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

“It's a funny thing about being alone. You never really notice it when it's happening. You're aware that nobody else is there, but [...] as with wading into cold water, you acclimate to the relative solitude until it doesn't even bother you anymore. You don't realize that your hands and toes have grown numb until there is a sudden burst of warmth that sends needles through your extremities.”
― Carissa Orlando, The September House

“Hope is never the loudest voice-it's the quiet hum beneath despair, the fragile thread we follow when the world seems intent on unraveling.”
― Justice Aaron Fowler, The Despondent

“An artist's legacy is not just a body of work; it is the archaeology of their lives and of life itself.”
― Stewart Stafford

“There is beauty in every emotion. The more we allow ourselves to feel, the closer we get to that ravishing sense of aliveness and awe, even in the midst of challenging experiences.”
― Beth Kempton, Wabi Sabi: Japanese Wisdom for a Perfectly Imperfect Life

“Not all lives are large. Not all stories are sad.”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

“You are never, never too old to be changed by love.”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

“When our eyes meet the world, and our minds weave stories within it, we are not merely observers but artists painting our fleeting masterpiece of existence. Embrace the brushstrokes of each moment, for life is a canvas meant to be cherished, not just viewed.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Living Colorful Beauty

“We don't exchange entire worlds; we share fragments, hoping the other will feel a pulse of recognition.”
― Monika Ajay Kaul

“She squints her one eye, and points. I follow her direction, and land upon a group of girls. We immediately paint their lives, as if we are the screenwriters of their story. I wonder is this what God feels like?”
― Madi Fiely

“You have to let someone, at least one person in the world, know who you are.”
― Brian Evenson, The Open Curtain

“Don’t you see? You’re as free as the winds of the high seas, which blow in whichever direction they please. Cast aside the doubts mangled in your mind, spread your wings, and soar high like the eagle, for you are made in Christ’s image and likeness.”
― James B. Agape, Pent Up Thoughts

“Curious how a man often calendared his glory and grief with a woman for asterisk.”
― Wilfrido D. Nolledo, But for the Lovers

“Wake up, Leo! And what after Citizen Science? Your experiences are dictated by your own consciousness.”
― Calvin Niles, The Sun Rises in Eastmoor

“All fiction offers up the possibility of escape from everyday life, but great fiction allows us to explore what we otherwise look away from.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“People whose religions commit them to the existence of the afterlife feel the terror of death just as anyone else does, nor are they spared the wrenching pain of loss. They do not respond to their loved one's death as though the loved one has moved to a place where they can't contact them for a while but expect to later rejoin them. They might say that is how they see the situation, but their profound sorrow and their mourning practices point in a different direction.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“My writing is hybrid
because it is human —
and the human is never just one thing.

It is poetry,
it is pain,
it is visceral confession,
reflection,
questioning,
philosophy,
and prayer —
all intertwined…”
― Phoenix Moon

“Time is both a concept we feel and a measurement we quantify.”
― JJ Simon, Humans Actuators of Time

“(On duality) Nothing can exist for us without its opposite—for even absence itself becomes a presence through the contrast of what is missing.”
― Alyssa Skyes, Two Seconds of Eternity: An Experience in Another Dimension

“After thousands of hours at the bedside and thousands of hours in education with my students, one thing I’ve come to understand is that of all the contagious things in a hospital—measles and tuberculosis and Covid-19—nothing is easier to catch than anxiety. It spreads faster than you can say, “I’m nervous.” And almost always, the most anxious person in the room is the last to be aware of it, even after they’ve infected everyone around them.”
― Keith Wakefield