quotations about men
[Man] attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Second Sex
Men are not taught how to be lovers, to be expressive, to share, to show affection, and to become companions. As do all human beings, men have the capacity to love, but this capacity is not developed.... Because men are taught how to be workers and to be bosses, their gender identities do not respect their feminine sides.
IAN M. HARRIS
Messages Men Hear: Constructing Masculinities
I've never gone anywhere where the men have come up to my infantile expectations. I always have gone through life constantly being surprised by the extreme, marvelous qualities of a small minority of men. But I can't see the rest of them. They seem awful rubbish.
REBECCA WEST
The Paris Review, spring 1981
The Spirit of man is like a kite, which rises by means of those very forces which seem to oppose its rise; the tie that joins it to the earth, the opposing winds of temptation, and the weight of earth-born affections which it carries with it into the sky.
COVENTRY PATMORE
The Rod, the Root, and the Flower
Create that good, solid foundation, and the man who comes into your life can be that delicious icing.
NORA ROBERTS
interview, inReads, October 5, 2011
Most women use more brains picking a horse in the third at Belmont than they do picking a husband.
LAUREN BACALL
How to Marry a Millionaire
Marriage and fatherhood heighten the disillusion that we all think we are born handy. We confidently believe that we can fix things around the house, as if it's part of the collective brain that was further enhanced by eighth-grade shop class.
BOB NEWHART
I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This
Living with boys has changed the way I see men. I used to love them in spite of themselves. I've come to love them because of themselves. Collectively, they can be assholes. But so can women, given the same chance. Anyone who thinks estrogen is the antidote for brutality has neither paid much attention to history nor taken an eighth grade girls' gym class. Men may have sins against female kind to atone for, but being born male is not one of them.
KYRAN PITTMAN
Planting Dandelions
Man makes one journey all his living days,
Down through the realms of music and of art;
Down through the halls of fame and glorious praise;
Down through the tears and triumphs of the heart
To some sweet woman waiting some place there.
For her he builds his cities and makes war,
Seeks gold and glorious wealth to store.
EDWIN CURRAN
"The Eternal Quest"
Testosterone is a great equalizer, it turns all men into morons.
RUPERT GILES
"The Pack", Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Men peak at age nineteen and go downhill.
GARRISON KEILLOR
Leaving Home
Sometimes a woman needs a man for company, no matter how useless he is.
LISA KLEYPAS
Sugar Daddy
Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.
JOHN STEINBECK
The Grapes of Wrath
Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God.
SIGMUND FREUD
Civilization and Its Discontents
Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Notebooks
Man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Notes on Virginia
He who is infatuated with Man leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.
MAX STIRNER
The Ego and Its Own
The sexiest thing about men is how they are with kids... If they are great with kids they are real men ... selfless, powerful, comforting ... Too bad so many men suck!
PAMELA ANDERSON
God would never have made Man to that height and excellence of nature if he had deigned him only to worldly drudgery and employment here below.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Man, who wert once a despot and a slave,
A dupe and a deceiver! a decay,
A traveler from the cradle to the grave
Through the dim night of this immortal day.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Prometheus Unbound