quotations about men
Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Handmaid's Tale
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
Aggression is part of the masculine design, we are hardwired for it.... Little girls do not invent games where large numbers of people die, where bloodshed is a prerequisite for having fun. Hockey, for example, was not a feminine creation. Nor was boxing. A boy wants to attack something -- and so does a man, even if it's only a little white ball on a tee.
JOHN ELDREDGE
Wild at Heart
Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
letter, 1839
Every man carries a menagerie in himself; and, by stirring him up all around, you will find every sort of animal represented there.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
Good men are like good hairdressers. Hard as hell to find.
ZANE
Shame on It All
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
Men and barbed wire have their good points.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Men are cowards before women until they become tyrants.
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
The Small House at Allington
If the heart of man is deprest with cares,
The mist is dispell'd when a woman appears.
JOHN GAY
The Beggar's Opera
I have no idea why it apparently takes three grown men to cook some hamburgers. One to cook, one to kibbitz, and one to insult the other two.
NORA ROBERTS
The Pagan Stone
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
Males. You have to lead them to the water and then show them how to slurp it.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Finisher
The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!
JANE AUSTEN
Sense and Sensibility
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindu, his best friends hear no more of him.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
letter to Maria Gisborne
Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer--and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
AYN RAND
The Virtue of Selfishness
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
But man he made of angel form erect,
To hold communion with the heavens above,
And on his soul impressed his image fair,
His own similitude of holiness,
Of virtue, truth, and love; with reason high
To balance right and wrong, and conscience quick
To choose or to reject; with knowledge great,
Prudence and wisdom, vigilance and strength,
To guard all force or guile; and last of all,
The highest gift of God's abundant grace,
With perfect, free, unbias'd will. Thus man
Was made upright, immortal made, and crown'd
The king of all.
ROBERT POLLOK
The Course of Time