Quotes about man (10000 quotes, page 64)

“The same society which receives the rewards of technology must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for control. To deal with these new problems will require a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities. Our conservation must be not just the classic conservation of protection and development, but a creative conservation of restoration and innovation. Its concern is not with nature alone, but with the total relation between man and the world around him. Its object is not just man's welfare, but the dignity of man's spirit.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

Message to Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty written to Congress (8 Feb 1965), in Lyndon B. Johnson: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President (1965), Vol.1, 156. United States. President (1963-1969 : Johnson), Lyndon Baines Johnson, United States. Office of the Federal Register — 1970
1960s

World , Beauty , Nature , Problem

“O but it is a fine thing to have a finger pointed at one, and to hear people say, "That's the man!"”
At pulchrum est digito monstrari et dicier "hic est".

Persius (34–62) ancient latin poet

Satire I, line 28.
The Satires

People

“Every sin which a man does is without the body, but he that commits fornication sins against his own body.”

Paul of Tarsus book First Epistle to the Corinthians

1 Corinthians 6:18
First Epistle to the Corinthians

“To be perfectly ignorant in all the Terms of them is only tolerable in those, who think their Tongues of as little Use to them, as generally their Understandings are. Those whom Necessity has obliged to get their Bread by Manual Industry, where some Degree of Art is required to go along with it, and who have had some Insight into these Studies, have very often found Advantages from them sufficient to reward the Pains they were at in acquiring them. And whatever may have been imputed (how justly I'm not now to determine) to some other Studies, under the Notion of Insignificancy and Loss of Time; yet these, I believe, never caused Repentance in any, except it was for their Remissness in the Prosecution of them. And though Plato's Censure, that those who did not understand the 117 Prop. of the 10th Element, ought not to be ranked among Rational Creatures, wax unreasonable and unjust: Yet to give a Man the Character of Universal Learning that is destitute of a competent Knowledge in the Mathematics, is no less so.”

Jacques Ozanam (1640–1718) French mathematician

Preface
A Mathematical Dictionary: Or; A Compendious Explication of All Mathematical Terms, 1702

Pain , Art , Mathematics , Understanding

“Maurice Joly: Your honor, I have not written a lampoon here…this book’s delineations are applicable to all governments!
Prosecutor: No, your honor.. this man has written a tract that barely conceals a horrid defamation of our emperor!!
Maurice Joly: No! No! No! This book provides a call to conscience…a perspective for citizens concerned about the harsh realities of the conditions in which they live…
Furthermore, my book shows how the despotism taught by Machiavelli in “The Prince” could, by artifice and evil ways, impose itself on our society.
Prosecutor: No, your honor. It does more than that… for by ‘’’using’’’ the despotism of Machiavelli’’’ asa comparison, Joly seeks to show that Bonaparte, our sovereign, and an evil Italian are ‘’’the same’’’ in thought and deed!
Maurice Joly: If the reader sees a relationship to the infamy of the emperor, am I to blame?
Judge: Maurice Joly, I charge you with the crime of defamation! Of suggesting through shameful means that our sovereign has led the public astray, degraded our nation and corrupted our morals! This is an infamy, sir!!
Judge: Therefore, Maurice Joly, this court sentences you to 15 months imprisonment.
Maurice Joly: This is unfair and an example of this despotic society under Louis Bonaparte!
Balif: Quiet! You’ve had your say!
Judge: The emperor’s police will immediately confiscate all copies of this book they can find!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp.16-19

Books , Way , Reality , Evil

“Your man with a thin skin, a vehement ambition, a scrupulous conscience, and a sanguine desire for rapid improvement is never a happy, and seldom a fortunate politician.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 11

Happiness

“It has been my experience that the better a man you are, the more folks there are who resent you for it, and find occasion to get angry at you no matter how kindly meant your deeds may be.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 13.

“The centuries are thick, dark waves that rise and fall, steeped in blood. Every moment is a gaping abyss.
Gaze on the dark sea without staggering, confront the abyss every moment without illusion or impudence or fear. … But this is not enough; take a further step: battle to give meaning to the confused struggles of man.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

Fear , Sea

“Early artists considered the human body, that forked radish, that defenseless starfish, a poor vehicle for the expression of energy, compared to the muscle-rippling bull and the streamlined antelope. Once more it was the Greeks, by their idealization of man, who turned the human body into an incarnation of energy, to us the most satisfying of all, for although it can never attain the uninhibited physical flow of the animal, its movements concern us more closely. Through art we can relive them in our own bodies, and achieve thereby that enhanced vitality which all thinkers on art, from Goethe to Berenson, have recognized as one of the chief sources of aesthetic pleasure.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1951), Ch. V: Energy

Pleasure , Art , Animals

“The basis of the Juche Idea is that man is the master of all things and the decisive factor in everything.”

Kim Il-sung (1912–1994) President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

On Juche in Our Revolution vol. 2 (1977)

Idea , Decision

“There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former. The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace. Evil may at some future period bring forth good; and good may bring forth evil, both equally unexpected.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

Very often attributed to Addison, this is in fact by Hugh Blair, published in Blair's Sermons (1815), Vol. 1, pp. 196-197.
Misattributed

Life , Secret , Evil , Future

“A man can enjoy a terrestrial paradise after eighty, but it is not to be obtained, except by strict temperance in food and drink, virtues acceptable to God, and friends to reason.”

Luigi Cornaro (1484–1566) Italian philosopher

Discourses on the Sober Life

God , Food , Drink

“How safe and easy the poor man's life and his humble dwelling! How blind men still are to Heaven's gifts!”
O vitae tuta facultas pauperis angustique lares! o munera nondum intellecta deum!

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus book Pharsalia

Book V, line 527 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia

Life , Men

“And hey there little sexy pig, you made it with a man
And now you've got a little kid with hooves instead of hands.”

Devendra Banhart (1981) American folk singer

-Little Yellow Spider
From Niño Rojo

“But, yesterday, the same man-made forms of law, declared it a crime punishable with $1,000 fine and six months' imprisonment, for you, or me, or any of us, to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread, or a night's shelter to a panting fugitive as he was tracking his way to Canada. And every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony on the Charge of Illegal Voting] (1874)
Trial on the charge of illegal voting (1874)

Law , Way , Water , Night

“No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”

Gideon Tucker

Final accounting in the Estate of A.B. (1866) http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/no_mans_life_liberty_or_property_are_safe_while_the_legislature_is_in_sessi/

Life

“I have merely attempted to put the view of the universe and man's place in it which is common to all mystics in plain and untechnical language: and to suggest the practical conditions under which ordinary persons may participate in their experience.”

Evelyn Underhill book Practical Mysticism

Preface, p. 16
Practical Mysticism (1914)

Universe , Personality

“We often hear, “Rape is rape, right?” No. A stranger forcing himself on a woman at knife point is different from a man and woman having sex while drunk and having regrets the morning. What is different? When a woman agrees to a date, she does not make a choice to be sexual, but she does make a choice to explore sexual possibilities. The woman makes no such choice with a stranger or an acquaintance.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 315.

Sex

“A man ain't nothing but a man. But a son? Well, now, that's somebody.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved (1987), Ch. 2

“Of all those expensive and uncertain projects, however, which bring bankruptcy upon the greater part of the people who engage in in them, there is none perhaps more perfectly ruinous than the search after new silver and gold mines. It is perhaps the most disadvantageous lottery in the world, or the one in which the gain of those who draw the prizes bears the least proportion to the loss of those who draw the blanks: for though the prizes are few and the blanks are many, the common price of a ticket is the whole fortune of a very rich man.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter VII, Part First, p. 610.

People , World , Search , Loss

“I am a lawyer. I think that one of the most fundamental responsibilities, not only of every citizen, but particularly of lawyers, is to give testimony in a court of law, to give it honestly and willingly, and it will be a very unhappy day for Anglo-Saxon justice when a man, even a man in public life, is too timid to state what he knows and what he has heard about a defendant in a criminal trial for fear that defendant might be convicted. That would to me be the ultimate timidity.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

On why he gave testimony on behalf of Alger Hiss, as quoted in Adlai Stevenson of Illinois : The Life of Adlai E. Stevenson (1976) by John Bartlow Martin, p. 552; also in "History Remembers…Adlai Stevenson" by Maureen Zebian in The Epoch Times (4 November 2004) http://en.epochtimes.com/news/4-11-4/24153.html

Life , Fear , Justice , Law

“If you expect manners from modern newspapers you will be sorely disappointed in these democratic days. It is one of the blessings of modern democracy? If you were in America and did not give any interview, even then they would invent one? The press is a public institution; formerly, it was something dignified, but now the newspapers are the correct measure of the futility of human life…. It is the same with all other modern things… the press, the theatre, the radio; they drag down everything to the level of the crowd…. They succeed only if they can pamper the common man's tastes…. It is the same old question of the mass being pulled up by something higher. But, as it always happens, instead of being pulled up it is the mass that pulls everything down to its level….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

June 1, 1926
India's Rebirth

Life , Disappointment , Democracy , Question

“[Command] is one of the easiest things in the world if a man only is lavish of the immense power which is by the military code granted to a Regimental commander.”

Charles P. Mattocks (1840–1910) American soldier, lawyer and politician

Letter to his mother, in [Lorien Foote, The Yankee Plague: Escaped Union Prisoners and the Collapse of the Confederacy, https://books.google.com/books?id=d4kwDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA14, 5 October 2016, University of North Carolina Press, 978-1-4696-3056-4, 14–]

World

“The truly enlightened man has no learning, no virtue, no accomplishments, no fame.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

38
Essays in Idleness (1967 Columbia University Press, Trns: Donald Keene)

Learning

“What makes The Joker tick I wonder?” Fredric said. “I mean what are his real motivations?”
“Consider him at any level of conduct,” Bruce said slowly, “in the home, on the street, in interpersonal relations, in jail—always there is an extraordinary contradiction. He is dirty and compulsively neat, aloof and desperately gregarious, enthusiastic and sullen, generous and stingy, a snappy dresser and a scarecrow, a gentleman and a boor, given to extremes of happiness and despair, singularly well able to apply himself and capable of frittering away a lifetime in trivial pursuits, decorous and unseemly, kind and cruel, tolerant yet open to the most outrageous varieties of bigotry, a great friend and an implacable enemy, a lover and abominator of women, sweet-spoken and foul-mouthed, a rake and a puritan, swelling with hubris and haunted by inferiority, outcast and social climber, felon and philanthropist, barbarian and patron of the arts, enamored of novelty and solidly conservative, philosopher and fool, Republican and Democrat, large of soul and unbearably petty, distant and brimming with friendly impulses, an inveterate liar and astonishingly strict with petty cash, adventurous and timid, imaginative and stolid, malignly destructive and a planter of trees on Arbor Day—I tell you frankly, the man is a mess.”
“That’s extremely well said Bruce,” Fredric stated. “I think you’ve given a very thoughtful analysis.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“I was paraphrasing what Mark Schorer said about Sinclair Lewis,” Bruce replied.
“The Joker’s Greatest Triumph”.
Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964)

Women , Fools , Art , Home

“Your eyes are windows to your dreams; Your ears are windows to your mind; You nose is the door to your heart - you can win over any man with just your smell.”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 34
Dark Rooms (2002)

Dreams , Heart

“The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Song of the Broad-Axe
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“I believe with Schopenhauer: We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must. Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being. I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime; nevertheless, I must protect myself from unpleasant contacts. I may consider him guiltless, but I prefer not to take tea with him.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Communication , Freedom , Tea

“Some other Course therefore must be taken to promote the Search of Knowledge. Some other kind of Art for Inquiry than what hath been hitherto made use of, must be discovered; the Intellect is not to he suffer'd to act without its Helps, but is continually to be assisted by some Method or Engine, which shall be as a Guide to regulate its Actions, so as that it shall not be able to act amiss: Of this Engine, no Man except the incomparable Verulam hath had any Thoughts, and he indeed hath promoted it to a very good pitch; but there is yet somewhat more to be added, which he seem'd to want time to compleat. By this, as by that Art of Algebra in Geometry, 'twill be very easy to proceed in any Natural Inquiry, regularly and certainly: And indeed it may not improperly be call'd a Philosophical Algebra, or an Art of directing the Mind in the search after Philosophical Truths, for as 'tis very hard for the most acute Wit to find out any difficult Problem in Geometry. without the help of Algebra to direct and regulate the Acts of the Reason in the Process from the question to the quœsitum, and altogether as easy for the meanest Capacity acting by that Method to compleat and perfect it, so will it be in the inquiry after Natural Knowledge.”

Robert Hooke (1635–1703) English natural philosopher, architect and polymath

"The Present State of Natural Philosophy, and wherein it is deficient," The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke https://books.google.com/books?id=6xVTAAAAcAAJ (1705) ed., Richard Waller, pp. 6-7.

Truth , Art , Search , Question

“A man might write such stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to it.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1783, p. 501
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

“I'm not disgusted. I'm a citizen of the United States of America and I'm no second-class citizen either and no man here is, unless he thinks like one and reasons like one and performs like one. This is my country and I believe in her, and I will serve her, and I'll contribute to her welfare whenever and however I can. If she has any ills, I'll stand by her until in God's given time, through her wisdom and her consideration for the welfare of the entire nation, she will put them right.”

Daniel James Jr. (1920–1978) United States general

As quoted in The Right to Fight: A History of African Americans in The Military (1998), by Gerald Astor, De Capo Press, pp. 440–443

Wisdom , God , Thinking , Time

“Man loves company — even if it is only that of a small burning candle.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

K 40
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook K (1789-1793)

Love

“The running gag of the Grand Prix series is that whereas Murray [Walker], safe in the commentary box, sounds like a blindfolded man riding a unicycle on the rim of the pit of doom, the men actually facing the danger are all so taciturn that you might as well try interviewing the cars themselves.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Hot pistils'
Essays and reviews, Glued to the Box (1983)

Men , Cars , Box

“To be told that we ought not to agitate the question of Slavery, when it is that which is forever agitating us, is like telling a man with the fever and ague on him to stop shaking and he will be cured. The discussion of Slavery is said to be dangerous, but dangerous to what?…Discussion is the very life of free institutions, the fruitful mother of all political and moral enlightenment, and yet the question of all questions must be tabooed.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

The Election in November 1860 (1860)

Life , Question

“Well, I think comparing Common Lisp to Scheme is prima facie evidence of ill will, even if Common Lisp wins. It is somewhat like a supposed compliment like "man, you are even smarter than George W. Bush."”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Setting a property in a symbol http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/80bdf64552957f61 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Lisp

Thinking

“Don't ever think the poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when his hand trembles! If they ever were there, they are there still!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Thinking , Dead

“There are in every man, at all times, two simultaneous tendencies, one toward God, the other toward Satan.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Il y a dans tout homme, à toute heure, deux postulations simultanées, l'une vers Dieu, l'autre vers Satan.
Journaux intimes (1864–1867; published 1887), Mon cœur mis à nu (1864)

God , Time

“Each jazz musician when he takes a horn in his hand — trumpet, bass, saxophone, drums — whatever instrument he plays — each soloist, that is, when he begins to ad lib on a given composition with a title and improvise a new creative melody, this man is taking the place of a composer.”

Charles Mingus (1922–1979) American jazz double bassist, composer and bandleader

What Is A Jazz Composer? (1971)

“The leader of the band is tired
And his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs through my instrument
And his song is in my soul --
My life has been a poor attempt
To imitate the man.
I'm just a living legacy
To the leader of the band.”

Dan Fogelberg (1951–2007) singer-songwriter, musician

The Leader of the Band.
Song lyrics, The Innocent Age (1981)

Life , Soul

“Never was the military spirit half so rampant in this country since 1815 as at the present time. Look at the news from Rangoon…This makes 5400 persons killed by our ships in the East during the last five years, without our having lost one man by the butcheries. Now give me Free Trade as the recognized policy of all parties in this country, and I will find the best possible argument against these marauding atrocities.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

'How Wars are got up in India' (1853), The Political Writings of Richard Cobden (1903), pp. 457-8.
1850s

Time , Personality , Country

“It seems to me that we do live in two worlds. There is is this physical one, which is coherent, and there is a spiritual one, which to the average man, with his flashes of religious experience, if you like to call them that — that world is very often incoherent. This experience of having two worlds to live in all the time, or… not all the time, occasionally, is a vital one and is what living is like.”

William Golding (1911–1993) British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

As quoted in "The Dreams of William Golding", BBC Arena (2012)

World , Time

“Once a man’s will is set, he need no longer rely on others or expect anything from the world. His vision encompasses Heaven and earth, past and present, and the tranquility of his heart is undisturbed.”

Yoshida Shoin (1830–1859) Japanese politician

Vol. III.
Yoshida Shoin Zenshu

World , Past , Heart

“American civil rights activist and U. S. Army Sergeant Medgar Evers once said that "you can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea." His statement applies to both good and evil. Drones are powerful assassination weapons that offer short-term fixes. Drones kill terrorists, but not the idea of terrorism in the long term.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

Idea , Evil

“The caucus is a sort of representative meeting which sits voting and voting till they have cut out all the known men against whom much is to be said, and agreed on some unknown man against whom there is nothing known, and therefore nothing to be alleged.”

Walter Bagehot book The English Constitution

No. V, The House of Commons, p. 155
Bagehot was commenting on the method of selecting Presidential candidates in the United States.
The English Constitution (1867)

Men

“And he says “I know about your man” …and their hearts will broken if you can't decide between them.”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

So Much Work
Song lyrics

Heart

“For the sake of this fifth message of peace to Ireland, this farrago of superlative nonsense, the vexatious and costly machinery of a general election is to be put in motion, all business other than what may be connected with political agitation is to be impeded and suspended; trade and commercial enterprise, now suffering sadly from protracted bad times, and which political stability can alone re-invigorate, are to be further harassed and handicapped; all useful and desired reforms are to be indefinitely postponed; the British Constitution is to be torn up; the Liberal party shivered into fragments. And why? For this reason and no other. To gratify the ambition of an old man in a hurry.”

Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895) British politician

Address to the electors of South Paddington, quoted in The Times (21 June 1886), p. 6. The "old man in a hurry" was Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone

Peace , Business , Suffering , Time

“If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.”

Thomas Watson, Jr. (1914–1993) American businessman and diplomat

Watson, Jr. cited in: Joseph Mancuso (1975) Managing technology products. p. 160.

Leadership , Time

“For those who labor, I propose to improve unemployment insurance, to expand minimum wage benefits, and by the repeal of section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act to make the labor laws in all our states equal to the laws of the 31 states which do not have tonight right-to-work measures. And I also intend to ask the Congress to consider measures which, without improperly invading state and local authority, will enable us effectively to deal with strikes which threaten irreparable damage to the national interest. The third path is the path of liberation. It is to use our success for the fulfillment of our lives. A great nation is one which breeds a great people. A great people flower not from wealth and power, but from a society which spurs them to the fullness of their genius. That alone is a Great Society. Yet, slowly, painfully, on the edge of victory, has come the knowledge that shared prosperity is not enough. In the midst of abundance modern man walks oppressed by forces which menace and confine the quality of his life, and which individual abundance alone will not overcome. We can subdue and we can master these forces—bring increased meaning to our lives—if all of us, government and citizens, are bold enough to change old ways, daring enough to assault new dangers, and if the dream is dear enough to call forth the limitless capacities of this great people.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life , People , Law , Dreams

“Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.”

William Makepeace Thackeray book The History of Henry Esmond

Bk. I, ch. 7.
The History of Henry Esmond (1852)

Angels , Thinking

“Fortunate the man who, at the right moment meets the right friend; fortunate also the man who at the right moment meets the right enemy. I do not approve the extermination of the enemy; the policy of exterminating or, as it is barbarously said, liquidating enemies, is one of the most alarming developments of modern war and peace, from the point of view of those who desire the survival of culture. One needs the enemy… A country within which the divisions have goon too far is a danger to itself: a country which is too well united - whether by nature or by device, by hounest purpose or by fraud and oppression - is a menace to others.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Notes towards the definition of culture(1948)

War , Peace , Fraud , Nature

“When men cease to be faithful to their God, he who expects to find them so to each other will be much disappointed. The primitive sincerity will accompany the primitive piety in her flight from the earth, and then interest will succeed conscience in the regulation of human conduct, till one man cannot trust another further than he holds him by that tie: hence, by the way, it is, that although many are infidels themselves, yet few choose to have their families and dependents such; as judging—and rightly judging—that true Christians are the only persons to be depended on for the exact discharge of their social duties.”

George Horne (1730–1792) English churchman, writer and university administrator

Source: The Works of the Right Reverend George Horne, 1809, p. 64; As quoted in Allibone (1880)

Men , God , Family , Faith

“I do not admire that you do not undertake your face, man!”

Róbert Puzsér (1974) hungarian publicist

Quotes from him, Csillag születik (talent show between 2011-2012)

“For there have been some people, otherwise good and holy, who saw that intemperance and luxury time and again drive man to throw off all restraints unless he is curbed by the utmost severity. And in their desire to correct such a pernicious evil they have adopted the only method which they saw fit, namely to permit earthly blessings only insofar as they were an absolute necessity. This advice showed the best of intentions but was far too rigid. For they committed the very dangerous error of imposing on the consequence of others stricter rules than those laid down in the Word of the Lord. By restricting people within the demands of necessity, they meant abstinence from everything possible. On the other hand, there are many nowadays who seek a pretext to excuse intemperance in the use of the external things, and who desire to indulge the lusts of the flesh. Such people take for granted that liberty should not be restricted by any limitations at all; but to this we can never agree. We must grant, indeed, that it is not right or possible to bind the consciences of others with hard and fast rules.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 85.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

People , Error , Evil , Time

“When I asked Bhutto what he thought of Assad, he described the Syrian leader as “The Levanter.” Knowing that, like himself, I was a keen reader of thrillers, the Pakistani Prime Minister knew that I would get the message. However, it was only months later when, having read Eric Ambler’s 1972 novel The Levanter that I understood Bhutto’s one-word pen portrayal of Hafez Al-Assad. In The Levanter the hero, or anti-hero if you prefer, is a British businessman who, having lived in Syria for years, has almost “gone native” and become a man of uncertain identity. He is a bit of this and a bit of that, and a bit of everything else, in a region that is a mosaic of minorities. He doesn’t believe in anything and is loyal to no one. He could be your friend in the morning but betray you in the evening. He has only two goals in life: to survive and to make money… Today, Bashar Al-Assad is playing the role of the son of the Levanter, offering his services to any would-be buyer through interviews with whoever passes through the corner of Damascus where he is hiding. At first glance, the Levanter may appear attractive to those engaged in sordid games. In the end, however, the Levanter must betray his existing paymaster in order to begin serving a new one. Four years ago, Bashar switched to the Tehran-Moscow axis and is now trying to switch back to the Tel-Aviv-Washington one that he and his father served for decades. However, if the story has one lesson to teach, it is that the Levanter is always the source of the problem, rather than part of the solution. ISIS is there because almost half a century of repression by the Assads produced the conditions for its emergence. What is needed is a policy based on the truth of the situation in which both Assad and ISIS are parts of the same problem.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: Like Father, Like Son http://www.aawsat.net/2015/02/article55341622/opinion-like-father-like-son, Ashraq Al-Awsat (February 20, 2015).

Life , Money , Truth , Game

“The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith; and when the ordinary man calls himself a sceptic or an unbeliever, that is ordinarily a simple pose, cloaking a disinclination to think anything out to a conclusion.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Introduction to Pascal’s Pensées

Faith , Thinking

“They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,
The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 23, st. 4.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)
Variant: The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on the earth.

Life , Time

“Take care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, 'I never whitened a hair of her dear head, I never marked a sorrowful line in her face!' For of all the many things that you can think when you are a man, you had better have that by you, Woolwich!”

Charles Dickens book Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 34

Thinking

“They stared at each other, man and alien, or more correctly alien and alien—for this is what they were to each other. Alien meaning different, alien meaning unknown.”

Harry Harrison (1925–2012) American science fiction author

Source: Plague from Space (1965), Chapter 13 (p. 136)

“Could man be drunk for ever
With liquor, love, or fights,
Lief should I rouse at mornings
And lief lie down of nights.
But men at whiles are sober
And think by fits and starts,
And if they think, they fasten
Their hands upon their hearts.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

No. 10, st. 2.
Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

Love , Men , Lie , Thinking

“The ridicule is pressure to consider ourselves less important than someone even more precious: A baby is more precious than a mother; a woman is more precious than a man.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Baby

“The strong, calm man is always loved and revered. He is like a shade-giving tree in a thirsty land, or a sheltering rock in a storm. "Who does not love a tranquil heart, a sweet-tempered, balanced life? It does not matter whether it rains or shines, or what changes come to those possessing these blessings, for they are always sweet, serene, and calm. That exquisite poise of character, which we call serenity is the last lesson of culture, the fruitage of the soul. It is precious as wisdom, more to be desired than gold — yea, than even fine gold. How insignificant mere money seeking looks in comparison with a serene life — a life that dwells in the ocean of Truth, beneath the waves, beyond the reach of tempests, in the Eternal Calm!”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

As A Man Thinketh (1902), Serenity

Love , Life , Wisdom , Money

“Spiritual inebriation is this: that a man receives more sensible joy and sweetness than his heart can either contain or desire.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Heart , Joy

“You do not believe that souls are assigned, first to one body and then to another, and that our so-called death is merely a change of abode? You do not believe that in cattle, or in wild beasts, or in creatures of the deep, the soul of him who was once a man may linger? You do not believe that nothing on this earth is annihilated, but only changes its haunts? And that animals also have cycles of progress and, so to speak, an orbit for their souls, no less than the heavenly bodies, which revolve in fixed circuits? Great men have put faith in this idea; therefore, while holding to your own view, keep the whole question in abeyance in your mind. If the theory is true, it is a mark of purity to refrain from eating flesh; if it be false, it is economy. And what harm does it do to you to give such credence? I am merely depriving you of food which sustains lions and vultures.”

Sotion (Pythagorean) ancient greek philosopher

Quoted in Seneca the Younger, Moral letters to Lucilius, CVIII, 20-21.

Death , Men , Faith , Food

“Wine makes a man more pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

April 28, 1778, p. 404
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

Wine

“There was no time for scholarly details, and, besides, I have always believed that a man can fairly be judged by the standards and taste of his choices in matters of high-level plagiarism.”

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

"Prisoner of Denver", in Vanity Fair (June 2004) https://archive.is/20130628091446/www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-6240592_ITM
2000s

Time

“No work is low or bad in this world if it is done in the right spirit. (…) That is why a man should never hesitate to do any work. Whether it is high or low, big or small, no work is bad. Work is work.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Karma yoga
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 1 February 1984.

World

“No man worth having is true to his wife, or can be true to his wife, or ever was, or ever will be so.”

John Vanbrugh The Relapse

The Relapse, Act III, sc. ii (1697)

“Unlike modern man, who dreams of the world he will make, pre-modern man dreamed of the world he left.”

Robert L. Heilbroner (1919–2005) American historian and economist

Source: The Future As History (1960), Chapter I, Part 3, The Future as the Mirror of the Past, p. 19

World , Dreams

“It is certain that no man can embrace the grace of the Gospel without retaking himself from the errors of his former life into the right path, and making it his whole study to practice repentance.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 3, Chapter 3, Section 1, p. 497
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Life , Error , Study

“The man had declared, with some justification, that the world was going to hell in a handbasket, and then gone on to claim that the only solution lay in returning to the Good Old Moral Values of the glorious past.
Unable to stand any more, Malcolm had demanded why, if those values were so marvellous, the people who paid lip-service to them had involved mankind in two world wars with all their accoutrements from poison gas to atom-bombs.”

John Brunner book The Stone That Never Came Down

Source: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 4 (p. 31)

War , People , World , Hell

“In so far as we are individuals, each of us is a fragment of a species, a part of this universe, a single dot in the immense network of forces and influences, cosmic, ethnic, historic, whose laws we obey. We are subject to the determination of the physical world. But each man is also a person, he is not subject to the stars and atoms; for he subsists entirely with the very subsistence of his spiritual soul, and the latter is in him a principle of creative unity, of independence and of freedom.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

Scholasticism and Politics (1940)

World , Law , Soul , Star

“The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a gentleman or a man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of his country.”

James Otis Jr. (1725–1783) Lawyer in colonial Massachusetts

Argument Against the Writs of Assistance (1761)

Life , Health , Country

“Prove your friend ere you have need, but in deed
A friend is never known till a man have need.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Part I, chapter 11.
Proverbs (1546)

“To follow and demonstrate the path of Truth, Simplicity and Love is man’s supreme duty and the highest Yoga. Diligent work is a quality of this path, for laziness is death on earth. Only by work can one claim victory over karma. All must strive to do their duty in the best way possible and not wander from that duty. Service to humanity is the first duty.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

30 September 1982.
The Teachings of Babaji

Love , Death , Truth , Way

“You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so you learn to love God and man by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves.”

Francis de Sales (1567–1622) French bishop, saint, writer and Doctor of the Church j

Quoted by Bishop Jean-Pierre Camus in The Spirit of Saint Francis de Sales, ch. 1, Pg. 3 (1880)

Love , God , Way , Thinking

“To appreciate heaven well
'T is good for a man to have some fifteen minutes of hell.”

Will Carleton (1845–1912) poet.

Gone with a handsomer Man, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Hell

“In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies—the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distraction.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 4 (pp. 35-36)

Democracy , Communication , Universe , Falseness

“She knows I'm a deserter from the Scottish Fusiliers,
She knows I stole a blind-man's can…that got me seven years!
She knows I've been connected with a gang of West-End Pests,
And the police have had me twice inside the cage;
And she knows I mix with ladies that have got a shady past,
But my mother doesn't know I'm on the stage.”

Billy Bennett (1887–1942) British comedian

"My Mother Doesn't Know I'm on the Stage", line 11

Past

“Man finds happiness only in the superfluous. Under communism, he has only the essentials. How abominable and ridiculous!”

Nélson Rodrigues (1912–1980) Brazilian writer and playwright

As 30 melhores entrevistas da Playboy: agosto 1975-agosto 2005" - Página 132, de Luiz Rivoiro - 2005 - 313 páginas (November 1979)

Communication , Happiness

“Costly followers are not to be liked; lest while a man maketh his train longer, he make his wings shorter.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Followers and Friends
Essays (1625)

Training

“I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace; that two are called a law firm; and that three or more become a Congress!”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Adams as portrayed in the musical 1776 (1969); this has sometimes been cited as an actual quote of Adams.
Misattributed

Law

“The Lord commands us to do good unto all men without exception, though the majority are very undeserving when judged according to their own merits. But scripture here helps us out with an excellent argument when it teaches us that we must not think of man’s real value, but only of his creation in the image of God to which we owe all possible honor and love.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 37.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

Love , Men , God , Thinking

“Evolution consists of many great revolutionary events taking place quite independently of man's consciously attempting to bring them about. Man is very vain; he likes to feel that he is responsible for all the favorable things that happen, and he is innocent of all the unfavorable happenings. But all the larger evolutionary patternings seeming favorable or unfavorable to man's conditioned reflexing are transpiring transcendentally to any of man's conscious planning or contriving.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

Feeling

“The forgetting of all things and of one's self, combined with contemplation, makes a man divine”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From, Light on Carmel: An Anthology from the Works of Brother John of Saint Samson, O.Carm.

Forgetting

“Each man's place in the social scheme of his village is know; the contribution which he must make to the work and ceremonial of the village and the share of the whole which he will receive back again are likewise defined. For failure to receive what is due to him, he is fined even more heavily than for failure to give that which is due from him. Just as a man must accept his privileges as well as discharge his duties, so is he also the guardian of his own status and if, as may happen to a high caste, that status is affronted, he himself must perform a ceremony to restore it.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Balinese Character (1942), p. 7

Failure

“No Dilettantism in this Mahomet; it is a business of Reprobation and Salvation with him, of Time and Eternity: he is in deadly earnest about it! Dilettantism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of amateur-search for Truth, toying and coquetting with Truth: this is the sorest sin. The root of all other imaginable sins. It consists in the heart and soul of the man never having been open to Truth; — "living in a vain show." Such a man not only utters and produces falsehoods, but is himself a falsehood. The rational moral principle, spark of the Divinity, is sunk deep in him, in quiet paralysis of life-death.”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Life , Death , Truth , Soul

“Mel is sensual with me. He treats me like an uncle - a dirty uncle. He's an earthy man and very moral underneath. He has traditional values.”

Madeline Kahn (1942–1999) American actress

Paul D. Zimmerman, (February 17, 1975) "The Mad Mad Mel Brooks", Newsweek

“To strengthen the work of Congress I strongly urge an amendment to provide a four-year term for Members of the House of Representatives—which should not begin before 1972. The present two-year term requires most members of Congress to divert enormous energies to an almost constant process of campaigning—depriving this nation of the fullest measure of both their skill and their wisdom. Today, too, the work of government is far more complex than in our early years, requiring more time to learn and more time to master the technical tasks of legislating. And a longer term will serve to attract more men of the highest quality to political life. The nation, the principle of democracy, and, I think, each congressional district, will all be better served by a four-year term for members of the House. And I urge your swift action. Tonight the cup of peril is full in Vietnam. That conflict is not an isolated episode, but another great event in the policy that we have followed with strong consistency since World War II. The touchstone of that policy is the interest of the United States—the welfare and the freedom of the people of the United States. But nations sink when they see that interest only through a narrow glass. In a world that has grown small and dangerous, pursuit of narrow aims could bring decay and even disaster. An America that is mighty beyond description—yet living in a hostile or despairing world—would be neither safe nor free to build a civilization to liberate the spirit of man. In this pursuit we helped rebuild Western Europe. We gave our aid to Greece and Turkey, and we defended the freedom of Berlin. In this pursuit we have helped new nations toward independence. We have extended the helping hand of the Peace Corps and carried forward the largest program of economic assistance in the world. And in this pursuit we work to build a hemisphere of democracy and of social justice. In this pursuit we have defended against Communist aggression—in Korea under President Truman—in the Formosa Straits under President Eisenhower—in Cuba under President Kennedy—and again in Vietnam.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life , Wisdom , Men , Hostility

“A man is not really a true man until he owns his own home, and they that own their homes are made more honorable and honest and pure, true and economical and careful, by owning the home.”

Russell Conwell (1843–1925) American academic administrator

Acres of Diamonds (1915)

Home

“…but who can know the heart of a man? Not even he himself, I suspect. A man is the easiest animal to put on a leash, and the hardest to keep leashed. Even when he chooses it himself.”

Robert Jordan The Dragon Reborn

Siuan Sanche
The Dragon Reborn (15 October 1991)

Heart , Animals

“This is the Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and begging through the round of every man's acquaintance, which gives to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give--who does not often give--the warning, "Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here!"”

Charles Dickens book Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 1

Hope , Courage , Suffering , Heart

“Sharp it away, lad, sharp it away,” the burly guardsman said, making the blade skitter across the whetstone, “lest otherways ye’ll be a girl afore ye’re a man.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 31, “The Councils of the Prince” (p. 502).

Girl

“And in a flash I understood the meaning of sex. It is a craving for the mingling of consciousness, whose symbol is the mingling of bodies. Every time a man and a woman slake their thirst in the strange waters of the other's identity, they glimpse the immensity of their freedom.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: The God of the Labyrinth (1970), p. 252

Sex , Freedom , Water , Time

“Any church that imprisons a man because he has used an argument against its creed, will simply convince the world that it cannot answer the argument.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

World

“Three sacraments that contribute to life, baptism, confession, communion, have been used at Easter time. (Eucharist connects completely faith and baptism, God and man incompletely) Triumph: As expected of pious Christians, the joy of victory is heard in the midst of an unjust world; victory and not disparagement, insult, persecution. With the day of the victory of Christ, the Easter, the bonds are broken, the death and sin laid (?), and the Redeemer of mankind rises strongly the human race from night time and fetters, in blessed heights, heavenly gates!).”

Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) Silesian scientist and Augustinian friar

Excerpt from a sermon on Easter delivered by Mendel, found in Folia Mendeliana (1966), Volume 6, Moravian Museum in Brünn.
Original: Drei Sakramente, die das Leben spenden: Taufe, Beichte, Kommunion sind zur Osterzeit eingesetzt worden. (Eucharistie verbindet vollkommen, Glaube und Taufe unvollkommen dem Gottmenschen). Sieg: Wie mutet es einen frommen Christen an, mitten in der ungerechten Welt von Sieg zu hören, und nicht wieder Hintansetzung, Beschimpfung, Verfolgung; auch Siegesfreude. Mit dem Siegestag Christi, mit dem Ostertag, sind die Bande zerrissen, die der Tod und die Sünde aufgelegt ( ? ), und stark erhebt sich das Menschengeschlecht mit seinem Erlöser aus Nachtzeit und Fesseln in weite selige Höhen, himmlische Gefilde!).
Sermon on Easter

Life , Death , God , World

“Gore is a man without an unconscious.”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

On friend and author Gore Vidal, as quoted in "GORE VIDAL, 1925-2012 : Prolific, Elegant, Acerbic Writer" in The New York Times (1 August 2012) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/books/gore-vidal-elegant-writer-dies-at-86.html?pagewanted=all