Human Experience Quotes

“...but if there is one universal truth in the human experience, it is that a finely honed scone-eating palate does not just develop overnight.”
― Jennifer Lynn Barnes, The Inheritance Games

“The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The revealed and mystic literature of mankind bears ample testimony to the fact that religious experience has been too enduring and dominant in the history of mankind to be rejected as mere illusion. There seems to be no reason, then, to accept the normal level of human experience as fact and reject its other levels as mystical and emotional.”
― Allama Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

“I don't think humanity just replays history, but we are the same people our ancestors were, and our descendants are going to face a lot of the same situations we do. It's instructive to imagine how they would react, with different technologies on different worlds. That's why I write science fiction -- even though the term 'science fiction' excites disdain in certain persons.”
― Kage Baker

“The entire range of human experience is present in a church choir, including, but not restricted to jealousy, revenge, horror, pride, incompetence (the tenors have never been on the right note in the entire history of church choirs, and the basses have never been on the right page), wrath, lust and existential despair.”
― Connie Willis, The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories

“...someday..., we'll medicate human experience right out of the human experience.”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“As a spirit having a human experience, you can choose to not merely exist but to be fully conscious and aware of living in a limited world. When you take a conscious part in life and its multitudes of choices, you won't let life happen to you - you will make life happen for you.”
― James Van Praagh, Ghosts Among Us: Uncovering the Truth About the Other Side

“In the world “out there,” there are no verbs, no speech events, and no adjacency pairs. There are particles of matter moving around in certain recurrent and yet not fully predictable patterns. We interpret such experiences as and through symbolic means, including linguistic expressions. That’s what it means to be human.”
― Duranti a Alessandro, Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader

“But I could tell thee of other things, Inglés, and do not doubt what thou simply cannot see nor cannot hear. Thou canst not hear what a dog hears. Nor canst thou smell what a dog smells. But already thou hast experienced a little of what can happen to man.”
― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

“Philosophy is the critically reflective, systematically articulated attempt to illumine our human experience in depth and set it in a vision of the whole.”
― W. Norris Clarke, The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics

“How wrong and petty any life is.”
― David Wojahn, Mystery Train

“Is it true that all our experiences will one day revive in entire clearness of outline and full brilliancy of colour, passing before the horror-struck soul to the denial of time, and the assertion of ever-present eternity? If so, then God be with us, for we shall need him.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen by George Macdonald

“The most important lessons we learn in life do not come from books. Instead, they are lessons we learn from interacting with each other and experiencing what it means to be human.”
― Rob Ryan Sullivan

“Indeed, there is a case for arguing that Homo Sapiens is also Homo Religious. Men and women started to worship gods as soon as they became recognizably human; they created religions at the same time as they created works of art. This was not simply because they wanted to propitiate powerful forces; these early faiths expressed the wonder and mystery that seem always to have been an essential component of the human experience of this beautiful yet terrifying world.
(…) It was not tacked onto a primordially secular nature by manipulative kings and priests but was natural to humanity.”
― Karen Armstrong, History of God

“Sunshine and rain make a rainbow. The coming together of pleasure and pain is what gives life its colour, texture, and flavour.

Each experience accumulates to compose a grand work of art, of which we ourselves are the artists.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“But see, it can be said we endure together
The knowing in part, the fragmentation, as if it were the whole.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Girl dancer! Oh you shifting
Of all that passes into steps: how you manage that!
And the eddy at the end, a tree made from a vortex,
Does it not take full possession of the swirling year?

And the tip of your tree, does it not blossom
Quietly above you, from your spinning? Is it not
Your limitless warmth, the sun,
The summer, its heat?

But your tree of ecstasy bears,
Gives quiet fruit: the flagon streaked with ripeness,
And the vase riper still.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“One must be present, fully and deeply, in the garden of the now. In this state of presence, the ego’s chatter can be heard, acknowledged, and understood for what it is – not the entirety of our being, but a part of our human experience. It is in this mindful acknowledgment that the ego is gently guided to take its rightful place as a servant to the essence, no longer the master of our destinies.”
― Kevin L. Michel, The 7 Laws of Quantum Power

“Outside these walls are probing, restless streets. In here, I'm a living memory, suspended in static, cut off from the present moment. Outside the moment arrives, arrives, arrives, is arriving.”
― Chloé Cooper Jones, Easy Beauty

“She feels the shudder that precipitates a sob and tries to repress this particular kind of ugliness.”
― Sally Rooney, At the Clinic

“Maybe that’s how all human beings feel. The reason for this is the fact our technology has advanced far beyond the understanding of an ordinary individual.”
― Predrag Ilić, Chaque

“The journey from illusion to reality is often the longest one.”
― Santosh Kalwar

“We all grieve in different ways, you know?' she adds. 'Losing someone is universal, but I think that's about it, really. The rest is our own thing.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“Is it true that all our experiences will one day revive in entire clearness of outline and full brilliancy of colour, passing before the horror-struck soul to the denial of time, and the assertion of ever-present eternity? If so, then God be with us, for we shall need him.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“Critics of the DSM and ICD have argued that disorders are arbitrary labels used to describe typical human experiences that are deemed abnormal. An example of this concept is that different countries have varied expectations and views of what is considered to be normal. A person who claims to talk to spirits might be considered schizophrenic in one culture while being deemed a holy person in another.”
― Stefan Hofmann

“Humankind, with all its symbolic capability, seems to always have associated light and height with a higher power—something numinous and holy.

Could it be that deep down inside, we all know that we are part of something far greater than ourselves?”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“Surviving something impossibly hard — supported by meaningful connection and our own inner strength — makes us more alive. More purpose-driven, more prioritized, more focused, more aware, more connected. More human. By bringing loss out of the shadows, we can change our lives for the better.”
― Sue Deagle

“The fact that people like this just fell out of our universe - just stopped existing - was so scary, so cold.”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“How do you keep your feet on the ground knowing your world is not one person - one brilliant, effervescent, incredibly kind, loving person - lighter?”
― Genevieve Wheeler, Adelaide

“Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves: The Remastered Full-Color Edition