Separated from that familiar intercourse, which facilitates the knowledge and the despatch of business, he reposed an unsuspecting confidence in his deacon Serapion; and seldom applied his speculative knowledge of human nature to the particular character, either of his dependants, or of his equals.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

Make a little comparison between Chaucer and Shakespeare, having in mind (1) the characters described by both poets, (2) their knowledge of human nature, (3) the sources of their plots, (4) the interest of their works.
— from English Literature Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World by William J. (William Joseph) Long

A knowledge of human nature is acquired only (barring of course a certain talent thereto) by persevering observation, comparison, summarization, and further comparison.
— from Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students by Hans Gross

Honour likewise we ought to pay to our parents just as to the gods, but then, not all kinds of honour: not the same, for instance, to a father as to a mother: nor again to a father the honour due to a scientific man or to a general but that which is a father’s due, and in like manner to a mother that which is a mother’s.
— from The Ethics of Aristotle by Aristotle

The many literary qualifications he possesses rank him foremost among literary characters.——That unequalled production from the pen of this wonderful philosopher, denominated " A Pickle for the Knowing Ones ," has not only received universal applause, and been ranked as of the first magnitude in the literary world, but has had such rapidity in its sale, that a copy cannot be procured, though diligently sought after by men of the most transcendant merit.
— from A Pickle for the Knowing Ones by Timothy Dexter

That done, he looked at the cork, unscrewed it from the corkscrew, laid each separately on the table, and, with the end of the sailor's knot of his neckerchief, dusted the inside of the neck of the bottle.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

In 1867, his mind being engaged at once by the revolutionary agitation of his own time, and by the similar interest of the still more violent upheaval in Spain in the first years of the century, he began a kind of historical novel, La Fontana de Oro , in which he undertook to study the inner motives and history of that period, so all-important for modern Spanish history, and to illustrate the detestable character of Ferdinand VII as it appeared in one of his most disgraceful moments.
— from Doña Perfecta by Benito Pérez Galdós

Yet it may be deemed hardly fair to contrast the Rajput with the Mogul: the one disciplined into an accurate knowledge of human nature, by experience of the [324] mutability of fortune; the other cooped up from infancy in a valley of his native hills, his birth concealed, and his education restricted.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod

You see, Monsieur Pontmercy, various things have happened to me in the course of my life.” Again Jean Valjean paused, swallowing his saliva with an effort, as though his words had a bitter after-taste, and then he went on: “When one has such a horror hanging over one, one has not the right to make others share it without their knowledge, one has not the right to make them slip over one’s own precipice without their perceiving it, one has not the right to let one’s red blouse drag upon them, one has no right to slyly encumber with one’s misery the happiness of others.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Besides these plays (he confesses to authorship or collaboration in two hundred and twenty) he was a voluminous writer in prose and verse, though I do not myself pretend to much knowledge of his non-dramatic work.
— from A History of Elizabethan Literature by George Saintsbury

It was very kind of him not to have forgotten them after having lived so long away from Paris.
— from Sentimental Education; Or, The History of a Young Man. Volume 1 by Gustave Flaubert

He asked them if they knew or had notice of any rich country where there was gold or silver.
— from A Narrative of the expedition of Hernando de Soto into Florida published at Evora in 1557 by Knight of Elvas

[59] Here we see coming into play the newly acquired knowledge of human nature of which the sixteenth century was so proud.
— from English Travellers of the Renaissance by Clare Howard

I go there sometimes to extend my knowledge of human nature; but one cannot go there much without being in danger of contracting injurious habits.—With my friends?
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 17, April, 1873 to September, 1873 A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science by Various

If you have enough knowledge of human nature to understand the fine game of baseball, and have at any time scraped acquaintance with the interesting mathematical doctrine of progressive permutations, you will see, when four men equal to a thousand are under the eyes of each other, and of the garrison in the fort, that the whole arsenal of logarithms would give out before you could compute the permutative possibilities of the courage that would be refracted, reflected, compounded and concentrated by all there, each giving courage to and receiving courage from each and all the others.
— from The Delicious Vice by Young Ewing Allison

What I know of him?"' No—she could not speak, she could not even breathe.
— from Mehalah: A Story of the Salt Marshes by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

There might be keener knowledge of human nature than was "dreamt of in their philosophy"—which passed with them for commonplace , only because it was clothed in plain familiar household words, not dressed up in some pedantic masquerade of antithesis.
— from Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume 5 (of 10) by J. G. (John Gibson) Lockhart

No one can read this tramp’s reminiscences without adding to his knowledge of human nature, and to his comprehension of a somewhat unknown walk of life.” ACADEMY.
— from A Girl of the North: A Story of London and Canada by Susan Morrow Jones