"Humankind" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is not a question of what I want. I was not put here in the world to frivol through a life of gross pleasure. I have serious work to do in the service of humankind, and I can do it only by rigid concentration and ruthless elimination of the unessential. Surely you ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... responsible concern is chiefly centered here. The hopes which waken immediate enthusiasm and stir spontaneous response are hopes of righteousness victorious upon the earth. Because men believe in God, they believe that he has great purposes for humankind. The course of human history is like a river: sometimes it flows so slowly that one would hardly know it moved at all; sometimes bends come in its channel so that one can hardly see in what direction it intends to ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... Margaret would reply, striving to guard her voice with equal care, but with less success. For Margaret was cursed, nay blessed, with that heart of infinite motherhood that yearns over the broken or the weak or the straying of humankind, and makes their ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... his dark, cold, comfortless study with his head bowed on his hands. Up on the hill Rosemary had a headache and went early to bed, while Ellen remarked to St. George, purring his disdain of foolish humankind, who did not know that a soft cushion was the ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... west, Earth journeys on her immemorial quest, Whom a moon chases in no different guise. Thus stars pursue their courses, and thus flies The sun, and thus all creatures manifest Unrest, the common heritage, the ban Flung broadcast on all humankind,—on all Who live; for living, all are bound to die. That which is old, we know that it is man. These have no rest who sit and dream and sigh, Nor have those rest who ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... foundation of ethics; everyone knows that to mistake a desert mirage for a lake of fresh water does but lure the fainting traveler to dire disappointment or death. Now, it is perfectly clear that of all the things with which human beings have to deal, the most important by far is Man himself—humankind—men, women and children. It follows that for us human beings nothing else can be quite so important as a clear, true, just, scientific concept of Man—a right understanding of what we as human beings really are. For it requires no great wisdom, ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... possessed by ambition alone, I might possibly have been a greater man than I was; but I should not have been more virtuous, nor have gained the title I preferred to that of conqueror of Judaea and Emperor of Rome, in being called the delight of humankind. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... sorrowful than fierce,—a poor charmed brute, that while netted in the drowsy woofs of its mistress Lysia's magnetic spell, seemed as though it dimly wondered why it should thus be raised aloft for the adoration of infatuated humankind. Its brilliant crest quivered and emitted little arrowy scintillations of lustre—the "god" was ill at ease in the midst of all his splendor, and two or three times bent back his gleaming neck as though desirous of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... lessons. If the child always did good and never did evil it would not merit nor receive any punishment from a loving parent. One of the chief purposes of Jehovah in dealing with mankind in the manner he does deal with them is that humankind might be disciplined and learn the lessons of good and the effect of doing wrong, and thus learn to appreciate the ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... could make Haines consider his views on the necessity of political regeneration to be ridiculous. His optimism could not be snuffed out, for he was a genuine believer that the natural tendency of humankind was to do right. Wrong he believed to be the outcome of unnatural causes. This quality, combined with his practical knowledge of the world and his courage, made him a formidable man, one who would one day accomplish big things—if he ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... she has almost succeeded in transporting us into a state of religious fervour, we suddenly catch her smile through the lines and realize that no one more than she feels the futility of fanaticism. The stupid blunders of humankind do not escape her; neither do they arouse her contempt. She accepts human nature as it is with a warm fondness for all its types. We laugh and weep simultaneously at the children of the departing pilgrims, who cry out in vain: "We don't want to go to ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... at midnight, and looking down from aloft in the sky on the sleeping village far below, with its steeple pointing up at her, so that she might touch the golden weathercock! You, meanwhile, in such an ecstasy, and all below you the dull, innocent, sober humankind; the wife sleeping by her husband, or mother by her child, squalling with wind in its stomach; the goodman driving up his cattle and his plough,—all so innocent, all so stupid, with their dull days just alike, one after another. And you up in the air, sweeping away to some nook in the forest! Ha! ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hating the Plumies. It was not only that humankind was showing up rather badly, at the moment. It was that the Plumie ship had refused contact and forced a fight. It was that if the Niccola were destroyed the Plumie would carry news of the existence ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... than love. For him there is no one but himself: all other creatures are mere ciphers. The force of his will consists in the imperturbable calculations of his egotism: he is an able chess-player whose opponent is all humankind, whom he intends to checkmate. His success is due as much to the qualities he lacks as to the talents he possesses. Neither pity, nor sympathy, nor religion, nor attachment to any idea whatsoever ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... for no mere fingers they, But keys to all the goods by God to men assigned; And praise his deeds no less, for no mere deeds are they, But jewels to adorn the necks of humankind. ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... like a ship without rudder or compass, left to drift hither and thither with every wind that blows. He is as one without law, or rule, or order, or government. "Moral principles," says Hume, "are social and universal. They form, in a manner, the PARTY of humankind against vice and ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... at length brought our history to a conclusion, in which, to our great pleasure, though contrary, perhaps, to thy expectation, Mr Jones appears to be the happiest of all humankind; for what happiness this world affords equal to the possession of such a woman as Sophia, I sincerely own I ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... his heart, detested those abandoned courses, and was a professed enemy to the whole society of gamesters, whom he considered, and always treated, as the foes of humankind, he was insensibly accustomed to licentious riot, and even led imperceptibly into play by those cormorants, who are no less dangerous in the art of cheating, than by their consummate skill in working up the passions of unwary ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... grizzly's skull down to its chin. It was the only time in history that a grizzly bear was ever killed by a man with a sword. But no grizzly nowadays would attack a man unless cornered. Even cubs with no possible experience of humankind are terrified ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... tragic if Mahon machines were used to destroy humankind with themselves! Sergeant Bellews would have raged at the thought of training a Mahon unit to guide an atom bomb. It would have to be—in a fashion—deceived. He even disliked the necessity he faced that afternoon while a courier winged his way to the Pentagon with the ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... that monster's history, how it fell, Fain would I tell thee who hast ears to hear, Save only whence it came: for none of all The Argive host could read that riddle right. Some god, we dimly guessed, our niggard vows Resenting, had upon Phoroneus' realm Let loose this very scourge of humankind. On peopled Pisa plunging like a flood The brute ran riot: notably it cost Its neighbours of Bembina woes untold. And here Eurystheus bade me try my first Passage of arms, and slay that fearsome thing. So with my buxom bow and quiver lined With arrows ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... "But we were crazed . . . We should laugh now together, I and you, We two. You, for your dreaming it was worth A star's while to look on and light the Earth; And I, forever telling to my mind, Glory it was, and gladness, to give birth To humankind! Yes, I, that ever thought it not amiss To give the breath to men, For men to slay again: Lording it over anguish but to give My life that men might live For this. You will be laughing now, remembering I called you once ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... years subsequent to the landing at Plymouth, the Rev. Francis Higginson, an acute observer, wrote to the mother country,—"A sup of New England air is better than a whole flagon of old English ale." Jean Paul says that the roots of humankind are the lungs, and that, being rooted in air,—we are properly children of the aether. Truly, children of the aether,—and so, children of fire. For the oxygen, upon which the lungs chiefly feed, is the fiery principle in Nature,—all that we denominate fire and flame being but the manifestation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... a century's service on the part of Mrs. Elizabeth Buffum Chace as president of the Rhode Island Woman Suffrage Association. Letters from absent friends were read expressing their high appreciation of her life-long service in the cause of humankind as well as womankind. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mr. William Lloyd Garrison and Miss Mary F. Eastman attended to speak for the cause, and to testify their love for Mrs. Chace. The Hon. E. L. Freeman, ex-Gov. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... start on that chapter of her life, for, if I did, I would not know where to stop. It was there I met her, there she nursed me back to life; then I learned to appreciate her devotion to the cause of humankind. This second long siege against suffering made her an invalid ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... with Henry joined, Rush, Rodney, Langdon, friends of humankind, Persuasive Dickinson, the farmer's boast, Recording Thompson, pride of all the host, Nash, Jay, the Livingstons, in council great, Rutledge and Laurens, held the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... offered to do this, but I will not return unto the like thereof; so be of good cheer, with eyes cool and clear, for I have no desire to other than thyself and will not die but in the love of thee, and thou to me art queen this day, to the exclusion of al! humankind." Therewith she fell to kissing his feet; and this her fashion pleased him, so that his love for her redoubled and he became unable to brook severance from her a single hour. Now Al-Rashid one day went forth to the chase and left Tohfah in her pavilion. As she sat perusing a book, with a candle-branch ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... democratic assumptions, and He scientifically demonstrated those assumptions. In His eyes all individuals were of value; through the social implications of His message sin became democratic and the burden of all; in His aspirations all humankind were included. He assumed that Love would solve more problems than Hatred. He even assumed that to have a human enemy was a social anomaly. And He believed that religion was essentially a system of behavior by which the individual need not be swallowed up in the group, but by which the individual ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... ingloriously, your head down in consciousness that you are cutting a sorry figure before the world. Barefoot as a mendicant, your hair disheveled in the wind, the stripes of your clothes strongly suggestive of Sing Sing, your appearance a caricature of humankind, you wander up and down the beach a creature that the land is evidently trying to shake off and the sea is unwilling to take. But you are consoled by the fact that all the rest are as mean and forlorn-looking as yourself; ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... are not mortal. And when, at noontide, I tread the crowded streets, the influence of this day will still be felt; so that I shall walk among men kindly and as a brother, with affection and sympathy, but yet shall not melt into the indistinguishable mass of humankind. I shall think my own thoughts, and feel my own emotions, and ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... man at time of death Would fain set forth some saying that may live After his death and better humankind; For death gives life's last word a power to live, And, like the stone-cut epitaph, remain After the vanish'd voice, and speak to men. God grant me grace to glorify my God! And first I say it is a grievous case, Many so dote upon this bubble world, Whose colours in a moment break and fly, ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... of which many of us know nothing. Take, for example, some marsh within a half-hour's trolley ride of any of our cities or towns. Select one where cat-tails and reeds abound. Mosquitoes and fear of malaria keep these places free from invasion by humankind; but if we select some windy day we may laugh them both to scorn, and we shall be well repaid for our trip. The birds frequenting these places are so seldom disturbed that they make only slight effort to conceal their nests, and we shall find plenty of the beautiful ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for humankind, Is happy ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... quickly learnt,—which are learnt by a single lesson. One liberal tip, or even a few kind words heartily said, to a manly little schoolboy, will establish in his mind the rooted principle that the speaker of the words or the bestower of the tip is a jolly and noble specimen of humankind. Boys are great physiognomists: they read a man's nature at a glance. Well I remember how, when going to and from school, a long journey of four hundred miles, in days when such a journey implied travel by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... by those whose interests were in them. The Mutiny of the Bounty, perhaps the most romantic incident of these South Seas, was the result of an effort to transport breadfruit-tree shoots from Tahiti to the West Indies. It is a beautiful trait in humankind, which, maybe, designing nature has endowed us with to spread her manifold creations, that even the most selfish of men delight in planting in new environments exotic seeds and plants, and in enriching the fauna of faraway islands with strange animals and insects. The pepper- and the gum-tree ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... individualism; diminish the interference of government—"laissez faire, laissez passer."[2] Agriculture is productive, let its burdens be alleviated; manufactures are useful but "sterile": honour, therefore, above all, to the tiller of the fields, who hugs nature close, and who enriches humankind! The elder Mirabeau—"ami des hommes"—who had anticipated Quesnay in some of his views, and himself had learnt from Cantillon, met Quesnay in 1757, and thenceforth subordinated his own fiery spirit, as far as that was possible, to the spirit of the master. From the physiocrats—Gournay ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... wilt Thou blame an aged Poet's prayer, That issuing hence may steal into thy mind Some solace under weight of royal care, Or grief—the inheritance of humankind. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... of mind! Sweet delight of humankind! Heavenly-born, and bred on high, To crown the favourites of the sky With more of happiness below Than victors in a triumph know! Whither, O whither art thou fled, To lay thy meek, contented head? What happy region dost thou please To make ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... black azure of the heavens, with a gradually deepening depression. A dreamy sense stole over him of remoteness or detachment from all visible things, as though he were suddenly and mysteriously separated from the rest of humankind by an invisible force which he was powerless to resist. He was still lost in this vague half-torpor or semi- conscious reverie, when a light tap startled him back to the realization of earth and his earthly surroundings. ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... comes up out of a ground that lies thickly packed beneath our feet, and that is wider than the widest waste, and deeper than the bottomless abysses of the sea. It comes up from a soil that descends downward through all times and ages, through all the days of humankind, down to the very foundations of the globe itself. For it grows from the flesh of the nameless, unnumbered multitudes of men condemned by life throughout its course to misery. It has its roots where death and defeat have been. It has its roots in all bruised and maimed ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... with him, might indeed be apt to conclude, that such a diversity of images and characters, such strict enquiries into nature, such close observations on the several humours, manners, and affections of all ranks and degrees of men, and, as it were, so true and perfect a dissection of humankind, delivered with so much pointed wit, and force of expression, could be no other than the work of extraordinary diligence, labour, and application; but in truth, we owe the pleasure and advantage of having been so well ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... carefully examining the interior features of this enormous cavern, and before deciding if it was the work of nature or humankind, I went ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... and shade my lifeless face: One would not, sure, be frightful when one's dead,— And—Betty—give this cheek a little red." The courtier smooth, who forty years had shined An humble servant to all humankind. Just brought out this, when scarce his tongue could stir, "If—where I'm going—I could serve you, sir?" "I give and I devise" (old Euclio said, And sighed) "my lands and tenements to Ned." Your money, sir? "My money, sir! What, all? Why—if I must" (then wept)—"I give it Paul." The manor, sir? ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... you would both like to go sleighing with me some afternoon?" she ventured, with the humility so prone to assail humankind in a frank and shrewish presence. "The roads are in wonderful condition, and I don't believe you'd take cold. Do you know, I found Grandmother Eaton's foot-warmers, the other day! I'll ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... Far better than that I, like filthy mire, should sink into some drain! Ye flowers are now faded and gone, and, lo, I come to bury you. But as for me, what day I shall see death is not as yet divined! Here I am fain these flowers to inter; but humankind will laugh me as a fool. Who knows, who will, in years to come, commit me to my grave! Mark, and you'll find the close of spring, and the gradual decay of flowers, Resemble faithfully the time of death of maidens ripe in years! In a twinkle, spring time draws to a close, and maidens wax ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... but a dying man Searches among the dark caves of his mind! But as I stood, the very wind that ran Between the files breathed more than common wind, As though the gods of men when Time began, Fathers of fathers of old humankind, Startled, heard now the changeful future knock; And their lament it was from ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... replied: A scanty train, In that far age, approach'd the wide domain; The wide domain, with game and fruitage crown'd, Supplied their food uncultured from the ground. By nature form'd to rove, the humankind, Of freedom fond, will ramble unconfined, Till all the region fills, and rival right Restrains their steps, and bids their force unite; When common safety builds a common cause, Conforms their interest and inspires ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... is the work and glory of the Lord, how great must be the responsibility of the teachers of Zion, His copartners in the business of saving humankind! Next to parenthood, teaching involves us in the most sacred relationship known to man. The teacher akin to the parent is the steward of human souls—his purpose ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... of those every-day lives from the busy, moving mass of humankind and place it under the microscope; bring up to the visible surface all that has lain hidden for years from the casual glance of the general observer; lay bare the secret tenor of its every thought and motive and impulse. ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... that Tree, in Autumn's dim decay, Stript by the frequent, chill, and eddying Wind; Where yet some yellow, lonely leaves we find Lingering and trembling on the naked spray, Twenty, perchance, for millions whirl'd away! Emblem, alas! too just, of Humankind! Vain MAN expects longevity, design'd For few indeed; and their protracted day What is it worth that Wisdom does not scorn? The blasts of Sickness, Care, and Grief appal, That laid the Friends in dust, whose natal morn Rose near their own;—and solemn is the call;— Yet, like ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... of his daily life. His wife and children must be content with life simply—bare, cold life—often without any of the conveniences or the commonest luxuries which make existence anything more than the curse it is to a large majority of humankind. This is peculiarly true of the condition of the masses of the Old World, and is fast becoming true in our own young and ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... is being shed in various parts of the world. It cannot be their employers who are at fault, because the press and the clergy are unanimous in declaring that the heads of our great industries are the benefactors of humankind. That is why the girls protest. They are quite content with their own fate, but they cannot bear the entire responsibility for the march of civilisation. Mamie tells me that she cannot sleep of nights for thinking of the poor little Moorish babies whose mothers were killed by the French guns. ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... produce in other boats to market. Under bridges its current was divided and subdivided until no one could tell which was Somme and which canal, busy itself as the peasants and the shopkeepers doing a good turn to humankind, grinding wheat in one place and in another farther on turning a loom to weave the rich velvets for which Amiens is famous, and between its stages of usefulness supplying a Venetian effect where balconies leaned across one of its subdivisions, an ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... but coldly felt, till she Became my only friend, who had endued My purpose with a wider sympathy; Thus, Cythna mourned with me the servitude 985 In which the half of humankind were mewed Victims of lust and hate, the slaves of slaves, She mourned that grace and power were thrown as food To the hyena lust, who, among graves, Over his loathed meal, laughing in agony, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... sentiment should seek its most adequate and definitive expression in a portrayal of all phases of the life and fate of those who, as the tillers of the soil, had ever remained nearer to Mother Earth than the rest of humankind. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... (which is frequently the case), and there are not in the unseen world voices more gentle and more true, that may be so implicitly relied on, or that are so certain to give none but tenderest counsel, as the Voices in which the Spirits of the Fireside and the Hearth address themselves to humankind. ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... your perplexity, O Socrates, abandon fears and doubts, believe and know that this thing of which I make great boast, my beauty, has power to confer some benefit on humankind. ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... know how resistlessly the male of humankind is drawn to the female, at the mere glimpse of her flinging aside the tools of his trade, whatever it may be, and furiously pursuing to the ends of the earth. And we know, too (for the true poets of all ages have told us), how ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... sloppy, but it's the way I feel," Cappy declared. "When a man has a big heart-breaking job to do and a lot of Philistines are knocking him, maybe it helps him to retain his faith in humankind to have some fellow grow sincerely sloppy and slip a telegraphic cheer in with the hoots. Besides, if I didn't let off steam today I'd swell up and bust myself all ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... severall wayes are we plagued and punished for our father's defaultes, that it is the greatest part of our felicity to be well born, and it were happy for humankind if only such parentes as are sounde of body and mind should be suffered to marry. An Husbandman will sow none but the choicest seed upon his lande; he will not reare a bull nor an horse, except he be right shapen in all his parts, or permit him to cover a mare, except he be ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... say so! Thou dost know and feel The things they do to thee and thine. The heel That scratched thy neck in passing—whose? Canst say? Yes, yes, 'twas his, and this is his fete-day. Oh, thou that wert of humankind—couched so— A beast of burden on this dunghill! oh! Bray to them, Mule! Oh, Bullock! bellow then! Since they have made thee blind, grope in thy den! Do something, Outcast One, that wast so grand! Who knows if thou putt'st ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... one quality in humankind that really matters—softening, suffering and despair and turning away wrath, and as Donna knelt by the grave of the man who had possessed that quality to such an extent that he had considered his life cheap as a ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... like the spirit of that wind Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet Passed through the peopled haunts of humankind. Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet, Through fane, and palace-court, and labyrinth mined 525 With many a dark and subterranean street Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep She passed, observing mortals ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... dawned brilliantly, and to the homesick girl there suddenly came a sense of desolation on waking. A strange land was this, without church-bells or sense of Sabbath fitness. The mountain, it is true, greeted her with a holy light of gladness, but mountains are not dependent upon humankind for being in the spirit on the Lord's day. They are "continually praising Him." Margaret wondered how she was to get through this day, this dreary first Sabbath away from her home and her Sabbath-school class, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... could do would surprise her, nor did she wonder when boys of Thad West's age yielded to her lure. But that this man, this staid, stanch Thomas, on whom she had counted more implicitly than she knew, should have proved so easy a victim shook her native faith in humankind. "All men are alike," thought Persis, in her haste betrayed into one of those sweepingly unjust generalizations such as King ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... What doth the soul; to be or live if better worth it is; And why the Lord, Who, only, reads within that book of His, In fatal hymeneals hath eternally entwined The vintage-chant of nature with the dirging cry of humankind? ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... metaphors have come is war, which has given men some of the most vivid action possible to humankind. Thus we speak of "a war of words," of a person "plunging into the fray," when we mean that he or she joins in a keen argument or quarrel. Or we speak more generally of the "battle of life," picturing the troubles and difficulties ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... watch the other's going, Till, having clear'd sufficient ground, With one accord they turn'd them round, And squatting down, for forms not caring, At one another fell to staring; As if not proof against a touch Of what plagues humankind so much, A prying itch to get at notions Of all their neighbor's looks and motions. Sir Don at length was first to rise— The better dog in point of size, And, snuffing all the ground between, Set off, with easy jaunty mien; ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... repulsive, but very human. As he stands before the prison gate he says that "the whole sorrow of mankind" holds him in its grip. But this is a part of what he wished for. He wished for universal experience—to feel in his own soul all the weal and all the woe of humankind. At the end of the First Part he has drained the cup of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... his work with that of other writers without feeling the effect of his personality. Fletcher, perhaps next to him among the Elizabethans in a versatile expression of a wide range of emotions, gives no sign of the sincere, profound, and searching interest in humankind which we are sure was Shakespeare's. Bacon, surpassing him perhaps in intellectual curiosity and thoroughness, manifestly gives no evidence in his writings of the warmth of sympathy, the quickness of emotional ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... to be! Life would hardly be endurable were it not for dreaming, hoping, believing. I could stand any loss better than that of my faith in humankind." I sat upright, my hands locked in my lap. "I'm not here to do things for the people you have so little patience with. I told you I wanted to see what sort of people we are. You're perfectly certain those who live in Scarborough ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... said courteously that he was but a passer-by, and that he must set off home again, before the sun was high. And at that the old man said, "Nay, sir, but as you have come, you will surely wait awhile and speak with me. I see," he added, "so few of humankind, that my mind and tongue are alike stiff with disuse; but you can tell me something of your world—and I," he added, "can tell you something of mine." Then there came suddenly on Gilbert a great fear, and he looked ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... our true heritage of sun; It is the wings wherewith the soul may fly. Save through this flesh so scorned and spat upon, No ray of light had reached the caverned mind, No thrill of pleasure through the life had run, No love of nature or of humankind, Were it but love of self, had stirred the heart To its first deed. Such freedom as we find, We find but through its service, not apart. And as an eagle's wings upbear him higher Than Andes or Himalaya, and chart Rivers and seas beneath; so our desire, With more celestial members yet, may ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... Sure I'm by nature form'd for misery Beyond the rest of humankind, or else 'Tis a false saying, though a common one, "That time assuages grief." For ev'ry day My sorrow for the absence of my son Grows on my mind: the longer he's away, The more impatiently I wish to see him, The more pine ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... vegetables, and has brought all the vegetable gardeners and greengrocers around me. The poultry rearers are here too, and the forage dealers and the grass cutters and the basket makers, and other thrifty members of the commercial order of Ch'u-tung humankind. When I came away the people dropped into line and strained their necks to get a parting smile. I was sped on my way with a public curiosity as if I were a penal servitor released from prison, a general home from a war, or something of that kind. And so this wonderful ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... saw—or seemed to see—that there lay a responsibility upon her in reference to the clergyman, which she owned to no other, nor to the whole world besides. The links that united her to the rest of humankind—links of flowers, or silk, or gold, or whatever the material—had all been broken. Here was the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break. Like all other ties, it brought ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a tinker," quoth Mr. Sprott, not louting low (for a sturdy republican was Mr. Sprott), but like a lord of humankind, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... like another of those rats—one that had left the wainscoting and taken to the floor, regardless (in a boldness at once insolent and sly) of the presence of humankind. To Marshall it was only an office-hand from the outer room who now entered with a handful of mail matter, which he placed, with an air not wholly guiltless of servility and stealth, upon ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... be strengthened by the stability and independence of the judges the establishment of juries, and of civil and criminal codes, not prescribed by old times, nor by conquering kings, but by the voice of nature, by the clamor of justice and by the genius of wisdom." ... "Humankind cries against the thoughtless and blind legislators who have thought that they might with impunity try chimerical institutions. All the peoples of the world have attempted to gain freedom, some by deeds of arms, others by laws passing ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... that once were wont to crown Our deeds of valor and of great renown! O trees of Jupiter, Dordona's grove, How ingrate man repays thy treasure trove That first gave food that humankind might eat, And furnished shelter from ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... Behold, you Powers, To whom you have intrusted humankind! See Europe, Afric, Asia, put in balance, And all weighed down by one light, worthless woman! I think the gods are Antonies, and give, Like prodigals, this nether world away To none ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... only enough money in my pocket and sandwiches in my pack to see me through the first three or four days. Any man may brutally pay his way anywhere, but it is quite another thing to be accepted by your humankind not as a paid lodger but as a friend. Always, it seems to me, I have wanted to submit myself, and indeed submit the stranger, to that test. Moreover, how can any man look for true adventure in life if he always knows to a certainty where his next meal is coming ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... overcast and a storm came on, with what solicitude would the old mother lead the way into the thatched stable, where there was snug protection against the threatening element. There are those who say that none but humankind is immortal,—that none but man has a soul. I do not make or believe that claim. There is that within me which tells me that no thing in this world and life of ours which has felt the grace of maternity shall utterly perish. And this I say ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... those in the United States are The Carnegie Corporation and The Rockefeller Foundation, which are devoting hundreds of millions of dollars to the service of research, for the purpose of advancing science and directly benefiting humankind. The results play an important part in the protection and daily welfare of mankind. The Mellon Institute contributes much to the solution of problems of applied chemistry.[7] It is interesting to note how the investigation carried on by these and other foundations is contributing ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... as they sighed and turned to toil anew, The Seraph hailed them with observance due; And after some fit talk of higher things Touched tentative on mundane happenings. This they permitting, he, emboldened thus, Prolused of humankind promiscuous. And, since the large contention less avails Than instances observed, he told them tales—Tales of the shop, the bed, the court, the street, Intimate, elemental, indiscreet: Occasions where Confusion ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... It was accepted, nowadays, that humankind might be one species but was many races, and each saw the cosmos in its own fashion. On Kalmet III there was a dense, predominantly Asiatic population which terraced its mountainsides for agriculture and deftly mingled modern ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... tenderest chord that vibrates in the great heart of all humankind when he gave to immortality his song of "Home, Sweet Home;" and thank God, the grand mansions and palaces of the rich do not hold all the happiness and nobility of this world. There are millions of humble cottages where virtue resides in the warmth and purity ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... of it, you need to be under no alarm as to the possibility of its chemical or mechanical analysis. The philosophers are very humorous in their ecstasy of hope about it; but the real interest of their discoveries in this direction is very small to humankind. It is quite true that the tympanum of the ear vibrates under sound, and that the surface of the water in a ditch vibrates too; but the ditch hears nothing for all that; and my hearing is still to me as blessed ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... life are yearning, sad, As humankind they scan. She says, "Oh, there are men enough, But where'll I find ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... "and what profit did the immortal and ill-starred Torquato Tasso win from all his genius? A few stolen kisses on the steps of a palace. And he died of famine in a madhouse. I say it: the world's opinion, that empress of humankind, I will tear from her her crown and sceptre. Opinion tyrannizes over unhappy Italy, as over all the earth. Italy! what flaming sword will one day come to break her fetters, as now I ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... allies, we are striving to build a world in which peoples with diverse interests can live freely and prosper. But all that humankind has achieved to date, all that we are seeking to accomplish, and human existence itself can be undone in an instant—in the catastrophe ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... meet the finch, the sparrow of the timbered lands. He has been out in the woods already, and is coming back now to humankind, that he likes to live with and study from all sides. Queer little finch. A bird of passage, really, but his parents have taught him that one can spend a winter in the north; and now he will teach his children that the north's the ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... country such as ours ought to be one of hope, and not of despair. It ought not to be looked upon as the last and worst shift that a family can come to, but the performance of an imperative duty to our blood, our country, our religion, and to humankind. As soon as children begin to be felt an incumbrance, and what was properly in ancient times Old Testament blessings are no longer welcomed, parents ought to provide for removal to parts of this wide world where every accession is an ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... romance had a sharp edge of reality as I saw in those battles of the Somme, and afterward, more grievously, in the Cambrai salient and Flanders, when the tanks were put out of action by direct hits of field-guns and nothing of humankind remained in them but the charred bones ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... the district office, where it might have been acted on by the officers in charge to the great detriment of the Service. At that time the evil of sending out as inspectors men admirably trained in theory but woefully lacking in practice and the knowledge of Western humankind was one of the great menaces to effective personnel. Fortunately this particular report came into the hands of the Chief, who happened to be touring in the West. A fuller investigation exposed to the sapient experience ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... aid The world's foundations first were laid, Come, visit every pious mind; Come, pour thy joys on humankind; From sin and sorrow set us free, And ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... work of ages in a day, To raze and shatter, to abase and slay. Blind as the earthquake, headlong as the storm, Yet in such hideous subter-human form, Vulgar as venomous! Dragon indeed, And dangerous, but with no soul save greed, No aim save chaos. Bloody, yet so blind, The common enemy of humankind; Whose age-stored works and ways it yearns to blast, To smite to ruined fragments, and to cast Prone—as itself is prone—in common dust. The Beautiful, the Wise, the Strong, the Just, All fruit of labour, and all spoil of thought, All that co-operant Man hath won or wrought, All that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... friends of the Navy League seriously believe that a principle as old as humankind can be suddenly upset by the invention of a submarine or of some novelty in guns? Even in their notions of what material strength means I hold them to be mistaken. The last resource which a nation ought to neglect is its ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her worth shall never die; but for all humankind immortal ones shall make a gladsome song in praise of steadfast Penelope." It is a noble story: the fidelity of a wife, the undaunted courage of a man; a long battle with adversity, crowned with the joy of love's reunion; the meeting with servant, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... and the good colonel, notwithstanding his having disposed of his money, discounted the captain's draft. You see, madam, an instance in the generous behaviour of my friend James, how false are all universal satires against humankind. He is indeed one of the worthiest men the ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... soul, with virtue overruled, Inflamed by reason, and by reason cooled, 110 In hours of peace content to be unknown, And only in the field of battle shown: To souls like these, in mutual friendship joined, Heaven dares intrust the cause of humankind. Britannia's graceful sons appear in arms, Her harassed troops the hero's presence warms, Whilst the high hills and rivers all around With thundering peals of British shouts resound: Doubling their speed, they ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... is the God of spirits. He is not only the God of humankind; "the immense city of God contains, no doubt, nobler citizens than man, in reasoning power so weak, and in affections so poor."[169] But let us speak of what is known to us: He is the God of humankind. All nations shall one day render glory to Him. Mighty words have resounded ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... people. Will you not save this honest, uncorrupted but dark, deceived and oppressed people? They should not be allowed to perish, for within their souls they carry a great store of strong moral forces. Make of them a cultured people, believing in the verity of humankind; teach them to use the wealth of their land; and the ancient people of Jenghiz Khan will ever be ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... can hear, the war and rush of stormy Wind Depures the stuff of human life, breeds health and strength for humankind: ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... pictur'd scenes Beguile the lonely hour; I sit and gaze With lingering eye, till charmed FANCY makes The lovely landscape live, and the rapt soul From the foul haunts of herded humankind Flies far away with spirit speed, and tastes The untainted air, that with the lively hue Of health and happiness illumes the cheek Of mountain LIBERTY. My willing soul All eager follows on thy faery flights FANCY! best friend; whose blessed witcheries ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... each bosom reason holds her state. With daring aims irregularly great, Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of humankind pass by, Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band, By forms unfashion'd; fresh from nature's hand; Fierce in their native hardiness of soul, True to imagin'd right, above control, While ev'n the peasant boasts these rights to scan, And learns to ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... first the sea Europe from Asia severed, And Mars to rage 'mid humankind began, Never was such a blow as this delivered On land and sea at once by mortal man. These heroes did to death a host of Medes Near Cyprus, and then captured with their crews Five score Phoenician ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... the whole. As Brandes says, in the course of his sympathetic criticism of the two writers, "Ibsen is in love with the idea, and its psychological and logical consequences.... Corresponding to this love of the abstract idea in Ibsen, we have in Bjornson the love of humankind." Bjornson, moreover, was a long way behind Ibsen in constructive skill. As regards the technical execution of Leonarda, its only obvious weakness is a slight want of vividness in the presentation of the thesis. ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... we know the aspirations of humankind, and share them. We have come to a new realization of our place in the world and a new appraisal of our Nation by the world. The unselfishness of these United States is a thing proven; our devotion to peace for ourselves and for the world is well established; our concern for preserved civilization ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... shall wait in vain, And Bartimaeus still go blind; The healing hem shall ne'er again Be touched by suffering humankind. ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... rearing. Now, since we are all, in greater or less measure, the product of our respective environments, and as for centuries before her time Desdemona's ancestors had been accustomed to the fostering care of humankind, she and her family must have been profoundly affected by the peculiar circumstances ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... hearts of bronze have humankind! The man who first attempted this awful route and defied its terrors must have had a heart of adamant. Often did our traveller turn his eyes towards his little home as first pirates, then contrary ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine |
