Human Hands Quotes:

Nearly everyone underestimates how powerful the touch of another person's hand can be. The need to be touched is something so primal, so fundamentally a part of our existence as human beings that its true impact upon us can be difficult to put into words. That power doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex, either. From the time we are infants, we learn to associate the touch of a human hand with safety, with comfort, with love.

- Jim Butcher

source: Jim Butcher (2006). “Dead Beat: A Novel of The Dresden Files”, p.262, Penguin

topic: Sex, Powerful, Hands, Human Hands

The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.

- Havelock Ellis

topic: Stars, Moon, Space, Sun And Stars, Sun Moon And Stars

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

- James Madison

topic: Power, Government, Hands, Despots, Power Corrupts

Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.

- Maxim Gorky

topic: Inspirational, Happiness, Happy, Always Happy, Joy Happiness

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

topic: Sad, Business, Lying, Social Activism, Being Weird

The human hand allows the mind to reveal itself.

- Maria Montessori

topic: Hands, Mind, Humans, Montessori, Human Hands

The irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand.

- Willa Cather

source: 1927 Death Comes to the Archbishop, bk.1, ch.3.

topic: Hands, Quality, Intimate, Human Hands

Not without a shudder may the human hand reach into the mysterious urn of destiny.

- Friedrich Schiller

topic: Fate, Destiny, Hands, Human Hands

Art is something greater and higher than our own skill or knowledge or learning. That art is something which, though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from a man's soul.

- Vincent Van Gogh

source: Vincent van Gogh (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)”, p.2271, Delphi Classics

topic: Art, Men, Skills, Human Hands

The human hand is made complete by the addition of a baseball.

- Paul Dickson

source: Paul Dickson (2014). “The Official Rules: 5,427 Laws, Principles, and Axioms to Help You Cope with Crises, Deadlines, Bad Luck, Rude Behavior, Red Tape, and Attacks by Inanimate Objects”, p.76, Courier Corporation

topic: Baseball, Hands, Made, Human Hands

All the inventions and devices ever constructed by the human hand or conceived by the human mind, no matter how delicate, how intricate and complicated, are simple, childish toys compared with that most marvelously wrought mechanism, the human body. Its parts are far more delicate, and their mutual adjustments infinitely more accurate, than are those of the most perfect chronometer ever made.

- John Harvey Kellogg

topic: Science, Simple, Hands, Intricate, Human Hands

We cannot but feel uneasy about the losses caused by humanity themselves. Apart from the losses of life and property in destructive wars, the environment and natural resources are also being destroyed by human hands.

- Nong Duc Manh

topic: War, Loss, Hands, Uneasy, Human Hands

REACH, n. The radius of action of the human hand. The area within which it is possible (and customary) to gratify directly the propensity to provide.

- Ambrose Bierce

topic: Hands, Action, Propensity, Radius, Human Hands

And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thoughts; Which he may read that binds the sheaf, Or builds the house, or digs the grave, And those wild eyes that watch the waves In roarings round the coral reef.

- Alfred Lord Tennyson

source: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (2014). “Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Selected Poetry: A Broadview Anthology of British Literature Edition”, p.122, Broadview Press

topic: Strong, Eye, Hands, Wild Eyes, Coral Reefs

Reason cannot desire for man any condition other than that in which not only every individual enjoys the most absolute, unbounded freedom to develop himself out of himself, in true individuality, but in which physical nature, as well, need receive no other shaping by human hands than that which is given to her voluntarily by each individual, according to the measure of his wants and his inclinations, restricted only by the limits of his energy and his rights.

- Wilhelm von Humboldt

topic: Men, Rights, Hands, Human Hands

Perhaps nothing is so fraught with significance as the human hand.

- Jane Addams

source: Jane Addams (2012). “Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes”, p.45, Courier Corporation

topic: Hands, Significance, Humans, Savagery, Hull House

It is rather an unpleasant fact, that the ugliest and awkwardest of brute animals have the greatest resemblance to man: the monkey and the bear. The monkey is ugly too (so we think) because he is like man--as the bear is awkward, because the cumbrous action of its huge paws seems to be a preposterous imitation of the motions of human hands. Men and apes are the only animals that have hairs on the under eye-lid. Let kings know this.

- Charles Lamb

topic: Kings, Eye, Animal, Resemblance, Human Hands

Actually I think CGI has the potential to equal or even surpass what the human hand can do.

- Hayao Miyazaki

topic: Thinking, Hands, Equal, Cgi, Human Hands

Here is the infallible test. Imagine yourself in a situation where you are alone, wholly alone on earth, and you are offered one of the two, books or men. I often hear men prizing their solitude but that is only because there are still men somewhere on earth even though in the far distance. I knew nothing of books when I came forth from the womb of my mother, and I shall die without books, with another human hand in my own. I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human being looking at me.

- Martin Buber

source: Martin Buber (1963). “Pointing the way: collected essays. Edited and translated with an introd. by Maurice S. Friedman”

topic: Mother, Distance, Book, Far Distance, Human Hands

Once you put human life in human hands, you have started on a slippery slope that knows no boundaries.

- Leon Kass

topic: Hands, Slippery Slope, Boundaries, No Boundaries, Slopes

Religions are different roads converging on the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads so long as we reach the same goal? I believe that all religions of the world are true more or less. I say "more or less" because I believe that everything the human hand touches, by reason of the very fact that human beings are imperfect, becomes imperfect.

- Mahatma Gandhi

source: Mahatma Gandhi, Anand T. Hingorani, Ganga Anand Hingorani (1985). “The Encyclopaedia of Gandhian Thoughts”

topic: Believe, Hands, Long, Different Roads, Does It Matter

Under reverent, patient care, the wild seed gradually relinquishes its protective husk and entrusts its reproductive life to human hands.(thus) this sacred law and covenant with Mother Earth; Respectful care brings abundance. If you take, you must give back-Return the gift.

- Marilou Awiakta

topic: Mother, Hands, Law, Patient Care, Human Hands

We are hungry for things that have touched human hands.

- Faith Popcorn

topic: Hands, Hungry, Humans, Human Hands

I believe in animal rights, and high among them is the right to the gentle stroke of a human hand.

- Robert Breault

topic: Believe, Animal, Rights, Human Hands

No one person can fulfill all your needs. But the community can truly hold you. The community can let you experience the fact that, beyond your anguish, there are human hands that hold you and show you God's faithful love.

- Henri Nouwen

topic: Hands, Community, Faithful, Faithful Love, Human Hands

The most important innovation in medicine to come in the next 10 years: the power of the human hand.

- Abraham Verghese

topic: Motivation, Inspiration, Hands, Human Hands

People have often assumed that for music to be emotionally powerful it has to come directly from a human hand, whereas I disagree with that, and enjoy proving these people wrong. This project is an excellent way of exploring that area more.

- Squarepusher

source: "Squarepusher Makes Music with Robots, for Robots". "Squarepusher × Z-MACHINES" promo video, motherboard.vice.com. April 2, 2014.

topic: Powerful, Hands, People, Human Hands

Salvation is a word for the divine spaciousness that comes to human beings in all the tight places where their lives are at risk, regardless of how they got there or whether they know God's name. Sometimes it comes as an extended human hand and sometimes as a bolt from the blue, but either way it opens a door in what looked for all the world like a wall. This is the way of life, and God alone knows how it works.

- Barbara Brown Taylor

source: FaceBook post by Barbara Brown Taylor from Jul 02, 2013

topic: Wall, Hands, Names, Spaciousness, Human Hands

For by his incarnation the Son of God united himself in a certain way with every man. He labored with human hands... and loved with a human heart. Born of Mary the Virgin, he truly became one of us.

- Pope John Paul II

topic: Faith, Inspiration, Heart, Human Hands

We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers and sisters.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

topic: Brother, Hands, Justice, Breaking Silence, Human Hands

The world is by no means averse to religion. In fact, it is devoted to it with a passion. It will buy any recipe for salvation as long as that formula leaves the responsibility for cooking up salvation firmly in human hands. The world is drowning in religion. But it is scared out of its wits by any mention of the grace that takes the world home gratis.

- Robert Farrar Capon

topic: Home, Mean, Responsibility, Human Hands

True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the "rejects of life," to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands--whether of individuals or entire peoples--need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.

- Paulo Freire

topic: Lying, Fighting, Hands, Charity And Generosity, Pedagogy Of The Oppressed

There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy!

- Anton Szandor LaVey

topic: Men, Hands, Idols, Moral Code, Satanist

There is a primal reassurance in being touched, in knowing that someone else, someone close to you, wants to be touching you. There is a bone-deep security that goes with the brush of a human hand, a silent, reflex-level affirmation that someone is near, that someone cares.

- Jim Butcher

topic: Knowing, Hands, Touching, Reassurance, Primal

He lifts her breasts, which fit perfectly into his hands, though he knows this is no promise that he gets to keep them. A million things you can't have will fit in a human hand.

- Barbara Kingsolver

source: Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Pigs in Heaven”, p.41, Faber & Faber

topic: Hands, Promise, Fit, Human Hands

The locker at the end of her bed had no lock, and one of the hinges was busted. She opened it up. There was a thing in it. The thing might have been a sandwich at some point, or an animal, or a human hand...but what it was now was fuzzy and putrid. A minute later, Ginny was down the stairs, out the door, and gone.

- Maureen Johnson

topic: Animal, Doors, Hands, Busted, Human Hands

Among the many problems with taking the Bible literally is it reduces the most mysterious and complex of realities to simple - even simplistic - terms. Yes, scripture speaks of fire and damnation and eternal bliss, but the Bible is the product of human hands and hearts, and much of the imagery is allegorical, not meteorological.

- Jon Meacham

topic: Heart, Simple, Reality, Human Hands

More power than all the success slogans ever penned by human hand is the realization for every man that he has but one boss. That boss is the man - he - himself.

- Gabriel Heatter

source: "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

topic: Men, Hands, Boss, Human Hands

All power in human hands is liable to be abused.

- James Madison

source: James Madison, David B. Mattern (1997). “James Madison's "Advice to My Country"”, p.80, University of Virginia Press

topic: Hands, Presidential, Liable, Human Hands

For me, life is the most beautiful gift of God to mankind, therefore people and nations who destroy life by abortion and euthanasia are the poorest. I do not say legal or illegal, but I think that no human hand should be raised to kill life, since life is God's life in us, even in an unborn child.

- Mother Teresa

topic: Beautiful, Children, Thinking, Unborn Child, Human Hands

Everything made by human hands looks terrible under magnification--crude, rough, and asymmetrical. But in nature every bit of life is lovely. And the more magnification we use, the more details are brought out, perfectly formed, like endless sets of boxes within boxes.

- Roman Vishniac

topic: Hands, Lovely, Looks, Magnification, Human Hands

No Temple made by mortal human hands can ever compare to the Temple made by the gods themselves. That building of wood and stone that houses us and that many believe conceals the great Secret Temple from prying eyes, somewhere in its heart of hearts, is but a decoy for the masses who need this simple concrete limited thing in their lives. The real Temple is the whole world, and there is nothing as divinely blessed as a blooming growing garden.

- Vera Nazarian

topic: Real, Believe, Blessed, Blooming, Human Hands

Like the Bible-a document that often contradicts itself and from which one can construct sharply different arguments-theology is the product of human hands and hearts.

- Jon Meacham

topic: Heart, Hands, Different, Human Hands

Friends come back from their worship with a new sense of ordination, but not the ordination of human hands. Something has happened in the stillness that makes the heart more tender, more sensitive, more shocked by evil, more dedicated to ideals of life, and more eager to push back the skirts of darkness and to widen the area of light and love.

- Rufus Jones

topic: Heart, Light, Hands, Quaker, Light And Love

With all its technical sophistication, the photographic camera remains a coarse device compared to the human hand and brain.

- Claude Levi-Strauss

topic: Hands, Brain, Cameras, Human Hands

There is a book into which some of us are happily led to look, and to look again, and never tire of looking. It is the Book of Man. You may open that book whenever and wherever you find another human voice to answer yours, and another human hand to take in your own.

- Walter Besant

topic: Book, Men, Voice, Human Hands, Human Voice

I feel overawed by quantity where counting no longer makes sense. By unrepeatability within such a quantity. By creatures of nature gathered in herds, droves, species, in which each individual, while subservient to the mass, retains some distinguishing features. A crowd of people, birds, insects, or leaves is a mysterious assemblage of variants of certain prototype. A riddle of nature's abhorrence of exact repetition or inability to produce it. Just as the human hand cannot repeat its own gesture, I invoke this disturbing law, switching my own immobile herds into that rhythm.

- Magdalena Abakanowicz

topic: Hands, Law, People, Switching, Subservient

Jesus shouldn't have died so early and then he could have got twice as much across. They killed him and then twisted so many of the best things he said. Human hands started messing it all up and now so much of religion is hogwash.

- Jimi Hendrix

topic: Jesus, Hands, Hogwash, Human Hands

When I touch a human hand, I touch heaven.

- Nicolas Malebranche

topic: Hands, Heaven, Humanity, Human Hands

Life itself is the real and most miraculous miracle of all. If one had never before seen a human hand and were suddenly presented for the first time with this strange and wonderful thing, what a miracle, what a magnificently shocking and inexplicable and mysterious thing it would be.

- Christopher Fry

topic: Real, Hands, Miracle, Mysterious Things, Human Hands