humanity
It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time, waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.
Letters of E. B. White, rev. edition edited by Martha White (New York: Harper Perennial, 2007), 596.
I love humans—though it’s a gauge of my spiritual condition how friendly I am with my fellow New Yorkers.
“Raging Into God,” New York Magazine, by Boris Kachka, November 8, 2009.
I don’t want to talk about me, of course, but it seems as though far too much attention has been lavished on you lately—that your greed and vanities and quest for self-fulfillment have been catered to far too much. You just want and want and want. You believe in yourself excessively. You don’t believe in Nature anymore. It’s too isolated from you. You’ve abstracted it. It’s so messy and damaged and sad. Your eyes glaze as you travel life’s highway past all the crushed animals and the Big Gulp cups.
Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals (New York: Vintage, 2002), 3.
Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civili-zation is the story of what happened on the banks.
“More History from the Will Durants: Spry Old Team Does It Again,” by Jim Hicks, Life, October 18, 1963, 92.
Nothing restores my faith in humanity like a successful Craigslist exchange.
Twitter, Feb 25, 2010.
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
“The American Scholar,” in The American Scholar, Self-Reliance, Compensation (New York: American Book Company, 1911), 42.