Quotes about man
page 85

Hermann Hesse photo
Karl Barth photo
Ben Hecht photo
Thomas Eakins photo
Francisco De Goya photo

“I haven't heard them [n. d. r. he's talking about some Spanish popular folk songs] and probably never shall because I no longer go to the places where one could hear them, for I have got into my head that I should maintain a certain presence and air for dignity.... that a man should have, and you can imagine that I'm not very happy about it.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

letter 206, c. 1787; in Goya, A life in Letters, edited and introduced by Sarah Simmons; transl. Philip Troutman, London, Pimlico, 2004
Goya understands that the social role he has reached (he is royal painter from 1789) will prevent him from attending places where people sing http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/09/goya-life-in-letters-edited-and.html
1780s

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël photo

“A man must know how to fly in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.”

Un homme doit savoir braver l'opinion; une femme s'y soumettre.
Delphine (1802), epigraph
The epigraph is taken from the writings of de Staël's mother, Suzanne Necker.

William Hazlitt photo

“Man is a make-believe animal — he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

Notes of a Journey through France and Italy (1824), ch. XVI

Murray Leinster photo

“Historically, the developement of machines had amplified man's ability to destroy.”

Edmund Cooper (1926–1982) British writer

The cloud walker (1973)

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.”

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

Walter Savage Landor, from The Dial, XII

Heinrich Heine photo

“The whole system of symbolism impressed on the art and the life of the Middle Ages must awaken the admiration of poets in all times. In reality, what colossal unity there is in Christian art, especially in its architecture! These Gothic cathedrals, how harmoniously they accord with the worship of which they are the temples, and how the idea of the Church reveals itself in them! Everything about them strives upwards, everything transubstantiates itself; the stone buds forth into branches and foliage, and becomes a tree; the fruit of the vine and the ears of corn become blood and flesh; the man becomes God; God becomes a pure spirit. For the poet, the Christian life of the Middle Ages is a precious and inexhaustibly fruitful field. Only through Christianity could the circumstances of life combine to form such striking contrasts, such motley sorrow, such weird beauty, that one almost fancies such things can never have had any real existence, and that it is all a vast fever-dream the fever-dream of a delirious deity. Even Nature, during this sublime epoch of the Christian religion, seemed to have put on a fantastic disguise; for oftentimes though man, absorbed in abstract subtilties, turned away from her with abhorrence, she would recall him to her with a voice so mysteriously sweet, so terrible in its tenderness, so powerfully enchanting, that unconsciously he would listen and smile, and become terrified, and even fall sick unto death.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp#page/n5/mode/2up, p. 26

Frederick Douglass photo

“The great fact underlying the claim for universal suffrage is that every man is himself and belongs to himself, and represents his own individuality, not only in form and features, but in thought and feeling. And the same is true of woman. She is herself, and can be nobody else than herself. Her selfhood is as perfect and as absolute as is the selfhood of man.”

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

Speech at the New England Woman Suffrage Association (May 24, 1886) Nicholas Buccola, edit., The Essential Douglass: Selected Writings & Speeches, Hackett Publishing Company, 2016, p. 307. Sometimes referred to as his “Who and What is Woman?” speech
1880s

Charles James Fox photo
Thomas Robert Malthus photo

“Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man might never have emerged from the savage state.”

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter XVIII, paragraph 11, lines 16-17

Adolphe Quetelet photo

“We then better understand the weakness of man, and the power of the Supreme: we are struck with the inflexible constancy of the laws which regulate the march of worlds, and which preside over the succession of human generations.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Adolphe Quételet. 1981. Letters addressed to H.R.H. the Grand Duke of Saxe Coburg and Gotha, on the theory of probability. Arno Press, p. 132

Albert Camus photo
George Eliot photo
Pat Condell photo
Mary McCarthy photo
Howard Cosell photo
John Wesley photo

“I can by no means approve the scurrility and contempt with which the Romanists have often been treated. I dare not rail at, or despise, any man: much less those who profess to believe in the same Master. But I pity them much; having the same assurance, that Jesus is the Christ, and that no Romanist can expect to be saved, according to the terms of his covenant.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Letter to a Roman Catholic Priest, published in his Journal for 27 August 1739 http://books.google.com/books?id=TylXAAAAIAAJ&q=%22+published+in+his+Journal+for+27+August+1739%22&dq=%22+published+in+his+Journal+for+27+August+1739%22&hl=en&ei=ggg-TMSKNcL6lwfw3cj3BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-thumbnail&resnum=1&ved=0CC8Q6wEwAA.
In, The works of the Rev. John Wesley, A. M., London, Wesleyan Conference Office, 1872, vol. 1, p. 220. http://books.google.com/books?id=Eo9KAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA220&dq=%22+I+can+by+no+means+approve+the+scurrility+and+contempt+with+which+the+Romanists%22&hl=en&ei=iwM-TOq7OcP7lwfr6Kz5BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%22%20I%20can%20by%20no%20means%20approve%20the%20scurrility%20and%20contempt%20with%20which%20the%20Romanists%22&f=false http://wesley.nnu.edu/John_Wesley/letters/1739.htm
General sources

Mario Cuomo photo
Matthew Arnold photo

“It is — last stage of all —
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

" Growing Old" (1867), st. 7

Damian Pettigrew photo
Jared Yates Sexton photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Jack Vance photo
Richard Feynman photo
Joe Jackson photo
Marshall McLuhan photo
H. G. Wells photo
Democritus photo

“You can tell the man who rings true from the man who rings false, not by his deeds alone, but also by his desires.”

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

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

Daniel Radcliffe photo
Francis Quarles photo

“Even such is man, whose glory lends
His life a blaze or two, and ends.”

Francis Quarles (1592–1644) English poet

Hos ego versiculos (1629).

J.C. Ryle photo
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès photo

“Gentlemen, we have a master; this young man does everything, can do everything and will do everything.”

Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836) French ''abbé'' ad statesman

Messieurs, nous avons un maître, ce jeune homme fait tout, peut tout, et veut tout.
Speaking of Napoleon I of France, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922), "Character", p. 105.

Dinah Craik photo
William Morris photo
Uhuru Kenyatta photo
Morarji Desai photo

“One has got to choose between the two evils, also between the lesser of the two evils in the matter of food, and therefore vegetarian food has got to be taken by man in order to sustain human life”

Morarji Desai (1896–1995) Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former prime minister

19th World Vegetarian Congress 1967

George William Curtis photo
Patrick Buchanan photo
José Ortega Y Gasset photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
Margaret Fuller photo

“There are who separate the eternal light
In forms of man and woman, day and night;
They cannot bear that God be essence quite.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), The One In All

Joseph Lewis photo

“Man's inhumanity to man will continue as long as man loves God more than he loves his fellow man.”

Joseph Lewis (1889–1968) American activist

An Atheist Manifesto

Raymond Poincaré photo

“The fact that he was a Lorrainer, born and brought up in sight of the German eagle waving over the ravished provinces of France, bred in him an implacable enmity for Germany and all Germans. Anti-clericalism was with him a conviction; anti-Germanism was a passion. That gave him a special hold on France that had been ravaged by the German legions in the Great War. It was a disaster to France and to Europe. Where a statesman was needed who realised that if it is to be wisely exploited victory must be utilised with clemency and restraint, Poincaré made it impossible for any French Prime Minister to exert these qualities. He would not tolerate any compromise, concession or conciliation. He was bent on keeping Germany down. He was more responsible than any other man for the refusal of France to implement the disarmament provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. He stimulated and subsidised the armaments of Poland and Czecho-Slovakia which created such a ferment of uneasiness in disarmed Germany. He encouraged insurrection in the Rhineland against the authority of the Reich. He intrigued with the anti-German elements in Britain to thwart every effort in the direction of restoring goodwill in Europe and he completely baffled Briand's endeavour in that direction. He is the true creator of modern Germany with its great and growing armaments, and should this end in another conflict the catastrophe will have been engineered by Poincaré. His dead hand lies heavy on Europe to-day.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

David Lloyd George, The Truth about the Peace Treaties. Volume I (London: Victor Gollancz, 1938), p. 252.
About

Bernard Mandeville photo
Barbara Hepworth photo
Homér photo

“If any man obeys the gods, they listen to him also.”

I. 218 (tr. Richmond Lattimore).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

James A. Garfield photo

“No American has carried greater fame out of the White House than this silent man who leaves it today.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

Regarding Ulysses S. Grant (4 March 1877), as quoted in Grant: A Biography https://books.google.com/books?id=cv5IbR5f9oMC&pg=PA449&lpg=PA449&dq=%22No+American+has+carried+greater+fame+out+of+the+White+House+than+this+silent+man+who+leaves+it+today%22&source=bl&ots=HoaHfwjqo6&sig=uaEqRbH27mRCUcR_OZatQlYcFK0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=owv8VPGnIIHsgwSyioC4AQ&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22No%20American%20has%20carried%20greater%20fame%20out%20of%20the%20White%20House%20than%20this%20silent%20man%20who%20leaves%20it%20today%22&f=false (1981), by William S. McFeely, p. 449
1870s

William O. Douglas photo
Walter Rauschenbusch photo

“The position of woman has doubtless been elevated through the influence of Christianity, but… it is probably fair to say that most of the great Churches through their teaching and organization have exerted a conservative and retarding influence on the rise of woman to equality with man.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 150

Joseph Heller photo
Ilana Mercer photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Piet Mondrian photo
François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“The passions are the only advocates which always persuade. They are a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.”

Les passions sont les seuls orateurs qui persuadent toujours. Elles sont comme un art de la nature dont les règles sont infaillibles; et l'homme le plus simple qui a de la passion persuade mieux que le plus éloquent qui n'en a point.
Variant translation: The passions are the only orators who always persuade. They are like a natural art, of which the rules are unfailing; and the simplest man who has passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent man who has none.
Maxim 8.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Seneca the Younger photo

“That is why we give to children a proverb, or that which the Greeks call Chreia, to be learned by heart; that sort of thing can be comprehended by the young mind, which cannot as yet hold more. For a man, however, whose progress is definite, to chase after choice extracts and to prop his weakness by the best known and the briefest sayings and to depend upon his memory, is disgraceful; it is time for him to lean on himself. He should make such maxims and not memorize them. For it is disgraceful even for an old man, or one who has sighted old age, to have a note-book knowledge. "This is what Zeno said." But what have you yourself said? "This is the opinion of Cleanthes." But what is your own opinion? How long shall you march under another man's orders? Take command, and utter some word which posterity will remember. Put forth something from your own stock.”
Ideo pueris et sententias ediscendas damus et has quas Graeci chrias vocant, quia complecti illas puerilis animus potest, qui plus adhuc non capit. Certi profectus viro captare flosculos turpe est et fulcire se notissimis ac paucissimis vocibus et memoria stare: sibi iam innitatur. Dicat ista, non teneat; turpe est enim seni aut prospicienti senectutem ex commentario sapere. 'Hoc Zenon dixit': tu quid? 'Hoc Cleanthes': tu quid? Quousque sub alio moveris? impera et dic quod memoriae tradatur, aliquid et de tuo profer.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXXIII

Margaret Atwood photo
Kate Bush photo

“I cannot sit and let
Something happen I'll regret.
Ooh, he scares me!
There's a man behind those eyes.
I catch him when I'm bending.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Never for Ever (1980)

William Cowper photo

“Praise enough
To fill the ambition of a private man,
That Chatham's language was his mother tongue.”

Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 235.

Bernard Landry photo

“I am a man of causes; I am not an individualist, and in my heart and conscience I do not think I could serve society as I would like to with this level of support.”

Bernard Landry (1937–2018) Canadian politician

In Radio-Canada, ""Biographies: Bernard Landry"" http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/dossiers/tetes/landry/,retrieved August 28, 2005
quote from Landry's resignation speech, made after winning a party confidence vote by only 76.2%.

Henry Adams photo

“An artist must be man, woman and demi-god.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mr. Wharton in Ch. IV
Esther: A Novel (1884)

Charles Dickens photo
Warren Farrell photo
Henryk Sienkiewicz photo
Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas photo

“There is no theam more plentifull to scan
Than is the glorious goodly frame of man.”

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–1590) French writer

First Week, Sixth Day. Compare: "Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man;
La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578)

Thomas Arnold photo

“The distinction between Christianity and all other systems of religion consists largely in this, that in these other, men are found seeking after God, while Christianity is God seeking after man.”

Thomas Arnold (1795–1842) English headmaster of Rugby School

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 133.

André Maurois photo

“Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game finished, that the stage belongs to the rising generations. The true evil is not the weakening of the body, but the indifference of the soul. Upon crossing the shadow line, it is more the desire to act than the power to do so that is lost. Is it possible, after fifty years of experiences and disappointments, to retain the ardent curiosity of youth, the desire to know and understand, the power to love wholeheartedly, the certainty that beauty, intelligence, and kindness unite naturally, and to preserve faith in the efficacy of reason? Beyond the shadow line lies the realm of even, tempered light where the eyes, not being dazzled any more by the blinding sun of desire, can see things and people as they are. How is it possible to believe in the moral perfection of pretty women if you have loved one of them? How is it possible to believe in progress when you have discovered throughout a long and difficult life that no violent change can triumph over human nature and that it is only the most ancient customs and ceremonies that can provide people with the flimsy shelter of civilization? "What's the use?" says the old man to himself. This is perhaps the most dangerous phrase he can utter, for after having said: "What's the use of struggling?" he will say one day: "What's the use of going out?" then: "What's the use of leaving my room?" then: "What's the use of leaving my bed?" and at last comes "What's the use of living?"”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

which opens the portals of death.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

William Ewart Gladstone photo
Harry Chapin photo
William Frederick Halsey, Jr. photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“283. A Man in Passion rides a Horse that runs away with him.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1749) : A Man in a Passion rides a mad Horse.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

George Hendrik Breitner photo

“.. A market, a quay, a river. a gang of soldiers.... is just as good and more history than 'The cousins of Spinoza are visiting him accompanied by their mamma'. O! if I could say some time as Munkaczy: 'I painted almost everything I dreamed when I was 12 years old'. He can tell this, the man which I love as the greatest painter, whatever they may say here [in The Hague]. I hope that you once may see a true painting of me, not one of the many I shall have to make and which are [only] something, but a truly grandiose thing. All wasted fire.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) ..Een markt een kaai een rivier. een bende soldaten.. ..is net zoo goed en meer geschiedenis dan 'De nichtjes van Spinoza komen hem bezoeken vergezeld door hunne mamma'. O! dat ik nog eens kon zeggen als Munkaczy: ik heb bijna alles geschilderd wat ik droomde toen ik 12 jaar was. dat kan hij zeggen hem die ik voor de grootste schilder hou wat ze hier ook mogen zeggen. Ik hoop dat U nog eens een waar schilderij van me moogt zien, niet een van de velen die ik zal moeten maken en ook wel iets is, maar iets waarachtigsch grootsch. Allemaal verspild vuur.
quote of Breitner in a letter to his Maecenas A.P. van Stolk, 28 March 1882; original text in RKD-Archive, The Hague https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/597
before 1890

Wassily Kandinsky photo

“The more freely abstract the form becomes, the purer, and also the more primitive it sounds. Therefore, in a composition in which corporeal elements are more or less superfluous, they can be more or less omitted and replaced by purely abstract forms, or by corporeal forms that have been completely abstracted... Here we are confronted by the question: Must we not then renounce the object altogether, throw it to the winds and instead lay bare the purely abstract? This is a question that naturally arises, the answer to which is at once indicated by an analysis of the concordance of the two elements of form (the objective and the abstract). Just as every word spoken (tree, sky, man) awakens an inner vibration, so too does every pictorially represented object. To deprive oneself of the possibility of this calling up vibrations would be to narrow one's arsenal of expressive means. At least, that is how it is today. But apart from today's answer, the above question receives the eternal answer to every question in art that begins with 'must.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

There is no 'must' in art, which is forever free.
Quote from: Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, eds. Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo, 2 Vols. (transl. Peter Vergo); Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., (1982), p. 195; as cited in: Samet, Jennifer Sachs. Painterly Representation in New York, 1945-1975. Dissertation, The City University of New York, 2010. p. 25
1910 - 1915

Max Wertheimer photo
Ian McCulloch photo
Tori Amos photo

“A man bites into a dry peach and says "This peach is not good;" the peach replies "It is not my fault that you don't know the proper use for a dry peach."”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

A quote from the special inclusions in the sheet music book for her album "Under the Pink".
Songs

Alfred Kinsey photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“A man perfects himself by work much more than by reading.”

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

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

H.L. Mencken photo

“No man, I suppose, ever admits to himself candidly that he gets his living in a dishonourable way.”

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

1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)

Thomas Carlyle photo

“That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.”

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

Bk. III, ch. 4.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)

Walker Percy photo
Henry Adams photo

“…only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Nicholas Murray Butler photo
Warren Farrell photo

“A man becomes successful by repressing his feelings, not expressing his feelings.”

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

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 16.

P.G. Wodehouse photo
Emma Watson photo
Martin Amis photo