quotations about men
Men are not taught how to be lovers, to be expressive, to share, to show affection, and to become companions. As do all human beings, men have the capacity to love, but this capacity is not developed.... Because men are taught how to be workers and to be bosses, their gender identities do not respect their feminine sides.
IAN M. HARRIS
Messages Men Hear: Constructing Masculinities
It is far easier to know men than to know man.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
I sometimes think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated His ability.
OSCAR WILDE
The Wit of Oscar Wilde
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful, is man!...
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
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
Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
[Man] attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Second Sex
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
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
Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Notebooks
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
Men deal with life as children with their play,
Who first misuse, then cast their toys away.
WILLIAM COWPER
Hope
Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God.
SIGMUND FREUD
Civilization and Its Discontents
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"
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
North & South
Man, who wert once a despot and a slave,
A dupe and a deceiver! a decay,
A traveler from the cradle to the grave
Through the dim night of this immortal day.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Prometheus Unbound
God would never have made Man to that height and excellence of nature if he had deigned him only to worldly drudgery and employment here below.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
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
There is a great deal of human nature in man.
CHARLES KINGSLEY
At Last