quotations about men
Men are foolish to expect us to revere them, when, in the end, they amount to almost nothing.
PAULINE RÉAGE
introduction, The Image
It is desperately hard these days for an average child to grow up to be a man, for our present organized system does not want men. They are not safe.
PAUL GOODMAN
Growing Up Absurd
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
What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.
MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain on Common Sense
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
The menfolk, they die, all right. And it's us women who walk around, like the Bible says, and mourn. The menfolk, they die, and it's over for them, but we women, we have to keep on living and try to forget what they done to us.
JAMES BALDWIN
Go Tell It on the Mountain
If sense was gunpowder ever one of you men put together wouldn't have enough to load a round of birdshot.
WILLIAM GAY
Provinces of Night
Man, when viewed in separation from his Maker and his end, can be as little understood and portrayed, as a plant torn from the soil in which it grew, and cut off from communication with the clouds and sun.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
The right boys i always toss and the wrong ones i keep on top of me like paperweights.
DANIEL HANDLER
Adverbs
All men are just accumulations dolls stuffed with sawdust swept up from the trash heaps where all previous dolls had been thrown away.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
The Sound and the Fury
Men and barbed wire have their good points.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
JOHN DONNE
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
The hardest man ... is but a shell.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
It's hard to resist a bad boy who's a good man.
NORA ROBERTS
Happy Ever After
I have been thinking, my love, and on my return,
I would like to reveal the truth of us, of myself.
I am tired of this restrictive masculine role.
CHRIS ABANI
Hands Washing Water
Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.
REBECCA WEST
The Thinking Reed
Man, only -- rash, refined, presumptuous man,
Starts from his rank, and mars creation's plan.
GEORGE CANNING
Progress of Man
Ah, race of mortal men,
How as a thing of nought
I count ye, though ye live;
For who is there of men
That more of blessing knows,
Than just a little while
To seem to prosper well,
And, having seemed, to fall?
SOPHOCLES
Oedipus the King
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
A man was like a child with his appetites. A woman had to yield him what he wanted, or like a child he would probably turn nasty and flounce away and spoil what was a very pleasant connection.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover