quotations about men
They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
When my son said, "I can't stop thinking about girls," I said, "That's not gonna stop. Congratulations. You're in the club. From now until the day you die, one way or another you'll be thinking about girls."
PAUL REISER
Good Housekeeping, June 2011
Man seems to be made neither to live alone nor with others.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
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
Wherever comes man comes tragedy and comedy also.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Man would not be the finest creature in the world if he were not too fine for it.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Of all that Heaven produces and nourishes, there is none so great as man.
CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom of Confucius
The world in the evening seems fraught with the absence of promise, if you are a married man. There is nothing to do but go home and drink your nine drinks and forget about it.
DONALD BARTHELME
"Critique de la Vie Quotidienne"
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man.
JOHN DRYDEN
A Song for St. Cecilia's Day
They're all alike ... at first they behave very well, they're obedient and prompt and they don't seem capable of killing a fly, but as soon as their beards appear they go to ruin.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
One Hundred Years of Solitude
You don't fix a man the way you do a fault in a pipe or a leak in a roof. You take him as he is ... or you don't take him at all.
NORA ROBERTS
Tears of the Moon
But man he made of angel form erect,
To hold communion with the heavens above,
And on his soul impressed his image fair,
His own similitude of holiness,
Of virtue, truth, and love; with reason high
To balance right and wrong, and conscience quick
To choose or to reject; with knowledge great,
Prudence and wisdom, vigilance and strength,
To guard all force or guile; and last of all,
The highest gift of God's abundant grace,
With perfect, free, unbias'd will. Thus man
Was made upright, immortal made, and crown'd
The king of all.
ROBERT POLLOK
The Course of Time
Man is a living lie--a bitter jest
Upon himself--a conscious grain of sand
Lost in a desert of unconsciousness.
HENRY VAN DYKE
"The Grand Canyon"
A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Handmaid's Tale
Women cry. Men laugh. Whiners moan. Men laugh. Wimps complain. Men laulgh.
LISA GARDNER
The Perfect Husband
I want men to admire me, but that's a trick you learn at school--a movement of the eyes, a tone of voice, a touch of the hand on the shoulder or the head. If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there's something to admire.
GRAHAM GREENE
The End of the Affair
Man is but a pebble dropped in a pool. And if man is but a pebble, then all his works can be no more.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Atreides
Thus man himself offers sufficient proof of the two orders--Matter and Spirit. In him culminates a visible finite universe; in him begins a universe invisible and infinite.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
Good men are like good hairdressers. Hard as hell to find.
ZANE
Shame on It All
Men are like chestnuts they sell in the street: they're all hot and they all smell good when you buy them, but when you take them out of the paper cone you realize that most of them are rotten inside.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Prisoner of Heaven