Men Quotes

To control and enslave the minds of men, all one must do is convince them that a secret exists, and that he is privy to information regarding that secret; hence the power of priests and psychics.

W'en you see a man in woe, Walk right up and say 'hullo'; Say "hullo" and "how d'ye do. How's the world a-usin' you?

I was angry but not at God. I feel that you are closer to God when you are messed up. Definitely. That's when you most need God, and God cannot control what man does.

Bogart could have been color blind. He got to know a man before he decided if he liked him or not.

All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.

Absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is, let alone the dullness of it and the pomposities of it.

They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, "Can he name a kitten?"

Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.

Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously.

They say the test of [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, "Can he name a kitten?" And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot.

Never, in these United States, has the brain of man conceived, or the hand of man fashioned, so perfect a thing as a clipper ship.

Chaplin is no business man - all he knows is that he can't take anything less.

Every man has some favorite topic of conversation, on which, by a feigned seriousness of attention, he may be drawn to expatiate without end.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.

Pity is not natural to man. Children always are cruel. Savages are always cruel.

No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.

The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.

I know not any crime so great that a man could contrive to commit as poisoning the sources of eternal truth.

Man's chief merit consists in resisting the impulses of his nature.

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

The round of a passionate man's life is in contracting debts in his passion, which his virtue obliges him to pay. He spends his time in outrage and acknowledgment, injury and reparation.

No man can fall into contempt but those who deserve it.

In order that all men might be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

Wit will never make a man rich, but there are places where riches will always make a wit.

You despise a man for avarice; but you do not hate him.

Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.

Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding.

This man [Chesterfield], I thought, had been a Lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among Lords.

It is better a man should be abused than forgotten.

If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination.

There is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man.

It may be laid down as a position which seldom deceives, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong.

This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.

Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth his having.

When people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them.

It is easy for a man who sits idle at home, and has nobody to please but himself, to ridicule or censure the common practices of mankind.

I remember a passage in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: "I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.

There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse.

The desires of man increase with his acquisitions.

Never believe extraordinary characters which you hear of people. Depend upon it, they are exaggerated. You do not see one man shoot a great deal higher than another.

A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.

A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries.

Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one.

No man reads a book of science from pure inclination. The books that we do read with pleasure are light compositions, which contain a quick succession of events.

It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.