quotations about men
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
JOHN DONNE
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
Some of the wildest men make the best pets.
MAE WEST
Belle of the Nineties
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
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"
This is man: a writer of books, a putter-down of words, a painter of pictures, a maker of ten thousand philosophies. He grows passionate over ideas, he hurls scorn and mockery at another's work, he finds the one way, the true way, for himself, and calls all others false--yet in the billion books upon the shelves there is not one that can tell him how to draw a single fleeting breath in peace and comfort. He makes histories of the universe, he directs the destiny of the nations, but he does not know his own history, and he cannot direct his own destiny with dignity or wisdom for ten consecutive minutes.
THOMAS WOLFE
You Can't Go Home Again
Welcome to the mystery that is men. I think it goes something like, they grow body hair, they lose all ability to tell you what they really want.
BUFFY SUMMERS
"Phases", Buffy the Vampire Slayer
What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.
MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain on Common Sense
Where man had been, in every place he left, garbage remained. Even in his pursuit of the ultimate truth and quest for his God, he produced garbage. By his garbage, which lay stratum upon stratum, he could always -- one had only to dig -- be known. For more long-lived than man is his refuse. Garbage alone lives after him.
GUNTER GRASS
The Rat
Wherever comes man comes tragedy and comedy also.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
You men never can understand ... that, however fond a woman may be of a man, there are times when he palls upon her. You don't know how I long to be able sometimes to put on my bonnet and go out, with nobody to ask me where I am going, why I am going, how long I am going to be, and when I shall be back. You don't know how I sometimes long to order a dinner that I should like, and that the children would like, but at the sight of which you would put on your hat and be off to the Club. You don't know how much I feel inclined sometimes to invite some woman here that I like, and that I know you don't; to go and see the people that I want to see, to go to bed when I am tired, and to get up when I feel I want to get up.
JEROME KLAPKA JEROME
Three Men in a Boat
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
I do like men who come out frankly and own that they are not gods.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Jo's Boys
Man started out on the wrong foot. The misadventure in paradise was the first consequence. The rest had to follow.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
Men are angels born without wings, nothing could be nicer than to be born without wings and to make them grow.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
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 don't settle down because of the right woman. They settle down because they are finally ready for it. Whatever woman they're dating when they get ready is the one they settle down with, not necessarily the best one or the prettiest, just the one who happened to be on hand when the time got to be right.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
A Kiss of Shadows
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
They were dressed in expensive clothes and looking at them one may think that men never lie on top of them in bed, but the assumption was totally wrong. For no matter how highly placed a woman, she's submissive to a man and for some of the women, it maybe some useless men that grunted on top of them.
KUMDONG BINDUL NOSTRA
I Will Never Trust a Man
I draw no petty social lines. A man to me is a man, wherever I find him.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
The Sound and the Fury
Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild.
IMMANUEL KANT
Lectures on Ethics