quotations about men
What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.
MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain on Common Sense
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
There is nothing alive more agonized than man of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.
HOMER
The Iliad
Man is said to be a rational creature; but should it not rather be said, that man is a creature capable of being rational, as we say a parrot is a creature capable of speech?
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
No one has any right to be angry with me, if I think fit to enumerate man among the quadrapeds. Man is neither a stone nor a plant, but an animal, for such is his way of living and moving; nor is he a worm, for then he would have only one foot; nor an insect, for then he would have antennae; nor a fish, for he has no fins; nor a bird, for he has no wings. Therefore, he is a quadraped, had a mouth like that of other quadrapeds, and finally four feet, on two of which he goes, and uses the other two for prehensive purposes.
CARL LINNAEUS
Fauna Suecica
They were dressed in expensive clothes and looking at them one may think that men never lie on top of them in bed, but the assumption was totally wrong. For no matter how highly placed a woman, she's submissive to a man and for some of the women, it maybe some useless men that grunted on top of them.
KUMDONG BINDUL NOSTRA
I Will Never Trust a Man
Being a Man is always acting like a Man.
JOSEPH GREENE
The ComMANdments: The Official Guide Book to Man Rules
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 menfolk, they die, all right. And it's us women who walk around, like the Bible says, and mourn. The menfolk, they die, and it's over for them, but we women, we have to keep on living and try to forget what they done to us.
JAMES BALDWIN
Go Tell It on the Mountain
I don't know what a man is. Only that every man has his price.
BERTOLD BRECHT
The Exception and the Rule
I draw no petty social lines. A man to me is a man, wherever I find him.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
The Sound and the Fury
All men are just accumulations dolls stuffed with sawdust swept up from the trash heaps where all previous dolls had been thrown away.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
The Sound and the Fury
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
Men would like monogamy better if it sounded less like monotony.
RITA RUDNER
stand-up routine
Some of the wildest men make the best pets.
MAE WEST
Belle of the Nineties
Man is not only the supreme result of evolution thus far, -- he is the final result of evolution; there is nothing beyond him. If one asks, How do we know that there may not be something inconceivable to us beyond? the answer is, We cannot know; but in our attempt to unriddle the enigma of the universe we must think with our faculties and be governed by our limitations, and we can conceive nothing higher than man. We can conceive of man infinitely improved; we can conceive of him cultivated, developed, enlarged, enriched, purified; but of anything essentially higher than man -- no. Nothing can be conceived higher than to think, to will, to love. If we look back along the pages of history, these two truths we have learned from the universe: first, that all its processes have been for the purpose of manifesting One who thinks, who wills, who loves; second, that the purpose in the manifestation of this One is the creation of a race of free moral agents, who can themselves think and will and love. The inorganic world existed before the vegetable, and the vegetable world existed before the animal, and the lower animal existed before man, but man exists for nothing beyond. The very topmost round of the ladder has been reached: to know right from wrong, to do the right and eschew the wrong, to understand invisible distinctions, to perceive the invisible world, to struggle toward something higher and yet higher, and yet always to know, to resolve, to love, -- this is supreme.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
You men never can understand ... that, however fond a woman may be of a man, there are times when he palls upon her. You don't know how I long to be able sometimes to put on my bonnet and go out, with nobody to ask me where I am going, why I am going, how long I am going to be, and when I shall be back. You don't know how I sometimes long to order a dinner that I should like, and that the children would like, but at the sight of which you would put on your hat and be off to the Club. You don't know how much I feel inclined sometimes to invite some woman here that I like, and that I know you don't; to go and see the people that I want to see, to go to bed when I am tired, and to get up when I feel I want to get up.
JEROME KLAPKA JEROME
Three Men in a Boat
A man ought to carry himself in the world as an orange tree would if it could walk up and down in the garden--swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up to the air.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Believe me, the world always was, and always will be the same, as long as men are men.
GEORGE BERKELEY
Alciphron; or, The Minute Philosopher in Seven Dialogues
Like it or not the role of masculinity is changing and many men are like a deer in headlights and don't which way to turn.
CHRIS FORTE
"Grateful: The Good Men Project Community", The Good Men Project, August 4, 2017