A Quote by Nathaniel Hawthorne

A singular fact, that, when man is a brute, he is the most sensual and loathsome of all brutes.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Quote Topics

Brute Brutes Fact Man Most Sensual Singular

Quote Author

Nathaniel Hawthorne
American - Novelist
July 4, 1804 - May 19, 1864

I have nothing to make me miserable," she said, getting calmer; "but can you understand that everything has become hateful, loathsome, coarse to me, and I myself most of all? You can't imagine what loathsome thoughts I have about everything." "Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?" asked Dolly, smiling. "The most utterly loathsome and coarse; I can't tell you. It's not unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse. As though everything that was good in me was all hidden away, and nothing was left but the most loathsome.

Leo Tolstoy

Brutes abstract not. -- If it may be doubted, whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas, that way, to any degree; this, I think, I may be positive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to.

John Locke

A good soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine. He is not a man. His is not a brute, for brutes kill only in self defense. All that is human in him, all that is divine in him, all that constitutes the man has been sworn away when he took the enlistment roll. His mind, his conscience, aye, his very soul, are in the keeping of his officer. No man can fall lower than a soldier-it is a depth beneath which we cannot go.

Jack London

I'm not the most loathsome man in the world. I've dropped to number nine.

Ben Affleck

In the faculty of speech man excels the brute; but if thou utterest what is improper, the brute is they superior.

Saadi

There's that popular misconception of man as something between a brute and an angel. Actually man is in transit between brute and God.

Norman Mailer

Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.

Sylvia Plath

It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Man has reason, discrimination and free-will such as it is. The brute has no such thing. It is not a free agent, and knows no distinction between virtue and vice, good and evil. Man, being a free agent, knows these distinctions, and when he follows his higher nature, shows himself far superior to the brute, but when he follows his baser nature can show himself lower than the brute.

Mahatma Gandhi

When men make themselves into brutes it is just to treat them like brutes.

Amelia Barr

To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior.

Mahatma Gandhi

A righteous man hates lying, But a wicked man is loathsome and comes to shame.

Solomon

Its the most breathtakingly ironic things about living: the fact that we are all-identical twins included-alone. Singular. And yet what we seek-what saves us-is our connection to others.

Wally Lamb

I know no study which is so unutterably saddening as that of the evolution of humanity, as it is set forth in the annals of history. Out of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more intelligent than the other brutes, a blind prey to impulses, which as often as not led him to destruction; a victim to endless illusions, which make his mental existence a terror and a burden, and fill his physical life with barren toil and battle.

Thomas Huxley

Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute, and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher laws - to the strength of the spirit.

Mahatma Gandhi

It is a singular fact that most men of action incline to the theory of fatalism, while the greater part of men of thought believe in providence.