A perfect tragedy is the noblest production of human nature.

-Addison,Joseph
  In The Spectator, no.39.

Cricket, like the novel, isgreat when it presents men in the round, when it shows the salty quality of human nature.

-Aristotle
  Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

Oh! it is onlya novel!†only some work in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineationof itsvarieties,theliveliesteffusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.

-Austen,Jane
  Northanger Abbey, ch.5.

The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.1,'Of  Truth'.

   There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.12,'Of Boldness'.

In a profound sense we may say that the crucifixion, howeverelse we may interpret it, accuseshumannature, accuses all of us in the very things that we think are our righteousness.

-Butterfield, Sir Herbert
History and Human Relations.

'I was ruminating,'said Mr Pickwick,'on the strange mutability of human affairs.' 'Ah! I seeöin at the palace door one day, out at the window the next. Philosopher, Sir?' 'An observer of human nature, sir,'said Mr Pickwick.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^7  Pickwick Papers, ch.2.

   Subdue yourappetites, mydears, and you've conquered human nature.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^9  Nicholas Nickleby, ch.5.

Igot disappointed in human nature as well and gave it up because I found it too much like my own.

-Donleavy,J(ames) P(atrick)
  A Fairy  Tale of NewYork, ch.18.

Humannature will not flourish, any morethana potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil.

-Hawthorne, Nathaniel
  The Scarlet Letter,'The Custom-House'.

He writes as fast as they can read, and he does not write himself down† His worst is better than any other person's best† His works (taken together) are almost like a new edition of human nature. This is indeed to be an author!

-Hazlitt,William
  Spirit of the Age,'Sir Walter Scott'.

'Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his; In the good old time 'twas hanging for the colour that it is; Though hanging isn't bad enough and flaying would be fair For the nameless and abominable colour of his hair.

-Housman, A(lfred) E(dward)
'Additional Poems', no.18, in Collected Poems (1939).

Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction, as even to excite a murmur among the zealots.

-Hume, David
  My Own Life, ch.1.

To charge all unmerited praise with the guilt of flattery, and to suppose that the encomiast always knows and feels the falsehood of his assertions, issurely to discover great ignorance of human nature and human life. In determinations depending not on rules, but on experience and comparison, judgement is always to some degree subject to affection.Very near to admiration is the wish to admire.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
^81 Lives of the English Poets,'Halifax'.

Scenery is fineöbut human nature is finer.

-Keats,John
  Letter to Benjamin Bailey,13 Mar.

We hardly know any instance of the strength and weakness of humannaturesostriking, and sogrotesque, as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stockingöhalf Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison inone pocket, and a quire of bad verses in the other.

-1st Baron
  Of Frederick the Great. Historical Essays.'Frederic the Great', in the Edinburgh Magazine,  Apr.

Henry VIII perhaps approached as nearly to the ideal standard of perfect wickedness as the infirmities of human nature will allow.

-Mackintosh, SirJames
  Of Henry's actions in executing Thomas More and  Anne Boleyn. History of England, vol.2.

What isgovernment itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

-Madison,James
  The Federalist,  Jan.

Promiscuous reading is necessary to the constituting of human nature. The attempt to keep out evil doctrine by licensing is like the exploit of that gallant man who thought to keep out the crows by shutting the park gate.

-Milton,John
  Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this, it requires the highest type of human natureöa type nowhere at present existing.

-Spencer, Herbert
'TheAmericans', collected in Essays (1891).