, turns human folly into heavenly wisdom, and gives to troubled mortals the peace of God. We know not what prayer can do. ~ Charles Spurgeon

What you mean by 'peace' is nothing more than the endless repetition of human folly. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

The way out is a very simple change in direction. You just need to see that the source and basis of your experience is within you. Human experience may be stimulated or catalyzed by external situations, but the source is within. Pain or pleasure, joy or misery, agony or ecstasy, happens only inside you. Human folly is that people are always trying to extract joy from the outside. You may use the outside as a stimulus or trigger, but the real thing always comes from within. Right ~ Sadhguru

Only three things are real: God, human folly, and laughter. Since we can do nothing with the first two, we must do what we can with the third. ~ John F. Kennedy

I can measure the motion of bodies but I cannot measure human folly. ~ Isaac Newton

Just by imagining the clump it seemed to me that I could hear whispers secret surges smell the beating of hot blood under wild unsecret flesh watching against red eyelids the swine untethered in pairs rushing coupled into the sea and he we must just stay awake and see evil done for a little while its not always and i it doesnt have to be even that long for a man of courage and he do you consider that courage and i yes sir dont you and he every man is the arbiter of his own virtues whether or not you consider it courageous is of more importance than the act itself than any act otherwise you could not be in earnest and i you dont believe i am serious and he i think you are too serious to give me any cause for alarm you wouldnt have felt driven to the expedient of telling me you had committed incest otherwise and i i wasnt lying i wasnt lying and he you wanted to sublimate a piece of natural human folly into a horror and then exorcise it with truth ~ William Faulkner

It is a mistake easily made by every man, saint or scholar, Church leader or day laborer. Ultimately, we come to expect God to accept our understanding of what his will ought to be and to help us fulfill that, instead of learning to see and accept his will in the real situations in which he places us daily. The simple soul who each day makes a morning offering of "all the prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day" - and who then acts upon it by accepting unquestioningly and responding lovingly to all the situations of the day as truly sent by God - has perceived with an almost childlike faith the profound truth about the will of God. To predict what God's will is going to be, to rationalize about what his will must be, is at once a work of human folly and yet the subtlest of all temptations. The plain and simple truth is that his will is that he actually wills to send us each day, in the way of circumstances, places, people, and problems. The trick is to learn to see that - not just in theory, or not just occasionally in a flash of insight granted by God's grace, but every day. ~ Father Walter J. Ciszek

When I was young and knew Virginia Woolf slightly, I learned something that startled me - that a person may be ultrasensitive and not warm. She was intensely curious and plied one with questions, teasing, charming questions that made the young person glow at being even for a moment the object of her attention. But I did feel at times as though I were "a specimen American young poet" to be absorbed and filed away in the novelist's store of vicarious experience. Then one had also the daring sense that anything could be said, the sense of freedom that was surely one of the keys to the Bloomsbury ethos, a shared secret amusement at human folly or pretensions. She was immensely kind to have seen me for at least one tea, as she did for some years whenever I was in England, but in all that time I never felt warmth, and this was startling. ~ May Sarton

The Crusades - the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation. ~ David Hume

It Begins with skepticism. The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible. ~ Steven Pinker

History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive. It knows the names of the king's bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly. ~ Jean-Henri Fabre

God and his love, and of multiple layers of human folly, which rings true at all kinds of levels of human knowledge and experience. ~ N. T. Wright

Forgive me,' said Abbot Zerchi. 'I wasn't getting ready to argue moral theology with you. I was speaking only of this spectacle of mass euthanasia in terms of human motivation. the very existence of the Radiation Disaster Act, and like laws in other countries, is the plainest possible evidence that governments were fully aware of the consequences of another war, but instead of trying to make the crime impossible, they tried to provide in advance for the consequences of the crime. Are the implications of that fact meaningless to you, Doctor? ~ Walter M. Miller Jr.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics defines the ultimate purpose of life, mind, and human striving: to deploy energy and information to fight back the tide of entropy and carve out refuges of beneficial order. An underappreciation of the inherent tendency toward disorder, and a failure to appreciate the precious niches of order we carve out, are a major source of human folly. ~ Steven Pinker

Indeed, all forms of human folly and beastiality touch a very symphathetic chord within our breasts! ~ J.D. Salinger

She (historian Barbara Tuchman) draws on skepticism, not cynicism, leaving the reader not so much outraged by human ability as amused and saddened by human folly. ~ Robert K. Massie

[Vestiges begins] from principles which are at variance with all sober inductive truth. The sober facts of geology shuffled, so as to play a rogue's game; phrenology (that sinkhole of human folly and prating coxcombry); spontaneous generation; transmutation of species; and I know not what; all to be swallowed, without tasting and trying, like so much horse-physic!! Gross credulity and rank infidelity joined in unlawful marriage, and breeding a deformed progeny of unnatural conclusions! ~ Adam Sedgwick

I can measure the motions of bodies," Sir Isaac Newton once observed, "but I cannot measure human folly." Nor could he do so as regards his own. He was to lose ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

The world is too big for love to be real. There are too many people in the world to ever know, beyond everything, that you are with the right person. That your heart is as swollen as it can be. Think of all the people in China. It is unlikely anyone will ever meet all of them. How can we know for certain, that trapped inside a foreign language and thumping in a foreign heart there isn't a love that is meant for us. The infinite possibility of existence, its limitless potential, is the proof that we need that love is nothing more than an imagination, a human folly, friendship swollen with self-importance, a final retreat from the storm of possibility. The love of our life could so easily have been someone else. It is random and accidental, haphazard and unsystematic. That which we feel for one person, clinging on to the delusion of destiny, could so easily be felt for a million people should the timing and the meetings and the mutual readiness have coalesced at some other time in some other place. Should someone else have accepted us or rejected us then everything would have been different. And once we know this, we know that all love is a lie. Not honesty but deception. Not heroism but cowardice. An unspoken agreement of mutual consolidation and compromise, a shield from possibility and a bed in which to sleep, nothing more than that. But I do still miss her. ~ Daniel Kitson

You wanted to sublimate a piece of natural human folly into a horror and then exorcise it with truth and i it was to isolate her out of the loud world so that it would have to flee us of necessity and then the sound of it would be as though it had never been ~ William Faulkner

There is little to be gained from looking backward with disapproval at the consistency of human folly except to notice how each generation thinks itself immune to its predecessor's mistakes. ~ John H. Makin

Something in the human psyche confuses beauty with the right to be loved. The briefest glance at human folly reveals that good looks and worthiness operate independently. Yet countless socializing forces, from Aunt Clara to the latest perfume ad, reinforce beliefs like 'If I were pretty enough, I would be loved.' ~ Martha Beck

I am Crone, eldest of the Moon's Great Ravens, whose eyes have looked upon a hundred thousand years of human folly. Hence my tattered coat and broken beak as evidence of your indiscriminate destruction. I am but a winged witness of your eternal madness. ~ Steven Erikson

Is there in all the history of human folly a greater fool than a clergymen in politics? ~ Pat Robertson

The well-being of the biosphere is measured over millennia of history and necessitates a human consciousness that can reflect and project along a similar time table. ~ Jeremy Rifkin

Neither parenting, Christian education, heritage, nor fine church involvement can alter anyone's essential sin nature. To lie, make self-centered choices, be destructive, or be deeply hurtful to oneself or others may be "out of character," but it is not outside of any human being's nature. ~ Rick Horne

It is only by having desire thwarted, and thereby learning to control it - in other words, by becoming civilized - that men become fully human. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

Human beings are not inevitable, and our brief existence is not preordained to be extended into the distant future. If Homo sapiens is to have a continued presence on earth, humankind will reevaluate its sense of place in the world and modify its strong species-centric stewardship of the planet. Our collective concepts of morality and ethics have a direct impact on our species' ultimate fate. ~ Jeff Schweitzer

Plainly, there's something within me that's ready to believe in life after death. And it's not the least bit interested in whether there's any sober evidence for it.
So I don't guffaw at the woman who visits her husband's grave and chats him up every now and then, maybe on the anniversary of his death. It's not hard to understand. And if I have difficulties with the ontological status of who she's talking to, that's all right.
That's not what this is about. This is about humans being human. ~ Carl Sagan

The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Sometimes you need to swallow hard and recognise your enemy as a fellow human being like who has the same rights as you and accept that you need to live in same space. ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Human dignity is the same for all human beings: when I trample on the dignity of another, I am trampling on my own. ~ Pope Francis

She's wonderful and soulful. She has a sly sense of humor. I've seen her deliver a funnier joke with a single silent raise of her eyebrow than many stand up comedians. She guards a very sensitive heart. Any human suffering brings her to tears. She's smart. Talk down to her and find yourself mentally slapped. She's an excellent judge of character, and seems to know an original spirit from a forgery every time. Cross boundaries with her...in any improper way and suffer the wrath of a lion. ... She's principled and firm. Rude behavior doesn't materialize in her presence. She's a grown-up who fully sees and knows children as citizens, and people, and souls. And because she respects children, all children seem to respect her. ~ Shonda Rhimes

If you're looking for your own idea of your own identity you know the human genome may not be the best place to look for it. You're just looking at a bunch of viruses. ~ Carl Zimmer

It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only the application of them that is human. ~ Thomas Paine

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, or George or Bill Bailey -
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover -
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Eff ~ T.S. Eliot

Passion was part of what made us human. I wanted to be more than just a lawyer. I wanted to be a human too! ~ N.M. Silber

Thus the recent rapid evolution of human intelligence is not only the cause of but also the only conceivable solution to the many serious problems that beset us. ~ Carl Sagan

There is something far greater at work here than what the human mind can process. It's ancient, it's old, and it's powerful. Some say it's God, others say it's fate, but whatever it is, it can't be stopped. ~ Chanda Hahn

A biography should be faithful to the truth. I do not believe that a biography of a man should be all praises, it should be both [praise and criticism] because it is not bad to show the human side of a person. You make him human by painting the defects. ~ Teodoro A. Agoncillo

The soul of every living being, including human, has a much longer life span than his carnal body. It usually takes few journeys through many bodies for a single soul to complete its lifetime in the material world. ~ Stevan V. Nikolic

Oh, why did he slap her when she's a widow, and that annoyed her even more. She said she should not have been slapped because she is a full human being, not because she doesn't have a husband to speak for her. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

As long as it was just a matter of graft and the lust for power, the British treated the people they robbed as human beings. It was religion that made them treat them like devils ~ Wendy Doniger

Daisuke was the sort of man who, once he was disturbed by something, no matter what, could not let go of it until he had pursued it to the utmost. Moreover, having the capacity to assess the folly of any given obsession, he was forced to be doubly conscious of it. Three of four years ago he had tackled the question of the process whereby his waking mind entered the realm of dreams. At night, when he had gotten under the covers and begun to doze off nicely, he would immediately think, this is it, this is how I fall asleep. No sooner had he thought of this than he was wide awake. When he had managed to doze off again, he would immediately think, here it is. Night after night, he was plagued by his curiosity and would repeat the same procedure two or three times. In the end, he became disgusted in spite of himself. He wanted somehow to escape his agony. Moreover, he was thoroughly impressed by the extent of his folly. To appeal to his conscious mind in order to apprehend his unconscious, and to try to recollect both at the same time was, as James had put it, analogous to lighting a candle to examine the dark, or stopping a top in order to study is movements; at that rate, it stood to reason that he would never again be able to sleep. He knew all this, but when night came, he still thought, now... ~ Natsume Sōseki

If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision that the Straits of Tiran would be closed. The right of innocent, maritime passage must be preserved for all nations ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making. As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses ... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death - if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach. ~ J.K. Rowling

People who equate all the different kinds of human activity to money are taking too primitive a view of things. ~ Paul A.M. Dirac

While anyone who practices a religion has the right to their own religious truths, it doesn't give them the right to violate the welfare of another human or an animal. So, where necessary, it is the task of the government to intervene and curb the freedom of religion. ~ Marianne Thieme

I do think it's important to be smiling and not make it all about business. You'll look back and regret it later, if you don't take advantage of your youth and your ability to travel. And it gives you something to pull from and inspiration to play your characters, and for your life and your development as a human being. ~ Nina Dobrev

In English sometimes they call a mentally disabled person a retard, and there is a kind of accidental poetry in naming a human being with this quality of latency or absence, like a clock left behind in an empty room, a page someone forgot to rip out of a calendar, the walking embodiment of jet lag. ~ Jean-Christophe Valtat

The problem in this world is that we have poetry but insist on living in prose. ~ J.M. Campos

Since you act as though God is dead, I wanted to join you in the mourning.
The reply of Martin Luther's wife, in full funeral regalia, in trying to illustrate the folly of his depressed state. ~ Mark Driscoll

The Robin and the Sparrow"
Said the robin to the sparrow,
"I should really like to know,
Why these anxious human beings
Rush about and worry so."
Said the sparrow to the robin,
"Friend I think that it must be,
That they have no Heavenly Father,
Such as cares for you and me. ~ Elizabeth Cheney

Pride - Lord of human kind ~ John Dryden

Each year the world Rich lived in felt more and more like a huge electronic haunted house in which digital ghosts and frightened human beings lived in uneasy coexistence. ~ Stephen King

It is in the movements of emotional crisis that human beings reveal themselves most accurately. ~ Anais Nin

Improving upon nature is the very essence of plant breeding, and so it goes to the heart of one of the central debates of the human condition: the relationship between humanity and nature and the degree to which the human race has a right (or indeed a responsibility) to change plant life for its own ends. ~ Noel Kingsbury

Have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood. France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, ~ Charles Dickens

The human mind makes foolish divisions in what love sees as one. ~ Anthony De Mello

He wondered whether there was any love between human beings that did not rest upon some sort of self-delusion ... ~ John Le Carre

I've written a screenplay that is a series of monologues and songs; they form this sort of human tapestry across time and place. The form is strange, but I find it really fascinating. ~ Patrick Wang

The tongues of men are not much leashed by concerns for accuracy or truth. ~ Richard K. Morgan

One only needs to read twentieth-century history to see that it has been the climax of human madness, if it's measured in terms of human violence inflicted on other humans. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Human beings forget they created the images in order to orientate themselves in the world. Since they are no longer able to decode them, their lives become a function of their own images: Imagination has turned into hallucination. This ~ Vilem Flusser

He who bets on governments and government money bets against 6,000 years of recorded human history. ~ Gary North

In this book, I want to share with you some extraordinary observations that I have made in my 50 years in dentistry. I believe these experiences made me a better dentist and played a significant role in my evolution as a human being. ~ James E. Rota

Passover is about more than saying the right prayers and singing the right songs. It is about experiencing the love God felt for humanity and which God expressed by freeing the Jewish people from Egypt. Our obligation as human beings and people of faith is to trust in that love and, like the Israelites, let it guide us to the next step on our journey. ~ Evan Moffic

I am capable of what every other human is capable of. This is one of the great lessons of war and life. ~ Gavin De Becker

She looked at Word. "You asked about X-it. He's sleeping. There are no intruders in his consciousness. I've done a sweep. Several installations, their A-I and Super-Recognizers have all been rendered inoperable, but others will quickly pick up the slack. Some will malfunction. All are on high alert. They know contact has been made, that you are still alive, and a global search has begun. No A-I or human Super-Recognizer can penetrate the room that you were in and in which X-it is now sleeping. But he cannot come out of the room until we are ready to return to the second in time when Death saved you. ~ Denny Taylor

He stood watching the approaching locamotive, his teeth chattering, his lips drawn away from them in a frightened smile; once or twice he glanced nervously sidewise, as though he were being watched. When the right moment came, he jumped. As he fell, the folly of his haste occurred to him with merciless clearness, the vastness of what he had left undone. There flashed through his brain, clearer than ever before, the blue of Adriatic water, the yellow of Algerian sands. ~ Willa Cather