quotations about men
Might not most men be as well named boys grown old.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
But that is how men are! Ungrateful and never satisfied. When you don't have them they hate you because you won't; and when you do have them they hate you again, for some other reason. Or for no reason at all, except that they are discontented children, and can't be satisfied whatever they get, let a woman do what she may.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
All men seemed to be self-serving, selfish, insensitive pigs, just waiting for an opportunity to act like greater self-serving, selfish, insensitive pigs.
DAN SIMMONS
Ilium
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
After thousands of centuries of vain efforts to come back to itself, Divinity, lost and scattered in the matter which it animates and sets in motion, finds a point of support, a sort of focus for self-concentration. This focus is man, his immortal soul singularly imprisoned in a mortal body. But each man considered individually is infinitely too limited, too small, to enclose the divine immensity; it can contain only a very small particle, immortal like the whole, but infinitely smaller than the whole. It follows that the divine being, the absolutely immaterial being, mind, is divisible like matter. Another mystery whose solution must be left to faith.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
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
[Man] attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Second Sex
The longer I live, the more it grieves me to see man, who occupies his supreme place for the very purpose of imposing his will upon nature, and freeing himself and his from an outrageous necessity--to see him taken up with some false notion, and doing just the opposite of what he wants to do; and then, because the whole bent of his mind is spoilt, bungling miserably over everything.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
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"
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
Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Notebooks
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
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, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.
JOHN STEINBECK
The Grapes of Wrath
Men read maps better than women because only men can understand the concept of an inch equaling a hundred miles.
ROSEANNE BARR
attributed, Soaring Solo
The sexiest thing about men is how they are with kids... If they are great with kids they are real men ... selfless, powerful, comforting ... Too bad so many men suck!
PAMELA ANDERSON
Sometimes a woman needs a man for company, no matter how useless he is.
LISA KLEYPAS
Sugar Daddy
Living with boys has changed the way I see men. I used to love them in spite of themselves. I've come to love them because of themselves. Collectively, they can be assholes. But so can women, given the same chance. Anyone who thinks estrogen is the antidote for brutality has neither paid much attention to history nor taken an eighth grade girls' gym class. Men may have sins against female kind to atone for, but being born male is not one of them.
KYRAN PITTMAN
Planting Dandelions
Men peak at age nineteen and go downhill.
GARRISON KEILLOR
Leaving Home
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