Top 100 Man For Himself Quotes
#1. What madness it is for a man to starve himself to enrich his heir, and so turn a friend into an enemy! For his joy at your death will be proportioned to what you leave him.
Seneca The Younger
#2. Throughout the centuries, man has considered himself beautiful. I rather suppose that man only believes in his own beauty out of pride; that he is not really beautiful and he suspects this himself; for why does he look on the face of his fellow-man with such scorn?
Comte De Lautreamont
#3. He was waiting for a man with a knife to come out of a doorway at him. All this time, he told me, he had been trying to steal death from her body. By confronting it himself, he would keep it away from her.
Don DeLillo
#4. A man who possesses a veneration of life will not simply say his prayers. He will throw himself into the battle to preserve life, if for no other reason than that he himself is an extension of life around him.
Albert Schweitzer
#5. Language is one of the greatest gifts man has devised for himself. It ranks, alongside the discovery of fire and the wheel, as a major influence in making modern man what he is today.
Edward R. Murrow
#6. Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.
Pope John Paul II
#7. If 'why' was the first and last question, then 'because I was curious to see what would happen' was the first and last answer. A version of it had been spoken to God Himself in the Garden of Eden, and it was destined to be the reason for the end of things at the hands of man.
John Connolly
#8. The first of all commodities to be exchanged is labour, and the freedom of man consists only in the exercise of the right to determine for himself in what manner his labour shall be employed, and how he will dispose of its products.
Henry Charles Carey
#9. It's a saying they have, that a man has a false heart in his mouth for the world to see, another in his breast to show to his special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is never known to anyone except to himself alone, hidden only God knows where.
James Clavell
#10. 'Heroism' is not the same as coping. A man who does his job properly and succeeds through his own efforts is definitely to be commended, but he is not a hero in the classic sense until he deliberately lays his life on the line for a cause he deems to be greater than himself.
Jeff Cooper
#11. And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness, Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.
Joseph Glanvill
#12. If a man must make excuses for himself, continually argue with himself that he is a man, then he is better off dead.
Elmore Leonard
#13. Man's strength resides in his capacity and desire to elevate himself, so as to attain the good. To travel step by step toward the heights. And that is all he can do. To reach heaven and remain there is beyond his powers: Even Moses had to return to earth. Is it the same for evil?
Elie Wiesel
#14. A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude.
Michel De Montaigne
#15. ... rational metaphysics teaches that man becomes all things by understanding them ... imaginative metaphysics shows that
man becomes all things by not understanding them ... for when he does not understand he makes the things out of himself and becomes them by transforming himself into them.
Giambattista Vico
#16. No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#17. The only thing which is of lasting benefit to a man is that which he does for himself. Money which comes to him without effort on his part is seldom a benefit and often a curse.
John D. Rockefeller
#18. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.
H.L. Mencken
#19. For the secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#20. A man in cahoots with a woman's sexual instinct was the devil himself, for he had the united power over her - himself and her own longing - greater than a mere man
Judith Ivory
#21. What a sweet reverence is that when a young man deems his mistress a little more than mortal and almost chides himself for longing to bring her close to his heart.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#22. When primitive man heard thunder or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, and therefore concluded that back of them must be a force greater than himself. Similarly he saw a supernatural force in the rain, and in the various other changes in nature.
Emma Goldman
#23. Oh, Brethren, what is the result of pride? Oh, see what humility can do? What was the need for all these sufferings? For, if from the beginning Man had humbled himself, obeyed God, and kept the commandment he would not have fallen.
Dorotheus Of Gaza
#24. There are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?
Arthur Schopenhauer
#25. A vain man is a nauseous creature: he is so full of himself that he has no room for anything else, be it never so good or deserving.
William Penn
#26. Man, and in general every rational being, exists as an end in himself, not merely as a means for arbitrary use by this or that will: he must in all his actions, whether they are directed to himself or to other rational beings, always be viewed at the same time as an end.
Immanuel Kant
#27. There were thus two things which the Savior did for us by becoming Man. He banished death from us and made us anew; and, invisible and imperceptible as in Himself He is, He became visible through His works and revealed Himself as the Word of the Father, the Ruler and King of the whole creation.
Athanasius Of Alexandria
#28. A man is a little thing while he works by and for himself; but when he gives voice to the rules of love and justice, he is godlike ...
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#29. The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought , for one would thereby dispense with man himself.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#30. To be radical is to go to the root of the matter. For man, however, the root is man himself.
Karl Marx
#31. But he who neither thinks for himself nor learns from others, is a failure as a man.
Hesiod
#32. A man convinced of his own merit will accept misfortune as an honor, for thus can he persuade others, as well as himself, that he is a worthy target for the arrows of fate.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#33. A good man would help the two people in the limo because it was the right thing to do; a good man would turn himself in; a good man would beg for his job back; a good man would just let this case go and move on. William wasn't a good man, not anymore. He was on a mission.
Destiny Booze
#34. Scripture instructs God's people to give our best to whatever task we turn our hands to, to conduct ourselves as if we work for the Lord himself, not for man.
Karen Witemeyer
#35. Only with the ultimate knowledge of all things will man have come to know himself. For things are but the boundaries of man.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#36. A man should remind himself that an object of faith is not scientifically demonstrable, lest presuming to demonstrate what is of faith, he should produce inconclusive reasons and offer occasion for unbelievers to scoff at a faith based on such ground.
Thomas Aquinas
#37. War is just a violent way of doing what half the people do calmly in peacetime: using the other half for food, heat, machinery and sexual pleasure. Man is the pie that bakes and eats himself, and the recipe is separation.
Alasdair Gray
#38. Every man is his own Pygmalion, and spends his life fashioning himself. And in fashioning himself, for good or ill, he fashions the human race and its future.
I. F. Stone
#39. The learned man understands the ignorant for he was once ignorant himself
Imam Ali
#40. Concern for man himself must always constitute the chief objective of all technological effort
Albert Einstein
#41. The only laws a man can truly respect are the ones he makes for himself.
William Powell
#42. Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself; and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as a mere means for some external purpose.
Immanuel Kant
#43. For a man who has compared himself to Theodore Roosevelt and the nation's challenges to those of the Gilded Age, Obama put forward a tepid agenda.
Ron Fournier
#44. That a person cannot and consequently will not defend himself, does not yet cast disgrace upon him in our eyes ; but we despise the person who has neither the ability nor the good will for revenge whether it be a man or a woman.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#45. It is hard for a black man to just be himself. We spend so much time in defense of something that is indefensible because there is nothing to defend.
Kevin Eubanks
#46. A flippant, frivolous man may ridicule others, may controvert them, scorn them; but he who has any respect for himself seems to have renounced the right of thinking meanly of others.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#47. Condemn you me for that the duke did love me?
So may you blame some fair and crystal river,
For that some melancholic distracted man
Hath drowned himself in't.
John Webster
#48. Surely a man has come to himself only when he has found the best that is in him, and has satisfied his heart with the highest achievement he is fit for.
Woodrow Wilson
#49. I am not morally obligated to care more for a man than he cares for himself.
Ayn Rand
#50. Despite Tub's eye wound he never so much as stumbled, and I felt for the first time that we knew and understood each other; I sensed in him a desire to improve himself, which perhaps was whimsy or wishful thinking on my part, but such are the musings of the traveling man. The
Patrick DeWitt
#52. The message of Christ's love is found in Isaiah, chapter sixty-one," the man was saying. "God himself will restore the crumbling foundations of your life. He will give you beauty for ashes. He'll provide redemption, no matter who you are, where you are. . . .
Karen Kingsbury
#53. Art is the production of objects for consumption, to be used and discarded while waiting for a new world in which man will have succeeded in freeing himself of everything, even of his own consciousness.
Eugenio Montale
#54. They gaped as if they'd never seen a ridiculously handsome bleeding man in a turquoise waistcoat fall through a rubbish hole and then save himself with a grappling hook before. What DID they do for fun in New Eden?
Meljean Brook
#55. One of the surprising things in this world is the respect a worthless man has for himself.
E.W. Howe
#56. The indignation was too sharp and raw for a mere piece of professional gossip; each man took it as a personal insult; each felt himself qualified to alter, advise and improve the work of any man living.
Ayn Rand
#57. He's heard Unitarianism called a featherbed for falling Christians, but his mother doesn't seem like a woman who has fallen anywhere. (Where is the featherbed for falling Unitarians, he wonders? Such as himself.) [From "Life Before Man," 1979)
Margaret Atwood
#58. A man has a false heart in his mouth for all the world to see, another in his breast to show all his special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is not known to anyone except himself alone.
James Clavell
#59. A man ... must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks people to leave their own fireside, and encounter such a day as this, for the sake of coming to see him. He must think himself a most agreeable fellow.
Jane Austen
#60. Our government teaches the whole people by its example. If the
government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it
invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
Louis D. Brandeis
#61. I have often expressed my sentiments, that every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.
George Washington
#62. The law stops every man's mouth. God will have a man humble himself down on his face before Him, with not a word to say for himself. Then God will speak to him, when he owns that he is a sinner, and gets rid of all his own righteousness.
Dwight L. Moody
#63. When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.
John Steinbeck
#64. A man captivated by wiles was only captivated for a time, whereas a man won by simplicity would be won forever - if he, himself, were worth the winning.
Anthony Trollope
#65. Far better for a man that he had never been born than that he should degrade a pulpit into a show box to exhibit himself in.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#66. It's the easiest thing in the world for a man to deceive himself.
Benjamin Franklin
#67. A true man does not only stand up for himself, he stands up for those that do not have the ability to.
William Lyon Mackenzie King
#68. Advertising mourishes the consuming power of men. It sets up before a man the goal of a better home, better clothing, better food for himself and his family. It spurs individual exertion and greater production.
Winston Churchill
#69. The Saab seethed off into the night. Arthur watched it go, as stunned as a man might be who, having believed himself to be totally blind for five years, suddenly discovers that he had merely been wearing too large a hat.
Douglas Adams
#70. It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
Thomas Jefferson
#71. It is vain to ask of the gods what man is capable of supplying for himself.
Epicurus
#72. Angelo was a grown man, and here was one thing he was quite free to decide for himself, and yet he was ready to let others make up his mind for him ... that could only be stupidity.
Anne Holm
#73. I cannot describe to you the despairing sensation of trying to do something for a man who seems incapable or unwilling to do anything further for himself.
Lord Byron
#74. The cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for want of poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of the internal world; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#75. This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.
Jonathan Swift
#76. Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to it himself.
A. H. Weiler
#77. Happiness is good, but well-overrated: what we hate most are the very motivators that put us in gear. A man drifts along with little to contribute until something agitates him enough to make a difference, whether for himself or for his communities.
Criss Jami
#78. Every man hath the right to doubt his task, and to forsake it from time to time; but what he must not do is forget it. Whoever doubteth not himself is unworthy
for in his unquestioning belief in his ability, he commiteth the sin of pride. Blessed are they who go through moments of indecision.
Paulo Coelho
#79. Indeed, on the face of it, this man of abnormal strength and constitution and obscure ambition, whom Hugh would never know, could never deliver nor make agreement to God for, but in his way loved and desired to help, had triumphantly succeeded in pulling himself together.
Malcolm Lowry
#80. Every man is the architect of his own life. He builds it just the way he wants it. However, after he has built what he wants, he sometimes decides that he doesn't like what he has built and looks for someone or something to blame instead of changing himself.
Sydney Madwed
#81. A man does not die for something which he himself does not believe in.
Adolf Hitler
#82. Every man is a plastic artist who must determine things for himself.
Joseph Beuys
#83. A man, groundly learned already, may take much profit himself in using by epitome to draw other men's works, for his own memory sake, into short room.
Roger Ascham
#84. Fate often puts all the material for happiness and prosperity into a man's hands just to see how miserable he can make himself with them.
Don Marquis
#85. Every man must decide for himself whether he shall master his world or be mastered by it.
James Cash Penney
#86. If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.
Woodrow Wilson
#87. He chuckled and pulled himself to his feet. "End of session, McGee. Good night and good luck." At the door he turned and said, "I'll have you checked out, of course. Just for the hell of it. I'm a careful and inquisitive man.
John D. MacDonald
#88. Everybody has to think for himself. A right way for a big man may not be a right way for a small man. A right way for someone who is slow may not be a right way for someone who is quick. Each person must understand his weaknesses and his strengths.
Bruce Lee
#89. In our household, which was essentially under an evil spell, my father 'Chaplin' was all the magic. A great man draws magic into himself, like reverse lightning. There's nothing to spare for anyone else.
Joyce Carol Oates
#90. No just man suffices unto himself for the winning of justification. The divine mercy must always hold out a hand to his footsteps as they falter and almost stumble, and this is so because the weakness of his free will may cause him to lose balance, and if he falls he may perish forever.
John Cassian
#91. How can you have order in a state without religion? For, when one man is dying of hunger near another who is ill of surfeit, he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an authority which declares 'God wills it thus.' Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#92. I don't like lying," Skellan began. "Says the man who passed himself off as my dog for a month,
Anonymous
#93. If a man is ever to find out who he is and what he is here for, he has got to take that journey for himself. He has got to get his heart back.
John Eldredge
#94. A hard lesson had been learned
that man himself suffers most when his hand despoils the earth and robs it of its legitimate fruits.
Lois Lenski
#95. The Warrior of the Light concentrates on the small miracles of daily life. He is capable of seeing what is beautiful because he carries beauty within himself, for the world is a mirror and gives back to each man the reflection of his own face.
Paulo Coelho
#96. Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world , individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever. (Wakefield)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#97. The reason why man seeks for happiness is not because happiness is his sustenance, but because happiness is his own being; therefore in seeking for happiness, man is seeking for himself.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
#98. A young man's ambition is to get along in the world and make a place for himself-half your life goes that way, till you're 45 or 50. Then, if you're lucky, you make terms with life, you get released.
Robert Penn Warren
#99. If for harming himself a man forfeits his freedom, then he was never free in the first place.
Ilana Mercer
#100. Most animals sleep in a hole in the ground or hanging from a tree. Man alone has made for himself an elaborate resting place. And yet he is the only one to have developed the alarm clock to rouse himself from it, the only species to spend sixteen or more hours of each day away from it.
James Rozoff
