<p>Our human experience, with all of its challenges and glories, has been described throughout history by artists, scholars, and the like. The following collection of quotes on the human condition offers a window to the essence of this experience.</p>

Quotes on the Human Condition

<figure><img src="https://thehumancondition.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Peonies-ca.-1910-Wilton-Lockwood-The-Metropolitan-Museum-of-Art.jpeg" alt="Peonies, ca. 1910, Wilton Lockwood, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (article on the human condition quotes)" width="450" height="445"></figure><p>Human actions can never… be accounted for by reason, but recommend themselves entirely to the sentiments.</p><div>— David Hume</div><p>Psychological and spiritual work—both necessary for full human realization—are meant to proceed both separately and simultaneously as life unfolds.</p><div>— David Richo</div><p>If we don’t face the consequences of unconscious motivation—through a practice or discipline that opens us to the unconscious—then that motivation will secretly influence our decisions all through our lives.</p><div>— Thomas Keating</div><p>The unconscious needs to be respected and approached with prudence.</p><div>— Thomas Keating</div><p>The contemplative journey, because it involves the purification of the unconscious, is not a magic carpet to bliss. It is an exercise of letting go of the false self, a humbling process, because it is the only self we know.</p><div>— Thomas Keating</div><p>God approaches us from many different perspectives: illness, misfortune, bankruptcy, divorce proceedings, rejection, inner trials. God has not promised to take away our trials, but to help us to change our attitudes toward them. That is what holiness really is. In this life, happiness is rooted in our basic attitude toward reality.</p><div>— Thomas Keating</div><p>Sometimes a sense of failure is a great means to true humility, which is what God most looks for in us.</p><div>— Thomas Keating</div><p>If psychologists and psychiatrists would be in dialogue with the insights of St. John of the Cross and those who experience the dark nights, there could be a marvelous symbiosis of treatment. We are not sick just because of some physiological pathology. It is not just a question of sin either; it is a question of the human condition, for which none of us is initially responsible but, on becoming adults, we are now called to be responsible.</p><div>— Thomas Keating</div><p>If we are talking about the health of a human being, we are not just talking about the body or even the emotions; we are talking about the whole range of human potential, including spiritual health. These all have to be treated at once if we want to get well. This is what contemplative prayer does. But it doesn’t act alone. Its fruits need to be worked into daily life.</p><div>— Thomas Keating</div><p>Daily life, if one is alert to the dynamics of the unconscious, brings us to new levels of realization not only about where we are but who we are.</p><div>— Thomas Keating</div><p>It is not feelings that are the problem, but what we do with them that matters. The freedom to deal with them and to confront them with reason and faith is what makes us fully human.</p><div>— Thomas Keating</div><p>The human being is not something to be overcome, but undergone.</p><div>— Simon Critchley</div><p>A humanity that stopped wondering about itself would cease to be free.</p><div>— Dominique Janicaud</div><p>Man must learn again to go out from himself, to understand himself from Being, and no longer solely from his own subjectivity.</p><div>— Simon Critchley</div><p>The human condition is defined by the feelings and emotions associated with our existence, our “conscious” experience of past and future, cognizance of the passage of time, and our vexed awareness of our mortality.</p><div>— Robert Bednarik</div><p>… such is the disorder and confusion in human affairs, that no perfect or regular distribution of happiness and misery is ever, in this life, to be expected.</p><div>— David Hume</div><p>We must accept life for what it actually is—a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature.</p><div>— Ida Wylie</div><p>…the social nature of the human being as the source of our uniquely creative intellectual capacities as well as our capacity for anxiety.</p><div>— Rollo May</div><p>In… anxiety, what is felt to be wrong may be simply some aspect of human destiny which every person must accept as part of the human condition.</p><div>— Rollo May</div><p>The constructive way of dealing with anxiety… consists of learning to live with it, accepting it as a “teacher,” to borrow Kierkegaard’s phrase, to school us in confronting our human destiny.</p><div>— Rollo May</div><p>The yearning to give form to life arises out of our human anxiety about our own death.</p><div>— Rollo May</div><p>To be human is to remember that this being human is an experiment without a goal or destination, but with a plan that includes learning about love at its center.</p><div>— Sheryl Paul</div><p>To be human is to grow toward an acceptance of paradox and widen our capacity to tolerate uncertainty until we say “I don’t know” more often than “I know.”</p><div>— Sheryl Paul</div><p>To be human is to struggle… But when we accept the fact that anxiety, depression, loneliness, powerlessness, grief, joy, and exhilaration are all part of the design, we step out into the rain and perhaps even dance a little.</p><div>— Sheryl Paul</div><p>To be human is to experience times of ease and flow alternating with times of struggle. When we identify too closely with the struggle, we fall into despair. When we attach too deeply into ease, we slip into hubris. Just as a raft navigates the still waters and the rapids, so we float and fight along this river of life.</p><div>— Sheryl Paul</div><p>To be human is to have hidden caverns inside the labyrinth of psyche, shadowlands that you cannot see or know until you’re cracked open. From the fissure, the light floods in and illuminates the shadow, causing what lives below to fly up into consciousness.</p><div>— Sheryl Paul</div><p>To be human is to have blind spots. No matter how much we delve into the interior realms, there will always be places we cannot see ourselves. This is why the most honest and courageous question we can ask a trusted loved one is, “What am I not seeing?” And when the blind spots are illuminated, we sing a song of gratitude that another veil of illusion and mis-seeing has been lifted.</p><div>— Sheryl Paul</div><p>To be human is to age. The fine lines in your thirties will deepen to creases in your forties and fifties and beyond. Because we live in a culture that tries to erase the lines, we’re forgetting that our lines tell the stories of our lives: “Look, that’s when I laughed so hard, I cried. Look, that’s when I cried so hard, I crumpled into silence.” And where are the silver-haired women? They’re being dyed out of the culture, so fierce is our fight against time. What we don’t often see is that with aging comes wisdom, with time comes acceptance, and with the shortening of days comes the lengthening of gratitude.</p><div>— Sheryl Paul</div><p>To be human is to love and be loved as best we can, and to remove the barriers that prevent us from loving fully and freely so that we can bring our love into the world that so desperately needs us.</p><div>— Sheryl Paul</div><p>To be human is to know that we are imperfect and whole: we will hurt and be hurt; we will feel disappointed and will disappoint; we will stumble and fall and get back up again.</p><div>— Sheryl Paul</div><p>Life can be a lonely journey. In fact, loneliness is part of the human experience, for it’s an undeniable fact that nobody, no matter how close they may come to our hearts, is living inside of our bodies and seeing life through our lens.</p><div>— Sheryl Paul</div><p>One of the great challenges of parenting is that we inevitably pass on our unhealed places to our kids, and we all have unhealed places, because we’re all human.</p><div>— Sheryl Paul</div><p>As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.</p><div>— C. G. Jung</div><p>Transformation is a study of the evolution of consciousness through its three main levels of development… Tradition indicates that three levels of consciousness are available to us: simple consciousness, not often seen in our modern technological world; complex consciousness, the usual state of educated Western man; and an enlightened state of consciousness, known only to a very few individuals, which is the culmination of human evolution and can be attained only by highly motivated people after much work and training.</p><div>— Robert A. Johnson</div><p>Amongst all of the existential angst of modern life there is a blossoming of&nbsp;spirit arising within the collective psyche of humanity.</p><div>— Adyashanti</div><p>To navigate the spirit of the modern psyche is no small matter. We need guides&nbsp;who at once have their feet firmly rooted in the ground and wisdom of our spiritual&nbsp;ancestors, while also embodying a deep understanding of the modern human&nbsp;condition. For the call of spirit today is to both awaken to our true spiritual identity&nbsp;and to embody that awakened consciousness in our humanity and daily lives.</p><div>— Adyashanti</div><p>Discovering the heart of who we really are is the essential human quest.</p><div>— John J. Prendergast</div><p>The heart area is central to human experience. It is where we feel most affected and touched, both emotionally and spiritually. Our sense of meaning springs from the heart, as does our sense of oneness or communion with the whole of life.</p><div>— John J. Prendergast</div><p>The psychologist Rollo May wrote, “One does not become fully human painlessly.” It is through inhabiting, often painfully, our emotions that we are able to become fully human.</p><div>— Joanne Cacciatore</div><p>Seeking only the “good” emotions and avoiding the “bad” emotions is problematic… Cutting ourselves off from any genuine feeling in order to pursue or manufacture another feeling denies our humanity. When we reclaim what belongs to us… then we need no longer feel acrimony toward it, and we need no longer expend our valuable energy trying to be rid of that which we wish were not ours. We can let it be.</p><div>— Joanne Cacciatore</div><p>While traditional spiritual cultures of the East have specialized in illuminating the… “heaven” side of human nature — Western psychology has focused on the earthly half… We need a new vision that embraces all…. domains of human existence….</p><div>— John Welwood</div><p>That the silent presence of your death Would call your life to attention, Wake you up to how scarce your time is And to the urgency to become free And equal to the call of your destiny.</p><div>— John O’Donohue</div><p>To truly encounter the human condition means to experience great happiness, but it also means to touch immeasurable pain, the power of fear, the sorrow of loneliness, the angst of death, and all else that comes from the depths of experience related to the tenderness of the “heart.”</p><div>— Robyn D. Walser</div><p>When we truly see the human condition, we come to know that we are not really alone…. we understand, in a place that is beyond words, that pain and fear are shared.</p><div>— Robyn D. Walser</div><p>Your sense of inner peace depends on spending some of your life energy in silence to recharge your battery, remove tension and anxiety, reacquaint you with the joy of knowing God, and feel closer to all of humanity.</p><div>— Dr. Wayne Dyer</div><p>Whenever animals in the forest are wounded, they rest. They look for a very quiet place and just stay there without moving for many days. They know it’s the best way for their body to heal. During this time they may not even eat or drink. The wisdom of stopping and healing is still alive in animals, but we human beings have lost the capacity to rest.</p><div>— Thich Nhat Hanh</div><p>Compassion is a response to suffering, the inevitable adversity all human beings will meet in their lives, whether it is the pain embedded in the fabric of ageing, sickness and death or the psychological and emotional afflictions that debilitate the mind. Compassion is the acknowledgment that not all pain can be ‘fixed’ or ‘solved’ but all suffering is made more approachable in a landscape of compassion.</p><div>— Christina Feldman and Willem Kuyken</div><p>It is a strange quirk of the human condition that the living tend to take life for granted.</p><div>— Jeremy David Engels</div>

The following collection of quotes on the human condition offers a window to the essence of the human experience.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

health

Health

communication

Communication

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

<p>Human actions can never… be accounted for by reason, but recommend themselves entirely to the sentiments. </p>

<p>Psychological and spiritual work—both necessary for full human realization—are meant to proceed both separately and simultaneously as life unfolds. </p>

<p>If we don’t face the consequences of unconscious motivation—through a practice or discipline that opens us to the unconscious—then that motivation will secretly influence our decisions all through our lives. </p>

<p>The unconscious needs to be respected and approached with prudence. </p>

<p>The contemplative journey, because it involves the purification of the unconscious, is not a magic carpet to bliss. It is an exercise of letting go of the false self, a humbling process, because it is the only self we know. </p>

<p>God approaches us from many different perspectives: illness, misfortune, bankruptcy, divorce proceedings, rejection, inner trials. God has not promised to take away our trials, but to help us to change our attitudes toward them. That is what holiness really is. In this life, happiness is rooted in our basic attitude toward reality. </p>

<p>Sometimes a sense of failure is a great means to true humility, which is what God most looks for in us. </p>

<p>If psychologists and psychiatrists would be in dialogue with the insights of St. John of the Cross and those who experience the dark nights, there could be a marvelous symbiosis of treatment. We are not sick just because of some physiological pathology. It is not just a question of sin either; it is a question of the human condition, for which none of us is initially responsible but, on becoming adults, we are now called to be responsible. </p>

<p>If we are talking about the health of a human being, we are not just talking about the body or even the emotions; we are talking about the whole range of human potential, including spiritual health. These all have to be treated at once if we want to get well. This is what contemplative prayer does. But it doesn’t act alone. Its fruits need to be worked into daily life. </p>

<p>Daily life, if one is alert to the dynamics of the unconscious, brings us to new levels of realization not only about where we are but who we are. </p>

<p>It is not feelings that are the problem, but what we do with them that matters. The freedom to deal with them and to confront them with reason and faith is what makes us fully human. </p>

<p>The human being is not something to be overcome, but undergone. </p>

<p>A humanity that stopped wondering about itself would cease to be free. </p>

<p>Man must learn again to go out from himself, to understand himself from Being, and no longer solely from his own subjectivity. </p>

<p>The human condition is defined by the feelings and emotions associated with our existence, our “conscious” experience of past and future, cognizance of the passage of time, and our vexed awareness of our mortality. </p>

<p>… such is the disorder and confusion in human affairs, that no perfect or regular distribution of happiness and misery is ever, in this life, to be expected. </p>

<p>We must accept life for what it actually is—a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature. </p>

<p>…the social nature of the human being as the source of our uniquely creative intellectual capacities as well as our capacity for anxiety. </p>

<p>In… anxiety, what is felt to be wrong may be simply some aspect of human destiny which every person must accept as part of the human condition. </p>

<p>The constructive way of dealing with anxiety… consists of learning to live with it, accepting it as a “teacher,” to borrow Kierkegaard’s phrase, to school us in confronting our human destiny. </p>

<p>The yearning to give form to life arises out of our human anxiety about our own death. </p>

<p>To be human is to remember that this being human is an experiment without a goal or destination, but with a plan that includes learning about love at its center. </p>

<p>To be human is to grow toward an acceptance of paradox and widen our capacity to tolerate uncertainty until we say “I don’t know” more often than “I know.” </p>

<p>To be human is to struggle… But when we accept the fact that anxiety, depression, loneliness, powerlessness, grief, joy, and exhilaration are all part of the design, we step out into the rain and perhaps even dance a little. </p>

<p>To be human is to experience times of ease and flow alternating with times of struggle. When we identify too closely with the struggle, we fall into despair. When we attach too deeply into ease, we slip into hubris. Just as a raft navigates the still waters and the rapids, so we float and fight along this river of life. </p>

<p>To be human is to have hidden caverns inside the labyrinth of psyche, shadowlands that you cannot see or know until you’re cracked open. From the fissure, the light floods in and illuminates the shadow, causing what lives below to fly up into consciousness. </p>

<p>To be human is to have blind spots. No matter how much we delve into the interior realms, there will always be places we cannot see ourselves. This is why the most honest and courageous question we can ask a trusted loved one is, “What am I not seeing?” And when the blind spots are illuminated, we sing a song of gratitude that another veil of illusion and mis-seeing has been lifted. </p>

<p>To be human is to age. The fine lines in your thirties will deepen to creases in your forties and fifties and beyond. Because we live in a culture that tries to erase the lines, we’re forgetting that our lines tell the stories of our lives: “Look, that’s when I laughed so hard, I cried. Look, that’s when I cried so hard, I crumpled into silence.” And where are the silver-haired women? They’re being dyed out of the culture, so fierce is our fight against time. What we don’t often see is that with aging comes wisdom, with time comes acceptance, and with the shortening of days comes the lengthening of gratitude. </p>

<p>To be human is to love and be loved as best we can, and to remove the barriers that prevent us from loving fully and freely so that we can bring our love into the world that so desperately needs us. </p>

<p>To be human is to know that we are imperfect and whole: we will hurt and be hurt; we will feel disappointed and will disappoint; we will stumble and fall and get back up again. </p>

<p>Life can be a lonely journey. In fact, loneliness is part of the human experience, for it’s an undeniable fact that nobody, no matter how close they may come to our hearts, is living inside of our bodies and seeing life through our lens. </p>

<p>One of the great challenges of parenting is that we inevitably pass on our unhealed places to our kids, and we all have unhealed places, because we’re all human. </p>

<p>As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. </p>

<p>Transformation is a study of the evolution of consciousness through its three main levels of development… Tradition indicates that three levels of consciousness are available to us: simple consciousness, not often seen in our modern technological world; complex consciousness, the usual state of educated Western man; and an enlightened state of consciousness, known only to a very few individuals, which is the culmination of human evolution and can be attained only by highly motivated people after much work and training. </p>

<p>Amongst all of the existential angst of modern life there is a blossoming of spirit arising within the collective psyche of humanity. </p>

<p>To navigate the spirit of the modern psyche is no small matter. We need guides who at once have their feet firmly rooted in the ground and wisdom of our spiritual ancestors, while also embodying a deep understanding of the modern human condition. For the call of spirit today is to both awaken to our true spiritual identity and to embody that awakened consciousness in our humanity and daily lives. </p>

<p>Discovering the heart of who we really are is the essential human quest. </p>

<p>The heart area is central to human experience. It is where we feel most affected and touched, both emotionally and spiritually. Our sense of meaning springs from the heart, as does our sense of oneness or communion with the whole of life. </p>

<p>The psychologist Rollo May wrote, “One does not become fully human painlessly.” It is through inhabiting, often painfully, our emotions that we are able to become fully human. </p>

<p>Seeking only the “good” emotions and avoiding the “bad” emotions is problematic… Cutting ourselves off from any genuine feeling in order to pursue or manufacture another feeling denies our humanity. When we reclaim what belongs to us… then we need no longer feel acrimony toward it, and we need no longer expend our valuable energy trying to be rid of that which we wish were not ours. We can let it be. </p>

<p>While traditional spiritual cultures of the East have specialized in illuminating the… “heaven” side of human nature — Western psychology has focused on the earthly half… We need a new vision that embraces all…. domains of human existence…. </p>

<p>That the silent presence of your death Would call your life to attention, Wake you up to how scarce your time is And to the urgency to become free And equal to the call of your destiny. </p>

<p>To truly encounter the human condition means to experience great happiness, but it also means to touch immeasurable pain, the power of fear, the sorrow of loneliness, the angst of death, and all else that comes from the depths of experience related to the tenderness of the “heart.” </p>

<p>When we truly see the human condition, we come to know that we are not really alone…. we understand, in a place that is beyond words, that pain and fear are shared. </p>

<p>Your sense of inner peace depends on spending some of your life energy in silence to recharge your battery, remove tension and anxiety, reacquaint you with the joy of knowing God, and feel closer to all of humanity. </p>

<p>Whenever animals in the forest are wounded, they rest. They look for a very quiet place and just stay there without moving for many days. They know it’s the best way for their body to heal. During this time they may not even eat or drink. The wisdom of stopping and healing is still alive in animals, but we human beings have lost the capacity to rest. </p>

<p>Compassion is a response to suffering, the inevitable adversity all human beings will meet in their lives, whether it is the pain embedded in the fabric of ageing, sickness and death or the psychological and emotional afflictions that debilitate the mind. Compassion is the acknowledgment that not all pain can be ‘fixed’ or ‘solved’ but all suffering is made more approachable in a landscape of compassion. </p>

<p>It is a strange quirk of the human condition that the living tend to take life for granted. </p>

Quotes on the Human Condition - The Human Condition

Quotes on the Human Condition

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