quotations about men
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever--
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Much Ado About Nothing
Where soil is, men grow,
Whether to weeds or flowers.
JOHN KEATS
Endymion
What a man is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Bell Jar
If I laugh at you, O fellow-men! if I trace with curious interest your labyrinthine self-delusions, note the inconsistencies in your zealous adhesions, and smile at your helpless endeavours in a rashly chosen part, it is not that I feel myself aloof from you: the more intimately I seem to discern your weaknesses, the stronger to me is the proof that I share them. How otherwise could I get the discernment?--for even what we are averse to, what we vow not to entertain, must have shaped or shadowed itself within us as a possibility before we can think of exorcising it. No man can know his brother simply as a spectator. Dear blunderers, I am one of you.
GEORGE ELIOT
Theophrastus Such
Men are different. Yet they are people, too. Women's physical and emotional characteristics and sufferings have been studied, written about and mulled over--and over. By contrast, the problems particularly affecting men are neglected--even by themselves.
JOAN GOMEZ
Psychological and Psychiatric Problems in Men
Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!
GEORGE CHAPMAN
To the Countess of Cumberland
Again Creb grunted. It was the usual noncommittal comment used by men when responding to a woman. It carried only enough meaning to indicate the woman had been understood, without acknowledging too much significance in what she said.
JEAN M. AUEL
The Clan of the Cave Bear
Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.
GASTON BACHÉLARD
The Psychoanalysis of Fire
Some men are born husbands; they have a passion for domesticity, for a fireside, for a home. Yet, curiously, these men very rarely stay at home. Apparently what they want is to have a place to get away from.
ADA LEVERSON
Love at Second Sight
Some men are like a church-organ--you can play on them for a lifetime and always find new harmonies; others are like a music-box--they have four or five thin jingles.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
All the wide world is but the husbandry of God for the development of the one fruit--man.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
Men simply weren't worth the effort. They expected a great deal of support, both physical and emotional, and seemed to think that a few moments a week of sexual gratification should suffice to keep a woman happy.
JOHN SAUL
Midnight Voices
Man becomes virtually an automaton in the loss of his individuality and responsibility. He is the harp of a thousand strings played upon by a divine hand, but not a man!
JOHN GRIER HIBBEN
The Problems of Philosophy
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
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
Men do communicate, often very directly, but women sometimes cannot accept how simple what we have to say is. We seldom play games--we aren't that sophisticated.
CHRIS ABANI
"What Men Aren't Telling Us", O Magazine, July 2008
What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just the same shall be man to the Übermensch: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
A man is nothing but breath and shadow.
SOPHOCLES
fragment, Ajax the Locrian
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.
ALFRED TENNYSON
The Vision of Sin