Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.
The principle that human nature in its psychological aspects is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.
Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.
Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history since its statements are rather of the nature of universals whereas those of history are singulars.
It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
I think that some of our soldiers die in the battlefield and some come home to bad health and die prematurely just by the nature of the kind of business they're in.
The American economy has always been driven by the entrepreneurial nature of its citizens and blocking access to affordable health care will only suffocate growth within the small business sector of our economy.
I don't know why my smile has become a signature pose. I think it's a nice change. I think people want to see happiness so a smile is what can bring that. I didn't make it my trademark on purpose.
The sum of the whole is plainly this: The nature of man considered in his single capacity and with respect only to the present world is adapted and leads him to attain the greatest happiness he can for himself in the present world.
Happiness or satisfaction consists only in the enjoyment of those objects which are by nature suited to our several particular appetites passions and affections.
Now an infinite happiness cannot be purchased by any price less than that which is infinite in value and infinity of merit can only result from a nature that is infinitely divine or perfect.
I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.
And of all illumination which human reason can give none is comparable to the discovery of what we are our nature our obligations what happiness we are capable of and what are the means of attaining it.
Happiness is dependent on self-discipline. We are the biggest obstacles to our own happiness. It is much easier to do battle with society and with others than to fight our own nature.
Thus happiness depends as nature shows less on exterior things than most suppose.
He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.
One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.
Money has never made man happy nor will it there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore guard accordingly and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.
I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.
The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature but by our institutions great is our sin.
Truth is I'll never know all there is to know about you just as you will never know all there is to know about me. Humans are by nature too complicated to be understood fully. So we can choose either to approach our fellow human beings with suspicion or to approach them with an open mind a dash of optimism and a great deal of candour.
We must make it an imperative duty of our government to protect the gifts which Nature has bestowed on America and to insure the maintenance of a clean healthy wholesome environment for our people.