“Every man's happiness is his own responsibility.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
“Every man's happiness is his own responsibility.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Source: The Anti-Christ
Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography
Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 3
Context: No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party — for what do they battle except their own prestige?
Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)
Source: Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher
Part III, Ch. VIII, 7, p. 223 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/223/mode/2up <br class="br">On the Basis of Morality (1840) <br class="br">Source: The Basis of Morality
“A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life, to be thankful for a good one.”
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896–1953) American novelist
George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States
Letter to Alexander Hamilton (28 August 1788) http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-06-02-0432 <br class="br">1780s <br class="br">Context: I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain (what I consider the most enviable of all titles) the character of an honest man, as well as prove (what I desire to be considered in reality) that I am, with great sincerity & esteem, Dear Sir Your friend and Most obedient Hble Ser⟨vt⟩
“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?”
"Andrea del Sarto", line 98.
Men and Women (1855)
Source: Men and Women and Other Poems
“Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.”
Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism
The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
“No man becomes rich unless he enriches others.”
Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist
“Of course, no man is entirely in his right mind at any time.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
William Shakespeare As You Like It
Jaques, Act II, scene vii.
Variant: All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
Source: As You Like It (1599–1600)
“Death solves all problems — no man, no problem.”
Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
This actually comes from the novel Children of the Arbat (1987) by Anatoly Rybakov. In his later book The Novel of Memories ( In Russian http://www.sakharov-center.ru/asfcd/auth/auth_pages.xtmpl?Key=18637&page=307) Rybakov admitted that he had no sources for such a statement. <br class="br">Misattributed
Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)
Source: Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President
“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve.”
Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author
p.32 -->
Variant: Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.
Source: Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
“If a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he cannot be loyal to anything.”
Claude McKay (1889–1948) Jamaican American writer, poet
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
As quoted in "From Wing Chun to Jeet Kune Do" by Jesse R. Glover in Black Belt Vol. 31, No. 9 (September 1993), p. 35
“Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
Source: The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
As quoted in "Lincoln's Imagination" by Noah Brooks, in Scribner's Monthly (August 1879), p. 586 http://books.google.com/books?id=jOoGAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA586 <br class="br">Posthumous attributions <br class="br">Variant: Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
When You Are Old http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1756/, st. 1–3 <br class="br">The Rose (1893) <br class="br">Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats <br class="br">Context: p>When you are old and gray and full of sleep,<br>And nodding by the fire, take down this book,<br>And slowly read, and dream of the soft look<br>Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;How many loved your moments of glad grace,<br>And loved your beauty with love false or true,<br>But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,<br>And loved the sorrows of your changing face.And bending down beside the glowing bars,<br>Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled<br>And paced upon the mountains overhead<br>And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.</p
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Source: Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
“A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition”
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet
Table-Talk (1857)
Source: The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
In revised edition, Vol. I, "Friday, January 19, 1906, About Dueling.", p. 298, The Autobiography of Mark Twain, 1959, Charles Neider, Harper & Row
Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924)
“A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can't play the part of a wise man.”
Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist
“There's one way to find out if a man is honest - ask him. If he says "yes" you know he is a crook.”
Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian
“I am only an average man, but by George, I work harder at it than the average man.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
“You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.”
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor
As quoted in The Great Quotations (1971) edited by George Seldes, p. 641
“A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Source: Sceptical Essays
Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker
Source: The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective
“The greatness of the man's power is the measure of his surrender.”
William Booth (1829–1912) British Methodist preacher
William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing
Variant: He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man. He that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.
Source: Much Ado About Nothing
“The only time a woman really succeeds in changing a man is when he's a baby.”
Natalie Wood (1938–1981) American actress
Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist
Ain't I a Woman? Speech (1851)
Context: That little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Jesus Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
Third State of the Union Address (7 December 1903)
1900s
“When the fight begins within himself,
A man's worth something.”
"Bishop Blougram's Apology".
Men and Women (1855)
“Man's maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play.”
Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil
Variant: The maturity of man—that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
“Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I
“No man is poor who has a Godly mother.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
“A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.”
James Allen book As a Man Thinketh
As A Man Thinketh (1902)
Source: As a Man Thinketh
“The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist
On the advisableness of improving natural knowledge (1866) http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/thx1410.txt <br class="br">1860s <br class="br">Source: Collected Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley <br class="br">Context: The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates hold them; not because their verity is testified by portents and wonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary source, Nature — whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment and to observation — Nature will confirm them. The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.
“Painting it's a blind man profession. Painter is painting not what he sees but what he feels.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
“Man's grandeur is that he knows himself to be miserable.”
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
Source: Pensées and Other Writings
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
Christopher Morley book Parnassus on Wheels
Variant: When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book I mean.
Source: Parnassus on Wheels
Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique
Interviews with Betty Friedan, Janann Sherman, ed. Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2002, ISBN 1578064805, p. x.
Source: The Feminine Mystique