A Quote by Goldwin Smith

The novelist must ground his work in faithful study of human nature. — © Goldwin Smith
The novelist must ground his work in faithful study of human nature.
After decades of faithful study, ecologists have begun to fathom hidden likenesses among many interwoven systems. ...a canon of nature's laws, strategies, and principles... Nature runs on sunlight. Nature uses only the energy it needs. Nature fits form to function. Nature recycles everything. Nature rewards cooperation. Nature banks on diversity. Nature demands local expertise. Nature curbs excesses from within. Nature taps the power of limits.
To the intelligent man with an interest in human nature it must often appear strange that so much of the energy of the scientific world has been spent on the study of the body and so little on the study of the mind.
The study of letters is the study of the operation of human force, of human freedom and activity; the study of nature is the study of the operation of non-human forces, of human limitation and passivity. The contemplation of human force and activity tends naturally to heighten our own force and activity; the contemplation of human limits and passivity tends rather to check it. Therefore the men who have had the humanistic training have played, and yet play, so prominent a part in human affairs, in spite of their prodigious ignorance of the universe.
Democracy must stand or fall on a platform of possible human perfectibility. If human nature cannot be improved by institutions, democracy is at best a more than usually safe form of political organization . . . . But if it is to work better as well as merely longer, it must have some leavening effect on human nature; and the sincere democrat is obliged to assume the power of the leaven. [Progressive]
Any player coming to Spurs whether he's a big signing or just a ground staff boy must be dedicated to the game and to the club. He must be prepared to work at his game. He must never be satisfied with his last performance, and he must hate losing.
Human nature refers to what is in people but which they cannot study or work at achieving.
By faithful study of the nobler arts, our nature's softened, and more gentle grows.
If the novelist shares his or her problems with the characters, he or she is able to study his personal unconscious.
And first, it seems not at all probable, That if the Omniscient Author of Nature knew that the study of his Works did really tend to make Men disbelieve his Being or Attributes, he would have given Men so many Invitations, and almost Necessities, to study and contemplate the Nature of his Creatures: Of these Invitations divers have been mention'd already, and more might be added to them, if we thought it requisite.
The utmost the American novelist can hope for, if he hopes at all to see his work included in the literature of his time, is that it may eventually be found to be along in the direction of the growing tip of collective consciousness. Preeminently the novelist's gift is that of access to the collective mind.
Just as man's physical existence was liberated when he grasped that 'nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed', so his consciousness will be liberated when grasps that nature, to be apprehended, must be obeyed - that the rules of cognition must be derived from the nature of existence and the nature, the identity, of his cognitive faculty.
Study the behavior of animals and you will understand human psychology and sociology. Study a flower excited under sunlight, and you will understand how all living things respond to light. The Almighty has provided everything in nature. Observe nature and you will grow. The cures of all illnesses are found in nature in the shapes of the body parts they were created to cure.
Nature is man's inorganic body -- that is to say, nature insofar as it is not the human body. Man lives from nature -- i.e., nature is his body -- and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it is he is not to die. To say that man's physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.
If a man has the right to self-ownership, to the control of his life, then in the real world he must also have the right to sustain his life by grappling with and transforming resources; he must be able to own the ground and the resources on which he stands and which he must use. In short, to sustain his human right.
It is never possible for a novelist to deny time inside the fabric of his novel: he must cling, however lightly, to the thread of his story, he must touch the interminable tapeworm, otherwise he becomes unintelligible, which, in his case, is a blunder.
We have been told over and over that "you can't change human nature", but the study of emic realities shows quite the contrary, that almost anything can become "human nature" if society defines it as such.
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