A Quote by John D. MacDonald

The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.

John D. MacDonald

Quote Topics

Awesome Damn Human Human Spirit Individual Nobility Only Pathetic Spirit Strange The Only Thing Thing Touching World Worth

Quote Author

John D. MacDonald
American - Writer
July 24, 1916 - December 28, 1986

Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything, for 'Tis the only thing in this world that lasts, 'Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for - worth dying for.

Margaret Mitchell

The individual feels the vanity of human desires and aims, and the nobility and marvelous order which are revealed in nature and in the world of thought. He feels the individual destiny as an imprisonment and seeks to experience the totality of existence as a unity full of significance.

Albert Einstein

How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.

Oscar Wilde

The theist can only find meaning by leaving this life for a transcendental world beyond the grave. The human world as he finds it is empty of 'ultimate purpose' and hence meaningless. Theism thus is an attempt to escape from the human condition; it is a pathetic deceit.

Paul Kurtz

It's a strange thing that every human being has a sort of dignity or wholeness in him, and out of that develops relationships to other human beings, tensions, misunderstandings, tenderness, coming in contact, touching and being touched, the cutting off of a contact and what happens then.

Ingmar Bergman

The only goal of science is the honour of the human spirit, and a question in number theory is worth a question concerning the system of the world.

Serge Lang

There’s no such thing as `one, true way’; the only answers worth having are the ones you find for yourself; leave the world better than you found it. Love, freedom, and the chance to do some good — they’re the things worth living and dying for, and if you aren’t willing to die for the things worth living for, you might as well turn in your membership in the human race.

Mercedes Lackey

The unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual; and that the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must here set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual.

Adolf Hitler

Only that which points the human spirit beyond its own limitations into what is universally human gives the individual strength superior to his own. Only in suprahuman demands which can hardly be fulfilled do human beings and peoples feel their true and sacred measure.

Stefan Zweig

Each individual human being can claim the Spirit of Jesus as the guiding spirit of his or her life. In that Spirit we can speak and act freely and confidently with the knowledge that the same Spirit that inspired Jesus is inspiring us.

Henri Nouwen

As temples of the Holy Spirit. we should have communion with the Holy Spirit. The work of any believer is not only the work of a human individual, but is actually the work of the Holy Spirit.

Pope Shenouda III

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me. I don't give a damn for the group, the community, the masses, and so forth.

Vladimir Nabokov

Spiritual superiority only sees the individual. But alas, ordinarily we human beings are sensual and, therefore, as soon as it is a gathering, the impression changes - we see something abstract, the crowd, and we become different. But in the eyes of God, the infinite spirit, all the millions that have lived and now live do not make a crowd, He only sees each individual.