quotations about men
Men simply weren't worth the effort. They expected a great deal of support, both physical and emotional, and seemed to think that a few moments a week of sexual gratification should suffice to keep a woman happy.
JOHN SAUL
Midnight Voices
No one has any right to be angry with me, if I think fit to enumerate man among the quadrapeds. Man is neither a stone nor a plant, but an animal, for such is his way of living and moving; nor is he a worm, for then he would have only one foot; nor an insect, for then he would have antennae; nor a fish, for he has no fins; nor a bird, for he has no wings. Therefore, he is a quadraped, had a mouth like that of other quadrapeds, and finally four feet, on two of which he goes, and uses the other two for prehensive purposes.
CARL LINNAEUS
Fauna Suecica
Men are like your smart phone. Pick up your phone and get into Settings. I can bet that you only know the functionality of that smartphone up to 50 per cent. There are certain functions in that phone you have never tried and you do not know what they are used for. You have never ventured beyond the normal stuff that an ordinary hand set does. Yet, that is your phone. That is exactly the same scenario. That man in your house, plans, thoughts or heart, he remains your man, but I can assure you do not know him 100 per cent.
TONY MASIKONDE
"Ladies, here's why men aren't an open book", The Standard, August 14, 2017
Men are foolish to expect us to revere them, when, in the end, they amount to almost nothing.
PAULINE RÉAGE
introduction, The Image
I don't know what a man is. Only that every man has his price.
BERTOLD BRECHT
The Exception and the Rule
In the ardor of his enthusiasm, a youth set forth in quest of a man of whom he might take counsel as to his future, but after long search and many disappointments, he came near relinquishing the pursuit as hopeless, when suddenly it occurred to him that one must first be a man to find a man, and profiting by this suggestion, he set himself to the work of becoming himself the man he had been seeking so long and fruitlessly.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Man is said to be a rational creature; but should it not rather be said, that man is a creature capable of being rational, as we say a parrot is a creature capable of speech?
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
Men are always ready to die for us, but not to make our lives worth having. Cheap sentiment and bad logic.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Jo's Boys
The menfolk, they die, all right. And it's us women who walk around, like the Bible says, and mourn. The menfolk, they die, and it's over for them, but we women, we have to keep on living and try to forget what they done to us.
JAMES BALDWIN
Go Tell It on the Mountain
We are socialized into thinking that men are like wine -- they get better with time. Women are like cheese -- they get blue veins and start to stink.
MONA CHALABI
"Why I refuse to date an older man", The Straits Times, October 22, 2017
Any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very much better than any other live or dead man.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
The Sound and the Fury
Man becomes virtually an automaton in the loss of his individuality and responsibility. He is the harp of a thousand strings played upon by a divine hand, but not a man!
JOHN GRIER HIBBEN
The Problems of Philosophy
Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite of him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Sartor Resartus
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
What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.
MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain on Common Sense
A man was like a child with his appetites. A woman had to yield him what he wanted, or like a child he would probably turn nasty and flounce away and spoil what was a very pleasant connection.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Men might be better if we better deemed
Of them. The worst way to improve the world
Is to condemn it.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
They do not believe there can be tears between men. They think we are only playing a game and that we do it to shock them.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
The right boys i always toss and the wrong ones i keep on top of me like paperweights.
DANIEL HANDLER
Adverbs
It takes a man to know men and all the wickedness mixed up in their flesh and blood.
AMELIA E. BARR
A Singer from the Sea