Quotes on Men

Surely a man has come to himself only when he has found the best that is in him, and has satisfied his heart with the highest achievement he is fit for.

Believe things, rather than man.

He who is surety is never sure himself. Take advice, and never be security for more than you are quite willing to lose. Remember the word of the wise man: He that is surety for a stranger shall smart for it; and he that hateth suretyship is sure.

People have pointed out evidences of personal feeling in my notices as if they were accusing me of a misdemeanor, not knowing that criticism written without personal feeling is not worth reading. It is the capacity for making good or bad art a personal matter that makes a man a critic.

Fate gave to man the courage of endurance.

Every man is of importance to himself.

Man is a wonder to himself; he can neither govern nor know himself.

An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches with spire steeples which point as with a silent finger to the sky and stars.

As there are misanthropists or haters of men, so also are there misologists, or haters of ideas.

It is a juvenile notion that a society needs a lofty purpose and a shining vision to achieve much. Both in the market place and on the battlefield men who set their hearts on toys have often displayed unequal initiative and drive. And one must be ignorant of the creative process to look for a close correspondence between motive and achievement in the world of thought and imagination.

Whatever the mind of man creates, should be controlled by man's character.

My experience has taught me that a man who has no vices has damned few virtues.

Riches are a cause of evil, not because, of themselves, they do any evil, but because they goad men on to evil.

The prouder a man is, the more he thinks he deserves, and the more he thinks he deserves, the less he really does deserve.

Where a man does his best with only moderate powers, he will have the advantage over negligent superiority.

Man alone of all the creatures of earth can change his own pattern. Man alone is the architect of his own destiny.

Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.

It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know - and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything.

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.

Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call today his own: he who, secure within, can say, tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today. Be fair or foul or rain or shine, the joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine. Not Heaven itself upon the past has power, but what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.