quotations about men
A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Ethical Religion
Men never try to pass themselves off for that which they are not, unless they expect to accomplish something desirable thereby.
J. B. RIPLEY
Plain Words to Young Men
I sometimes think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated His ability.
OSCAR WILDE
The Wit of Oscar Wilde
Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Notebooks
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
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
[Man] attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Second Sex
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful, is man!...
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
It is far easier to know men than to know man.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
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 peak at age nineteen and go downhill.
GARRISON KEILLOR
Leaving Home
Sometimes a woman needs a man for company, no matter how useless he is.
LISA KLEYPAS
Sugar Daddy
Men deal with life as children with their play,
Who first misuse, then cast their toys away.
WILLIAM COWPER
Hope
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 has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God.
SIGMUND FREUD
Civilization and Its Discontents
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
Women always think you need a man, you need a father, as if they'd be the slightest use. Men are a dead weight, they're clumsy and maladjusted.
YASMINA REZA
The God of Carnage
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
North & South
He who is infatuated with Man leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.
MAX STIRNER
The Ego and Its Own
Men who don't like girls with brains don't like girls.
MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
The Atlantic, 1965