quotations about men
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever--
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Much Ado About Nothing
What a man is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Bell Jar
Where soil is, men grow,
Whether to weeds or flowers.
JOHN KEATS
Endymion
Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!
GEORGE CHAPMAN
To the Countess of Cumberland
Some of the wildest men make the best pets.
MAE WEST
Belle of the Nineties
Some men are born husbands; they have a passion for domesticity, for a fireside, for a home. Yet, curiously, these men very rarely stay at home. Apparently what they want is to have a place to get away from.
ADA LEVERSON
Love at Second Sight
All the wide world is but the husbandry of God for the development of the one fruit--man.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Men changed whatever they set hand to. They wrought their magic on beasts, to make them dull and patient. They brought fire and the reek of smoke to the dales. They brought lines and order to the curve of the hills. Most of all they brought the chill of iron, to sweep away the ancient shadows.
C. J. CHERRYH
The Dreamstone
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.
ALFRED TENNYSON
The Vision of Sin
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
Men are different. Yet they are people, too. Women's physical and emotional characteristics and sufferings have been studied, written about and mulled over--and over. By contrast, the problems particularly affecting men are neglected--even by themselves.
JOAN GOMEZ
Psychological and Psychiatric Problems in Men
Man becomes virtually an automaton in the loss of his individuality and responsibility. He is the harp of a thousand strings played upon by a divine hand, but not a man!
JOHN GRIER HIBBEN
The Problems of Philosophy
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"
A man is nothing but breath and shadow.
SOPHOCLES
fragment, Ajax the Locrian
Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Crime and Punishment
Alas! What is man? Whether he be deprived of that light which is from on high, of whether he discard it, a frail and trembling creature; standing on time, that bleak and narrow isthmus between two eternities, he sees nothing but impenetrable darkness on the one hand, and doubt, distrust, and conjecture, still more perplexing, on the other. Most gladly would he take an observation, as to whence he has come, or whither he is going; alas, he has not the means: his telescope is too dim, his compass too wavering, his plummet too short.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
A hard man is good to find.
MAE WEST
attributed, She Always Knew How: Mae West, a Personal Biography
In the ardor of his enthusiasm, a youth set forth in quest of a man of whom he might take counsel as to his future, but after long search and many disappointments, he came near relinquishing the pursuit as hopeless, when suddenly it occurred to him that one must first be a man to find a man, and profiting by this suggestion, he set himself to the work of becoming himself the man he had been seeking so long and fruitlessly.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
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 a creation of desire, not a creation of need.
GASTON BACHÉLARD
The Psychoanalysis of Fire