man quotes

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.

I think that man has a fundamental obligation to extract from himself and from the earth all that it can give; and this obligation is all the more imperative that we are absolutely ignorant of what limits – they may still be very distant – God has imposed on our natural understanding and power.

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.

A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a homogeneous representation of the universe. We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.

A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.

You can always tell when a man’s well informed. His views are pretty much like your own.

The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.

Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character.

Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.

I like a man who grins when he fights.

Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife.

Man can be understood only by ascending from physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. In other words, he is first of all a cosmic problem.

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.

No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else.

One aged man – one man – can’t fill a house.

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.

Man, all lives matter.

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.

Temptation is a woman’s weapon and man’s excuse.

A clever man commits no minor blunders.

It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him.

For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.

A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

The sky is the part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of pleasing man.

If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. He has a heart capable of mirth, and naturally disposed to it.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

This man used to go to school with his dog. Then they were separated. His dog graduated!

A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

I would like to express the thoughts of a man who, having finally penetrated the partitions and ceilings of little countries, little coteries, little sects, rises above all these categories and finds himself a child and citizen of the Earth.

Man’s greatness lies in his power of thought.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

The little man is still a man.

A man cannot become an atheist merely by wishing it.

Wine gives a man nothing… it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

A man who has no office to go, to I don’t care who he is, is a trial of which you can have no conception.

There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge.

Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.

Desire is the essence of a man.

The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.