#humans

We do not have to be ashamed of what we are. As sentient beings we have wonderful backgrounds. These backgrounds may not be particularly enlightened or peaceful or intelligent. Nevertheless, we have soil good enough to cultivate; we can plant anything in it. ↗

— Chögyam Trungpa

#background #confidence #cultivation #development #enlightenment

All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed. For after all, he was only human. He wasn't a dog. ↗

— Charles M. Schulz

#dogs #humans #life

Humans, we just hop out of things, off things. We splatter ourselves in inappropriate places. Because we have nothing to live for. Because we want to destroy what we can. Because we want to be something we can’t. Because we don’t really believe we can die. ↗

— Deb Olin Unferth

#life #life

If I were a tree, I would have no reason to love a human. ↗

— Maggie Stiefvater

#humans #love #maggie-stiefvater #nature #the-raven-boys

The most important thing for any con artist is never to think like a mark. Marks think they can get something for nothing. Marks think they can get what they don’t deserve and could never deserve. Marks are stupid and pathetic and sad. Marks think they’re going to go home one night and have the girl they’ve loved since they were a kid suddenly love them back. Marks forget that whenever something’s too good to be true, that’s because it’s a con. ↗

— Holly Black

#humans #marks #love

Love is the great test of the human. The human is tested by our ability to withstand love. Love is so difficult, it is so challenging, it demands of us that we wreck it with ourselves. It demands of us an honesty that few of us could sustain. ↗

— Junot Díaz

#difficulty #honesty #humans #love #love

There seems to be an inborn drive in all human beings not to live in a steady emotional state, which would suggest that such a state is not tolerable to most people. Why else would someone succumb to the attractions of romantic love more than once? Didn’t they learn their lesson the first time or the tenth time or the twentieth time? And it’s the same old lesson: everything in this life—I repeat, everything—is more trouble than it’s worth. And simply being alive is the basic trouble. This is something that is more recognized in Eastern societies than in the West. There’s a minor tradition in Greek philosophy that instructs us to seek a state of equanimity rather than one of ecstasy, but it never really caught on for obvious reasons. Buddhism advises its practitioners not to seek highs or lows but to follow a middle path to personal salvation from the painful cravings of the average sensual life, which is why it was pretty much reviled by the masses and mutated into forms more suited to human drives and desires. It seems evident that very few people can simply sit still. Children spin in circles until they collapse with dizziness. ↗

— Thomas Ligotti

#stillness #why-humans-use-drugs #life

One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about human beings was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. ↗

— Douglas Adams

#ignorance #observation

I can certainly put myself in Israel's shoes. They are humans just like we are. They want peace and security inside their borders. ↗

— Mahmoud Abbas

#certainly #humans #i #i can #inside

The difference between humans and other mammals is that we know how to accessorize. ↗

— Madeleine Albright

#difference #how #humans #know #mammals