One Man For Himself Quotes

#1. I had worked for this old man and once he told me that he had spent his whole life thinking about his career and his work. And he was fifty-two and it suddenly struck him that he had never really given anything of himself. His life was for no one and nothing. He was almost crying saying that.

Celine

#2. Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement ... says heaven and earth in one word ... speaks of himself and his predicament as though for the first time.

Christopher Fry

#3. One of man's deepest habits is keeping alert for dangers and difficulties, refusing to allow himself to explore his own mind because he daren't take his eyes off the world around him.

Colin Wilson

#4. When a man is discontented with himself, it has one advantage - that it puts him into an excellent frame of mind for making a bargain.

Laurence Sterne

#5. If one prevents a man from working for the good of society while at the same time providing for the satisfaction of his own needs, then only one way remains open to him: to make himself richer and others poorer by the violent oppression and spoliation of his fellow men.

Ludwig Von Mises

#6. There cannot any one moral rule be proposed whereof a man may not justly demand a reason. Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.

John Locke

#7. You know," he went on almost under his breath, "every man who thinks for himself and feels vividly finds he lives in a world of his own, apart, and believes that one day he'll come across, either in a book or in a person, the Priest who shall make it clear to him.

Algernon Blackwood

#8. That there are a hundred with wit for one with understanding is a true proposition with which many witless Dummkopf consoles himself.The Dummkopf should also reflect that there also a hundred possessing neither wit nor understanding for every man possessing wit .

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

#9. Nurse: "Yet he is found to be treacherous towards his friends".

Tutor: "And what man is not? dost thou only now know this, that every one lives himself dearer than his neighbour, some indeed with justice, but others even for the sake of gain.

Euripides

#10. The man who fights for his fellow-man is a better man than the one who fights for himself.

Clarence Darrow

#11. The great living experience for every man is his adventure into the woman. The man embraces in the woman all that is not himself, and from that one resultant, from that embrace, comes every new action.

D.H. Lawrence

#12. The expenses of government, having for their object the interests of all, should be borne by every one, and the more a man enjoys the advantages of society, the more he ought to hold himself honoured in contributing to these expenses.

Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot

#13. I am realizing once and for all the difference as far as I am concerned of women and men and the necessity for both. With a man, however tender he is, one is feeding him - one is always and eternally understanding, mothering, supplying him with faith in himself (not in you).

May Sarton

#14. The world takes us at our own valuation. It believes in the man who believes in himself, but it has little use for the timid man, the one who is never certain of himself; who cannot rely on his own judgment, who craves advice from others, and is afraid to go ahead on his own account.

Orison Swett Marden

#15. The man who must brag for himself knows that no one else will

Robin Hobb

#16. A man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that all the people about him were influenced by the religion which they professed would find himself ruined by night.

Thomas B. Macaulay

#17. A man of humanity is one who, in seeking to establish himself, finds a foothold for others and who, in desiring attaining himself, helps others to attain.

Confucius

#18. The man who is deserving the name is the one whose thoughts and exertions are for others rather than for himself.

Walter Scott

#19. One has followed the other in an endless circle, for it is certain that as man's insight increases so he finds both wretchedness and greatness within himself. In a word man knows he is wretched. Thus he is wretched because he is so, but he is truly great because he knows it.

Blaise Pascal

#20. Cling not to one mood,
And deemed not thou art right, all others wrong.
For whoso thinks that wisdom dwells with him,
That he alone can speak or think alright,
Such oracles are empty breath when tried.
The wisest man will let himself be swayed
By other's wisdom and relax in time.

Sophocles

#21. That man alone loves himself rightly who procures the greatest possible good to himself through the whole of his existence and so pursues pleasure as not to give for it more than it is worth.

Benjamin Franklin

#22. Just for the sake of amusement, ask each passenger to tell you his story, and if you find a single one who hasn't often cursed his life, who hasn't told himself he's the most miserable man in the world, you can throw me overboard head first.

Voltaire

#23. It is one of those fables, which, out of an unknown antiquity, convey an unlooked-for wisdom, that the gods, in the beginning, divided Man into men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just as the hand was divided into fingers, the better to answer its end.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#24. We have to combine, certainly, but if we combine to fight on the idea of each man making more money for himself, then we end by fighting one another. And that's the trouble now ... human dealings are founded - founded - not on money but on what is fair and just all round.

Neil M. Gunn

#25. There in no one more unfortunate than the man who has never been unfortunate. for it has never been in his power to try himself.

Seneca The Younger

#26. While one man can discover a certain thing by himself, another is never able to understand it, even if taught by means of all possible expressions and metaphors, and during a long period; his mind can in no way grasp it, his capacity is insufficient for it.

Maimonides

#27. And for man to look upon himself as a capital good, even if it did not impair his freedom, may seem to debase him ... by investing in themselves people can enlarge the range of choice available to them. It is one way free men can enhance their welfare.

Theodore Schultz

#28. If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process.

Felix Frankfurter

#29. It is the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not to venture all his eggs in one basket.

Miguel De Cervantes

#30. It is impossible for one man both to labor day and night to get a living, and at the same time give himself to the study of sacred learning as the preaching office requires.

Martin Luther

#31. Waiting, he thought, was the most miserable condition a man could find himself in. His whole life, he had been waiting for one thing or another.

Paul Russell

#32. I believe it is the duty of each of us to act as if the fate of the world depended on him. Admittedly, one man by himself cannot do the job. However, one man can make a difference. We must live for the future of the human race, and not for our own comfort or success.

Hyman G. Rickover

#33. Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.

Mark Twain

#34. The happy man needs nothing and no one. Not that he holds himself aloof, for indeed he is in harmony with everything and everyone; everything is "in him"; nothing can happen to him. The same may also be said for the contemplative person; he needs himself alone; he lacks nothing.

Josef Pieper

#35. Every trial that ever burdened a mortal man, every temptation that ever stormed a human heart, and every blessing that ever delighted a needy soul have been skillfully designed by the Creator for one purpose: to draw men to Himself.

Jim Berg

#36. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and to be spent in that way.

Herman Melville

#37. I wondered how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one's own personality every man sets up for himself secretly.

Joseph Conrad

#38. It was October. A difficult morning to get through, even for a man like himself, who had survived so many mornings like this one.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

#39. Man is alone in the world, in tremendous eternal isolation. He has no object outside himself; lives for nothing else; he is far removed from being the slave of his wishes, of his abilities, of his necessities; he stands far above social ethics; he is alone. Thus he becomes one and all.

Otto Weininger

#40. Aah, man. Forty-one was far too fucking old for love at first sight.
He might as well throw himself at her feet and be done with it.

Kylie Scott

#41. It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such.

Henry David Thoreau

#42. In politics and in his personal life, Thomas Jefferson was a complicated man, but in one thing he was consistent: the wanted the best of everything, for himself and for his country.

Thomas J. Craughwell

#43. True brevity of expression consists in a man only saying what is worth saying, while avoiding all diffuse explanations of things which every one can think out for himself.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#44. If a man has only correct doctrine to offer me, I am sure to slip out at the first intermission to seek the company of someone who has seen for himself how lovely is the face of Him who is the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley. Such a man can help me, and no one else can.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

#45. We have big, big problems - flooding, earthquake, and many foolish things which now people are doing - I mean, these self-made catastrophes. We are able to give to every man on the street the possibilities to help himself. And to fight for this was one of my duties.

Frei Otto

#46. A man must consent to look to a foolish, innocent, adolescent part of himself for his cure. The inner fool is the only one who can touch his Fisher King wound.

Robert A. Johnson

#47. She was not so forbearing when it came to bad breath. After receiving one French envoy, she exclaimed, 'Good God! What shall I do if this man stay here, for I smell him an hour after he has gone!' Her words were reported back to the envoy, who at once betook himself back to France in shame.

Alison Weir

#48. Duke Chartres used to boast that no man could have less real value for character than himself, yet he would gladly give twenty thousand pounds for a good one, because he could immediately make double that sum by means of it.

Charles Caleb Colton

#49. A brave man thinks no one his superior who does him an injury, for he has it then in his power to make himself superior to the other by forgiving it.

Alexander Pope

#50. It seems to me that the whole of human life can be summed up in the one statement that man only exists for the purpose of proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not an organ.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#51. A military man can scarcely pride himself on having smitten a sleeping enemy; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten.

Isoroku Yamamoto

#52. Does Scripture forbid homosexual behavior? Of course it does. Jesus and his apostles taught that God's intention in marriage is for a man to leave his parents and join himself to one woman.

Michael Horton

#53. Man is the center of a circle without a circumference, except the one he creates for himself.

Mahatma Gandhi

#54. A man who works evil against another works it really against himself, and bad advice is worst for the one who devised it

Hesiod

#55. The discrimination between good and evil is in man's soul. Every man can judge that for himself, because in every man is the sense of admiration of beauty. Happiness only lies in thinking or doing that which one considers beautiful. Such an act becomes a virtue or goodness.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

#56. Never forget that the purpose for which a man lives is the improvement of the man himself, so that he may go out of this world having, in his great sphere or his small one, done some little good for his fellow creatures and labored a little to diminish the sin and sorrow that are in the world.

William E. Gladstone

#57. From his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any FIRST AND FOREMOST object but one
to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for HIMSELF.

Mark Twain

#58. In the United States everyone feels assured of his worth as an individual. No one humbles himself before another person or class. Even the great difference in wealth, the superior power of a few, cannot undermine this healthy self-confidence and natural respect for the dignity of one's fellow-man.

Albert Einstein

#59. That which a man takes for himself no one can deny him.

Amitav Ghosh

#60. Man has wanted to look beyond, wanted to expand himself; and all that we call progress, evolution, has been always measured by that one search, the search for human destiny, the search for God.

Swami Vivekananda

#61. A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy.

George Jean Nathan

#62. A man's work is in danger of deteriorating when he thinks he has found the one best formula for doing it. If he thinks that, he is likely to feel that all he needs is merely to go on repeating himself ... so long as a person is searching for better ways of doing his work, he is fairly safe.

Eugene O'Neill

#63. One man runs to his neighbor because he is looking for himself, and another because he wants to loose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison for you.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#64. As if this were a special place, one of those special places that each man must seek out for himself, and count himself as lucky if he ever found it, for there were those who sought and never found it. And worst of all, there were even those who never hunted for it. He

Clifford D. Simak

#65. Two lusts breed in the soul of man: the lust for aggresion, and the lust for telling lies. If one will not allow himself to wrong others, he will wrong himself. If he doesn't come across anyone to lie to, he will lie to himself in his own thoughts.

Ryszard Kapuscinski

#66. 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

#67. 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

#68. 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

#69. 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

#70. 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

#71. One of the surprising things in this world is the respect a worthless man has for himself.

E.W. Howe

#72. 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

#73. 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

#74. 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

#75. 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

#76. The faith of the gospel is called the knowledge of God's grace; for no one has ever tasted of the gospel but the man that knew himself to be reconciled to God, and took hold of the salvation that is held forth in Christ.

John Calvin

#77. To teach a man how he may learn to grow independently, and for himself, is perhaps the greatest service that one man can do another.

Benjamin Jowett

#78. Every man can educate himself. It's shameful to put one's mind into the hands of those whom you wouldn't entrust with your money. Dare to think for yourself.

Voltaire

#79. Every honest man lives for himself. Every man worth calling a man lives for himself. The one who doesn't - doesn't live at all.

Ayn Rand

#80. Syme strolled with her to a seat in the corner of the garden, and continued to pour out his opinions. For he was a sincere man, and in spite of his superficial airs and graces, at root a humble one. And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely. He

G.K. Chesterton

#81. The real Tragedy is the tragedy of the man who never in his life braces himself for his one supreme effort-he never stretches to his full capacity, never stands up to his full stature.

Arnold Bennett

#82. For by his incarnation the Son of God united himself in a certain way with every man. He labored with human hands ... and loved with a human heart. Born of Mary the Virgin, he truly became one of us ...

Pope John Paul II

#83. Of all the creatures that man kills for his amusement there is only one that he kills out of hatred - other men. Man hates nothing as much as himself. That is why war is called the leprosy of the human soul.

Halldor Laxness

#84. What is a good man if not one who does not believe in himself to the exclusion of others? ... He was asked to bear what cannot be borne--what should not be borne. I hope never to be so tested, for I have it on the best authority that I will not bear it.

Norman Lock

#85. More power than all the success slogans ever penned by human hand is the realization for every man that he has but one boss. That boss is the man - he - himself.

Gabriel Heatter

#86. Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners; without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.

Jonathan Swift

#87. He had reached that moment in life, different for each one of us, when a man abandonds himself to his demon or to his genius, following a mysterious law which bids him either to destroy or outdo himself.

Marguerite Yourcenar

#88. No one has the least regard for the man; with them all, he has been an object of avoidance, suspicion, and aversion; but the spark of life within him is curiously separable from himself now, and they have a deep interest in it, probably because it IS life, and they are living and must die.

Charles Dickens

#89. 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

#90. A man will find a single coin in the mud and talk about it for days, but when his inheritance comes and is accounted one percent less than he expected, then he will declare himself cheated.

Brandon Sanderson

#91. The Lonliest Man in the World, she said, only has room in his heart for one person, and if he can't have that person, he locks himself away. He tells himself no one could possibly love him, but really, it's that he refuses to love anyone else.

Garth Risk Hallberg

#92. The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.

Henry Ward Beecher

#93. It may be that until now there has been no more potent means for beautifying man himself than piety: it can turn man into so much art, surface, play of colors, graciousness that his sight no longer makes one suffer.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#94. Jesus Christ became Incarnate for one purpose, to make a way back to God that man might stand before Him as He was created to do, the friend and lover of God Himself.

Oswald Chambers

#95. It was presumptuous for one man to forgive another. That was the duty of God. For men to pretend such mercy was an idle pride and a lack of respect. He did not desire any such mercy for himself.

Mario Puzo

#96. If there was one thing he still let himself long for, it was the chance to hold a spear. To fight again, to try and find his way back to the man he had been. A man who had cared.
If he would find that anywhere, he'd find it here.

Brandon Sanderson

#97. [T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.

H.L. Mencken

#98. For he was a sincere man, and in spite of his superficial airs and graces, at root a humble one. And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely.

G.K. Chesterton

#99. The noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him also who has power over himself, who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has reverence for all that is severe and hard.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#100. When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself

Jacques-Yves Cousteau