What all men are really after is some form, or perhaps only some formula, of peace.
—Joseph Conrad in Under Western Eyes
No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.
—John Steinbeck in The Winter of Our Discontent
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
Learn your theories well but put them aside when you confront the mystery of the living soul.
—Carl Jung
Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them.
—Ray Bradbury in Dandelion Wine
I love mankind; it's people I can't stand.
—Charles M. Schulz
I began to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them — children, duties, visits, bores, relations: the things that protect married people from each other.
—Edith Wharton
You can’t keep yourself from falling in love, but you can steer yourself away from the wrong people.
—Jodi Picoult in Songs of the Humpback Whale
It’s hard to get along with people. As much as you try to like them and accept them as individuals, it becomes difficult because they keep getting out of line and wasting your time.
—Henry Rollins
I believe that people come into your life and then some go. I also think there’s a purpose as to why they were in your life at all. Each one takes a piece of you when they go. Some leave pieces of themselves with you. Sometimes it’s wisdom, or maybe, it’s a lesson.
—Shey Stahl in Waiting for You
I don’t have a lot of people to talk to. Not a lot of people are worth my time.
—Julie Anne Peters in By the Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead
Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
—Samuel Butler
That’s what life is about: People come and go.
—Cecelia Ahern in Love, Rosie
Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.
—Horace Walpole