quotations about men
Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.
ANDRE MALRAUX
attributed, The Executive's Book of Quotations
Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer--and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
AYN RAND
The Virtue of Selfishness
A hard man is good to find.
MAE WEST
attributed, She Always Knew How: Mae West, a Personal Biography
Men are cowards before women until they become tyrants.
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
The Small House at Allington
Men and barbed wire have their good points.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
letter, 1839
They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
Men are a good deal better collectively than they are individually. Many a man will do that privately which he will denounce in a crowd.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
Aggression is part of the masculine design, we are hardwired for it.... Little girls do not invent games where large numbers of people die, where bloodshed is a prerequisite for having fun. Hockey, for example, was not a feminine creation. Nor was boxing. A boy wants to attack something -- and so does a man, even if it's only a little white ball on a tee.
JOHN ELDREDGE
Wild at Heart
When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Every man carries a menagerie in himself; and, by stirring him up all around, you will find every sort of animal represented there.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Women cry. Men laugh. Whiners moan. Men laugh. Wimps complain. Men laulgh.
LISA GARDNER
The Perfect Husband
Men are foolish to expect us to revere them, when, in the end, they amount to almost nothing.
PAULINE RÉAGE
introduction, The Image
Where man had been, in every place he left, garbage remained. Even in his pursuit of the ultimate truth and quest for his God, he produced garbage. By his garbage, which lay stratum upon stratum, he could always -- one had only to dig -- be known. For more long-lived than man is his refuse. Garbage alone lives after him.
GUNTER GRASS
The Rat
They're all alike ... at first they behave very well, they're obedient and prompt and they don't seem capable of killing a fly, but as soon as their beards appear they go to ruin.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
Many are the marvels of God's Creation, but none so marvelous as man. Or so cunning, for good or ill.
S. M. STIRLING
The Sunrise Lands
Thus man himself offers sufficient proof of the two orders--Matter and Spirit. In him culminates a visible finite universe; in him begins a universe invisible and infinite.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
Good men are like good hairdressers. Hard as hell to find.
ZANE
Shame on It All
The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!
JANE AUSTEN
Sense and Sensibility