Men Quotes

What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one,--and that is not only true, but identical,--that men always act from self-interest.

Yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.

A man protesting against error is on the way towards uniting himself with all men that believe in truth.

The world is a thing that a man must learn to despise, and even to neglect, before he can learn to reverence it, and work in it and for it.

A man's religion consists, not of the many things he is in doubt of and tries to believe, but of the few he is assured of and has no need of effort for believing.

Ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat. Health alone is victory. Let all men, if they can manage it, contrive to be healthy!

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.

Courtesy is the due of man to man; not of suit-of-clothes to suit-of-clothes.

That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy.

Man always worships something; always he sees the Infinite shadowed forth in something finite; and indeed can and must so see it in any finite thing, once tempt him well to fix his eyes thereon.

Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

Even in the meanest sorts of labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work.

Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such; it is an accident, not a property of man.

For man is not the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer sense, its creator and producer.

When a man is wrong and won't admit is, he always gets angry.

To admire nothing, (as most are wont to do;) Is the only method that I know, To make men happy, and to keep them so.

War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has yet been deciphered.

Though bachelors be the strongest stakes, married men are the best binders, in the hedge of the commonwealth.

Great is the difference betwixt a man's being frightened at, and humbled for his sins.

I knew that I had done something that no man had been able to do to a champion.

And as in other things, so in men, not the seller, but the buyer determines the Price.

So easy are men to be drawn to believe any thing, from such men as have gotten credit with them; and can with gentleness and dexterity take hold of their fear and ignorance.

If men are naturally in a state of war, why do they always carry arms and why do they have keys to lock their doors?

The best men are the least suspicious of fraudulent purposes.

Man is distinguished not only by his reason, but also by this singular passion, from all other animals.

A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.

I take it that the good of mankind means the attainment, by every man, of all the happiness which he can enjoy without diminishing the happiness of his fellow men

Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say that he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.

The only question which any wise man can ask himself, and which any honest man will ask himself, is whether a doctrine is true or false.

Man's Place in Nature.

A manager is an assistant to his men.

Men as well as rivers grow crooked by following the path of least resistance.

The authors of the gospels were unlettered and ignorant men and the teachings of Jesus have come to us mutilated, misstated and unintelligible.

Amplification is the vice of modern oratory. It is an insult to an assembly of reasonable men, disgusting and revolting instead ofpersuading. Speeches measured by the hour, die by the hour.

[T]he dignity of parliament it seems can brook no opposition to it's power. Strange that a set of men who have made sale of theirvirtue to the minister should yet talk of retaining dignity!

Tranquility is the old man's milk.

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.

It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one.

All men are created equal.

I am tired of a life of contention, and of being the personal object for the hatred of every man, who hates the present state of things.

No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.

All men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The school-room sends men to the Legislature, to the bench, and the executive office. The bar-room sends them to the scaffold and hell.

The main peculiarity which distinguishes man from other animals is the means of his support - the power which he possesses of very greatly increasing these means.

A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.

Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God.

While some men see ordinary happenings, others see divine light and guidance.

To love our nothingness we must love everything in us that the proud man loves when he loves himself. But we must love it all for exactly the opposite reason.

The man of faith who has never experienced doubt is not a man of faith.