And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost.
Interpretation
Human nature is complex and contains both good and bad aspects that influence each other.
This quote reflects on the intricate nature of humanity, suggesting that individuals are not simply good or bad, but rather a mixture of both traits. This inherent complexity highlights how positive qualities can emerge from negative experiences and vice versa, illustrating the duality of human existence and the moral ambiguities that accompany it.
In practice
In a discussion about the complexities of human behavior during a lecture on psychology.
...the air so still it aches like the place where the tooth was on the morning after you’ve been to the dentist or aches like your heart in the bosom when you stand on the street corner waiting for the light to change and happen to recollect how things once were and how they might have been yet if what happened had not happened.
The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.
Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selflessness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made?
So little time we live in Time,_x000D_ _x000D_ And we learn all so painfully,_x000D_ _x000D_ That we may spare this hour's term_x000D_ _x000D_ To practice for Eternity.
For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They're inexpensive and easy to procure.
It is not the facts which guide the conduct of men, but their opinions about facts; which may be entirely wrong. We can only make them right by discussion.
Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draws it. Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Joy follows a pure thought like a shadow that never leaves.
I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos-especially activity that seems to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom... Rather than starting inside, I start outside and reach the mental through the physical.
To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.
Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.
Eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality.
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