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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
Few women think a man complete without vice.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM, The Maxims of Marmaduke
Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Notebooks
If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, Religion and Science
Man would not be the finest creature in the world if he were not too fine for it.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Physically, man is but an atom in space, and a pulsation in time. Spiritually, the entire outward universe receives significance from him, and the scope of his existence stretches beyond the stars.
E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words
Man is said to be a rational creature; but should it not rather be said, that man is a creature capable of being rational, as we say a parrot is a creature capable of speech?
FULKE GREVILLE, Maxims, Characters and Reflections
All the wide world is but the husbandry of God for the development of the one fruit--man.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Alas! What is man? Whether he be deprived of that light which is from on high, of whether he discard it, a frail and trembling creature; standing on time, that bleak and narrow isthmus between two eternities, he sees nothing but impenetrable darkness on the one hand, and doubt, distrust, and conjecture, still more perplexing, on the other. Most gladly would he take an observation, as to whence he has come, or whither he is going; alas, he has not the means: his telescope is too dim, his compass too wavering, his plummet too short.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindu, his best friends hear no more of him.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, letter to Maria Gisborne
Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.
GASTON BACHÉLARD, The Psychoanalysis of Fire
- No man ever reaches manhood
- till a woman's tenderness
- Is a part of his possession.
EDWIN LEIBFREED, "The Conquerors"
Man, when viewed in separation from his Maker and his end, can be as little understood and portrayed, as a plant torn from the soil in which it grew, and cut off from communication with the clouds and sun.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING, Thoughts
We are not men, but promises of men.
Many are the marvels of God's Creation, but none so marvelous as man. Or so cunning, for good or ill.
S. M. STIRLING, The Sunrise Lands
If I laugh at you, O fellow-men! if I trace with curious interest your labyrinthine self-delusions, note the inconsistencies in your zealous adhesions, and smile at your helpless endeavours in a rashly chosen part, it is not that I feel myself aloof from you: the more intimately I seem to discern your weaknesses, the stronger to me is the proof that I share them. How otherwise could I get the discernment?--for even what we are averse to, what we vow not to entertain, must have shaped or shadowed itself within us as a possibility before we can think of exorcising it. No man can know his brother simply as a spectator. Dear blunderers, I am one of you.
GEORGE ELIOT, Theophrastus Such
Every man carries a menagerie in himself; and, by stirring him up all around, you will find every sort of animal represented there.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Might not most men be as well named boys grown old.
FULKE GREVILLE, Maxims, Characters and Reflections
Man becomes virtually an automaton in the loss of his individuality and responsibility. He is the harp of a thousand strings played upon by a divine hand, but not a man!
JOHN GRIER HIBBEN, The Problems of Philosophy
Women always think you need a man, you need a father, as if they'd be the slightest use. Men are a dead weight, they're clumsy and maladjusted.
YASMINA REZA, The God of Carnage
- Unless above himself he can
- Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!
GEORGE CHAPMAN, To the Countess of Cumberland
Any scheme which makes man the head and centre of all things will fail in its applications.
E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words
Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
There is so much that is deaf and dumb in man, and so much that is paralyzed, so much that is shrunken, that nothing short of a miraculous touch of re-creation can make them at death perfect beings.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Man is improvable.
Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING, Thoughts
The longer I live, the more it grieves me to see man, who occupies his supreme place for the very purpose of imposing his will upon nature, and freeing himself and his from an outrageous necessity--to see him taken up with some false notion, and doing just the opposite of what he wants to do; and then, because the whole bent of his mind is spoilt, bungling miserably over everything.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Some men are like a church-organ--you can play on them for a lifetime and always find new harmonies; others are like a music-box--they have four or five thin jingles.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
Man seems to be made neither to live alone nor with others.
FULKE GREVILLE, Maxims, Characters and Reflections
Men peak at age nineteen and go downhill.
GARRISON KEILLOR, Leaving Home
It must be a very weary day to the youth when he first discovers that, after all, he will only become a man.
ARTHUR HELPS, Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
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