Human Bondage Quotes

#1. Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner. #Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

#2. The important thing was to love rather than to be loved. #Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

#3. The only nonhuman existence is what we call our human life. If we live our human life and none other, directly, then we subject ourselves to the most inhuman of all conditionsČ slavery to family and national taboos, wars, illness, poverty, deatah. Even the phrase "earning our living" is inhuman. Without religion or art or analysis to transpose the stark horror, we fall into the malady of our age with its great devotion to naturalism. A painting in a house is there to represent a color, a form, a realm we may not have been able to possess. A book opens a realm which our need to earn a living may have made unattainable. Everything that helps us to transpose the unbearable into a myth also helps the creation of distance from our inhuman life, to allow us to mix a little objectivity with the harsh, violent torments of our human bondage. #Quote by Anais Nin

#4. I would like to believe that there is a resolution in the human tragedy and that order can be reimposed upon the earth in the same way it occurs in the fifth act of the Elizabethan drama that supposedly mirrors our lives. My experience has been otherwise. History seldom corrects itself in its own sequence, and when we mete out justice, we often do it in a fashion that perpetuates the evil of the transgressors and breathes new life into the descendants of Cain. I would like to believe the instincts of the mob can be exorcised from the species or genetically bred out of it. But there is no culture in the history of the world that has not lauded its warriors over its mystics. Sometimes in an idle moment, I try to recall the names of five slaves out of the whole sorry history of human bondage whose lives we celebrate. I have never had much success. #Quote by James Lee Burke

#5. The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love. #Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

#6. There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved. #Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

#7. The title for this story comes from the Dutch philosopher Spinoza, who gave Part IV of his work Ethics the title Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions. Spinoza makes the point that humans are held hostage by their emotions and that to free oneself from this captivity, one has to know one's aims in life and follow them. It is an apt title, as the novel is centred on the unconscious search of the main character, Philip Carey, for his path in life and the tribulations he faces in trying to find peace. #Quote by William Somerset Maugham

#8. I wonder if you're not over-sensitive about your misfortune. Has it ever struck you to thank God for it? As long as you accept it rebelliously it can only cause you shame. But if you looked upon it as a cross that was given you to bear only because your shoulders were strong enough to bear it, a sign of God's favour, then it would be a source of happiness to you instead of misery. #Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

#9. There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood. #Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

#10. I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes of one's own than by doing the right thing on somebody else's advice. #Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

#11. The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself. #Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

#12. It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. - Of Human Bondage #Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

#13. It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it. #Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

#14. Mind is the only reason for human bondage and relief. Whenever mind is free from all physical attachment it is relieved and finds its way to the god. #Quote by Prajwalit

#15. In fact, all known societies above the very primitive level have been slave societies - even many of the Northwest American Indian tribes had slaves long before Columbus's voyage.46 Amid this universal slavery, only one civilization ever rejected human bondage: Christendom. And it did it twice! #Quote by Rodney Stark

#16. Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind. #Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

#17. People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise. #Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

#18. It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories. #Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

#19. Thinking of Cronshaw, Philip remembered the Persian rug which he had given him, telling him that it offered an answer to his question upon the meaning of life; and suddenly the answer occurred to him: he chuckled: now that he had it, it was like one of the puzzles which you worry over till you are shown the solution and then cannot imagine how it could ever have escaped you. The
answer was obvious. Life had no meaning. On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the planet's history; and as there had been a beginning of life upon it so, under the influence of other conditions,
there would be an end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come notas the climax of creation
but as a physical reaction to the environment.
- Of Human Bondage - #Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

#20. It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life. #Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

#21. It no longer came as a surprise to John Candotti that people found him easy to confess to. He was tolerant of human failings and it was rarely difficult for him to say, "Well, you screwed up. Everybody screws up. It's okay." His greatest satisfaction as a priest was to grant absolution, to help people forgive themselves for not being perfect, make amends, and get on with life. #Quote by Mary Doria Russell

#22. Our problem is not that we're fallen; our problem is we haven't become human yet. The question is, what can make us human, so that we can give life away and give love away and not be grasping after trying to protect our own lives all the time? That's the way I see the Jesus story, and I think it's a powerful and profound story. #Quote by John Shelby Spong

#23. The human spirit must prevail over technology. #Quote by Albert Einstein

#24. The human has no genetic adaptation to modern industrialized products and needs to be careful with prolonged exposure to these for good health. #Quote by Steven Magee

#25. Man could escape danger only by renouncing adventure, by abandoning that which has given to the human condition its unique character and genius among the rest of living things. #Quote by Rene Dubos

#26. There are few things more discomfiting than a spontaneous outburst of genuine decency from someone you're determined to dislike for no good reason. #Quote by Gregory David Roberts

#27. Where are you, Adam? According to the book of Genesis, Adam went into hiding after the fall. By trying to be more than human, Adam felt less than human. Before the fall, Adam was not ashamed; after the fall he was. Toxic shame is true agony. It is a pain felt from the inside, in the core of our being. It is excruciatingly painful. #Quote by John Bradshaw

#28. True religion is a universal and (necessarily) ego-transcending psycho-physical motivation of human beings. However, up to the present stage in human history, only relatively few individuals in any generation have been willing and able to make the gesture that is true religion (or, otherwise, true esotericism). In their great numbers, most people have, up to now, never yet been ready or willing to adapt to the true (and progressive) practical, moral, devotional, Spiritual, and Transcendental Wisdom-culture of right life. #Quote by Adi Da

#29. The sole object of revolution was the abolition of senseless suffering. But it had turned out that the removal of this second kind of suffering was only possible at the price of a temporary enormous increase in the sum total of the first. So the question now ran: Was such an operation justified? Obviously it was, if one spoke in the abstract of "mankind"; but, applied to "man" in the singular, to the cipher 2 - 4, the real human being of bone and flesh and blood and skin, the principle led to absurdity. As a boy, he had believed that in working for the Party he would find an answer to all questions of this sort. The work had lasted forty years, and right at the start he had forgotten the question for whose sake he had embarked on it. Now the forty years were over, and he returned to the boy's original perplexity. The Party had taken all he had to give and never supplied him with the answer. And neither did the silent partner, whose magic name he had tapped on the wall of the empty cell. He was deaf to direct questions, however urgent and desperate they might be. And yet there were ways of approach to him. Sometimes he would respond unexpectedly to a tune, or even the memory of a tune, or of the folded hands of the Pietà, or of certain scenes of his childhood. As if a tuning-fork had been struck, there would be answering vibrations, and once this had started a state would be produced which the mystics called "ecstasy" and saints "contemplation"; the greatest and soberest of mo #Quote by Arthur Koestler

#30. Yes, for every man there exist certain things which, instantly that they are said, seem to touch him more closely, more intimately, than anything has done before. Nor is it an uncommon occurrence that in the most unexpected fashion, and in the most retired of retreats, one will suddenly come face to face with a man whose burning periods will lead one to forget oneself and the tracklessness of the route and the discomfort of one's nightly halting-places, and the futility of crazes and the falseness of tricks by which one human being deceives another. And at once there will become engraven upon one's memory - vividly, and for all time - the evening thus spent. And of that evening one's remembrance will hold true, both as to who was present, and where each such person sat, and what he or she was wearing, and what the walls and the stove and other trifling features of the room looked like. #Quote by Nikolai Gogol

#31. To me, there is only one God. An unnamed presence we'll never understand. Everything else is human politics. It was human beings who wrote the holy books, and human beings who made all the rules and rituals. In other words, it is human beings who turn life into hell. So yes'
he picked up his wine glass
'I try to live by the spirit of God, but not by the rules, because rules are made by man, and man is nothing but a fatally conceited flea on the mammoth of Creation. #Quote by Anne Fortier

#32. The findings are in keeping with something called self-determination theory, which holds that human beings need three basic things in order to be content: they need to feel competent at what they do; they need to feel authentic in their lives; and they need to feel connected to others. These values are considered "intrinsic" to human happiness and far outweigh "extrinsic" values such as beauty, money, and status. Bluntly #Quote by Sebastian Junger

#33. It is necessary to name the enemy of human civilization, and this enemy is international terrorism associated with religious fundamentalism and religious intolerance. #Quote by Milos Zeman

#34. The instinct of self-preservation in human society, acting almost subconsciously, as do all drives in the human mind, is rebelling against the constantly refined methods of annihilation and against the destruction of humanity. #Quote by Bertha Von Suttner

#35. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distraction. It was possible no doubt to imagine a society in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries should be evenly distributed while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice, such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves. And when once they had done this they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. To return to the agricultural past as some thinkers about the beginning of the 20th century dreamed of doing was not a practical solution. It conflicted with the tendency towards mechanization which had become quasi-instinctive throughout almost the whole world, and moreover, any country which remained industrially backward was helpless in a military sense and was bound to be dominated, directly or indirectly by its more advances rivals. #Quote by George Orwell

#36. She already caused a scene with the repairmen who came to fix the shattered-by-Toraf bay window in my living room yesterday. Sure, she tried to whisper, but whispering, among many other things, isn't her specialty, and especially not now that she sounds like she's yodeling every sentence. But the glass installation guy did not appreciate her remark-which, in her defense, she had been trying to privately yodel to me-that his noise resembled a lobster claw. "A big one."
I can only imagine what kind of damage she would cause at school. She doesn't know how to play things cool like Galen. Her brain doesn't have that "inappropriate" filter, either. After all, that's why she was left behind in the first place. If she's not fit for the Syrena world right now, I'm not risking exposing her to the human world.
Oh sure, she looks innocent enough right now, surfing the channels on the humongloid flat screen above the fireplace. But I remember not too long ago that there was a different flat screen hanging on the wall-and that it had to be replaced with the current one because she picked a fight with me that ended with a literal storm unfurling in the living room and damaging everything. #Quote by Anna Banks

#37. The problem is capitalism. The problem is that in order to sell seven billion people on the necessity of globalisation, we've created a moral universe where people who do not work to create profit are considered less than human, and used as surplus labour to drive down the cost of wages. #Quote by Laurie Penny

#38. Brothers in one great family, children lose their common features only when they lose their innocence, which is the same everywhere. Then the passions, modified by climate, government and customs, differentiate the nations; the human race ceases to speak and hear the same language: society is the true tower of Babel. #Quote by Francois-Rene De Chateaubriand

#39. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion - to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious diversions of scarce resources - is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. #Quote by Sam Harris

#40. Touch"

You are already
asleep. I lower
myself in next to
you, my skin slightly
numb with the restraint
of habits, the patina of
self, the black frost
of outsideness, so that even
unclothed it is
a resilient chilly
hardness, a superficially
malleable, dead
rubbery texture.

You are a mound
of bedclothes, where the cat
in sleep braces
its paws against your
calf through the blankets,
and kneads each paw in turn.

Meanwhile and slowly
I feel a is it
my own warmth surfacing or
the ferment of your whole
body that in darkness beneath
the cover is stealing
bit by bit to break
down that chill.

You turn and
hold me tightly, do
you know who
I am or am I
your mother or
the nearest human being to
hold on to in a
dreamed pogrom.

What I, now loosened,
sink into is an old
big place, it is
there already, for
you are already
there, and the cat
got there before you, yet
it is hard to locate.
What is more, the place is
not found but seeps
from our touch in
continuous creation, dark
enclosing cocoon round
ourselves alone, dark
wide realm where we
walk with everyone. #Quote by Thom Gunn

#41. There were those few, and there will be more, who really liked people, loved people - all people. They were the human torches setting aflame the hearts of men so that they passionately fought for the rights of their fellow men, all men. They were hated, feared, and branded as radicals . They wore the epithet of radical as a badge of honor. They fought for the right of men to govern themselves, for the right of men to walk erect as free men and not grovel before kings, for the Bill of Rights, for the abolition of slavery, for public education, and for everything decent and worth while. They loved men and fought for them. Their neighbor's misery was their misery. They acted as they believed. #Quote by Saul Alinsky

#42. It's great that I can look up a fact instantly on my cellphone, but I miss the days in my room with a dog-eared, text-heavy paperback, immersed in the statistics of crime and punishment and lunacy, completely alone with the narrative of human depravity. #Quote by Russell Smith

#43. God Tris, are you even human? #Quote by Veronica Roth

#44. Absence of thought is indeed a powerful factor in human affairs, statistically speaking the most powerful, not just in the conduct of the many but in the conduct of all. #Quote by Hannah Arendt

#45. The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy. Collect and learn them; they are notable measures of directions for human life; you have much in little; they save time in speaking; and upon occasion may be the fullest and safest answer. #Quote by William Penn

#46. One of the odd enjoyments in life is to be alone in a room full of people. To have them there as unknowing human filler in your wide shot. #Quote by Henry Rollins

#47. [Measure for Measure] leaves me with the sense that life is all there is, so we might as well live it as best we can; that being human is not a given something we have to strive for. That the reason we are here is to live and that this involves making many difficult judgements. #Quote by Roger Allam

#48. Human beings are not creatures of logic; we are creatures of emotion. And we do not care what's true. We care how it feels. #Quote by Will Smith

#49. There is never but one pleasant side to this human life. Like the globe on which we turn, our own rapid rotation is but one day, and a part of this day cannot receive light, so that the other part will not be delivered into darkness. #Quote by Jacques-Henri Bernardin De Saint-Pierre

#50. If top performer are imbued with the belief that their excellence isn't a personal accomplishment, but a gift belonging to all of mankind as a demonstration of man's potential, they'll go strong and remain so through any event.
...
We celebrate the champion because we recognize that he has overcome personal ambition through sacrifice and dedication to higher principles.
The great become legendary when they teach by example. It isn't what they have, nor what they do, but what they have become that inspires all of mankind, and that's what we honor in them.
...
The Olympic spirit resides within the hearth of every man and woman. Great athletes can, by example, awaken awareness of that principle in all people.
These heroes and their spokesmen have a potentially powerful influence on all of mankind, literally the power to lift the world on their shoulders. The nurturing of excellence and recognition of its value is the responsibility of all men, because the quest for excellence in any area of human endeavor inspires us all toward the actualization of every form of man's yet unrealized greatness. #Quote by David R. Hawkins

#51. On issue after issue, the counterpoints to the conservative principle of the free market are the progressive principles of human dignity and the common good. We are interested in a market that serves human values, not humans who serve a market. Take #Quote by George Lakoff

#52. Laws have never been able to change human nature, and only God can change hearts. #Quote by Siri Mitchell

#53. I think there's a difference when you make fun of yourself and your own behavior, and when you dishonor or disrespect Christ. If you're making a mockery of Christ is one thing. But if you're just joking about human foibles and weaknesses, I think that's perfectly acceptable. #Quote by Patricia Heaton

#54. God's greatest gift is to endow human beings with the capacity to perceive - and the create - holiness. #Quote by David J. Wolpe

#55. Every age, every culture, every ethos and tradition has a style of its own, has the varieties of gentleness and harshness, of beauty and cruelty that are appropriate to it. Each age will take certain kinds of suffering for granted, will patiently accept certain wrongs. Human life becomes a real hell of suffering only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap. Required to live in the Middle Ages, someone from the Graeco-Roman period would have died a wretched death by suffocation, just as a savage inevitably would in the midst our civilization. Now, there are times when a whole generation gets caught to such an extent between two eras, two styles of life, that nothing comes naturally to it since it has lost all sense of morality, security and innocence. A man of Nietzsche's mettle had to endure our present misery more than a generation in advance. Today, thousands are enduring what he had to suffer alone and without being understood. #Quote by Hermann Hesse

#56. The artist is unique in his view of the world. He does not see material wealth as his ultimate goal and desire. He sees far beyond his own existence; his own fragile and corruptible mortality. He does not seek to profit through the exploitation of his fellow man. His is the life of expression; of sacrifice. He strives to evoke change within the vast diversities of human perception. #Quote by Tom Lazenby

#57. If there is one thing we admire about National Socialism it's the fact that it has succeeded, for the first time in German politics, in the complete mobilisation of human stupidity."30 #Quote by Volker Ullrich

#58. Grief falls upon human beings as the rain, not selecting good or evil, visiting the innocent, condemning those who have done no wrong. #Quote by Richard Jefferies

#59. The eye were no more than sense organs. The brain was no more than a central switchboard, encased in bone and removed from the working surface of the body. It was the hands that were the working surface, the hands that felt and manipulated the universe. Human beings thought with their hands. It was their hands that were the answer of curiosity, that felt and pinched and turned and lifted and hefted. There were animals that had brains of respectable size, but they had no hands and that made all the difference. #Quote by Isaac Asimov

#60. They say suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. the problem with being human isn't really so temporary. #Quote by Nic Sheff