Quotes about man
page 48

“Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: The Complete Essays

“Sometimes,' she said, 'it takes a woman to bring out the best in a man.”

Christopher McDougall (1962) American journalist and writer

Source: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

“Butch didn't live in his own place. He didn't spend his own money. He had no job, no future. He was a well-kept pet, not a man.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Revealed

Source: Lover Revealed

Money, Future

“Even though Cammie is fluent in fourteen languages and capable of killing a man seven different ways with her bare hands, she has no idea what to do when she meets an ordinary boy who thinks she's an ordinary girl.”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Way, Girl, Boy, Idea

“Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Source: Mansfield Park

Women, Girl

“People say I am ruthless. I am not ruthless. And if I find the man who is calling me ruthless, I shall destroy him.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

People

“Every man is a hero in his own story, Princess.”

Brandon Sanderson book Warbreaker

Denth
Source: Warbreaker (2009)

Princess

“The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Variant: One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be "happy" is not included in the plan of "Creation."
Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 2, as translated by James Strachey, p.53

Happiness

“What kind of love would drive a man for miles through solid rock?”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Crimson Crown

Love

“To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Soul, Forgetting

“As gentle a man as he was, as tender as was his heart, there was nothing weak about Michael Hosea. He was the strongest-minded man Joseph had ever met. A Man like Noah. A Man like the Shepherd-king David. A man after God's own heart.”

Francine Rivers (1947) American writer

Source: Redeeming Love

God, Heart

“I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

Source: The Simple Art of Murder

Pleasure, Art, Mathematics, Reading

“I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Food, Clothes

“The world, we are told, was made especially for man — a presumption not supported by all the facts.”

John Muir book A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf

Source: A Thousand-Mile Walk To the Gulf, 1916, chapter 6: Cedar Keys, page 160
Source: A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf

World, Support

“If you were a man, your ladyship, I would cordially horsewhip you for that remark.”

Deanna Raybourn (1968) American writer

Source: Silent in the Grave

“A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)
Context: A child, from the time he can think, should think about all he sees, should suffer for all who cannot live with honesty, should work so that all men can be honest, and should be honest himself. A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.

Thinking

“This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: The Woman in White

Patience

“There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man's spice-box seasons his own food.”

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer

Food, Nature, Box, Season

“If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Love Among the Chickens

Source: Love Among the Chickens

“I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving.

Life, Time, Parting

“What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has or how he is regarded by others.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Happiness

“A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

“But 'Thou mayest!'! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

God, Fight

“I refuse to "look up." Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

Optimism, Universe

“So… I take it that's the man in your life.”

Ally Carter book Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Life

“Man makes plans… and God laughs.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

God

“Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding out what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 10: "Conversation", p. 157

Secret, World

“To complain that man measures God by his own experience is a waste of time; man measures everything by his own experience; he has no other yardstick.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book The Mind of the Maker

Source: The Mind of the Maker

God, Time

“We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation.”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

“Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed.”

Anne Rice The Witching Hour

Source: The Witching Hour (1990)

Books, Reading

“A man in the jungle at night, as someone said, may suppose a hyena's growl to be a lion's; but when he hears the lion's growl, he knows damn well it's a lion.”

Sheldon Vanauken (1914–1996) American journalist

Source: A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy and Triumph

Night

“It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Nature, Leadership

“It's not a man's working hours that is important, it is how he spends his leisure time.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Time

“There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book III, Ch. 13
Attributed
Source: The Complete Essays

Music, Learning, Time, Dance

“The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.”

Gaylord Nelson (1916–2005) American politician

Future

“My father had taught me - mostly by example - that if a man wanted to be in charge of his life, he had to be in charge of his problems.”

Stephen King book Joyland

Source: Joyland

Life, Problem

“No, not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Money

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

This may be original with Groucho, but the Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/category/jim-brewer/ mentions the earliest report found in a 1958 issue of Boy's Life magazine where it is attributed to Jim Brewer. Misattributed Variant: Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. Source: The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

Books, Dogs, Reading, Funny

“Make your own rules or be a slave to another man's.”

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

“The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Happiness

“When considering a man's motives, remember you must not measure his wheat with your bushel. He may not be using the same standard at all.”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Apprentice

Source: Assassin's Apprentice

Motivation

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Epigraph
Source: A Moveable Feast (1964)

Life

“How can I shed tears for a man I should never have allowed to touch me in any way?”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Way, Tear

“Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Love, Joy, Personality

“Can a man who lies, cheats, steals, and sometimes does violence to other people be a man of honor?
Kolabati looked into his eyes. "He can if he lies to liars, cheats cheaters, steals from thieves, and limits his violence to those who are violent.”

F. Paul Wilson (1946) novelist

People, Cheating

“The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.”

Václav Havel book Letters to Olga

Letters to Olga (1988), p. 237

Life

“I know it's hard for you to trust me. If I ever find the man who did this to you, who made you so frightened, I'll kill him with my bare hands. But you can trust me.”

Juliet Marillier book Daughter of the Forest

Source: Daughter of the Forest

“Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.”

Denis Diderot book Rameau's Nephew

Rameau's Nephew (1762)

Forgetting

“Relationship Principle 1
In romance, there's nothing more attractive to a man than a woman who has dignity and pride in who she is.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Marry Bitches: A Woman's Guide to Winning Her Man's Heart

“Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Volume 1 [Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1860] ( p. 336 https://books.google.com/books?id=rszxUvpszaMC&pg=PA336) Also in The King of Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins by Catherine Peters ( p. 224 https://books.google.com/books?id=T0AABAAAQBAJ&pg=PA224) Source: The Woman in White (1859)

Time

“No man is an island,' said John Donne. I feel we are all islands -- in a common sea.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Source: Gift from the Sea

Feeling, Sea

“I can’t believe this night. I was supposed to be applauded and instead, I’m ruined. I swear to God in heaven if I ever see that man again, I will commit murder. (Tory)
Well, if you need help moving the body, you know where Kim and I live. (Pam)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

God, Help, Night

“Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man!”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Justice

“I’m like a man who’s been half-asleep all his life, trying to find out what he was like before he woke up.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon

Life

“A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow as well as himself — and what is a man's shadow but his upright astonishment?”

Djuna Barnes book Nightwood

Source: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 6 : Where the Tree Falls

“Using a fetching face to make men do as you wish is no different from a man using muscle to force a woman to his will. Both are base, and both will fail a person as they age.”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

Men, Age, Personality

“I'll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.

I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Way, Sleep, Country

“A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom freer.”

George MacDonald book Lilith

Source: Lilith

“I was slipping, man, and it was definetly time to get a grip.”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped

Time

“In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king.”

Guy De Maupassant Bel-Ami

Source: Bel-Ami

For Men

“In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas — no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Men, Feeling, Idea

“For a woman, language spoken is an expression of what she is feeling. For a man, language spoken is an expression of what he is thinking. A woman says what is on her heart while a man says what is on his mind.”

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

Source: The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage

Feeling, Thinking, Heart

“Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Source: Post Office (1971)

Fools, Back To Work

“Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. "No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

“The happy man in this life needs friends.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Life, Happiness

“Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

"A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz", in The Aleph (1949); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
Variant: Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment — the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.

Life

“Once one becomes a man, he can and must make his own decisions. But I do offer warning. Even a good thing can become destructive if taken to excess.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Alloy of Law

Decision

“He was a worried man (I'm stretching the term a bit here, I know. By now, in his mid to late teens, he might just about have passed for a man. When seen from behind. At a distance. On a very dark night).”

Jonathan Stroud book Ptolemy's Gate

Source: Ptolemy's Gate

Night

“Any man who thinks he is going to be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him should take a close look at the American Indian.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Possibly said by Hugh Allen, printed in Reader's Digest (Jan. 1967)
Misattributed

Happiness, Thinking

“He who flatters a man is his enemy. he who tells him of his faults is his maker.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

“To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.”

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

“The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

April 6, 1775
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II
Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 2

Books, Time, Reading, Parting

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer book The Cost of Discipleship

Source: The Cost of Discipleship

Christ

“You are safe," he said firmly. "You have my name and my family, my clan, and if necessary, the protection of my body as well. The man willna lay hands on ye again, while I live.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

Family

“I knew he would never leave me, never let me down-because the man had never abandoned anything in his long life. If I hadn’t taken the gold rope of our bond, I knew Adam would have sat on me and hog-tied me with it. I liked that. A lot.”

Patricia Briggs book Silver Borne

Source: Silver Borne

Life

“It is so easy for a woman to become what the man she loves believes her to be”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: The House of Mirth

Love

“Stealing a man's wife, that's nothing, but stealing his car, that's larceny.”

James M. Cain book The Postman Always Rings Twice

Source: The Postman Always Rings Twice

Cars

“I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

in Bukowski: Born Into This (2002)
Variant: I've never met another man I'd rather be.

“Ah, ladies and gentlemen, a man lives a sad life when he cannot take anything or anyone seriously.”

Milan Kundera book Laughable Loves

Source: Laughable Loves

Life, Sadness

“Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

Time

“A man's worth isn't measured by a bank register or diploma… It's about integrity”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: The Letter

“A barber lathers a man before he shaves him.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People

“To be sure, the dog is loyal. But why, on that account, should we take him as an example? He is loyal to man, not to other dogs.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976) Context: There is no doubt that a dog is loyal. But does that mean we should emulate him? After all, he is loyal to people, not to other dogs. http://books.google.com/books?id=T9V0j2sfPpUC&q=%22there+is+no+doubt+that+a+dog+is+loyal+but+does+that+mean+we+should+emulate+him+after+all+he+is+loyal+to+people+not+to+other+dogs%22&pg=PA109#v=onepage

Dogs