Quotes on Men

I could not become anything; neither good nor bad; neither a scoundrel nor an honest man; neither a hero nor an insect. And now I am eking out my days in my corner, taunting myself with the bitter and entirely useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything, that only a fool can become something.

Man is a goal-seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.

Asking a man if he could be trusted was like asking an unwed girl if she was a virgin. The question mattered, but the asking of it was gross insult.

There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.

Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part.

You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it.

I don't know if there are men on the moon, but if there are they must be using the earth as their lunatic asylum

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Man is perishing. That may be, and if it is nothingness that awaits us let us so act that it will be an unjust fate.

A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.

On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.

When you visualized a man or a woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity . . . that was a quality God's image carried with it . . . when you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.

Why comes temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph?

A man when he is making up to anybody can be cordial and gallant and full of little attentions and altogether charming. But when a man is really in love he can't help looking like a sheep.

The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for to-morrow which can be done to-day.

Every man has within himself the entire human condition

Man is capable of greatness, love, nobility, compassion. Yet never forget that his capacity for evil is infinite. It is a sad truth, boy, that if you sit now and think of the worst tortures that could ever be inflicted on another human being, they will already have been practiced somewhere. If there is one sound that follows the march of humanity, it is the scream.

Fail I alone, in words and deeds? Why, all men strive and who succeeds?

Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's, and not the beast's; God is, they are, Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.

How good is man's life, the mere living! How fit to employ all the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!

What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.