Human nature refers to what is in people but which they cannot study or work at achieving. – Xun Zi
When people lack teachers, their tendencies are not corrected when they do not have ritual and moral principles, then their lawlessness is not controlled. – Xun Zi
Since the nature of people is bad, to become corrected they must be taught by teachers and to be orderly they must acquire ritual and moral principles. – Xun Zi
Now it is human nature to want to eat to ones fill when hungry, to want to warm up when cold, to want to rest when tired. These all are a part of peoples emotional nature. – Xun Zi
I never can hear a crowd of people singing and gesticulating, all together, at an Italian opera, without fancying myself at Athens, listening to that particular tragedy, by Sophocles, in which he introduces a full chorus of turkeys, who set about bewailing the death of Meleager. – Edgar Allan Poe