MAN

Related Subjects: Evolution, Sexes, Woman

1. The human, to use a euphuism, race has gone crazy. Millions of its members are engaged now in hating other millions and in trying to kill them. Now the human race has its good points; among its members, active, honorary, and life, we count some of our best friends. But if these things against humanity continue, we warn the House Committee that we shall send in our resignation, or at least, ask to be transferred to non-resident membership.—F. P. A., The Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys
   

2. Man is the merriest species of the creation; all above or below him are serious.—ADDISON
   

3. Man is an animal and until his immediate material and economic needs are satisfied, he cannot develop further.—W. H. AUDEN, I Believe
   

4. Men are born neither free nor good.—W. H. AUDEN, I Believe
   

5. Man is a military animal,
   Glories in gunpowder, and loves parades.—PHILIP J. BAILEY, Festus
   

6. Then, my good girls, be more than women wise;
   At least be more than I was; and be sure
   You credit any thing the light gives life to,
   Before a man.—BEAUMONT & FLETCHER, The Maid's Tragedy
   

7. Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.—Bible, Job 14:1
   

8. What is man, that thou art mindful of him?—Bible, Psalms 8:4
   

9. Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.—Bible, Psalms 8:5
   

10. As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.—Bible, Psalms 13:15
    

11. I am fearfully and wonderfully made.—Bible, Psalms, 139:14
    

12. Of all the creatures that creep, swim, or fly,
    Peopling the earth, the waters, and the sky,
    From Rome to Iceland, Paris to Japan,
    I really think the greatest fool is man.—BOILEAU, Satires
    

13. Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave.—SIR THOMAS BROWNE, Urn-Burial
    

14. Man has staggered and bled and reeled from hammer blows, but he hasn't been counted out as yet. Until the final ten has been tolled who dares to say that he is puny?—HEYWOOD BROUN, In the Image of God
    

15. Here the free spirit of mankind, at length,
    Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place
    A limit to the giant's unchained strength,
    Or curb his swiftness in the forward race?—BRYANT, The Ages
    

16. O poor mortals, how ye make this earth bitter for each other.—CARLYLE, The French Revolution
    

17. What is Man? A foolish baby,
    Vainly strives, and fights, and frets.
    Demanding all, deserving nothing,
    One small grave is what he gets.—CARLYLE, Qui Bono
    

18. Every man is as Heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote
    

19. I thank God that my lot is bound up with that of the human race.—W. E. CHANNING
    

20. Unless above himself he can
    Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!—SAMUEL DANIEL, To the Countess of Cumberland
    

21. I know my life's a pain, and but a span;
    I know my sense is mock'd in ev'ry thing:
    And to conclude, I know myself a man,
    Which is a proud, and yet a wretched thing.—SIR JOHN DAVIES, The Vanity of Human Learning
    

22. Human beings themselves are wild animals when they are born—more helpless than other species, but by no means more tame. If they seem tamer it is only because they are brought up in that way. Don't you realize if you can tame boys you can tame almost anything? Wild horses from the range can be tamed quickly in a few weeks, but it takes years of patience and effort to tame young human beings.—CLARENCE DAY, Animals in a Machine Age
    

23. Plato having defined man to be a two-legged animal without feathers, Diogenes plucked a cock and brought it into the Academy, and said, "This is Plato's man." On which account this addition was made to the definition,—"With broad flat nails."—DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Diogenes
    

24. Diogenes lighted a candle in the daytime, and went round saying, "I am looking for a man."—DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Diogenes
    

25. Man derives a sense of his consequence in the world not merely subjectively, but objectively. If from the cradle through life the outside world brands a class unfit for this or that work, the character of the class will come to resemble and conform to the character described.—FREDERICK DOUGLASS, Autobiography
    

26. Men are but children of a larger growth.—DRYDEN, All for Love
    

27. This is the porcelain clay of humankind.—DRYDEN, Don Sebastian
    

28. A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world.—EMERSON, History
    

29. The plain man is the basic clod
    From which we grow the demigod;
    And in the average man is curled
    The hero stuff that rules the world.—SAM W. FOSS, The Man from the Crowd
    

30. A man is so in the way in the house.—MRS. GASKELL, Cranford

31. Man seems the only growth that dwindles here.—GOLDSMITH, The Traveller
    

32. O wearisome condition of humanity!—GREVILLE
    

33. Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.—HAZLITT
    

34. Though every prospect pleases,
    And only man is vile.—REGINALD HEBER, Missionary Hymn
    

35. In the busy haunts of men.—MRS. HEMANS, Tale of the Secret Tribunal
    

36. God give us men! A time like this demands
    Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands;
    Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
    Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
    Men who possess opinions and a will;
    Men who have honor ; men who will not lie;
    Men who can stand before a demagogue
    And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking;
    Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
    In public duty and in private thinking.—J. G. HOLLAND, The Day's Demand
    

37. The lot of man; to suffer and to die.—HOMER, Odyssey
    

38. To aspire to be superhuman is a most discreditable admission that you lack the guts, the wit, the moderating judgment to be successfully and consummately human.—ALDOUS HUXLEY, Do What You Will
    

39. The complete human being is no longer a product of nature, he is an artificial product like corn, and fruit-trees, and the Creole race and thoroughbred horses and dogs, the vine, etc.—IBSEN, Ghosts: Notes
    

40. It seems incredible that the universe can have been designed primarily to produce life like our own; had it been so, surely we might have expected to find a better proportion between the magnitude of the mechanism and the amount of the product. At first glance at least, life seems to be an utterly unimportant by-product; we living things are somehow off the main line.—SIR JAMES JEANS,
    The Mysterious Universe
    

41. Man must reconcile himself to the humble position of the inhabitant of a speck of dust, and adjust his views on the meaning of human life accordingly.—SIR JAMES JEANS, The Mysterious Universe
    

42. By learning the sufferings and burden of men, I became aware as never before of the life-power that has survived the forces of darkness—the power which, though never completely victorious, is continuously conquering. The very fact that we are still here carrying on the contest against the hosts of annihilation proves that on the whole the battle has gone for humanity.—HELEN KELLER
    

43. Man proposes, but God disposes.—THOMAS A KEMPIS, Of the Imitation of Christ

44. If death for us and our kind is the inevitable result of our stubbornness then we can only say, "So be it." Ours is a lost cause and there is no place for us in the natural universe, but we are not, for all that, sorry to be human. We should rather die as men than live as animals.—J. W. KRUTCH, Modern Temper
    

45. All through history men were the masters, women the inferiors. Now they are nearly equal—but men still have them licked.—SINCLAIR LEWIS
    

46. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good.—LINCOLN
    

47. Today more than ever—I feel we must not, however well-founded our doubts, be betrayed into mere cynicism and contempt for the human race. We must not—despite all the evidence of its fantastic vileness—forget its great and honorable traits, revealed in the shape of art, science, the quest for truth, the creation of beauty, the conception of justice.—THOMAS MANN, I Believe
    

48. All love of humanity is bound up with the future.—THOMAS MANN, I Believe
    

49. This Being of mine, whatever it really is, consists of a little flesh, a little breath, and the part which governs.—MARCUS AURELIUS, Meditations
    

50. Bread, beauty and brotherhood are the three great needs of man.—EDWIN MARKHAM
    

51. A man says to himself before he goes out, "What shall I say?" A woman meditates, "What shall I wear?"—METTERNICH
    

52. After all there is but one race—humanity.—GEORGE MOORE, The Bending of the Bough
    

53. A grain of manhood.—MILTON, Samson Agonistes
    

54. Our days begin with trouble here,
    Our life is but a span,
    And cruel death is always near,
    So frail a thing is man.—The New England Primer
    

55. Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman—a rope over an abyss.—NIETZSCHE, Thus Spake Zarathustra
    

56. Man never falls so low that he can see nothing higher than himself.—THEODORE PARKER, A Lesson for the Day
    

57. Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.—PASCAL, Thoughts
    

58. What a chimera, then, is man! what a novelty, what a monster, what a chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! A judge of all things, feeble worm of the earth, depositary of the truth, cloaca of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe!—PASCAL, Thoughts
    

59. No human thing is of serious importance.—PLATO, The Republic
    

60. The forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
    

61. It is a mighty good thing to know men, not from looking at them, but from having been one of them. When you have worked with them, when you have lived with them, you do not have to wonder how they feel, because you feel it yourself.—THEODORE ROOSEVELT
    

62. A man is young if a lady can make him happy or unhappy. He enters middle age when a lady can make him happy, but can no longer make him unhappy. He is old and gone if a lady can make him neither happy nor unhappy.—MORITZ ROSENTHAL
    

63. A man's truest monument must be a man.—M. J. SAVAGE, The Song of a Man
    

64. Man individually and as a race is possible on earth only because, not for weeks or months but for years, love and the guardianship of the strong over the weak has existed.—OLIVE SCHREINER, From Man to Man
    

65. He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.—SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet
    

66. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!—SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet
    

67. Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither.—SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet
    

68. His life was gentle, and the elements
    So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up
    And say to all the world, "This was a man!"—SHAKESPEARE, Julius Caesar
    

69. As proper men as ever trod upon neat's leather.—SHAKESPEARE, Julius Caesar
    

70. But man, proud man,
    Drest in a little brief authority,
    Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
    His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
    Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
    As make the angels weep.—SHAKESPEARE, Measure for Measure
    

71. There are a sort of men whose visages
    Do cream and mantle like a standing pond.—SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice
    

72. When he is best, he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast.—SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice
    

73. God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.—SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice
    

74. But men are men; the best sometimes forget.SHAKESPEARE, Othello
    

75. Men should be what they seem.—SHAKESPEARE, Othello
    

76. But I know that Man is still
    An ape at heart,
    A talkative, chattering ape.
    His curiosity shall discover many strange secrets,
    But he will use them solely
    For his two recreations,
    Lying and killing,
    Or—as he calls them—
    Conversation and sport.—OSBERT SITWELL, Subtlety of the Serpent
    

77. To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires,
    To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne,
    To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne.
    Unhappie Wight, born to disastrous end,
    That doth his life in so long tendance spend.—EDMUND SPENSER, Mother Hubberds Tale
    

78. Man is a social animal.—SPINOZA, Ethics
    

79. The Forgotten Man works and votes—generally he prays—but his chief business in life is to pay.. . . Who and where is the Forgotten Man in this case, who will have to pay for it all?—W. G. SUMNER, The Forgotten Man
    

80. I am a man; nothing human is alien to me.—TERENCE
    

81. I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
    By a chance bond together.—THOREAU, Sic Vita
    

82. For some curious reason Man has always assumed that his is the highest form of life in the universe. There is, of course, nothing at all with which to sustain this view.—JAMES THURBER, I Believe
    

83. The lower animals cooperate in the interest of the preservation of the species. Man no longer has the natural, earthy sense which would interest him in the preservation of the species.—JAMES THURBER, I Believe
    

84. Just now I am going through one of those periods when I believe that the black panther and the cedar waxwing have a higher hope of Heaven than Man has.—JAMES THURBER, I Believe
    

85. The man that lays his hand upon a woman,
    Save in the way of kindness, is a wretch
    Whom 'twere gross flattery to name a coward.—JOHN TOBIN, The Honeymoon
    

86. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being—that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.—MARK TWAIN
    

87. I can imagine no better news than to hear that there had emerged from the South American forest or the Australian desert specimens of a new species which would, by reason of some new organ or adaptation of an organ, be able to dominate man as man has dominated the other animals.—REBECCA WEST, I Believe
    

88. Ah, how unjust to Nature and himself
    Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!—EDWARD YOUNG, Night Thoughts
    

89. The more a man lives the life of his generation, the more likely is he to die when his generation passes away. The more a man lives within himself, is sufficient unto himself, so much the more likely is his memory to remain green.—STEFAN ZWEIG, Adepts in Self-Portraiture