quotations about men
There is nothing alive more agonized than man of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.
HOMER
The Iliad
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
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
The toolmakers had been remade by their own tools. For in using clubs and flints, their hands had developed a dexterity found nowhere else in the animal kingdom, permitting them to make still better tools, which in turn had developed their limbs and brains yet further. It was an accelerating, cumulative process; and at its end was Man.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
2001: A Space Odyssey
Women were brought up to believe that men were the answer. They weren't. They weren't even one of the questions.
JULIAN BARNES
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
The reputation of a Don Juan gives to a man the most dangerous power. Wise virgins resist it, but foolish virgins frequently yield to the desire to take a celebrated lover from a rival -- even from a friend. This emotion is a complex one, mad up of vanity, respect for another woman's taste, and the need to establish self-assurance by winning a difficult victory. Don Juan chose his first mistresses; later he was chosen.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living
Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild.
IMMANUEL KANT
Lectures on Ethics
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
What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.
MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain on Common Sense
The hardest man ... is but a shell.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Men are foolish to expect us to revere them, when, in the end, they amount to almost nothing.
PAULINE RÉAGE
introduction, The Image
Do you know how hard it is to find a decent man in this town? Most of them think monogamy is some kind of wood.
PEGGY BRANDT (AMY YASBECK)
The Mask
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
Few women think a man complete without vice.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke
Any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very much better than any other live or dead man.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
The Sound and the Fury
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
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 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
I do like men who come out frankly and own that they are not gods.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Jo's Boys
Man seems to be made neither to live alone nor with others.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections