man Quotes

“A man ain’t nothing but a man. But a son? Well, now, that’s somebody”

“Unless a man is prepared to ask a woman to be his wife, what right has he to claim her exclusive attention? Unless she has been asked to marry him, why would a sensible woman promise any man her exclusive attention? If, when the time has come for a commitment, he is not man enough to ask her to marry him, she should give him no reason to presume that she belongs to him.”

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

“The belly is the reason why man does not so readily take himself for a God.”

″‘Oh, better I like to work out-of-doors than in a house!’ she used to sing joyfully. ‘I not care that your grandmother say it makes me like a man. I like to be like a man.‘”

“A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant.”

“A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one’s life with meaning...A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest”

“Remember, if a man needs to pull away like a rubber band, when he returns he will be back with a lot more love. Then he can listen. This is the best time to initiate conversation.”

“A woman should not be judged for needing this reassurance, just as a man should not be judged for needing to withdraw.”

“It is very difficult for a man to differentiate between empathy and sympathy. He hates to be pitied.”

“The experience of coming alive as a man is so rate in our culture right now.”

“Every man repeats the sin of Adam, every day. We won’t risk, we won’t fight, and we won’t rescue Eve. We truly are a chip off the old block.”

“If a man does not find those things for which his heart is made, if he is never even invited to live for them from his deep heart, he will look for them in some other way.”

″ A man needs a battle to fight; he needs a place for the warrior in him to come alive and be honored, trained, seasoned. If we can reawaken that fierce quality in a man, hook it up to a higher purpose, release the warrior within, then the boy can grow up and become truly masculine.”

“Emasculation happens in marriage as well. Women are often attracted to the wilder side of a man, but once having caught him they settle down to the task of domesticating him. Ironically, if he gives in he’ll resent her for it, and she in turn will wonder where the passion has gone.”

“Every boy, in his journey to become a man, takes an arrow in the center of his heart, in the place of his strength. Because the wound is rarely discussed and even more rarely healed, every man carries a wound. And the wound is nearly always given by his father.”

“A good man is hard to find,” Red Sammy said. “Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more.”

“Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human … the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength.”

“He is a marvel -- man is! I would I knew who invented him.”

“‘There’s nobody to guide them through the process of becoming a man... to explain to them the meaning of manhood. And that’s a recipe for disaster.’”

″ Man is an experiment, the other animals are another experiment. Time will show whether they were worth the trouble.”

″ Man is without any doubt the most interesting fool there is. Also the most eccentric. He hasn’t a single written law, in his Bible or out of it, which has any but just one purpose and intention -- to limit or defeat the law of God.”

“They were fire-makers! They were gods! ”

“He became like a man. He attired himself with clothes even as does a husband.”

“The world is unfathomable and mysterious, just as we all are. The art of the warrior consists of reconciling the terror of being a man with the wonder of being a man.”

“Man is the creature he fears.”

“What a terrible thing to be a great lord, yet a wicked man.”

“The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse.”

“A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting. ”

“It was a tragic thing. May I say your father impressed me greatly with his manly qualities. He was a close trader but he acted the gentleman.”

“Sometimes a man seems to reverse himself so you would say, ‘he can’t do that. It’s out of character’. Maybe it’s not. It could just be another angle, or it might be that the pressures above or below have changed his shape. You see it in war a lot - a coward turning a hero and a brave man crashing in flames.”

“A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. ”

“The only caresses it had ever received were the caresses of the whip-lash and of harsh and menacing throat-sounds that threatened the whip-lash. ”

“And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers – shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle – to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.”

“The Earth received the wild beasts, and the yielding air the birds. But an animated being, more holy than these, more fitted to receive higher faculties, and which could rule over the rest, was still wanting. Then Man was formed.”

“Yea, for these laws were not ordained of Zeus, And she who sits enthroned with gods below, Justice, enacted not these human laws. Nor did I deem that thou, a mortal man, Could’st by a breath annul and override The immutable unwritten laws of Heaven.”

“Depart from my temple, and cover your heads, and loosen the garments girt around you, and throw behind your backs the bones of your great mother.”

“Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.”

“The Three Things Every Man Needs: Support, Loyalty, and the Cookie.”

“The bodies of irrational animals are bent toward the ground, whereas man was made to walk erect with his eyes on heaven, as though to remind him to keep his thoughts on things above.”

“In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.”

“We need to talk. For a man, few words are as menacing as those four — especially when a woman is the one saying them and he’s on the receiving end. Those four words can mean only two things to men: either we did something wrong or, worse, you really literally just want to talk.”

“Reason is man’s faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man’s ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. ”

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

“It is about the greatness of God, not the significance of man. God made man small and the universe big to say something about himself.”

“O my body, make of me always a man who questions!”

“No one cares about the man in the box, the man who disappears.”

“Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.”

“Look at all the things that can go wrong for men. There’s the nothing-happening-at-all problem, the too-much-happening-too-soon problem, the dismal-droop-after-a-promising-beginning problem; there’s the size-doesn’t-matter-except-in-my-case problem, the failing-to-deliver-the-goods problem…and what do women have to worry about? A handful of cellulite? Join the club. A spot of I-wonder-how-I-rank? ”

“Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won.”

“It was astonishing that a man of his intellect could stoop so low as he did—but that was too harsh a phrase—could depend so much as he did upon people’s praise.”

“McHarg, it is true, was a great man, a man famous throughout the world, a man who had now attained the highest pinnacle of success to which a writer could aspire. But on just this account his disillusionment and disappointment must have been so much the greater and the more crushing.”

“Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing.”

“An ugly man, with a face sharp like a weasel and a habit of running a flickering tongue over his lips before he speaks. But most ugly of all are his eyes: blue, bright blue. When people see them, they flinch. Such things are freakish. He is lucky he was not killed at birth.”

“This was a man who moved like the gods were watching: every gesture he made was upright and correct. There was no one else it could be but Hector”

“But, I am, after all, a man. And all the philosophic rationalizations I can conjure up do not keep me from wanting you, every day, every moment, the merciless wail of time, of time I can never spend with you, deep within my head. I love you, profoundly and completely. And I always will. The last cowboy, Robert.”

“A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.”

“There is no creature on earth half so terrifying as a truly just man.”

“I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. ”

“One night as I was passing a tavern I saw through a lighted window some gentlemen fighting with billiard cues, and saw one of them thrown out of the window. At other times I should have felt very much disgusted, but I was in such a mood at the time, that I actually envied the gentleman thrown out of the window – and I envied him so much that I even went into the tavern and into the billiard-room. ‘Perhaps,’ I thought, ‘I’ll have a fight, too, and they’ll throw me out of the window.’ ”

“The point is precisely this, that for centuries man has been raised above the animals and borne aloft not by the rod, but by music: the irresistibility of the unarmed truth, the attraction of its example.”

“A true artist is an ugly man.”

“I’m breathing . . . are you breathing too? It’s nice, isn’t it?”

“A man should go where he won’t be tempted.”

“Any man who makes you feel as if you have to change who you are, as a person, to be with him, is a man that will leave you as soon as he meets the woman he’s trying to make you out to be.”

“The right man for you won’t see proving his love for you as a burden. For him ... it’s an honor.”

“When a man complains of your standards being too high, it is usually because he’s used to dealing with women who have none.”

“The wrong man will always make excuses. The right man will make plans, commit, and follow through.”

″ A man that can’t answer your questions when you ask, without getting defensive, is often a man who is keeping more than just the answer from you.”

″ You could be doing everything right; working, cooking, cleaning, great sex...everything. But if it’s for the wrong man, that still won’t be enough to keep him.”

“There is absolutely nothing to take the place of a good man.”

“The most important impression a man can make on you is not the first impression, but rather a lasting impression which comes from consistency over time.”

“Every man has his price!”

“To frighten a man there must be something in the cupboard, must there not?”

“I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.”

“I realize that some people will not believe that a child of little more than ten years is capable of having such feelings. My story is not intended for them. I am telling it to those who have a better knowledge of man.”

“A man wears his pants around his waist.”

You weren’t a decent man and you didn’t do your best.

“I would rather have a man chasing Jesus than a house full of stuff.”

“A man can’t go along indefinitely carrying around in his pocket a key that doesn’t fit anything.”

“I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.”

“This should be agony. I should be a mass of aching muscle--broken, spent, unable to move. And, were I an older man, I surely would... But I am a man of thirty--of twenty again. The rain on my chest is a baptism--I’m born again.”

“A man is but a product of his thoughts. What he thinks he becomes.”

“And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant.”

“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. —Henri Bergson”

“In this world, a man, himself, is nothing. And there ain’t no world but this one.”

“He was just a man doing a job. A job whose primary attribute was self-restraint and self-composure, not for his own sake, but for those whom he led by his example.”

“But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.”

“The nature of man is a dual nature. He must be both an individualist and a collectivist.”

″‘Should you at any time come across a man with a limp,’ he added, ‘be wary of him. He works for Giles’s father. he’s clever and resourceful, but more important, he has no allegiance to anyone except his paymaster.‘”

“My mom told me that I should trust the man who could see the sorrow behind my smile, the love behind my anger, and the reasons behind my silence.”

“Impulsively, Wilson drew aside the curtain. He did not know, immediately, if he would survive. [...] Imprisoned in this swollen mass, his heart pulsed strickenly, threatening to burst its case as Wilson sat, paralyzed. Only inches away, separated from him by the thickness of a piece of glass, the man was staring at him.”

“One day George saw a man. He had on a large yellow straw hat. The man saw George too. ‘What a nice little monkey,’ he thought. ‘I would like to take him home with me.’ ”

“He looked down and saw his friend, the man with the big yellow hat! George was very happy. The man was happy too.”

“And then George and the man climbed into the car and at last, away they went to the ZOO! What a nice place for George to live!”

“Man might carve his mark on the earth, but unless he’s vigilant, Nature will take it all back.”

“The man took his rocket to the top of a heap and set off for the star.”

“He’s a man of few words, and he doesn’t know what either of them means,” people said, but not when he was within hearing.”

“So if you’re the ‘wrong kind of woman,’ then I’m the wrong kind of man.”

“I love mankind, he said, “but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”

“The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular.”

″‘I decided I was gon’ be the kind of father she deserved,’ he says. ‘I had to man up. That’s what you gotta do, Mav. Man up.‘”

Duct tape will not make an honest man out of you.

“I want a man willing to hike mountains for me, or I don’t want a man at all.”

“What one man can do, another man can do.”

“For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. The last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.”

“This year, though, it was different; it wasn’t just another start in a new class, but a first start with a man teacher.”

“After traveling for what seemed to be a great distance, Manyara came to a small clearing. There, silhouetted against the moonlight, was an old woman seated on a large stone. The old woman spoke. ‘I will give you some advice, Manyara. Soon after you pass the place where two paths cross, you will see a grove of trees. They will laugh at you. You must not laugh in return. Later, you will meet a man with his head under his arm. You must be polite to him.’ ”

“If a man should fall so much in love with you that you were dearer to him than his mother and father… and he let a priest take his right hand and put it in yours, while he promised to be eternally true to you, then his soul would flow into your body and you would be able to partake of human happiness. He can give you a soul and yet keep his own”

“This is the cock that crowed in the morn, that waked the priest all shaven and shorn, that married the man all tattered and torn, that kissed the maiden all forlorn”

“This is the farmer sowing his corn, that kept the cock that crowed in the morn, that waked the priest all shaven and shorn, that married the man all tattered and torn”

“This is the man all tattered and torn, that kissed the maiden all forlorn, that milked the cow with the crumpled horn, that tossed the dog, that worried the cat, that chased the rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house that Jack built”

“This is the priest all shaven and shorn, that married the man all tattered and torn, that kissed the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn”

“I thought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce. A tiny bit of a man pretending he was the whole.”

″‘I don’t want to be a man,’ said Jace. ‘I want to be an angst-ridden teenager who can’t confront his own inner demons and takes it out verbally on other people instead.‘”

“It was such happiness to her all the hot, long days that followed; to a girl just entering life there can be no purer, deeper feeling of pleasure than that brought by the knowledge that she is influencing for good some man or woman older than herself, more sin-worn and earth-wearied.”

“This Little House shall never be sold for gold or silver and she will live to see our great-great-grandchildren’s great-great-grandchildren living in her.”

“The man recovered his breath and went to get his mule. He tied the animal to a tree and walked over to the motionless robber, still lying in the road. Angrily he kicked the body.”

“A man called Mr Jones and his wife lived near the sea. One stormy night Mr Jones was in his garden when he saw the holly tree by his gate begin to toss and shake. A voice cried, ‘Help me! I’m stuck in the tree! Help me, or the storm will go on all night.”

Looking Forward When I am grown to man’s estate I shall be very proud and great, And tell the other girls and boys Not to meddle with my toys.

“Windy Nights Whenever the moon and stars are set, Whenever the wind is high, All night long in the dark and wet, A man goes riding by, Late in the night when the fires are out, Why does he gallop and gallop about? Whenever the trees are crying aloud, And ships are tossed at sea, By, on the highway, low and loud, By at the gallop goes he, By at the gallop he goes, and then By he comes back at the gallop again.”

“Now Angelica little knew that the ring which Giglio had given her was a fairy ring: if a man wore it, it made all the women in love with him; if a woman, all the gentlemen.”

″‘You should always trust a man,’ observed Sapt, fitting the key into the lock- ‘just as far as you must.‘”

“We’ll have to hit the road, for when a man undertakes to do his own business, it is not likely that he will be disappointed.”

One of his sentences, written two months after his last interview with Mrs Sinico, read: Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.

In a little time thou wilt be a man.”

“And what is a man that he should not run with his brothers?” said Mowgli.

“That is a man. That is all a man,”

“A man! A man! What has a man to do with us? Let him go to his own place.”

“This is a poor reward for following thee twenty miles. Thou smellest of wood smoke and cattle—altogether like a man already.”

“I am an old man. I did not know that thou wast anything more than a herdsboy. May I rise up and go away, or will thy servant tear me to pieces?”

A normal man, it is true, hardly exists. Among dozens—perhaps hundreds of thousands—hardly one is to be met with.”

“The first category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future.”

He is the most depraved, and abjectly vicious specimen of that class of men.