quotations about men
Man is not only the supreme result of evolution thus far, -- he is the final result of evolution; there is nothing beyond him. If one asks, How do we know that there may not be something inconceivable to us beyond? the answer is, We cannot know; but in our attempt to unriddle the enigma of the universe we must think with our faculties and be governed by our limitations, and we can conceive nothing higher than man. We can conceive of man infinitely improved; we can conceive of him cultivated, developed, enlarged, enriched, purified; but of anything essentially higher than man -- no. Nothing can be conceived higher than to think, to will, to love. If we look back along the pages of history, these two truths we have learned from the universe: first, that all its processes have been for the purpose of manifesting One who thinks, who wills, who loves; second, that the purpose in the manifestation of this One is the creation of a race of free moral agents, who can themselves think and will and love. The inorganic world existed before the vegetable, and the vegetable world existed before the animal, and the lower animal existed before man, but man exists for nothing beyond. The very topmost round of the ladder has been reached: to know right from wrong, to do the right and eschew the wrong, to understand invisible distinctions, to perceive the invisible world, to struggle toward something higher and yet higher, and yet always to know, to resolve, to love, -- this is supreme.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
The average age at which a man marries is thirty years; the average age at which his passions, his most violent desires for genesial delight are developed, is twenty years. Now during the ten fairest years of his life, during the green season in which his beauty, his youth and his wit make him more dangerous to husbands than at any other epoch of his life, his finds himself without any means of satisfying legitimately that irresistible craving for love which burns in his whole nature. During this time, representing the sixth part of human life, we are obliged to admit that the sixth part or less of our total male population and the sixth part which is the most vigorous is placed in a position which is perpetually exhausting for them, and dangerous for society.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Of all that Heaven produces and nourishes, there is none so great as man.
CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom of Confucius
Wherever comes man comes tragedy and comedy also.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Man is a living lie--a bitter jest
Upon himself--a conscious grain of sand
Lost in a desert of unconsciousness.
HENRY VAN DYKE
"The Grand Canyon"
Man seems to be made neither to live alone nor with others.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
When my son said, "I can't stop thinking about girls," I said, "That's not gonna stop. Congratulations. You're in the club. From now until the day you die, one way or another you'll be thinking about girls."
PAUL REISER
Good Housekeeping, June 2011
Men are a good deal better collectively than they are individually. Many a man will do that privately which he will denounce in a crowd.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
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"
Men would like monogamy better if it sounded less like monotony.
RITA RUDNER
stand-up routine
Women cry. Men laugh. Whiners moan. Men laugh. Wimps complain. Men laulgh.
LISA GARDNER
The Perfect Husband
I want men to admire me, but that's a trick you learn at school--a movement of the eyes, a tone of voice, a touch of the hand on the shoulder or the head. If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there's something to admire.
GRAHAM GREENE
The End of the Affair
They're all alike ... at first they behave very well, they're obedient and prompt and they don't seem capable of killing a fly, but as soon as their beards appear they go to ruin.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
One Hundred Years of Solitude
You don't fix a man the way you do a fault in a pipe or a leak in a roof. You take him as he is ... or you don't take him at all.
NORA ROBERTS
Tears of the Moon
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man.
JOHN DRYDEN
A Song for St. Cecilia's Day
A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Handmaid's Tale
Men only disagree
Of Creatures rational, though under hope
Of heavenly Grace; and God proclaiming peace,
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife
Among themselves, and levy cruel wars,
Wasting the Earth, each other to destroy:
As if (which might induce us to accord)
Man had not hellish foes enough besides,
That day and night for his destruction wait.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
Men are like chestnuts they sell in the street: they're all hot and they all smell good when you buy them, but when you take them out of the paper cone you realize that most of them are rotten inside.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Prisoner of Heaven
Men are like a deck of cards. You'll find the occasional king, but most are jacks.
LAURA SWENSON
attributed, Tweet This Book: The 1,400 Greatest Quotes of All Time in 140 Characters or Less
Man is but a pebble dropped in a pool. And if man is but a pebble, then all his works can be no more.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Atreides