quotations about men
No one has any right to be angry with me, if I think fit to enumerate man among the quadrapeds. Man is neither a stone nor a plant, but an animal, for such is his way of living and moving; nor is he a worm, for then he would have only one foot; nor an insect, for then he would have antennae; nor a fish, for he has no fins; nor a bird, for he has no wings. Therefore, he is a quadraped, had a mouth like that of other quadrapeds, and finally four feet, on two of which he goes, and uses the other two for prehensive purposes.
CARL LINNAEUS
Fauna Suecica
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
Man would not be the finest creature in the world if he were not too fine for it.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Man started out on the wrong foot. The misadventure in paradise was the first consequence. The rest had to follow.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.
GEORGE CARLIN
When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?
Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
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
Women cry. Men laugh. Whiners moan. Men laugh. Wimps complain. Men laulgh.
LISA GARDNER
The Perfect Husband
We are socialized into thinking that men are like wine -- they get better with time. Women are like cheese -- they get blue veins and start to stink.
MONA CHALABI
"Why I refuse to date an older man", The Straits Times, October 22, 2017
The world in the evening seems fraught with the absence of promise, if you are a married man. There is nothing to do but go home and drink your nine drinks and forget about it.
DONALD BARTHELME
"Critique de la Vie Quotidienne"
The hardest man ... is but a shell.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Man seems to be made neither to live alone nor with others.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
It's hard to resist a bad boy who's a good man.
NORA ROBERTS
Happy Ever After
Do you know how hard it is to find a decent man in this town? Most of them think monogamy is some kind of wood.
PEGGY BRANDT (AMY YASBECK)
The Mask
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
A man ought to carry himself in the world as an orange tree would if it could walk up and down in the garden--swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up to the air.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
A man is a man to the extent that he is a superman. A man should be defined by the sum of those tendencies which impel him to surpass the human condition.
GASTON BACHELARD
introduction, Water and Dreams
This is man: a writer of books, a putter-down of words, a painter of pictures, a maker of ten thousand philosophies. He grows passionate over ideas, he hurls scorn and mockery at another's work, he finds the one way, the true way, for himself, and calls all others false--yet in the billion books upon the shelves there is not one that can tell him how to draw a single fleeting breath in peace and comfort. He makes histories of the universe, he directs the destiny of the nations, but he does not know his own history, and he cannot direct his own destiny with dignity or wisdom for ten consecutive minutes.
THOMAS WOLFE
You Can't Go Home Again
I do like men who come out frankly and own that they are not gods.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Jo's Boys
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