#human-nature

"It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense."

"You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart."

"Humans are strange. … They value punishment because they think it means their actions are important—that they are important. … it's vanity."

"On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time."

"Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations."

"Believe in human beings - not all are good, but deep down all can be. But that doesn't mean you need to hang around crappy people and try to turn them around."

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."

"The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices."

"Hearts rebuilt from hope resurrect dreams killed by hate."

"Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves."

"An acquaintance merely enjoys your company, a fair-weather companion flatters when all is well, a true friend has your best interests at heart and the pluck to tell you what you need to hear."

"You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are."

"No passion is stronger in the breast of a man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high."

"While I was an honorable man in her eyes, she did not love me. But the minute she understood what I was, when she breathed the true and foul odor of my soul, love was born in her – for she does love me! Well, well! There is nothing real, then, except evil."

"I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago."

"I believe in equality. Equality for everybody. No matter how stupid they are or how superior I am to them."

"Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."

"I'm not in search of sanctity, sacredness, purity; these things are found after this life, not in this life; but in this life I search to be completely human: to feel, to give, to take, to laugh, to get lost, to be found, to dance, to love and to lust, to be so human."

"Anya looked upon Nin admirably. Having him as a partner-in-crime—if only on this one occasion, which she hoped would only be the start of something more—was more revitalizing than the cheap thrills of a cookie-cutter shallow, superficial romance, where the top priority was how beautiful a person was on the outside."

"In the end, you have to choose whether or not to trust someone."