Quotes about man
page 14
“The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.”
Source: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
“Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.”
Source: Life and Fate
“The individual is ephemeral, races and nations come and pass away, but man remains.”
The Problem of Increasing Human Energy (1900)
Context: When we speak of man, we have a conception of humanity as a whole, and before applying scientific methods to the investigation of his movement we must accept this as a physical fact. But can anyone doubt to-day that all the millions of individuals and all the innumerable types and characters constitute an entity, a unit? Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. I cut myself in the finger, and it pains me: this finger is a part of me. I see a friend hurt, and it hurts me, too: my friend and I are one. And now I see stricken down an enemy, a lump of matter which, of all the lumps of matter in the universe, I care least for, and it still grieves me. Does this not prove that each of us is only part of a whole?
For ages this idea has been proclaimed in the consummately wise teachings of religion, probably not alone as a means of insuring peace and harmony among men, but as a deeply founded truth. The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one. Metaphysical proofs are, however, not the only ones which we are able to bring forth in support of this idea. Science, too, recognizes this connectedness of separate individuals, though not quite in the same sense as it admits that the suns, planets, and moons of a constellation are one body, and there can be no doubt that it will be experimentally confirmed in times to come, when our means and methods for investigating psychical and other states and phenomena shall have been brought to great perfection. Still more: this one human being lives on and on. The individual is ephemeral, races and nations come and pass away, but man remains. Therein lies the profound difference between the individual and the whole.
“You can manicure a cat but can you caticure a man?”
Source: Skywriting by Word of Mouth and Other Writings
“And nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.”
"Why I Am So Wise", 6
Ecce Homo (1888)
“You are thought here to the most senseless and fit man for the job.”
Source: Much Ado About Nothing
Hyperion
Original: (de) Immerhin hat das den Staat zur Hölle gemacht, daß ihn der Mensch zu seinem Himmel machen wollte.
“Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.”
"The Transcendent Function" http://books.google.com/books?id=L3bsAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Man+needs+difficulties+they+are+necessary+for+health%22&pg=PA73#v=onepage ("Die Transzendente Funktion") (1916)
Volume 8: Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung (1969)
“Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself.”
Source: Monstrous Regiment
Source: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.”
Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Ch. 2
Source: A House of Pomegranates
“Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.”
Often attributed to Twain online, but unsourced. Alternate source: "The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak." — Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold the Moon, 1951, p. 188.
Misattributed
“When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.”
"In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it." is one of seven quotes inscribed on the walls at the gravesite of John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery.
"The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it — and the glow from that fire can truly light the world." is one of seven quotes inscribed on the walls at the gravesite of John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery.
"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." is one of seven quotes inscribed on the walls at the gravesite of John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery.
It has been reported at various places on the internet that in JFK's Inaugural address, the famous line "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country", was inspired by, or even a direct quotation of the famous and much esteemed writer and poet Khalil Gibran. Gibran in 1925 wrote in Arabic a line that has been translated as:
::Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country?
::If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in a desert.
However, this translation of Gibran is one that occurred over a decade after Kennedy's 1961 speech, appearing in A Third Treasury of Kahlil Gibran (1975) edited by Andrew Dib Sherfan, and the translator most likely drew upon Kennedy's famous words in expressing Gibran's prior ideas. For a further discussion regarding the quote see here.
1961, Inaugural Address
Context: In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it — and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
Variant: A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
Source: Walden
“Is man one of God’s blunders, or is God one of man’s blunders?”
Source: The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Variant: A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.
“No man is lonely while eating spaghetti:
it requires so much attention.”
An Essay on the Origin of Free-Masonry (1803-1805); found in manuscript form after Paine's death and thought to have been written for an intended part III of The Age of Reason. It was partially published in 1810 and published in its entirety in 1818.
1800s
“A man who is of 'sound mind' is one who keeps his inner madman under lock and key.”
Source: Unsourced
“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.”
“When man is with God in awe and love, then he is praying.”
Source: The Need and the Blessing of Prayer
Source: The Alchemist
“No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.”
Book II, Ch. 1, sec. 19
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)
“A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“A wise man will make more opportunities, than he finds.”
Of Ceremonies and Respect
Essays (1625)
Variant: Wise men make more opportunities than they find.
Source: The Essays
“The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.”
Source: Wealth, 1889, p. 664
“Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.”
“Shame on the man who goes to his grave escorted by the miserable hopes that have kept him alive.”
Lady Bracknell, Act I
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
“A man should be able to hear, and to bear, the worst that could be said of him.”
“If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.”
Source: Hamlet
“Medicine cabinets are. Those doors, man. They'll just spring on you like a ninja.”
Source: I Hunt Killers
“If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.” — JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE”
Source: Angel Words: Visual Evidence of How Words Can Be Angels in Your Life
Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.”
Variant: Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
“Lord Illingworth: Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.”
Act II
A Woman of No Importance (1893)
“Man is a rope, tied between beast and Superman--a rope over an abyss.”
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 42e
“If man could be crossed with a cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.”
Source: Notebook
Recollection by Gilbert J. Greene, quoted in The Speaking Oak (1902) by Ferdinand C. Iglehart and Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln (1917) by Ervin S. Chapman
Posthumous attributions
“A man who does not have something for which he is willing to die is not fit to live.”
“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”
The last sentence is from the 16 October 1854 Peoria speech, slightly paraphrased. No known contemporary source for the rest. It first appears, attributed to Lincoln, in US religious/inspirational journals in 1907-8, such as p123, Friends Intelligencer: a religious and family journal, Volume 65, Issue 8 (1908)
Misattributed
“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”
Source: The Great Gatsby (1925), ch. 9
“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.”
“Remember, man does not live on bread alone: sometimes he needs a little buttering up.”
“No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned.”
1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar's worth of service rendered — not gambling in stocks, but service rendered.
Context: No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar's worth of service rendered — not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective — a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.
Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 248
“No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.”
A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42 (1996), p. 544
Attributed from posthumous publications
“To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
marginal note in Moncure D. Conway's Sacred Anthology
quoted by Albert Bigelow Paine in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)
“Even you are not rich enough, Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is.”
Mrs Cheveley, Act I
Usually quoted as: No man is rich enough to buy back his own past.
Source: An Ideal Husband (1895)