“There are things stronger than the strongest man…”
Victor Hugo book Les Misérables
Source: Les Misérables
Quotes about man page 12
Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita
Да, человек смертен, но это было бы ещё полбеды. Плохо то, что он иногда внезапно смертен, вот в чём фокус!
Book One in 'Never Talk with Strangers', P/V
Source: The Master and Margarita (1967)
“Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.”
E.M. Forster book Howards End
Source: Howards End (1910), Ch. 41
“Every man's life is a fairy tale, written by God's fingers.”
Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet
John Henry Newman (1801–1890) English cleric and cardinal
Lecture IX
Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England (1851)
“Even if you slept with every man on Earth, my love will still survive.”
Paulo Coelho book The Winner Stands Alone
Source: The Winner Stands Alone
Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist
Source: Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers
“A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true.”
Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics
Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist
Variant: Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.
Source: Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements
Source: Malcolm X Speaks (1965), p. 111
“Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to remain a civilized man.”
Leonard Woolf (1880–1969) English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant
“Love between a man and woman is war.”
August Strindberg (1849–1912) Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter
Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter
As quoted in "The Joking Troubadour of Gloom" in The Daily Telegraph (26 April 1993) http://www.webheights.net/speakingcohen/feb93.htm <br class="br">Context: I am so often accused of gloominess and melancholy. And I think I'm probably the most cheerful man around. I don't consider myself a pessimist at all. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin. … I think those descriptions of me are quite inappropriate to the gravity of the predicament that faces us all. I've always been free from hope. It's never been one of my great solaces. I feel that more and more we're invited to make ourselves strong and cheerful..... I think that it was Ben Jonson who said, I have studied all the theologies and all the philosophies, but cheerfulness keeps breaking through.
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher
Variant translation: Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.
Variant translation: Until we extend the circle of compassion to all living things, we will not ourselves find peace.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)
“Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all … is not to have one.”
Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek
Variant: Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, in my view, is not to have one.
Source: Zorba the Greek
“The lawyer with the briefcase can steal more money than the man with the gun.”
Variant: Lawyers can steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns and masks."
-Don Vito Corleone
Source: The Godfather
“Think where man's glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
The Municipal Gallery Revisited http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1659/, st. 7 <br class="br">Last Poems (1936-1939) <br class="br">Variant: Think where man's glory most begins and ends. And say my glory was I had such friends. <br class="br">Context: You that would judge me, do not judge alone<br>This book or that, come to this hallowed place<br>Where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon;<br>Ireland's history in their lineaments trace;<br>Think where man's glory most begins and ends<br>And say my glory was I had such friends.
“The man who knows his limitations, has none.”
David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest
Source: Infinite Jest
Michael H. Hart (1932) American astronomer
Muhammad
Source: About Muhammad, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, p.3
“A man who takes himself too seriously will find that no one else takes him seriously.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
“Man made God in his own image…”
Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
“You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.”
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer
As quoted in How to Win Friends and Influence People (1935) by Dale Carnegie, p. 117; also paraphrased as "You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it for himself." Attributions are found as early as 1882. <br class="br">Attributed <br class="br">Source: Google Books link https://books.google.com/books?id=h70_AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA476&dq=You+cannot+teach+a+man+anything;+you+can+only+help+him+find+it+within+himself&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMI39Gmss_gyAIVRNRjCh1Q2wGN#v=onepage&q=%22You%20cannot%20teach%22&f=false
“Because no man wants to be a coward in front of a cheese.”
Terry Pratchett book Wintersmith
Source: Wintersmith
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Source: Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings
“I'm the greatest, I'm a bad man, and I'm pretty!”
Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist
Source: Ali! Ali!: The Words of Muhammed Ali.
“Just because a man has died for it, does not make it true.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
“If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist
Source: Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844/The Communist Manifesto
“Many a man fails to become a thinker only because his memory is too good.”
Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human
Mancher wird nur deshalb kein Denker, weil sein Gedächtnis zu gut ist.
II.122
Human, All Too Human (1878)
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Words on being presented with a Bible, as reported in the Washington Daily Morning Chronicle (8 September 1864)
1860s
“Man rarely places a proper valuation upon his womankind, at least not until deprived of them.”
Jack London (1876–1916) American author, journalist, and social activist
“No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
“No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.”
Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate
Démosthenés (-384–-322 BC) ancient greek statesman and orator
Third Olynthiac http://books.google.com/books?id=n4INAAAAYAAJ&q=&quot;the+easiest+thing+in+the+world+is+self-deceit+for+every+man+believes+what+he+wishes+though+the+reality+is+often+different&quot;&pg=PA57#v=onepage, section 19 (349 BC), as translated by Charles Rann Kennedy (1852) <br class="br">Variants: <br class="br">A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true. <br class="br">As quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (1987) by Robert Andrews, p. 255 <br class="br">There is nothing easier than self-delusion. Since what man desires, is the first thing he believes.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
My Day (1935–1962)
Source: This is My Story
Context: If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively. For people to have more time to read, to take part in their civic obligations, to know more about how their government functions and who their officials are might mean in a democracy a great improvement in the democratic processes. Let's begin, then, to think how we can prepare old and young for these new opportunities. Let's not wait until they come upon us suddenly and we have a crisis that we will be ill prepared to meet. (5 November 1958)
Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird
Pt. 1, ch. 11
Jean Louise (Scout) Finch
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Pt. I, st. 7
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Source: The Ballad Of Reading Gaol
“I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest
"The Evolution of Chastity" (February 1934), as translated in Toward the Future (1975) edited by by René Hague, who also suggests "space" as an alternate translation of "the ether."
Variants:
"One day after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity" — after all the scientific and technological achievements — "we shall harness for God the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
As quoted by R. Sargent Shriver, Jr. in his speech accepting the nomination as the Democratic candidate for vice president, in Washington, D. C. (8 August 1972); this has sometimes been published as if Shriver's interjection "after all the scientific and technological achievements" were part of the original statement, as in The New York Times (9 August 1972), p. 18
What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but identifying them.
As translated in The The Ignatian Tradition (2009) edited by Kevin F. Burke, Eileen Burke-Sullivan and Phyllis Zagano, p. 86
Love is the only force which can make things one without destroying them. … Some day, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
As quoted in Seed Sown : Theme and Reflections on the Sunday Lectionary Reading (1996) by Jay Cormier, p. 33
The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, humanity will have discovered fire.
As quoted in Fire of Love : Encountering the Holy Spirit (2006) by Donald Goergen, p. 92
The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
As quoted in Read for the Cure (2007) by Eileen Fanning, p. v
Variant: Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
Context: What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but expressing them. And so we cannot avoid this conclusion: it is biologically evident that to gain control of passion and so make it serve spirit must be a condition of progress. Sooner or later, then, the world will brush aside our incredulity and take this step : because whatever is the more true comes out into the open, and whatever is better is ultimately realized. The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
“Give a man a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep 'til noon.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
“In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man’s torments.”
Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human
... die Hoffnung: sie ist in Wahrheit das übelste der Übel, weil sie die Qual der Menschen verlängert.
I.71
Variant: Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
Source: Human, All Too Human (1878)
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher
Variant : The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another, even the lowliest creature; to do so is to renounce our manhood and shoulder a guilt which nothing justifies.
As quoted in Becoming Vegan : The Complete Guide to Adopting a Healthy Plant-based Diet (2000) by Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melina, p. 261
Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 305; also in The Animal World of Albert Schweitzer (1950), p. 179
“The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher
“For man is essentially alone, and one should pity him and love him and grieve with him.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author
“The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters.”
Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer
Source: Lewis Carroll, Roger Lancelyn Green (1989). “The Selected Letters of Lewis Carroll”, p.10, Springer
“By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.”
Mark Twain book Following the Equator
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XXXIX
Following the Equator (1897)
“I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.”
Booker T. Washington book Up from Slavery
Variant: I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
Source: 1900s, Up From Slavery (1901), Chapter XI: Making Their Beds Before They Could Lie On Them. This statement was quoted in Charm and Courtesy in Conversation (1904) by Frances Bennett Callaway, p. 153 as "I permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him." It has also often been paraphrased in various other ways: I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him. I let no man drag me down so low as to make me hate him.
Source: Up from Slavery
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
“Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.”
Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning
Postscript 1984 : The Case for a Tragic Optimism, based on a lecture at the Third World Congress of Logotherapy, Regensburg University (19 June 1983)
Variant: So, let us be alert in a twofold sense: Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
Source: Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)
Context: You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to "saints." Wouldn't it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.
So, let us be alert — alert in a twofold sense:
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher
The Analects, as reported in Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (1997), p. 279.
Attributed
“Poetry is a naked woman, a naked man, and the distance between them.”
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919) American artist, writer and activist
Source: Poetry as Insurgent Art
“Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
“A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
“A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
“The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
“Why does a man live?
-In order to think about it…”
Erich Maria Remarque (1898–1970) German novelist
Source: Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country
