Quotes about men
page 31

“Stare at me in this faceless way, go mad with desire, and rip my clothes off. It's terrific. In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind. The fantasy of rape — of which mine is in a kind of prepubescent sub-category — is common enough among women and (in mirror image) among men.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Nora Ephron: Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women, Knopf Publishing, New York, 1975

Love, Women, Sex, Way

“The Church is the Church only when it exists for others… not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Letters and Papers from Prison

Help, Christ

“Another of these strong silent men. The world is full of us.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

World, Strong

“It's strange how men feel they have the right to criticize a woman's appearance to her face.”

Marilyn French (1929–2009) Novelist, critic

Source: Her Mother's Daughter

Feeling, Appearance

“I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred. I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.”

Booker T. Washington book Up from Slavery

Source: 1900s, Up From Slavery (1901), Chapter XI: Making Their Beds Before They Could Lie On Them
Source: Up from Slavery

Love, Strong

“The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong. Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation… Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.”

Bernard Cornwell book The Last Kingdom

Source: The Last Kingdom

“Those men want to take Laurence from me, and put him in prison, and execute him, and I will not let them, ever, and I do not care if Laurence tells me not to squash you," he added, fiercely, to Lord Barham.”

Naomi Novik book Throne of Jade

Source: Throne of Jade

“We are all honorable men here, we do not have to give each other assurances as if we were lawyers.”

Mario Puzo The Godfather

Source: The Godfather

“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

Edmund Burke book Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

Volume i, p. 526; see #Disputed below.
Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)
Source: Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents: Volume 1 Paperback: 001

“For education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Education

“It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

God, Dreams

“Don't ever trust men with good intentions. They'll always disappoint you."
Leo”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Tempt Me at Twilight

Disappointment

“Men do, I've found, accept the most errant nonsense from a well dressed woman”

Laurie R. King book Justice Hall

Source: Justice Hall

“The rabbis paled. I’d managed to terrify holy men. Maybe I could beat up a nun for an encore.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

“Beauty is that quality which, next to money, is generally the most attractive to the worst kinds of men;”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XVI : The Warning of Experience; Mrs. Maxwell to Helen
Context: Beauty is that quality which, next to money, is generally the most attractive to the worst kinds of men; and, therefore, it is likely to entail a great deal of trouble on the possessor.

Money, Beauty

“You may break your heart, but men will still go on as before.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Ὅτι οὐδὲν ἧττον τὰ αὐτὰ ποιήσουσι, κἂν σὺ διαρραγῇς.
VIII, 4
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII

Heart

“Make no small plans. They have no magic to stir men's souls.”

Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Soul

“Men are born to sin…What does matter most, is not that we err, it is that we do benefit from our mistakes, that we are capable of sincere repentance, of genuine contrition.”

Sharon Kay Penman book The Sunne in Splendour

Source: The Sunne in Splendour

Sincerity

“We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straightly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter

Books, Dreams, Sleep, Study

“Men of passion and vision are often seen as mad.”

Robin Hobb book Royal Assassin

Source: Royal Assassin

Passion, Madness

“Most men and women, by birth or nature, lack the means to advance in wealth and power, but all have the ability to advance in knowledge.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in The Golden Ratio (2002) by Mario Livio

Women, Birth, Nature, Knowledge

“My father was a deeply sentimental man. And like all sentimental men, he was also very cruel.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Hate, War

“It is difficult
to get the news from poems

yet men die miserably every day

for lack”

William Carlos Williams book Journey to Love

'of what is found there.'
Journey to Love (1955), Asphodel, That Greeny Flower
Source: Asphodel, That Greeny Flower and Other Love Poems: That Greeny Flower

“It is not a good fancy,' said the llama. 'What profit to kill men?'
Very little - as I know; but if evil men were not now and then slain it would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers.”

Rudyard Kipling Kim

Source: Kim

World, Evil

“To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Childhood

“Based on her experience with men, most assumed that when you talked to them about a problem or dilemma, they were expected to offer an opinion, even when all you wants was for them to listen.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Source: The Lucky One

Problem

“The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God can love them.”

Thomas Merton book No Man Is an Island

Source: No Man Is an Island

Love, God

“Why is it that there are always these problems and misunderstandings between men and women? Surely it would have been better if God had made only one sort of person, and the children had come by some other means, with the rain perhaps.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Kalahari Typing School for Men

Source: The Kalahari Typing School for Men

Women, God, Children, Problem

“For surely a king is first a man. And so it must follow that a king does as all men do: the best he can.”

Cameron Dokey (1956) American writer

Source: The Storyteller's Daughter: A Retelling of the Arabian Nights

“I came to the Greeks early, and I found answers in them. Greece's great men let all their acts turn on the immortality of the soul. We don't really act as if we believed in the soul's immortality and that's why we are where we are today.”

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American teacher and writer

Soul

“As Harry puts it, men and women can never be friends because 'the sex part always gets in the way.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Source: When Harry Met Sally

Women, Sex, Way, Parting

“If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination … no more men!”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

A variant — "Professor Einstein, the learned scientist, once calculated that if all bees disappeared off the earth, four years later all humans would also have disappeared" — appears in The Irish Beekeeper, v.19-20, 1965-66, p74, citing Abeilles et Fleurs (Bees and Flowers, the house magazine of Union Nationale de l'Apiculture Française) for June 1965. Snopes.com mentions its use in a beekeepers' protest in 1994 in Europe http://www.snopes.com/quotes/einstein/bees.asp suggesting invention and attribution to Einstein for political reasons. Misattributed

Bee

“Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
This is not done by jostling in the street.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Great Things Are Done
1800s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1807-1809)

Mountain

“Men of sense, whatever you may choose to say, do not want silly wives.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

Sense

“Men are intrigued by anything they do not completly control.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

“Authority doesn't come from a rank.," Kaladin said, fingering the spheres in his pocket.
"Where does it come from?"
"From the men who give it to you. That's the only way to get it.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

Way

“History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.”

Alan Bennett The History Boys

Source: The History Boys

Women, History

“A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

Happiness

“I shudder at the thought of men….
I'm due to fall in love again”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Love

“Men don’t realize that if we’re sleeping with them on the first date, we’re probably not interested in seeing them again either.”

Chelsea Handler (1975) American comedian, actress, author and talk show host

Sleep

“It's like Brad Pitt for us. You might not like blond men with pretty features, but c'mon, it's Brad. You're not going to kick him out of bed for eating crackers.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

“My mother says men are different from us. She says we want to be in love, but only with the one we want; a man needs to be in love, but he will love the first woman to tie a string to his heart. - Egwene, speaking to Elayne”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Love, Heart

“The outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state… Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

Source: As a Man Thinketh

Life, Personality

“Love doesn't die; the men and women do.”

William Faulkner book If I Forget Thee

Source: The Wild Palms

Love, Women

“From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.”

Salman Rushdie book The Satanic Verses

Source: The Satanic Verses

God

“Animals have no unconscious, because they have a territory. Men have only had an unconscious since they lost a territory.”

Jean Baudrillard book Simulacra and Simulation

Source: Simulacra and Simulation

Animals

“An artist needn't be a clergyman or a church warden, but he must have a warm heart for his fellow men”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Heart

“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to his Italian friend, Philip Mazzei (1796)
1790s

Sea

“Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

“But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Source: Mansfield Park (1814)

Women, World

“In the year 2025, the best men don't run for president, they run for their lives….”

Stephen King The Running Man

Source: The Running Man

“Nothing that we despise in other men is inherently absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don't do, and more in light of what they suffer.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

People, Light, Suffering, Learning

“I only want one thing of men, and that is, that they should leave me alone.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover

“Mom says it's because she has PMS.
Do you even know what that means?
"I'm not a little kid anymore. It means pissed-at- men syndrome”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

Moms

“Among men, sex sometimes results in intimacy; among women, intimacy sometimes results in sex.”

Barbara Cartland (1901–2000) English writer and media personality

Women, Sex

“As the Wheel of Time turns, places wear many names. Men wear many names, many faces. Different faces, but always the same man. Yet no one knows the Great Pattern the Wheel weaves, or even the Pattern of an Age. We can only watch, and study, and hope.”

Robert Jordan book The Eye of the World

Source: The Eye of the World

Age, Hope, Study, Time

“because white men can't
police their imagination
black men are dying”

Claudia Rankine book Citizen: An American Lyric

Source: Citizen: An American Lyric

Imagination

“Achilles makes a sound like choking. “There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.” His spearpoint flies in a dark whirlwind, bright as the evening-star, to catch the hollow at Hector’s throat.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Star

“Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current.”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Source: The Golden Compass

Women, Imagination

“I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Love, Life

“I don't know why men like to barbecue so much. Maybe its the only thing they can cook. Or maybe they're just closet pyromaniacs.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

Cooking

“A nation or a civilization that continues to produce softminded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: There is little hope for us until we become toughminded enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths, and downright ignorance. The shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of softmindedness. A nation or a civilization that continues to produce softminded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.
But we must not stop with the cultivation of a tough mind. The gospel also demands a tender heart. … What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of toughmindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hardheartedness?

Death

“For if there is one thing I have learned over the years about men, it is that feelings of powerlessness do not usually bring forth their finest qualities.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Feeling, Learning

“Words have to find a man's mind before they can touch his heart, and some men's minds are woefully small targets.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: Chapter 14, “The Name of the Wind” (p. 113)
Context: Remember this son, if you forget everything else. A poet is a musician who can’t sing. Words have to find a man’s mind before they can touch his heart. And, some men’s minds are woeful small targets. Music touches their hearts directly, no matter how small or stubborn the mind of the man who listens.

Heart

“In cities men cannot be prevented from concerting together, and from awakening a mutual excitement which prompts sudden and passionate resolutions. Cities may be looked upon as large assemblies, of which all the inhabitants are members; their populace exercises a prodigious influence upon the magistrates, and frequently executes its own wishes without their intervention.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Variant translation: In towns it is impossible to prevent men from assembling, getting excited together and forming sudden passionate resolves. Towns are like great meeting houses with all the inhabitants as members. In them the people wield immense influence over their magistrates and often carry their desires into execution without intermediaries.
Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XVII.

Exercises, Passion

“He describes him in general terms, as the most incomprehensible and formidable among men; as engaged in schemes, reasonably suspected to be, in the highest degree, criminal, but such as no human intelligence is able to unravel: that his ends are pursued by means which leave it in doubt whether he be not in league with some infernal spirit: that his crimes have hitherto been perpetrated with the aid of some unknown but desperate accomplices: that he wages a perpetual war against the happiness of mankind, and sets his engines of destruction at work against every object that presents itself.”

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

War, Intelligence, Happiness

“Robert F. Kennedy used to say, 'Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not?'; that outlook has become a far too common and destructive approach to interpreting the law”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Speech at Catholic University, Columbus School of Law http://web.archive.org/web/20040704015129/http://www.law.cua.edu/News/Things%20That%20Never%20Were.cfm (2004). 2000s

Law, Dreams

“The money men make from their willingness to work the least desirable hours is not a sign of discrimination against women, but a sign of the willingness of mostly married men to lose sleep to support the family as their wife loses sleep to feed the child. A willingness to do the uncomfortable shifts is one reason married men earn more than twice what never-married men earn. Men's contribution, made at night, need not be lost in the dark.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 69.

Women, Money, Family, Support

“Stranded in this mill town railroad yard while the whole world was converging elsewhere, we seemed to be nothing but children playing among heroic men.”

John Knowles book A Separate Peace

Gene, on the war activities around Devon.
Source: A Separate Peace (1959), P. 89

Children, World

“Wait,” Foyle commanded. He looked at the beaming grin engraved in the steel robot face. “But society can be so stupid. So confused. You’ve witnessed this conference.”
“Yes, sir, but you must teach, not dictate. You must teach society.”
“To space-jaunte? Why? Why reach out to the stars and galaxies? What for?”
“Because you’re alive, sir. You might as well ask: Why is life? Don’t ask about it. Live it.”
“Quite mad,” Dagenham muttered.
“But fascinating,” Y’ang-Yeovil murmured.
“There’s got to be more to life than just living,” Foyle said to the robot.
“Then find it for yourself, sir. Don’t ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.”
“Why can’t we all move forward together?”
“Because you’re all different. You’re not lemmings. Some must lead, and hope that the rest will follow.”
“Who leads?”
“The men who must … driven men, compelled men.”
“Freak men.”
“You’re all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That’s its hope and glory.”
“Thank you very much.”

Alfred Bester book The Stars My Destination

“My pleasure, sir.”
Source: The Stars My Destination (1956), Chapter 16 (p. 251).

Life, Pleasure, Stupidity, World

“As the Creator and Preserver of men, Thou art gloriously manifest; butO! how much more gloriously art Thou revealed as reconciling ungrateful enemies to Thyself by the blood of Thy eternal Son. Here Thy beneficence displays its brightest splendor; here Thou dost fully display Thy most magnificent titles; THE LORD, THE LORD GOD, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness. How unsearchable are Thy ways, and Thy paths past finding out!”

Elizabeth Rowe (1674–1737) poet and writer

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 272.

God, Art, Way, Suffering

“It is remarkable, that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or to acknowledge the personality of God. … In reading a work on agriculture, we have to skip the author's moral reflections, and the words "Providence" and "He" scattered along the page, to come at the profitable level of what he has to say. What he calls his religion is for the most part offensive to the nostrils. … There is more religion in men's science than there is science in their religion.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

God, Religion, Feeling, Science

“Woman's soul is present and lives more intensely in all parts of the body, and it is inwardly affected by that which happens to the body; whereas, with men, the body has more pronoucedly the character of an instrument which serves them in their work and which is accompanied by a certain detachment.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), Spirituality of the Christian Woman (1932)

Soul, Parting

“To each his suff'rings: all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan,
The tender for another's pain;
Th' unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 10 Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=odec (written 1742–1750)

Pain, Fate, Happiness

“Where men of fine feeling are concerned there is seldom misunderstanding.”

John Paul Jones (1747–1792) American naval officer

Letter from Jones to the Marquis de Lafayette, (1 May 1779)

Feeling

“Does Donald Trump have the temperament to be Commander-in-Chief? Donald Trump can't even handle the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign. He loses his cool at the slightest provocation. When he's gotten a tough question from a reporter. When he's challenged in a debate. When he sees a protestor at a rally. Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons. I can't put it any better than Jackie Kennedy did after the Cuban Missile Crisis. She said that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started – not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men – the ones moved by fear and pride.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), 2016 Democratic National Convention (July 28, 2016)

War, Fear, Imagination, Question

“The appeal of political correctness is that it attempts to change men’s souls by altering how they speak. If one sufficiently reforms language, certain thoughts become unthinkable, and the world moves in the approved direction.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Engineering Souls http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_2_sndgs03.html (March 22, 2007). City Journal (1998 - 2008)

World, Soul, Change

“Badly off as the men… were in your day, they were more fortunate than their mothers and wives.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/lkbak10.txt (1888), Ch. 11.

“Darab Khan who had been sent with a strong force to punish the Rajputs of Khandela and to demolish the great temple of the place, attacked the place on the 8th March/5th Safar, and slew the three hundred and odd men who made a bold defence, not one of them escaping alive. [16 October 1678] The temples of Khandela and Sanula and all other temples in the neighbourhood were demolished…'On Sunday, the 25th May/24th Rabi. S., Khan Jahan Bahadur came from Jodhpur, after demolishing the temples and bringing with himself some cart-loads of idols, and had audience of the Emperor, who highly praised him and ordered that the idols, which were mostly jewelled, gold en, silver y, bronze, copper or stone, should be cast in the yard (jilaukhanah) of the Court and under the steps of the Jam'a mosque, to be trodden on. They remained so for some time and at last their very names were lost' [25 May 1679]…Ruhullah Khan and Ekkataz Khan went to demolish the great temple in front of the Rana's palace, which was one of the rarest buildings of the age and the chief cause of the destruction of life and property of the despised worshippers Twenty machator Rajputs who were sitting in the temple vowed to give up their lives; first one of them came out to fight, killed some and was then himself slain, then came out another and so on, until every one of the twenty perished, after killing a large number of the imperialists including the trusted slave, Ikhlas. The temple was found empty. The hewers broke the images…..”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Maasir-i-alamgiri, translated into English by Sir Jadu-Nath Sarkar, Calcutta, 1947, pp. 107-120, also quoted in part in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers. Different translation: “Darab Khan was sent with a strong force to punish the Rajputs of Khandela and demolish the great temple of that place.” (M.A. 171.) “He attacked the place on 8th March 1679, and pulled down the temples of Khandela and Sanula and all other temples in the neighbourhood.”(M.A. 173.) Sarkar, Jadunath (1972). History of Aurangzib: Volume III. App. V.
Quotes from late medieval histories, 1670s

Life, Strong, Fight, Age

“Women must not merely imitate men. Women have more to give than performing any job in society like neutered robots. Those who talk today of rousing the 'consciousness' of women contribute an idea of real importance. It was such a grievous mistake to leave out women. For whence can come love, compassion and understanding if not out of the relations of men and women and of them to their children?”

Dora Russell (1894–1986) author, feminist, socialist campaigner

Source: The Tamarisk Tree (1975), Ch. XIV

Love, Women, Children, Idea

“He took his way to the abode of sacred Loyalty, seeking to discover her hidden purpose. It chanced that the goddess, who loves solitude, was then in a distant region of heaven, pondering in her heart the high concerns of the gods. Then he who gave peace to Nemea accosted her thus with reverence: "Goddess more ancient than Jupiter, glory of gods and men, without whom neither sea nor land finds peace, sister of Justice…"”
Ad limina sanctae contendit Fidei secretaque pectora temptat. arcanis dea laeta polo tum forte remoto caelicolum magnas uoluebat conscia curas. quam tali adloquitur Nemeae pacator honore: 'Ante Iouem generata, decus diuumque hominumque, qua sine non tellus pacem, non aequora norunt, iustitiae consors...'

Silius Italicus Punica

Book II, lines 479–486
Punica

Love, God, Peace, Justice

“And now," Herod calmly said, "You can kill all the new-born…. Kill them all…. take your men and let your men take their swords. Make sure they're sharp. To Bethlehem. Hack. Lunge. Chop. Kill.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Man of Nazareth (1979)

“If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books, should be forbid.”

Herman Melville book The Encantadas

Sketch Eighth
The Encantadas (1854)

Books, Dreams, Hurt

“Here we go again,’ he thought. ‘Drink and reminiscence. Another day of wasted time. They’re right when they say we drink too much out here. And we slobber too much over ourselves…. We’re all sorry for ourselves because we’re not big executives or artists or happily married men in a civilized temperate climate.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Beds in the East (1959)

Drink, Time

“Let me tell you I am better acquainted with you for a long Absence, as men are with themselves for a long affliction: Absence does but hold off a friend, to make one see him the truer.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Letter, written in collaboration with Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, to Jonathan Swift, December 14, 1725.

Affliction

“Your great demonstration which marks this day in the City of Washington is only representative of many like observances extending over our own country and into other lands, so that it makes a truly world-wide appeal. It is a manifestation of the good in human nature which is of tremendous significance. More than six centuries ago, when in spite of much learning and much piety there was much ignorance, much wickedness and much warfare, when there seemed to be too little light in the world, when the condition of the common people appeared to be sunk in hopelessness, when most of life was rude, harsh and cruel, when the speech of men was too often profane and vulgar, until the earth rang with the tumult of those who took the name of the Lord in vain, the foundation of this day was laid in the formation of the Holy Name Society. It had an inspired purpose. It sought to rededicate the minds of the people to a true conception of the sacredness of the name of the Supreme Being. It was an effort to save all reference to the Deity from curses and blasphemy, and restore the lips of men to reverence and praise. Out of weakness there began to be strength; out of frenzy there began to be self-control; out of confusion there began to be order. This demonstration is a manifestation of the wide extent to which an effort to do the right thing will reach when it is once begun. It is a purpose which makes a universal appeal, an effort in which all may unite.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Life, People, World, Nature

“ There is […] no necessary connection between the symbol and that which is symbolized. Just as men can wear yachting costumes without ever having been near a yacht, so they can make the noise "I'm hungry" without being hungry. Furthermore, just as social rank can be symbolized by feathers in the hair, by tattooing on the breast, by gold ornaments on the watch chain, or by a thousand different devices according to the culture we live in, so the fact of being hungry can be symbolized by a thousand different noises according to the culture we live in: "J'ai faim," or "Es hungert mich," or "Ho appetito," or "Hara ga hetta," and so on.”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), Language as Symbolism, p. 27

Tattoo

“Mark this well, you proud men of action: You are nothing but the unwitting agents of the men of thought who often, in quiet self-effacement, mark out most exactly all your doings in advance.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, Vol. III (1834)

“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Speech at the Copley Plaza Hotel, Boston, Massachusetts (7 June 1945), quoted in Patton : Ordeal and Triumph (1970) by Ladislas Farago

God

“He had seen enough of the world to be a coward, and above all he had an uneasy distrust of bankers. Even dead men allow themselves a few narrow prejudices.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

World, Dead

“Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. That state is most fortunate in its form of government which has the aptest instruments for the discovery of law.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

Speech to the Massachusetts State Senate http://friesian.com/ross/ca40/2002.htm#war (7 January 1914). 1910s, Speech to the Massachusetts State Senate (1914)

Law

“It will be said, "Patriotism has welded mankind into states, and maintains the unity of states." But men are now united in states; that work is done; why now maintain exclusive devotion to one's own state, when this produces terrible evils for all states and nations? For this same patriotism which welded mankind into states is now destroying those same states. If there were but one patriotism say of the English only then it were possible to regard that as conciliatory, or beneficent. But when, as now, there is American patriotism, English, German, French, Russian, all opposed to one another, in this event, patriotism no longer unites, but disunites.”

Leo Tolstoy book Patriotism and Government

Patriotism and Government

Evil

““This is the first award I received…In fact, I consider this priceless. This was presented to me by Sri. Godavarma Bhattan Thampuran of Kodungallur (Cranganore) Palace years ago. I was only 22 then. Those were days when Kodungallur used to witness the best assembly of scholars in Sanskrit and the sasthras. Present on that day were several highly learned men and women. The stage was in front of Sringapuram temple. I presented Bhagavad Dooth Prabhantham Koothu. My interpretation of one of the slokas was a little more elaborate than and different from the custom-worn treatment. The audience liked it. In appreciation, Bhattan Thampuran removed this ring from his finger and put it on mine. The spontaneous gesture in recognition of my art naturally is the most precious to me ”
-Guru Māni Mādhava Chākyār, about his prized possession- the golden ring from the great scholar H. H Bhattan Thampuran”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Awards
Source: K. A. Chandrahasan, In pursuit of excellence (Performing Arts), "The Hindu", Sunday March 26, 1989

Women, Art, Nature, Learning

“Standardization develops a kind of mass mind, which in mature years renders men very susceptible to crowd appeal.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 74

“I think every man would be better off if he didn’t take any intoxicatin’ drink at all, but as men will drink, they ought to have good stuff without impoverishin’ themselves by goin’ to fancy places and without riskin’ death by goin’ to poor places. p. 86”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 21, Concerning Excise

Death, Drink, Thinking

“Mama was a looker,
Lord, how she shined.
Papa was a good'n,
But the jealous kind.
Papa loved Mama;
Mama loved men.
Mama's in the graveyard;
Papa's in the pen.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

Papa Loved Mama, written by Kim Williams and G. Brooks.
Song lyrics, Ropin' the Wind (1991)

Love

“Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor. Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

"Petty Notes on Some Sex in America" first published in Playboy magazine (1961 - 1962)
Cannibals and Christians (1966)

Life

“Some men are born committed to action: they do not have a choice, they have been thrown on a path, at the end of that path, an act awaits them, their act.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Act 1
The Flies (1943)

“I have come across men of letters who have written history without taking part in public affairs, and politicians who have concerned themselves with producing events without thinking about them. I have observed that the first are always inclined to find general causes whereas the second, living in the midst of disconnected daily facts, are prone to imagine that everything is attributable to particular incidents, and that the wires they pull are the same as those that move the world. It is to be presumed that both are equally deceived.”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 80 http://books.google.com/books?id=3gtoAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA80&dq=%22come+across+men+of+letters+who+have+written+history+without+taking+part+in+public+affairs%22 1850s and later

World, Imagination, History, Thinking

Quotes about men page 31

Quotes about men
page 31