quotations about men
Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
letter, 1839
Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. You have to teach them how to be there for you, and part of me feels tender toward them and gentle, and part of me is so afraid of them, afraid of any more violation.
ANNE LAMOTT
Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
Men are like performing dogs, they love attention. The second they get less than they think they're entitled to at home, they're off in search of someone else, wagging their tail.
MARSHA
"Why do men cheat?", GQ, July 12, 2017
If the heart of man is deprest with cares,
The mist is dispell'd when a woman appears.
JOHN GAY
The Beggar's Opera
Man is a living lie--a bitter jest
Upon himself--a conscious grain of sand
Lost in a desert of unconsciousness.
HENRY VAN DYKE
"The Grand Canyon"
But man he made of angel form erect,
To hold communion with the heavens above,
And on his soul impressed his image fair,
His own similitude of holiness,
Of virtue, truth, and love; with reason high
To balance right and wrong, and conscience quick
To choose or to reject; with knowledge great,
Prudence and wisdom, vigilance and strength,
To guard all force or guile; and last of all,
The highest gift of God's abundant grace,
With perfect, free, unbias'd will. Thus man
Was made upright, immortal made, and crown'd
The king of all.
ROBERT POLLOK
The Course of Time
Men would make love with any number of women ... even total strangers, while females were selective. They were catering to the demands of one small egg. While males had millions of frantic sperms screaming: "Let us out, let us out!"
WOODY ALLEN
Husbands and Wives
Men only disagree
Of Creatures rational, though under hope
Of heavenly Grace; and God proclaiming peace,
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife
Among themselves, and levy cruel wars,
Wasting the Earth, each other to destroy:
As if (which might induce us to accord)
Man had not hellish foes enough besides,
That day and night for his destruction wait.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
I want men to admire me, but that's a trick you learn at school--a movement of the eyes, a tone of voice, a touch of the hand on the shoulder or the head. If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there's something to admire.
GRAHAM GREENE
The End of the Affair
They're all alike ... at first they behave very well, they're obedient and prompt and they don't seem capable of killing a fly, but as soon as their beards appear they go to ruin.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
One Hundred Years of Solitude
They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer--and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
AYN RAND
The Virtue of Selfishness
There are a lot of women who live with pot-bellied pigs.
CATHERINE ZETA JONES
attributed, Tweet This Book: The 1,400 Greatest Quotes of All Time in 140 Characters or Less
Men are like a deck of cards. You'll find the occasional king, but most are jacks.
LAURA SWENSON
attributed, Tweet This Book: The 1,400 Greatest Quotes of All Time in 140 Characters or Less
Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.
ANDRE MALRAUX
attributed, The Executive's Book of Quotations
A strong man doesn't have to be dominant toward a woman. He doesn't match his strength against a woman weak with love for him. He matches it against the world.
MARILYN MONROE
My Story
Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain.
EDWARD ABBEY
"The Crooked Wood", The Journey Home
Men are like pampered children, that's why women have to be more understanding and responsive to their duties at home.
SHUH
"10 Questions You Always Wanted to Ask a Second Wife", Vice, December 7, 2017
Have you never seen a strange unconnected deformed representation of a figure, which seen in another point of view, became proportioned and agreeable? It is the picture of man.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
Might not most men be as well named boys grown old.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections