quotations about men
Men aren't allowed to have self-esteem, because we're already supposed to have all the power.... But most men earn less than they want, barely the minimum wage. They're drones. They do stuff they don't want to do to support their families, and they're not sure why they do it. They don't know what they're doing half the time, and any time we stick up for ourselves, we're pigs because we don't know how to articulate our frustrations and joys.
TIM ALLEN
Parade Magazine, October 27, 2002
After thousands of centuries of vain efforts to come back to itself, Divinity, lost and scattered in the matter which it animates and sets in motion, finds a point of support, a sort of focus for self-concentration. This focus is man, his immortal soul singularly imprisoned in a mortal body. But each man considered individually is infinitely too limited, too small, to enclose the divine immensity; it can contain only a very small particle, immortal like the whole, but infinitely smaller than the whole. It follows that the divine being, the absolutely immaterial being, mind, is divisible like matter. Another mystery whose solution must be left to faith.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
Man himself is a great deep, whose very hairs Thou numberest, O Lord, and they fall not to the ground without Thee. And yet are the hairs of his head easier to be numbered than his feelings, and the beatings of his heart.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
When God made man she was practicing.
RITA MAE BROWN
Cat on the Scent
Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Übermensch--a rope over an abyss.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The longer I live, the more it grieves me to see man, who occupies his supreme place for the very purpose of imposing his will upon nature, and freeing himself and his from an outrageous necessity--to see him taken up with some false notion, and doing just the opposite of what he wants to do; and then, because the whole bent of his mind is spoilt, bungling miserably over everything.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Man is nothing but surprise, contradiction, incoherence, and folly.
OCTAVE MIRBEAU
The Diary of a Chambermaid
Even in hell, if a man was a man, you'd know it.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENET
"The Devil and Daniel Webster"
I sometimes think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated His ability.
OSCAR WILDE
The Wit of Oscar Wilde
I've never gone anywhere where the men have come up to my infantile expectations. I always have gone through life constantly being surprised by the extreme, marvelous qualities of a small minority of men. But I can't see the rest of them. They seem awful rubbish.
REBECCA WEST
The Paris Review, spring 1981
Many women I know think the ideal of happiness is to be in love with a great man, or to be the wife of a great public success; to share his triumph! They forget you share the man as well!
ADA LEVERSON
Tenterhooks
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful, is man!...
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Might not most men be as well named boys grown old.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
Real men don't use instructions, son. Besides, this is just the manufacturer's opinion on how to put this together.
TIM ALLEN
Home Improvement
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
North & South
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
JOHN GRAY
Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus
Most women use more brains picking a horse in the third at Belmont than they do picking a husband.
LAUREN BACALL
How to Marry a Millionaire
[Man] attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Second Sex
He who is infatuated with Man leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.
MAX STIRNER
The Ego and Its Own
My! ain't men blinder'n moles?
AMY LOWELL
"Reaping", Men, Women and Ghosts