quotations about men
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
North & South
[Man] attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Second Sex
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful, is man!...
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Most women use more brains picking a horse in the third at Belmont than they do picking a husband.
LAUREN BACALL
How to Marry a Millionaire
Women always think you need a man, you need a father, as if they'd be the slightest use. Men are a dead weight, they're clumsy and maladjusted.
YASMINA REZA
The God of Carnage
I've never gone anywhere where the men have come up to my infantile expectations. I always have gone through life constantly being surprised by the extreme, marvelous qualities of a small minority of men. But I can't see the rest of them. They seem awful rubbish.
REBECCA WEST
The Paris Review, spring 1981
Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.
JOHN STEINBECK
The Grapes of Wrath
Marriage and fatherhood heighten the disillusion that we all think we are born handy. We confidently believe that we can fix things around the house, as if it's part of the collective brain that was further enhanced by eighth-grade shop class.
BOB NEWHART
I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This
Testosterone is a great equalizer, it turns all men into morons.
RUPERT GILES
"The Pack", Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Men peak at age nineteen and go downhill.
GARRISON KEILLOR
Leaving Home
The Spirit of man is like a kite, which rises by means of those very forces which seem to oppose its rise; the tie that joins it to the earth, the opposing winds of temptation, and the weight of earth-born affections which it carries with it into the sky.
COVENTRY PATMORE
The Rod, the Root, and the Flower
Man makes one journey all his living days,
Down through the realms of music and of art;
Down through the halls of fame and glorious praise;
Down through the tears and triumphs of the heart
To some sweet woman waiting some place there.
For her he builds his cities and makes war,
Seeks gold and glorious wealth to store.
EDWIN CURRAN
"The Eternal Quest"
Sometimes a woman needs a man for company, no matter how useless he is.
LISA KLEYPAS
Sugar Daddy
Men deal with life as children with their play,
Who first misuse, then cast their toys away.
WILLIAM COWPER
Hope
Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Notebooks
He who is infatuated with Man leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.
MAX STIRNER
The Ego and Its Own
It must be a very weary day to the youth when he first discovers that, after all, he will only become a man.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God.
SIGMUND FREUD
Civilization and Its Discontents
Man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Notes on Virginia
Man is still a predatory animal, and we're only kidding ourselves if we think we're the pinnacle of evolution and civilization.
JELLO BIAFRA
interview, Spin Magazine, February 1986