quotations about men
The right boys i always toss and the wrong ones i keep on top of me like paperweights.
DANIEL HANDLER
Adverbs
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.
ALFRED TENNYSON
The Vision of Sin
If I laugh at you, O fellow-men! if I trace with curious interest your labyrinthine self-delusions, note the inconsistencies in your zealous adhesions, and smile at your helpless endeavours in a rashly chosen part, it is not that I feel myself aloof from you: the more intimately I seem to discern your weaknesses, the stronger to me is the proof that I share them. How otherwise could I get the discernment?--for even what we are averse to, what we vow not to entertain, must have shaped or shadowed itself within us as a possibility before we can think of exorcising it. No man can know his brother simply as a spectator. Dear blunderers, I am one of you.
GEORGE ELIOT
Theophrastus Such
I don't understand men. I don't even understand what I don't understand about men.
MAUREEN DOWD
Are Men Necessary?
Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite of him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Sartor Resartus
Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"Raising the Wind", Saturday Courier, October 14, 1843
Some of the wildest men make the best pets.
MAE WEST
Belle of the Nineties
Men are always ready to die for us, but not to make our lives worth having. Cheap sentiment and bad logic.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Jo's Boys
It takes a man to know men and all the wickedness mixed up in their flesh and blood.
AMELIA E. BARR
A Singer from the Sea
Few women think a man complete without vice.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke
Man is said to be a rational creature; but should it not rather be said, that man is a creature capable of being rational, as we say a parrot is a creature capable of speech?
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
Man started out on the wrong foot. The misadventure in paradise was the first consequence. The rest had to follow.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man",
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"The Conqueror Worm"
Man, being the strongest of all animals, differs from the rest; he was obliged to be his own domesticator; he had to tame himself.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Men are angels born without wings, nothing could be nicer than to be born without wings and to make them grow.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Crime and Punishment
You men never can understand ... that, however fond a woman may be of a man, there are times when he palls upon her. You don't know how I long to be able sometimes to put on my bonnet and go out, with nobody to ask me where I am going, why I am going, how long I am going to be, and when I shall be back. You don't know how I sometimes long to order a dinner that I should like, and that the children would like, but at the sight of which you would put on your hat and be off to the Club. You don't know how much I feel inclined sometimes to invite some woman here that I like, and that I know you don't; to go and see the people that I want to see, to go to bed when I am tired, and to get up when I feel I want to get up.
JEROME KLAPKA JEROME
Three Men in a Boat
A man is nothing but breath and shadow.
SOPHOCLES
fragment, Ajax the Locrian
I don't know what a man is. Only that every man has his price.
BERTOLD BRECHT
The Exception and the Rule
Man would not be the finest creature in the world if he were not too fine for it.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe