Quotes about man (10000 quotes, page 73)

“[T]he doctrine of a plurality of Gods is as prominent in the Bible as any other doctrine…. The head God organized the heavens and the earth. I defy all the world to refute me. In the beginning the heads of the Gods organized the heavens and the earth. Now the learned priests and the people rage, and the heathen imagine a vain thing. If we pursue the Hebrew text further, it reads, 'The head one of the Gods said, Let us make a man in our own image.' I once asked a learned Jew, 'If the Hebrew language compels us to render all words ending in heim in the plural, why not render the first Eloheim plural?' He replied, 'That is the rule with few exceptions; but in this case it would ruin the Bible.' He acknowledged I was right…. In the very beginning the Bible shows there is a plurality of Gods beyond the power of refutation. It is a great subject I am dwelling on. The word Eloheim ought to be in the plural all the way through—'Gods'. The heads of the Gods appointed one God for us; and when you take [that] view of the subject, its sets one free to see all the beauty, holiness and perfection of the Gods. All I want is to get the simple, naked truth, and the whole truth.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 6:474-76 (7 April 1844)
1840s, King Follett discourse (1844)

God , People , Truth , World

“Only through intuition does a work rise above more or less subjective expression. Different periods produce different feelings and conceptions, and in each period men differ. Consequently different art expressions even in a single period are not only logical but a tribute to the general development of art. Intuition always finds the way of progress, which is continuous growth toward a clearer establishment of the content of art: the unification of man with the universe.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

'A New Realism', p. 17
1940's, A New Realism', 1943-1945

Men , Art , Way , Feeling

“It was a touching sight that aged negro kneeling at the feet of the tall, gaunt-looking man who seemed in himself to be bearing all the grief of the nation, and whose sad face seemed to say, 'I suffer for you all, but will do all I can to help you.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 295

Age , Sadness , Suffering , Help

“Let no guilty man escape, if it can be avoided. No personal considerations should stand in the way of performing a public duty.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Endorsement of a letter relating to the Whiskey Ring (29 July 1875).
1870s

Way , Personality

“I just think it's double standards the whole time. On the one hand people say, 'Oh, women have equal rights now, women can be as powerful as men and do the same jobs as men', but we're still not allowed to talk about sex, 'cos that's unladylike. It's like that old thing, if a man has slept with loads and loads of women, he's a stud. But if a woman has slept with loads of boys, she's a slag. Well, why? Why? What makes a man a stud 'cos he's pulled loads of women? And what makes me a slag 'cos I've slept with more than 10 men? It's ridiculous!”

Jodie Marsh (1978) English glamour model and television personality

Interview in The Guardian, 25 January 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jan/25/broadcasting.bigbrother

Women , Men , People , Sex

“One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Quoted in The Edmonton Journal (8 March 1999), C3

“It is a great advantage for any man to be able to talk or hear, neither ignorantly nor absurdly, upon any subject; for I have known people, who have not said one word, hear ignorantly and absurdly; it has appeared by their inattentive and unmeaning faces.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

11 May 1752
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

People , Appearance

“I wanted to be an actor or be a director since I was a very small child. I mean, my mother went into labor at a movie theater. There were, like, four movie theaters around us when I was growing up in Austin. Movies became my babysitter. I think I saw more films than I saw reality. Then I noticed something when I was in my late teens that really made my thinking shift in what I wanted to do with film. When I was watching a film as a young man, there would be a second or two when I drifted outside of myself. I noticed how for a moment, in the image and music and train of information, I was traveling through the film, leaving myself. And I knew that was something I wanted to do. I wanted to see how long I could make that feeling go on—if I could take someone outside themselves, outside their body for a minute, five minutes, maybe even 80 minutes, 90 minutes.”

Tobe Hooper (1943–2017) American film director, screenwriter and producer

Tobe Hooper Interview http://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/tobe-hooper/#_ (July 14, 2014)

Music , Travel , Feeling , Thinking

“Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Vol. I, ch. 1
History of England (1849–1861)

Age , Imagination , Past

“What a man calls his "conscience" is merely the mental action that follows a sentimental reaction after too much wine or love.”

Helen Rowland (1875–1950) American journalist

Brides
A Guide to Men (1922)

Love , Wine

“We've looked and looked, but after all where are we?
Do we know any better where we are,
And how it stands between the night tonight
And a man with a smoky lantern chimney?
How different from the way it ever stood?”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

The Star-Splitter
1920s

Way , Night

“The light from the big window fell right on the picture. I took a good look at it. Then I shifted a bit nearer and took another look. Then I went back to where I had been at first, because it hadn't seemed quite so bad from there.
"Well?" said Corky, anxiously.
I hesitated a bit.
"Of course, old man, I only saw the kid once, and then only for a moment, but -- but it *was* an ugly sort of kid wasn't it, if I remember rightly?"
"As ugly as that?"
I looked again, and honesty compelled me to be frank.
"I don't see how it could have been, old chap."”

P.G. Wodehouse book Carry On, Jeeves

Carry On, Jeeves (1925)

Light

“We are the sum of our achievements, nothing more and nothing less. The mountain road which led us here was built by a dead people none of us would remember otherwise. What we create is the only part of us which can survive, or has the right to. Man is nothing, except to other men.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

The Birthgrave (1975)
Source: Book Two, Part V “Tower-Eshkorek”, Chapter 3 (p. 303)

Men , People , Mountain , Parting

“It may be, however, sufficient to say, that wherever the church has had power it has been a crime for any man to speak his honest thought. No church has ever been willing that any opponent should give a transcript of his mind. Every church in power has appealed to brute force, to the sword, for the purpose of sustaining its creed. Not one has had the courage to occupy the open field. The church has not been satisfied with calling Infidels and unbelievers blasphemers. Each church has accused nearly every other church of being a blasphemer. Every pioneer has been branded as a criminal. The Catholics called Martin Luther a blasphemer, and Martin Luther called Copernicus a blasphemer. Pious ignorance always regards intelligence as a kind of blasphemy. Some of the greatest men of the world, some of the best, have been put to death for the crime of blasphemy, that is to say, for the crime of endeavoring to benefit their fellow-men.”

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

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

Death , Men , World , Intelligence

“But let them tell you what type of an Apostle or prophet God promised them. Was it a man from some of the enemy colleges and universities with an arm full of degrees coming from these institutions of learning of the enemy?Let them read their scriptures and see what type of man God promised to choose for a last messenger. How many of the prophets in the past were educated men of the civilization in which they were born before the call of God?”

Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975) American religious leader

Message to the Blackman (1965)

Men , God , Education , Learning

“We shall continue to maintain segregation in Alabama completely and absolutely without violence or ill-will. … I advocate hatred of no man, because hate will only compound the problems facing the South. … We ask for patience and tolerance and make an earnest request that we be allowed to handle state and local affairs without outside interference.”

George Wallace (1919–1998) 45th Governor of Alabama

First gubernatorial campaign (14 February 1958), quoted in George Wallace: American Populist (1995) by Stephen Lesher
1950s

Hate , Problem , Patience

“We have entered 'The Era of the Three-Option Woman and the No-Option Man.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power, p. 52.

“To vote for Mr. Roosevelt is to give Mr. Taft half a slap and Mr. Wilson half a boost, and why a man would want to impale himself on so absurd a dilemma I can't see for the life of me.”

George Howard Earle, Jr. (1856–1928) American lawyer

From "Half a Slap and Half a Boost" in American Economist (20 September 1912)

Life

“I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another's misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

Life

“I saw a man take a needleful of hard drug
And die slow”

Laura Nyro (1947–1997) American musician and songwriter

"Been On A Train"
Lyrics

“There's a vacancy, won't you come to me
And fill my empty spaces
I'm a motel man in a promised land
That's filled with empty faces
So won't you bring your sorrows bring your dreams,
It's a place for you to be
There's no more tomorrow or that's how it seems
Won't you come to me? I've got a vacancy”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Vacancy
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

Dreams

“A general theme for what I'm trying to convey and what actually drove me and my very industrious and creative project members over all these years, is… that there is much more to it than pictures. It has to be a picture language. There has to be meaning there, and the meaning is useful. You're trying to solve problems. So it really comes down to man machine problem solving. Better means of communication and expression is what always has driven our work.”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

Source: Retrospectives : The Early Years in Computer Graphics at at MIT, Lincoln Lab and Harvard (1989), p. 26.

Communication , Problem

“I set off in yoga seventy years ago when ridicule, rejection, and outright condemnation were the lot of a seeker through yoga even in its native land of India. Indeed If I had become a sadhu, a mendicant holy man, wandering the great trunk roads of British India, begging bowl in hand, I would have met with less derision and won more respect. At one time I was asked to become a sannyasin and renounce the world, but I declined. I wanted to live as an ordinary householder with all the trials and tribulations of life and to take my yoga practice r to average people who share my life with me the common life of work, marriage and children. I was blessed with all three…”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.xiii

Life , Marriage , Children , People

“Cricket is quite a gentle, harmless game, but he is a lucky man who has not to sweat some blood before he's done with it.”

John Snaith (1876–1936) British cricketer (1876-)

Willow the King (1899)

Game

“Propaganda does not aim to elevate man, but to make him serve.”

Jacques Ellul book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

Vintage, p. 38
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)

“I tell you they are," rejoined Elder Rigdon, "and no man or woman shall put up a prayer in this place to-day.”

Lucy Mack Smith (1775–1856) American religious leader

The History of Joseph Smith by His Mother (1853), "Rigdon's Depression"

“"Why!" said Huxter, suddenly, "that's not a man at all. It's just empty clothes. Look! You can see down his collar and the linings of his clothes. I could put my arm—"He extended his hand; it seemed to meet something in mid-air, and he drew it back with a sharp exclamation. "I wish you'd keep your fingers out of my eye," said the aerial voice, in a tone of savage expostulation. "The fact is, I'm all here: head, hands, legs, and all the rest of it, but it happens I'm invisible. It's a confounded nuisance, but I am. That's no reason why I should be poked to pieces by every stupid bumpkin in Iping, is it?"”

H. G. Wells book The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 7: The Unveiling of the Stranger

Stupidity , Clothes

“I thought this would be about the last battle of the war — I sincerely hoped so; and I said further I took it that most of the men in the ranks were small farmers. The whole country had been so raided by the two armies that it was doubtful whether they would be able to put in a crop to carry themselves and their families through the next winter without the aid of the horses they were then riding. The United States did not want them and I would, therefore, instruct the officers I left behind to receive the paroles of his troops to let every man of the Confederate army who claimed to own a horse or mule take the animal to his home. Lee remarked again that this would have a happy effect.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Source: 1880s, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885), Ch. 67.

Men , War , Family , Hope

“The friendship of one wise man is better than the friendship of a host of fools.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

Friendship , Fools

“I did not hate the author of my misfortunes — truth and justice acquit me of that; I rather pitied the hard destiny to which he seemed condemned. But I thought with unspeakable loathing of those errors, in consequence of which every man is fated to be, more or less, the tyrant or the slave. I was astonished at the folly of my species, that they did not rise up as one man, and shake off chains so ignominious, and misery so insupportable. So far as related to myself, I resolved — and this resolution has never been entirety forgotten by me — to hold myself disengaged from this odious scene, and never fill the part either of the oppressor or the sufferer.”

William Godwin book Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams

Caleb Williams (1794)

Hate , Fate , Truth , Justice

“Colly doing a good, no-frills, manful job for England here, just one from the over. He is to cricket what Jim Taggart is to detective work.”

Ben Dirs journalist

England v Sri Lanka, 2007-04-04, BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/6521515.stm,

“Greek, sir, is like lace; every man gets as much of it as he can.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1780
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

“All women love the man who appeals to their maternity. Rudy does that instinctively and it is devastating in its effects on feminine resistance.”

Natacha Rambova (1897–1966) American film personality and fashion designer

On Valentino, p. 58
Photoplay: "Wedded and Parted" (December 1922)

Love , Women , Maternity

“I have always been against the war; I placed my family's existence in danger because I was speaking out against primitivism and nationalism and stupidity. I didn't do that so I could perform in Croatia again one day, but so I could talk with my children as a man, when the time comes.”

Đorđe Balašević (1953) Serbian songwriter

\
(from an interview for Croatian television, aired on December 29 2000).

War , Children , Stupidity , Family

“The Duke (Cesare) is a good-natured man, but he cannot tolerate affronts. I have often told him that Rome is a free city, and that everyone may write and speak as he pleases. Evil is even spoken of me, but I let it pass." The Duke replied: "Rome is accustomed to write and speak; it is well, but I will teach such people repentance."* The Pope finally reminded him how much he himself had forgiven, and especially at the time of Charles VIII's invasion, so many cardinals, whom the King himself had called his betrayers. "I could," he said, "have sentenced the Vice-Chancellor and Cardinal Vincula to death, but I did not wish to harm anyone, and I have forgiven fourteen great nobles.”

Pope Alexander VI (1431–1503) pope of the Catholic Church 1492-1503

Report of the Ferrarese ambassador, Beltrando Costabili to Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, February 1, 1502. Archives of Modena: As quoted in History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages (1900), Ferdinand Gregorovius, George Bell & Sons, London, Volume 7, Part 2 (1497-1503), p. 486. http://books.google.com/books?id=kW1OAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA486&dq=%22often+told+him+that+Rome+is+a+free+city%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PQRlUeiiBIPA9QT4s4H4CA&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22often%20told%20him%20that%20Rome%20is%20a%20free%20city%22&f=false See also L. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol.6, p. 12. http://books.google.com/books?id=hk1DAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA112&dq=%22told+him+that+Rome+is+a+free+city%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ojZlUeS7Dob49QTTn4HQBw&ved=0CEUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22told%20him%20that%20Rome%20is%20a%20free%20city%22&f=false. (Commonweal writes: “Whatever his faults, the Pope appears to have been of a forgiving and clement disposition, pardoning foes when he had them in his power, and becoming reconciled with those who had bitterly opposed him. With Savonarola — pulpit methods, by the way, were scarcely as novel and extraordinary then as our author (Peter de Roo) thinks — Alexander VI dealt on the whole rather patiently, more so, indeed, than our author, who is hardly fair to the friar.” -- Commonweal (1924), Commonweal Publishing Company, volume 1, p. 185. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=Whatever+his+faults%2C+the+Pope+appears+to+have+been+of+a+forgiving+and+clement+disposition&btnG=#hl=en&tbm=bks&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22Whatever+his+faults%2C+the+Pope+appears+to+have+been+of+a+forgiving+and+clement+disposition%22&oq=%22Whatever+his+faults%2C+the+Pope+appears+to+have+been+of+a+forgiving+and+clement+disposition%22&gs_l=serp.3...1287.1287.1.1562.1.1.0.0.0.0.79.79.1.1.0...0.0...1c.1.8.psy-ab.VnzmdIrn1SQ&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44990110,d.eWU&fp=5b7686e7449457e7&biw=1294&bih=770)

Death , People , Nature , Evil

“At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The white man will never be alone.”

Chief Seattle (1786–1866) Duwamish chief

Statement on surrendering tribal lands to Isaac Stevens, governor of Washington Territory (1855)

Love , Beauty , Thinking , Night

“Speech is the best show a man puts on.”

Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941) American linguist

Source: Language, thought and reality (1956), p. 249.

“Men are socialized to trust women until evidence to the contrary surfaces; women are socialized to be suspicious of men until an individual man earns trust.”

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

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 139.

Women , Men

“Children learn the fundamental principles of natural law at a very early age. Thus they very early understand that one child must not, without just cause, strike or otherwise hurt, another; that one child must not assume any arbitrary control or domination over another; that one child must not, either by force, deceit, or stealth, obtain possession of anything that belongs to another; that if one child commits any of these wrongs against another, it is not only the right of the injured child to resist, and, if need be, punish the wrongdoer, and compel him to make reparation, but that it is also the right, and the moral duty, of all other children, and all other persons, to assist the injured party in defending his rights, and redressing his wrongs. These are fundamental principles of natural law, which govern the most important transactions of man with man. Yet children learn them earlier than they learn that three and three are six, or five and five ten. Their childish plays, even, could not be carried on without a constant regard to them; and it is equally impossible for persons of any age to live together in peace on any other conditions.

It would be no extravagance to say that, in most cases, if not in all, mankind at large, young and old, learn this natural law long before they have learned the meanings of the words by which we describe it. In truth, it would be impossible to make them understand the real meanings of the words, if they did not understand the nature of the thing itself. To make them understand the meanings of the words justice and injustice before knowing the nature of the things themselves, would be as impossible as it would be to make them understand the meanings of the words heat and cold, wet and dry, light and darkness, white and black, one and two, before knowing the nature of the things themselves. Men necessarily must know sentiments and ideas, no less than material things, before they can know the meanings of the words by which we describe them.”

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

Section IV, p. 9–10
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter I. The Science of Justice.

Men , Children , Truth , Age

“The characteristic of a well-bred man is, to converse with his inferiors without insolence, and with his superiors with respect and with ease.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

17 March 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)
Context: Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau: "Improved means to an unimproved end". This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man. If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual "lag" must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the "without" of man's nature subjugates the "within", dark storm clouds begin to form in the world.

Religion , Art , Literature , Problem

“The typical reaction of liberal intellectuals is to seize on the contradiction here: How can something be both wrong and right, or at least both wrong and OK, at the same time? What liberal intellectuals fail to see is that this so-called contradiction expresses the quintessence of the Machiavellian and therefore the modern, a quintessence that has been thoroughly absorbed by the man in the street. The world is ruled by necessity, says the man in the street, not by some abstract moral code. We have to do what we have to do.
If you wish to counter the man in the street, it cannot be by appeal to moral principles, much less by demanding that people should run their lives in such a way that there are no contradictions between what they say and what they do. Ordinary life is full of contradictions; ordinary people are used to accommodating them. Rather, you must attack the metaphysical, supra-empirical status of necessità and show that to be fraudulent.”

J.M. Coetzee book Diary of a Bad Year

Source: Diary of a Bad Year (2007), p. 17

Life , People , World , Way

“A painter must not only be of necessity an imitator of the works of nature…but he must be as necessarily an imitator of the works of other painters: this appears more humiliating, but is equally true; and no man can be an artist, whatever he may suppose, upon any other terms.”

Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) English painter, specialising in portraits

Discourse no. 6, delivered on December 10, 1774; vol. 1, p. 150.
Discourses on Art

Nature , Appearance

“Any concept of biology is not only sterile and profitless, it is distorted and untrue, if it puts its primary focus on unnatural conditions rather than on those vast forces not of man's making that shape and channel the nature and direction of life.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

Preface to Humane Biology Projects (1961) by the Animal Welfare Institute

Life , Nature

“Rawlings was a burglar and a thief, but like much of the London underworld he would not have anyone “trash” his country. It is a fact that convicted traitors in prison, along with child molesters, have to be kept in seclusion because professional “faces,” if left alone with such a man, are likely to rearrange his component parts.”

Frederick Forsyth book The Fourth Protocol

The Fourth Protocol (1984)

Parting , Country

“Somewhere—in desolate wind-swept space—
In Twilight-land—in No-man’s land—
Two hurrying Shapes met face to face,
And bade each other stand.

“And who are you?” cried one, agape,
Shuddering in the gloaming light.
“I know not,” said the second Shape,
“I only died last night.””

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American poet, novelist, editor

Identity; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Light , Night

“Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit, has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least; but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes, without coming to total disagreement as to all the premises.”

Charles Dickens book Bleak House

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

Understanding , Time

“A true leader has to have a genuine open-door policy so that his people are not afraid to approach him for any reason. A man should feel free to tell his chief executive to his face, 'I think you're dead wrong about such and such, and here are my reasons.”

Harold Geneen (1910–1997) American businessman

Managing, Chapter Six (Leadership), p. 113.

People , Feeling , Thinking , Dead

“So don't tell me the story of your life
I'd rather watch the movie
Your Hollywood smile is not enough
You're giving me the blues
So when are you going to understand
I'm not the woman to make you a man”

Anni-Frid Lyngstad (1945) Swedish female singer

That's Tough (Non-album single credited to Lyngstad, Hans Fredriksson, and Kirsty MacColl), from Shine (1984)
Lyrics, Shine (1984)

Life , Smile , Understanding

“It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes the other party stick the less.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Cunning
Essays (1625)

“We passed the Gardens and turned down Avenue de New York. There, under the embankment trees, I had the unpleasant sensation that I was dreaming. I had already lived my life and was just a ghost hovering in the tepid air of Saturday evening. Why try to renew ties which had been broken and look for paths that had been blocked off long ago? And the plump, moustachioed little man, walking beside me, hardly seemed real.”

Patrick Modiano book Missing Person

Missing Person (1978 )

Life , Dreams , Tree

“Greta Van Susteren: What would you do about Libya?
Gingrich: Exercise a no-fly zone this evening, communicate to the Libyan military that Gaddafi was gone and that the sooner they switch sides, the more likely they were to survive, provided help to the rebels to replace him. I mean, the idea that we're confused about a man who has been an anti-American dictator since 1969 just tells you how inept this administration is. They were very quick to jump on Mubarak, who was their ally for 30 years, and they were confused about getting rid of Gaddafi. This is a moment to get rid of him. Do it. Get it over with.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

On the Record
Fox News
2011-03-07
2010s

Exercises , Communication , Idea , Help

“If you are religious, then remember that this bomb is Man's challenge to God. It's worded quite simply: We have the power to destroy everything that You have created. If you're not religious, then look at it this way. This world of ours is 4 600 000 000 years old. It could end in an afternoon.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

The End of Imagination August, 1998 http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1516/15160040.htm.
Articles

God , World , Way

“Athirst for personal salvation, the West forgets that many religions had but a vague notion of the life beyond the grave; true, all great religions stake a claim on eternity, but not necessarily on man's eternal life.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

Part IV, Chapter I
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)

Life , Religion , Personality , Forgetting

“Moral education is not mere drill in the ways of the herd. The good man's first duty, as Professor Erskine says, is to be intelligent. Good intentions alone do not enable man to judge wisely or behave well. The prevailing idea that one can be at the same time good and stupid has strongly influenced our education.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 180

Stupidity , Education , Way , Intelligence

“Every man of learning wishes, that his son may be learned; and that not so much from a view to pecuniary advantage, as from a desire to have him supplied with the means of useful instruction and liberal amusement.”

James Beattie (1735–1803) Scottish poet, moralist and philosopher

"Remarks on the Utility of Classical Learning" (written in 1769), published in Essays, Vol. II (1776), p. 524.

Learning

“I am a Southern man and a slaveholder. A kind and merciful one, I trust, and none the worse for being a slaveholder. I say, for one, I would rather meet any extremity upon earth than give up one inch of our equality, one inch of what belongs to us as members of this republic! What! Acknowledged inferiority! The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledged inferiority!”

John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) 7th Vice President of the United States

Speech in the U.S. Senate https://web.archive.org/web/20070123074414/http://www.claremont.org/publications/pubid.667/pub_detail.asp (19 February 1847)
1840s

Life

“Take him, earth, for cherishing,
To thy tender breast receive him.
Body of a man I bring thee,
Noble even in its ruin.”
Nunc suscipe, terra, fovendum,<br/>gremioque hunc concipe molli.<br/>Hominis tibi membra sequestro,<br/>generosa et fragmina credo.

Prudentius (348–413) Roman writer

Nunc suscipe, terra, fovendum,
gremioque hunc concipe molli.
Hominis tibi membra sequestro,
generosa et fragmina credo.
"Hymnus X: Ad Exequias Defuncti", line 125 ; translation from Helen Waddell Mediaeval Latin Lyrics (London: Constable, [1929] 1943) p. 45.

“My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”

Ted Kennedy (1932–2009) United States Senator

Eulogy for Robert F. Kennedy (8 June 1968)

Life , Death , War , Suffering

“[It is anomalous] to hold that in order to convict a man the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind, but can extract what is in his stomach.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Writing for the court, Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165 (1952). The unanimous decision reversed the conviction of an alleged drug addict because evidence was obtained by forced stomach pumping.
Judicial opinions

“Arbitrariness and true liberty are as distinct from each other that the empirical nature is distinct from the higher nature of man.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 50.

Nature

“Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Notes from Underground

Part 1, Chapter 5 (page 19)
Notes from Underground (1864)

Intelligence , Water

“What a man does in his closet ought not to affect the rights of third persons.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Outram v. Morewood (1793), 5 T. R. 123.

Personality

“I didn’t want to be the kind of man that my father was. So I’ve tried, my entire life, to be the complete and utter opposite of that. And it has served not only the art well, but I think the audience well.”

Tyler Perry (1966) American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, producer, author, and songwriter

Interview: Tyler Perry, movie mogul, 21 August 2010

Life , Art , Thinking

“You are the man newly arriving
at history’s worm-ravaged door,
the woman whose shadows are salves
upon the bleeding breasts of the earth,
the infant whose heartbeat
floods every harp in Paradise.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(Self Knowledge in the New Millennium, p. 57).
Book Sources, I Made My Boy Out of Poetry (1998)

History

“Increasingly in our time — this is an inevitable result of collectivization — it is the organization man who succeeds. And he is characterized by the fact that he has significance only if he gives up his significance.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: Psychology and the Human Dilemma (1967), p. 37

Time

“If the body dies, it does no harm to the mind, but if the mind dies, one can no longer act as a man even though the body survives.”

Yoshida Shoin (1830–1859) Japanese politician

Vol. VIII.
Yoshida Shoin Zenshu

“Milton's Paradise Lost is admirable; but am I therefore bound to maintain, that there are no flats amongst his elevations, when it is evident he creeps along sometimes for above an hundred lines together? Cannot I admire the height of his invention, and the strength of his expression, without defending his antiquated words, and the perpetual harshness of their sound? It is as much commendation as a man can bear, to own him excellent; all beyond it is idolatry.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Preface to Translations from Theocritus, Lucretius, and Horace, in Sylvæ: or, The second part of Poetical Miscellanies, published by Mr. Dryden, third edition (London, 1702).

“The traitor to humanity is the traitor most accursed;
Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod,
Than to be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God!”

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

"On the Capture of Certain Fugitive Slaves Near Washington" (1845)

God , Falseness

“No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.”

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

The Art Eternal, New York Evening Mail (1918)
1910s

Secret , Dreams , Heart

“Do not yet see, that, if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Nature

Nature, Addresses and Lectures. The American Scholar
1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)
Variant: If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. 6.

World

“What's my line?
I'm happy cleaning windows
Take my time
I'll see you when my love grows
Baby don't let it slide
I'm a working man in my prime
Cleaning windows…”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Cleaning Windows
Song lyrics, Beautiful Vision (1982)

Love , Time , Baby , Happiness

“Nothing could tempt me to do this man injustice, though I could hardly add to the injury he has done himself.”

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

Interview with the Chicago Times, Feb. 14, 1881.

“A crown is a pitiless master, harsher than the staff of a pig-keeper; while a staff bears up, a crown weighs down, beyond the strength of any man to wear it lightly.”

Lloyd Alexander The Chronicles of Prydain

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book V : The High King (1968), Chapter 10 (King Math)

“Prudence and justice tell me that in electricity and steam there is more love for man than in chastity and abstinence from meat.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (March 27, 1894)
Letters

Love , Justice

“I'm gonna get one of those tracheotomies, so I can smoke two cigarettes at the same time! I'm gonna get nine tracheotomies, all around my neck, I'll be Tracheotomy Man! He can smoke a pack at a time, he's Tracheotomy Man!”

Denis Leary (1957) American actor and comedian

Standup routines, No Cure for Cancer (1993)

Time

“Though it becomes not man himself to praise.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Ben che stia mal che l'uom se stesso lodi.
Canto XLIII, stanza 12 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

“…classic philosophy maintained that change, and consequently time, are marks of inferior reality, holding that true and ultimate reality is immutable and eternal. Human reasons, all too human, have given birth to the idea that over and beyond the lower realm of things that shift like the sands on the seashore there is the kingdom of the unchanging, of the complete, the perfect. The grounds for the belief are couched in the technical language of philosophy, but the grounds for the cause is the heart's desire for surcease from change, struggle, and uncertainty. The eternal and immutable is the consummation of mortal man's quest for certainty.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

Idea , Birth , Reality , Change

“I met my maker / I made him cry / And on my shoulder / He asked me why / His people won't fly / Through the storm / I said listen up man, they don't even know you're born
All my people / Right here, right now / D'you know what I mean?
Coming in a mess / Going out in style / I ain't good looking / But I'm someone's child
No one can give me the air that's mine to breathe”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

D'You Know What I Mean
Be Here Now (1997)

People , Cry , Flying

“The man who kan ware a paper collar a hole week and keap, it klean, aint fit for enny thing else.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

“To such a one, already filled with intellectual substance, and possessing what we may call the practical gold-bullion of human culture, it was an obvious improvement that he should be taught to speak it out of him on occasion; that he should carry a spiritual banknote producible on demand for what of "gold-bullion" he had, not so negotiable otherwise, stored in the cellars of his mind. A man, with wisdom, insight and heroic worth already acquired for him, naturally demanded of the schoolmaster this one new faculty, the faculty of uttering in fit words what he had. A valuable superaddition of faculty:—and yet we are to remember it was scarcely a new faculty; it was but the tangible sign of what other faculties the man had in the silent state.”

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

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Wisdom , Nature

“Their strength's eternal in their sight,
They overtake the deer in flight,
And in their arrogance they smite;
But I am sage, if they are strong:
Man's love is transient as his death is long.”

Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) English writer and gardener

"The Greater Cats"
Kings Daughter (1929)

Love , Death , Strong

“In its studies and learned colloquy, Faz saw and felt the tales of Men. They seemed curiously convoluted, revolving about Self. What mattered most to those who loved tales was how they concluded. Yet all Men knew how each ended. Their little dreams were rounded with a sleep.
So the point of a tale was not how it ended, but what it meant. The great inspiring epic rage of Man was to find that lesson, buried in a grave.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Time’s Rub, pp. 260-261
In Alien Flesh (1986)

Love , Men , Dreams , Sleep

“This case, involving legal requirements for the content and labeling of meat products such as frankfurters, affords a rare opportunity to explore simultaneously both parts of Bismarck's aphorism that 'No man should see how laws or sausages are made.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Community Nutrition Institute v. Block, 749 F.2d 50, 51 (D.C. Cir. 1984) ; decided December 5, 1984.
1980s

Law , Parting

“Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. As man emerged out of the animal, so out of man the superman emerges.”

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

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913)
Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana

Nature , Animals

“Often again she is resolved to promise her skill to the unhappy man, then again refuses, and is determined rather to perish with him; and she cries that never will she yield to so base a passion…”
Saepe suas misero promittere destinat artes, denegat atque una potius decernit in ira ac neque tam turpi cessuram semet amori proclamat.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book VII, Lines 317–320

Passion

“In the fall of 1960, when I was sixteen and my father was for a time not working, my mother met a man named Warren Miller and fell in love with him.”

Richard Ford (1944) American novelist and short story writer

Source: Wildlife (1990), p. 1

Love , Time

“Nobody precisely knew where he born, but it's known it wasn't in São Paulo, nor in Rio de Janeiro, nor in Pará. It was wrong trying to find in this man any kind of regionalism. Before anything, Quaresma was a Brazilian.”

Lima Barreto book Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma

Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma (1915)

“I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Shot of Love (1981), Every Grain Of Sand
Variant: "I am hanging in the balance of a perfect, finished plan" (The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1–3)

Reality