quotations about men
Man, being the strongest of all animals, differs from the rest; he was obliged to be his own domesticator; he had to tame himself.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
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
What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.
MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain on Common Sense
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
Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"Raising the Wind", Saturday Courier, October 14, 1843
I draw no petty social lines. A man to me is a man, wherever I find him.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
The Sound and the Fury
The right boys i always toss and the wrong ones i keep on top of me like paperweights.
DANIEL HANDLER
Adverbs
Men are foolish to expect us to revere them, when, in the end, they amount to almost nothing.
PAULINE RÉAGE
introduction, The Image
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
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
Men and barbed wire have their good points.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
If sense was gunpowder ever one of you men put together wouldn't have enough to load a round of birdshot.
WILLIAM GAY
Provinces of Night
The hardest man ... is but a shell.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.
REBECCA WEST
The Thinking Reed
It's hard to resist a bad boy who's a good man.
NORA ROBERTS
Happy Ever After
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
Ah, race of mortal men,
How as a thing of nought
I count ye, though ye live;
For who is there of men
That more of blessing knows,
Than just a little while
To seem to prosper well,
And, having seemed, to fall?
SOPHOCLES
Oedipus the King
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
We are not men, but promises of men.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
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