Isn’t everyone’s life a mass of contradictions?
There's not one person in the world that's not a living, walking contradiction.
The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions - none more so than the most capable.
Mankind is made up of inconsistencies, and no man acts invariably up to his predominant character. The wisest man sometimes acts weakly, and the weakest sometimes wisely.
There is no man so great as not to have some littleness more predominant than all his greatness. Our virtues are the dupes, and often only the plaything of our follies.
Alas! Man's vices, horrible as they are supposed to be, contain the positive proof of his taste for the infinite.
Nothing is pure and entire of a piece. All advantages are attended with disadvantages. A universal compensation prevails in all conditions of being and existence.
Every one of these hundreds of millions of human beings is in some form seeking happiness.... Not one is altogether noble nor altogether trustworthy nor altogether consistent; and not one is altogether vile.... Not a single one but has at some time wept.
Man is physical as well as metaphysical, a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start.
Human beings are good, they have shadow, every single one of us has redeeming qualities and every single one of us has qualities that people can hold against us. That’s what makes us human.
That is the truth about man - that he has a curious kind of dignity, but also a curious kind of misery, and that these forms of agnosticism don't understand.
Socialist thought owes its appeal to the young largely to its visionary character; the very courage to indulge in Utopian thought is in this respect a source of strength for socialism which traditional liberalism sadly lacks. Speculation about general principles provides an opportunity for the play of the imagination of those who are unencumbered by much knowledge of the facts of present-day life. Their ideas suffer from inherent contradictions, and any attempt to put them into practice must produce something utterly different from what they expect.
Cruel men are the greatest lovers of Mercy, avaricious men of generosity, and proud men of humility; that is to say, in other, not in themselves.
