quotations about men
It takes a man to know men and all the wickedness mixed up in their flesh and blood.
AMELIA E. BARR
A Singer from the Sea
I don't know what a man is. Only that every man has his price.
BERTOLD BRECHT
The Exception and the Rule
Few women think a man complete without vice.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke
I have been thinking, my love, and on my return,
I would like to reveal the truth of us, of myself.
I am tired of this restrictive masculine role.
CHRIS ABANI
Hands Washing Water
There is nothing alive more agonized than man of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.
HOMER
The Iliad
I do like men who come out frankly and own that they are not gods.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Jo's Boys
It is desperately hard these days for an average child to grow up to be a man, for our present organized system does not want men. They are not safe.
PAUL GOODMAN
Growing Up Absurd
This is man: a writer of books, a putter-down of words, a painter of pictures, a maker of ten thousand philosophies. He grows passionate over ideas, he hurls scorn and mockery at another's work, he finds the one way, the true way, for himself, and calls all others false--yet in the billion books upon the shelves there is not one that can tell him how to draw a single fleeting breath in peace and comfort. He makes histories of the universe, he directs the destiny of the nations, but he does not know his own history, and he cannot direct his own destiny with dignity or wisdom for ten consecutive minutes.
THOMAS WOLFE
You Can't Go Home Again
Wherever comes man comes tragedy and comedy also.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Religion and Science
What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just the same shall be man to the Übermensch: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild.
IMMANUEL KANT
Lectures on Ethics
Men are angels born without wings, nothing could be nicer than to be born without wings and to make them grow.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
The hardest man ... is but a shell.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite of him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Sartor Resartus
Man, when viewed in separation from his Maker and his end, can be as little understood and portrayed, as a plant torn from the soil in which it grew, and cut off from communication with the clouds and sun.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
Welcome to the mystery that is men. I think it goes something like, they grow body hair, they lose all ability to tell you what they really want.
BUFFY SUMMERS
"Phases", Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Men changed whatever they set hand to. They wrought their magic on beasts, to make them dull and patient. They brought fire and the reek of smoke to the dales. They brought lines and order to the curve of the hills. Most of all they brought the chill of iron, to sweep away the ancient shadows.
C. J. CHERRYH
The Dreamstone
No man ever reaches manhood
till a woman's tenderness
Is a part of his possession.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Conquerors"
Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Crime and Punishment