Quotes about man
page 16

“What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Autobiographical Dictation (1906).
Variant: The only reason why God created man is because he was disappointed with the monkey.

Disappointment

“Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)

Love, Perfection, Wedding

“The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

God, Fear

“Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Stupidity

“The best cure for racism is to have somebody shoot at you. Man, it does not matter then what color the arse is that comes to save yours-black or white, you're ready to give it a big fat kiss.”

Wilbur Smith book Golden Fox

Source: Golden Fox

Color, Kiss

“When a man becomes a Christian, he becomes industrious, trustworthy and prosperous. Now, if that man when he gets all he can and saves all he can, does not give all he can, I have more hope for Judas Iscariot than for that man!”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Hope

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Widely attributed to Lincoln, this appears to be derived from Thomas Carlyle's general comment below, but there are similar quotes about Lincoln in his biographies. Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity. Thomas Carlyle (1841) On Heroes and Hero Worship. Any man can stand adversity — only a great man can stand prosperity. Horatio Alger (1883), Abraham Lincoln: The Backwoods Boy; or, How a Young Rail-Splitter became President Most people can bear adversity; but if you wish to know what a man really is give him power. This is the supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he never used it except on the side of mercy. Robert G. Ingersoll (1883), Unity: Freedom, Fellowship and Character in Religion, Volume 11, Number 3, The Exchange Table, True Greatness Exemplified in Abraham Lincoln, by Robert G. Ingersoll (excerpt), Quote Page 55, Column 1 and 2, Chicago, Illinois. ( Google Books Full View https://books.google.com/books?id=JUIrAAAAYAAJ&q=%22man+really%22#v=snippet&) If you want to discover just what there is in a man — give him power. Francis Trevelyan Miller (1910), Portrait Life of Lincoln: Life of Abraham Lincoln, the Greatest American Any man can handle adversity. If you truly want to test a man's character, give him power. Attributed in the electronic game Infamous Misattributed

Men, Leadership, For Men

“One has a right to judge a man by the effect he has over his friends.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure - as a mere automaton of duty?”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Source: The Anti-Christ/Ecce Homo/Twilight of the Idols/Other Writings

Pleasure, Feeling, Thinking, Personality

“By two wings is man lifted above earthly things, even by
simplicity and purity. Simplicity ought to be in the intention,
purity in the affection.”

Thomas à Kempis book The Imitation of Christ

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 545.
Source: The Imitation of Christ
Context: Simplicity and purity are the two wings by which a man is lifted above all earthly things. Simplicity is in the intention — purity in the affection. Simplicity tends to God,— purity apprehends and tastes Him.

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

For Men

“Remember no man is really defeated unless he is discouraged.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

“I am nothing special; of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Duke, Miracles, p. 2
Source: 1990s, The Notebook (1996)

Love, Life, Soul, Heart

“Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Success, Funny, Back To Work, For Him

“Man cries, his tears dry up and run out. So he becomes a devil, reduced to a monster.”

Kohta Hirano (1973) Japanese manga artist

Tear

“It's always hard to remember love - years pass and you say to yourself, Was I really in love, or was I just kidding myself? Was I really in love, or was I just pretending he was the man of my dreams? Was I really in love, or was I just desperate?”

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

Source: I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

Love, Dreams

“man, i would have peeled off my shirt faster than you can say bubba loves trucks.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Love

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

More Maxims of Mark (1927) edited by Merle Johnson
Variant: Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

People, Clothes, Funny

“Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace'

One grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.

One not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.

One fine day.”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919) American artist, writer and activist

Love, Happiness, Beauty, Coffee

“It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1841
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

“It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Portrait of Mr. W. H. http://www.planetmonk.com/wilde/portrait/wh01.html (1889)

“It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

God, Feeling

“Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Endymion (1880), Ch. 36.

Life, Success

“What is this thing called life? I believe
That the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life,
Only we do not call it so--I speak of the life
That oxidizes fats and proteins and carbo-
Hydrates to live on, and from that chemical energy
Makes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things grow
From a chemical reaction?
I think they were here already, I think the rocks
And the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxies
have their various consciousness, all things are conscious;
But the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brain
Bring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glass
To concentrate the heat and make it catch fire:
It seems to us martyrs hotter than the blazing hearth
From which it came. So we scream and laugh, clamorous animals
Born howling to die groaning: the old stones in the dooryard
Prefer silence; but those and all things have their own awareness,
As the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all,
Like the cells of a man's body making one being,
They make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

Source: The Selected Poetry

Love, Life, God, Pain

“Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography.”

Robert Byrne (1928–2013) American chess player and writer

Way, Heart

“The highways are crowded with people who drive as if their sole purpose in getting behind the wheel is to avenge every wrong done them by man, beast or fate. The only thing that keeps them in line is their fear of death, jail and lawsuits.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga

Death, Fate, People, Fear

“Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Animals

“A pessimist is a man who looks both ways when he crosses the street.”

Laurence J. Peter (1919–1990) Canadian eductor

Way

“Sure, when you're in the midst of your own suffering, it's easy to convince yourself that you're no good—but we are all tested in this life… The measure of a man is not how much he suffers in the test, but how he comes out at the end.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: UnWholly

Life, Suffering

“In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage.”

William Shakespeare Henry V

Source: Henry V

War, Peace, Nature, Rage

“All of Creation’s a farce.
Man was born as a joke.
In his head his reason is buffeted
Like wind-blown smoke.
Life is a game.
Everyone ridicules everyone else.
But he who has the last laugh
Laughs longest.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Life, Game

“but the bravest man among us is afraid of himself”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Death strode away, stopped, and came back. He pointed a skeletal finger at The Duck Man.
WHY, he said, ARE YOU WALKING AROUND WITH THAT DUCK?
"What duck?"
AH. SORRY.”

Terry Pratchett book Soul Music

Source: Soul Music

Death

“It is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.”

Stanley Milgram (1933–1984) Social psychologist

Source: Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View (1974), p. 205
Context: The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.

Personality

“The man who pursues happiness wisely will aim at the possession of a number of subsidiary interests in addition to those central ones upon which his life is built.”

Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness

Source: The Conquest of Happiness

Life, Happiness

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Source: 1910s, Prejudices, First Series (1919), Ch. 6, "The New Poetry Movement"
Source: Prejudices: First Series

Time

“The higher man is distinguished from the lower by his fearlessness and his readiness to challenge misfortune.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Will to Power

Source: The Will to Power

“A woman gets angry when a man denies his faults, because she knew them all along. His lying mocks her affection; it is the deceit that angers her more than the faults.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Life Is Worth Living

Lying, Anger

“I am the wilderness lost in man.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

“Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: Unpopular Essays

People, Feeling, Evil, Falseness

“Don't judge a man until you have walked two moons in his moccasins.”

Sharon Creech Walk Two Moons

Source: Walk Two Moons

“Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Antichrist

Sec. 23
The Antichrist (1888)

Love

“A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

Fish

“How can I tell," said the man, "that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The Salmon of Doubt (2002)
Source: Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2)

Past

“It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s Source: "A Letter: Being an Answer to a Friend, on the publication of The Age of Reason" (12 May 1797), published in an 1852 edition of The Age of Reason, p. 205 http://books.google.com/books?id=2PgRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA205

God, Learning

“Is he not sacred, even to the gods, the wandering man who comes in weariness?”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

God

“A man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“A man must have vices, expensive ones if possible. Otherwise when he reaches old age he will have nothing to be redeemed from.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Age

“The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.”

Sigmund Freud book The Interpretation of Dreams

1910s Source: Quoting Plato, as translated by Abraham Arden Brill, "The Interpretation of Dreams" https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Freud_-_The_interpretation_of_dreams.djvu/511 (1913 edition), p.493

Life, Dreams

“The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the son of his own works.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book I, Ch. 4.

“Every development of truths which relate to human nature, and more especially its active manifestations, is attended with a wish to see worked out in practice what theory has shown us to be just and good. To man, whose mind is seldom satisfied with the calmly beneficent influence of abstract ideas, this desire is perfectly natural, and it increases in liveliness with the spirit of benevolent sympathy in social happiness and well-being. But, however natural in itself, and however noble in its origin, this desire has not unfrequently led to hurtful consequences,—nay, often to greater evils than the colder indifference, or (as from the very opposite cause the same effect may follow) the glowing enthusiasm, which, comparatively heedless of reality, delights only in the pure beauty of ideas.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 16

Happiness, Truth, Beauty, Idea

“When I was a boy a farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village had great fame as a faith-doctor—that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to her from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, "Have faith—it is all that is necessary," and they went away well of their ailments. She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several times I saw her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was the patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in this sort of industry, and has both the high and the low for patients. He gets into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma, but his business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand of his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is this confidence which does the work, and not some mysterious power issuing from himself.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Source: Christian Science (1907), Ch. 4

Faith, Confidence, Boy, Business

“I am staunchly opposed to presenting political opinions in mainstream comics. No manifestos from Spider-Man. The reader should be able to project themselves on these characters. That’s necessary when writing heroic escapist fiction. Superheroes are wish fulfillment characters. We want to be Superman. We hope we’re as principled as Captain America. It’s important that these characters portray only the most universal values.”

Chuck Dixon (1954) American comic book writer

TBU Exclusive: Chuck Dixon Talks The Batman Universe http://thebatmanuniverse.net/chuck-dixon/ (May 24, 2016)

Hope, Universe

“In such 'fantasy', as it is called, new form is made; Faerie begins; Man becomes a sub-creator.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien book On Fairy-Stories

On Fairy-Stories (1939)

“When all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1847)

Money, Change

“Neither family, nor privilege, nor wealth, nor anything but Love can light that beacon which a man must steer by when he sets out to live the better life.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

178c, M. Joyce, trans, Collected Dialogues of Plato (1961), p. 533
The Symposium

Love, Life, Family, Light

“These rules are of use only in correcting the figures; since every man makes some mistakes in his first compositions and he who knows them not, cannot amend them. But you, knowing your errors, will correct your works and where you find mistakes amend them, and remember never to fall into them again. But if you try to apply these rules in composition you will never make an end, and will produce confusion in your works.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

Error

“Do not forget, man, consumed by lust:
you—are the stone, the desert, are death …”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Dionysian-Dithyrambs

Dionysian-Dithyrambs (1888)

Death, Forgetting

“The number of those who do selfless public service and those who serve without expecting any return, should increase. Their sterling qualities should show the way to the people at large. Their life would be a model to show how man should conduct himself in public life.”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

Quote in Life History Of E.V.Ramasamy, Priyar Center http://www.periyarcentre.in/abtperiyar.html Reform

Life, People, Way

“…when I had gone through the whole, and saw what a plain, simple, reason able thing Christianity was, suited to all conditions and capacities; and in the morality of it now, with divine authority, established into a legible law, so far surpassing all that philosophy and human reason had attained to, or could possibly make effectual to all degrees of man kind; I was flattered to think it might be of some use in the world; especially to those, who thought either that there was no need of revelation at all, or that the revelation of our Saviour required the belief of such articles for salvation, which the settled notions, and their way of reasoning in some, and want of understanding in others, made impossible to them. Upon these two topics the objections seemed to turn, which were with most assurance made by deists, against Christianity; but against Christianity misunderstood. It seemed to me, that there needed no more to show them the weakness of their exceptions, but to lay plainly before them the doctrine of our Saviour and his apostles, as delivered in the scriptures, and not as taught by the several sects of Christians.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

Preface to the Reader
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)

World, Law, Way, Understanding

“Neither human wisdom nor divine inspiration can confer upon man any greater blessing than this [live a life of happiness and harmony here on earth].”

Plato book Phaedrus

256b
Phaedrus

Life, Wisdom, Happiness

“The Republicans inculcate, with whatever of ability they can, that the negro is a man; that his bondage is cruelly wrong, and that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged. The Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the wrong of his bondage; so far as possible, crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him; compliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so; and call the indefinite outspreading of his bondage "a sacred right of self-government."”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, Speech on the Dred Scott Decision (1857)

“You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Europe and Elsewhere. Corn Pone Opinions (1925)

“I receive letters every day asking me to write a manifesto and make a speech; that I am the only man who could do so with effect; and all that. Why should I? I warned the country about Ireland before the General Election and told them to be vigilant, or there would be something happen there, "worse even than famine or pestilence". It has happened. And there have been elections since the Irish Revolution in England, Wales and Scotland, and they have supported the policy of imbecility and treason that has brought about all this disaster.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Letter to Lady Chesterfield (22 December 1880), quoted in the Marquis of Zetland (ed.), The Letters of Disraeli to Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield. Vol. II, 1876 to 1881 (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929), p. 305.
1880s

Support, Country

“The woman is increasingly aware that love alone can give her full stature, just as the man begins to discern that spirit alone can endow his life with its highest meaning. Fundamentally, therefore, both seek a psychic relation to the other, because love needs the spirit, and the spirit love, for their fulfillment.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Source: Contributions to Analytical Psychology (1928), p. 185

Love, Life

“Jellicoe was the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon.”

Winston S. Churchill book The World Crisis

The World Crisis, 1916-1918 Part I : Chapter V (Jutland: The Preliminaries), Churchill, Butterworth (1927), pp. 112.
Early career years (1898–1929)

War

“Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term "Art," I should call it "the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul." The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of "Artist".”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

Art, Soul, Nature, Sense

“Coming to grips with my past, it was hard. I don't feel like what I did was so evil, I just feel like the way I was living, and my mentality, was part of my progression to be a man.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Posthumous attributions, Tupac: Resurrection (2003)
Variant: I don't feel like what I did was so evil, I just feel like the way I was living and my mentality was a part of my progression to be a man.

Way, Feeling, Evil, Past

“There exists no more repulsive and desolate creature in the world than the man who has evaded his genius and who now looks furtively to left and right, behind him and all about him. In the end such a man becomes impossible to get hold of, since he is wholly exterior, without kernel: a tattered, painted bag of clothes; a decked-out ghost that cannot inspire even fear and certainly not pity.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

Es gibt kein öderes und widrigeres Geschöpf in der Natur als den Menschen, welcher seinem Genius ausgewichen ist und nun nach rechts und nach links, nach rückwärts und überallhin schielt. Man darf einen solchen Menschen zuletzt gar nicht mehr angreifen, denn er ist ganz Außenseite ohne Kern, ein anbrüchiges, gemaltes, aufgebauschtes Gewand.
“Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 128
Untimely Meditations (1876)

World, Fear, Painting, Clothes

“Since everything that lives is obliged to expend and receive life, there is an exchange of modifications between the living creature and its environment.
And yet, once that vital necessity is satisfied, our species—a positively strange species—thinks it must create for itself other needs and tasks besides that of preserving life. … Whatever may be the origin or cause of this curious deviation, the human species is engaged in an immense adventure, an adventure whose objective and end it does not know. …
The same senses, the same muscles, the same limbs—more, the same types of signs, the same instruments of exchange, the same languages, the same modes of logic—enter into the most indispensable acts of our lives, as they figure into the most gratuitous. …
In short, man has not two sets of tools, he has only one, and this one set must serve him for the preservation of his life and his physiological rhythm, and expend itself at other times on illusions and on the labours of our great adventure. …
The same muscles and nerves produce walking as well as dancing, exactly as our linguistic faculty enables us to express our needs and ideas, while the same words and forms can be combined to produce works of poetry. A single mechanism is employed in both cases for two entirely different purposes.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Source: Regards sur le monde actuel [Reflections on the World Today] (1931), pp. 158-159

Life, Idea, Thinking, Sense

“Man shouldn't be able to see his own face. That's what's most terrible. Nature gave him the possibility of not seeing it, as well as the incapacity of not seeing his own eyes.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 371
The Book of Disquiet
Original: O homem não deve poder ver a sua própria cara. Isso é o que há de mais terrível. A Natureza deu-lhe o dom de não a poder ver, assim como a de não poder fitar os seus próprios olhos.

Nature

“The character I have in view when I say "smug vulgarian" is, thus, not the part-time philistine, but the total type, the genteel bourgeois, the complete universal product of triteness and mediocrity. He is the conformist, the man who conforms to his group, and he also is typified by something else: he is a pseudo-idealist, he is pseudo-compassionate, he is pseudo-wise. The fraud is the closest ally of the true philistine. All such great words as "Beauty," "Love," "Nature," "Truth," and so on become masks and dupes when the smug vulgarian employs them. … The philistine likes to impress and he likes to be impressed, in consequence of which a world of deception, of mutual cheating, is formed by him and around him.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lectures on Russian Literature

Lectures on Russian Literature (1982)

Love, Truth, World, Beauty

“The concrete man has but one interest — to be right. That to him is the art of all arts, and all means are fair which help him to it.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

1880s, The Sentiment of Rationality (1882)

Art, Help

“I am reminded every day of my life, if not by events, then by my wife, that I am not a perfect man.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Speech in Mitchell, South Dakota; (1 June 2008)
2008

Life, Perfection

“Every man needs his Siren to check his courage and strength when he hears her song in his travels through the unknown.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Siren http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/siren-7/ From the poems written in English

Travel, Courage

“In selecting human assistants such superficialities as education, as physical strength, even antecedent morality, are not as important as the inner attitudes, proclivities, character, which after all determine the man or woman.”

Harrington Emerson (1853–1931) American efficiency engineer and business theorist

Source: The twelve principles of efficiency (1912), p. 176; cited in Münsterberg (113; 52)

Education

“In a crunch a man's reputation never counts for as much as it ought to. Most people are good-hearted and willing to give a man the benefit of the doubt, but the poisonous few are eager to see others brought down, ruined. … Envy, Bob. Envy eats them alive. If you had money, they'd envy you that. But since you don't, they envy you for having such a good, bright, loving daughter. They envy you for just being a happy man. They envy you for not envying them. One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren't happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others.”

Dean Koontz book Lightning

Part I, Chapter 1.2, the mysterious stranger's words to Bob Shane
Lightning (1988)

Love, Money, Happiness, People

“You spend too much time alone, too much time watching television, and too little time cultivating the inner man. You live in a squalid little flat in what is referred to as a no-go zone from which your friends, of whom you see less and less, have all fled for the suburbs long ago with wives and sprogs in tow. You are exceedingly unlucky in love, having invested years in a romantic relationship which, as you know only too well, is neither romantic nor much of a relationship. In short, you have all the social prospects of a garden gnome.”

Stephen R. Lawhead (1950) American writer

Source: The Skin Map (2010), p. 12

Love, Time

“When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behaviour is a result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"The Doctrine of Free Will"
1930s, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

Way, Imagination, Birth, Thinking

“The fortunate man is the one who cannot take more than a couple of drinks without becoming intoxicated. The unfortunate wight is the one who can take many glasses without betraying a sign; who must take numerous glasses in order to get the kick.”

Jack London book John Barleycorn

Source: John Barleycorn (1913), Ch. VI

Drink

“Instinctively we divide mankind into friends and foes - friends, towards whom we have the morality of co-operation; foes, towards whom we have that of competition. But this division is constantly changing; at one moment a man hates his business competitor, at another, when both are threatened by Socialism or by an external enemy, he suddenly begins to view him as a brother. Always when we pass beyond the limits of the family it is the external enemy which supplies the cohesive force. In times of safety we can afford to hate our neighbour, but in times of danger we must love him.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Authority and the Individual (1949)
1940s

Love, Hate, Family, Business

“Man has nothing else to do but surrender — in deep trust, in deep love. Don’t be a doer, just surrender. Let there be a let-go.”

Rajneesh (1931–1990) Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement

The Art of Dying ( osho.com http://www.osho.com/online-library-allow-silences-joke-5f0b06d0-61e.aspx; retrieved August 2012), Chapter 6, 14. The Art of Dying

Love

“On the other hand, the free states carry on their government on the principle of the equality of men. We think slavery is morally wrong, and a direct violation of that principle. We all think it wrong. It is clearly proved, I think, by natural theology, apart from revelation. Every man, black, white or yellow, has a mouth to be fed and two hands with which to feed it, and that bread should be allowed to go to that mouth without controversy.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Men, Nature, Thinking

“Zappa was not a protester or an activist. He was merely a man who used his brain.”

Piero Scaruffi (1955) Italian writer

Zappa The History of Rock Music http://www.scaruffi.com/vol1/zappa.html

“A dignified man prefers to be feared and respected rather than being loved”

Ali Al-Wardi (1913–1995) Iraqi sociologist

Love, Fear

“When in 1716 Banda Bahadur with his 740 followers was given by Farrukh Siyar the choice between Islam and death, they all died to a man rather than become Musalman.”

Banda Singh Bahadur (1670–1716) Sikh military commander

Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they.

Death

“Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Section 2, paragraph 30.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

Communication

“Man the lifeboats. The idiots are winning.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

The Guardian, 7 April 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/07/education Guardian columns

“Jack Reacher ordered espresso, double, no peel, no cube, foam cup, no china, and before it arrived at his table he saw a man's life change forever. Not that the waiter was slow. Just that the move was slick. So slick, Reacher had no idea what he was watching. It was just an urban scene, repeated everywhere in the world a billion times a day: A guy unlocked a car and got in and drove away. That was all. But that was enough.”

Lee Child book The Hard Way

The Hard Way, Ch. 1 (2006).

Life, World, Cars, Guy

“All my life I have made it a rule never to permit a religious man or woman take for granted that his or her religious beliefs deserved more consideration than non-religious beliefs or anti-religious ones.
I never agree with that foolish statement that I ought to respect the views of others when I believe them to be wrong.”

Chapman Cohen (1868–1954) British atheist and secularist writer and lecturer

The Credo of Empowerment, as quoted in David M. Mandell Atheist Acrimonious (Vervante, 2008), p. 176.

Life

“The society adopts neither rites nor priesthood, and it will never lose sight of the resolution not to advance any thing as a society inconvenient to any sect or sects, in any time or country, and under any government.
It will be seen that it is so much the more easy for the society to keep within this circle, because, that the dogmas of the Theophilanthropists are those upon which all the sects have agreed, that their moral is. that upon which there has never been the least dissent; and that the name they have taken expresses the double end of all the sects, that of leading to the adoration of God and love of man.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)

Love, God, Time, Country

“All creatures kill—there seems to be no exception; but of the whole list, man is the only one that kills for fun; he is the only one that kills in malice, the only one that kills for revenge.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 312

Revenge

“It is not a reproach but a compliment to learning, to say, that great scholars are less fit for business; since the truth is, business is so much a lower thing than learning, that a man used to the last cannot easily bring his stomach down to the first.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Moral Thoughts and Reflections

Truth, Business, Learning

“A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact
Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard,
And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since.
Give it me back! The thing's restorative
I'the touch and sight.”

Robert Browning The Ring and the Book

Book I : The Ring and the Book.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

Life, Secret, Books, Heart

“There were profound reasons for his attachment to the sea: he loved it because as a hard-working artist he needed rest, needed to escape from the demanding complexity of phenomena and lie hidden on the bosom of the simple and tremendous; because of a forbidden longing deep within him that ran quite contrary to his life’s task and was for that very reason seductive, a longing for the unarticulated and immeasurable, for eternity, for nothingness. To rest in the arms of perfection is the desire of any man intent upon creating excellence; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?”

Thomas Mann book Death in Venice

Source: Death in Venice (1912), Ch. 3, as translated by David Luke

Love, Life, Lie, Perfection

“Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world. Our hearing extends to a small distance. Our sight is impeded by intervening bodies and shadows. To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions. We must transmit our intelligence, travel, transport the materials and transfer the energies necessary for our existence. Following this thought we now realize, forcibly enough to dispense with argument, that of all other conquests of man, without exception, that which is most desirable, which would be most helpful in the establishment of universal peaceful relations is — the complete ANNIHILATION OF DISTANCE.
To achieve this wonder, electricity is the one and only means. Inestimable good has already been done by the use of this all powerful agent, the nature of which is still a mystery. Our astonishment at what has been accomplished would be uncontrollable were it not held in check by the expectation of greater miracles to come. That one, the greatest of all, can be viewed in three aspects: Dissemination of intelligence, transportation, and transmission of power.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

A Means for Furthering Peace (1905)

World, Peace, Travel, Intelligence

“The General is sorry to be informed —, that the foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing, a vice heretofore little known in an American army, is growing into a fashion; — he hopes the officers will, by example as well as influence, endeavor to check it, and that both they and the men will reflect that we can have little hope of the blessing of Heaven on our arms, if we insult it by impiety and folly; added to this, it is a vice so mean and low, without any temptation, that every man of sense and character detests and despises it.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Extract from the Orderly Book of the army under command of Washington, dated at Head Quarters, in the city of New York (3 August 1770); reported in American Masonic Register and Literary Companion, Volume 1 https://www.thefederalistpapers.org/founders/washington/george-washington-the-foolish-and-wicked-practice-of-profane-cursing-and-swearing (1829), p. 163 1770s

Men, Hope, Fashion, Sense

Quotes about man page 16

Quotes about man
page 16