Quotes About What Man Is

#1. What man is a man who does not make the world better?

John Eldredge

#2. Since Auschwitz, we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima, we know what is at stake.

Viktor E. Frankl

#3. It is vain to ask of the gods what man is capable of supplying for himself.

Epicurus

#4. Sometimes life is just awful, and that's the way it is. It doesn't have to reflect so much on God, as just be noted as this is what man is willing to do to his fellow man. It doesn't mean God is like this too.

Dee Henderson

#5. The jellyfish doesn't actively move anywhere - it's just moved with the tides. Is that what man is? Man's just the jellyfish: stuff happens to you, and you get twisted in different directions.

Andrew Buchan

#6. Risk is the factor of a stratagem measured by what man is powerless to control.

Mike Norton

#7. The noblest of all studies is the study of what man is and of what life he should live.

Plato

#8. The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.

Oscar Wilde

#9. What man is such a coward he would not rather fall once than remain forever tottering?

Cormac McCarthy

#10. What man of sense will agree with the statement that the first, second and third days, in which the evening and morning were named, were without sun, moon and stars? What man is found such an idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in Paradise, in Eden, Like a Husbandman?

Origen

#11. What man is, only his history tells.

Wilhelm Dilthey

#12. Christ's whole life on earth was the assertion and example of true manliness - the setting forth in living act and word what man is meant to be, and how he should carry himself in this world of God - one long campaign in which the temptation stands out as the first great battle and victory.

Thomas Hughes

#13. Pascal told only half the story. He said man was a thinking reed. What man is, is a thinking reed and a walking genital.

Walker Percy

#14. What man is happy? He who has a healthy body, a resourceful mind, and a docile nature.

Thales

#15. We are nearly all composed of such a complex mixture of human qualities that in each one of us reside both masculine and feminine principles: what man is without any female attribute and what woman never demonstrates any masculine characteristics?

Natalie Clifford Barney

#16. For me, "Zoo" has always been a fable. It has nothing to do with realism. It's a fable about what man is doing to the world, and the animals have retribution. But in the real world, this would not happen. But in the world of 1984, this kind of thing can happen in a story.

James Patterson

#17. There is the churning and the boiling of the sea, and the foam on top of it and that is what man is, churning and foam together.

Simone Schwarz-Bart

#18. What man is, only history tells.

George Mosse

#19. 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

#20. What man is really anti-progressive? For he is only anti-certain-people's-visions-for-the-future.

Criss Jami

#21. What man is there that does not laboriously, though all unconsciously, himself fashion the sorrow that is to be the pivot of his life.

Maurice Maeterlinck

#22. In the early ages, I believe not much thought was given to what man is and what his real functions should be, and what is the real purpose of his life.

Morarji Desai

#23. Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#24. Soldiers have many vices, but vanity is not amongst them. How could it be? What man is going to worry about his hair when he might lose his head?

Sharon Kay Penman

#25. But tell me, I beseech you, what man is that would submit his neck to the noose of wedlock, if, as wise men should, he did but first truly weigh the inconvenience of the thing? Or

Erasmus

#26. In some sense man is a microcosm of the universe; therefore what man is, is a clue to the universe. We are enfolded in the universe.

David Bohm

#27. This I say, because God showed me somewhat of his truth, in order that I might know what man is without him; that is, when the soul is found in mortal sin, at that time, it is so monstrous and horrible to behold, that it is impossible to imagine anything equally so.

Catherine Of Genoa

#28. I will tell you what man is. He is a freak, an ejected foetus robbed of his natural development, thrown out into the world with a naked covering of parchment, with too little room for his teeth and a soft bulging skull like a bubble. But nature stirs a pudding there ...

William Golding

#29. Correct morality can only be derived from what man is - not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be.

Robert A. Heinlein

#30. If he didn't fall in love he would have never come back near the end of the film. Because, what man is going to dishonor himself so that he comes back in front of the man that took a woman away from him ... and warns her to save her life?

Rod Steiger

#31. 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

#32. What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.

Confucius

#33. It is not the nature of man, as I see it, ever to be quite satisfied with what he has in life ... Contentment tends to breed laxity, but a healthy discontent keeps us alert to the changing needs of our time.

Frances Perkins

#34. I am quite an admirer of Fidel [Castro]. For me, Fidel is the first and the best man in solidarity with the peoples of the world. Fidel shares not just what he does not need, but every little thing he has. That is called solidarity.

Evo Morales

#35. It is in vain to hope to please all alike. Let a man stand with his face in what direction he will, he must necessarily turn his back on one half of the world.

George Dennison Prentice

#36. That's what it means to be a man. You do what you think is right, regardless of who it hurts, and whether it works out, because in the end you have to live with yourself.

Mark Goldblatt

#37. And there, in that phrase, the bitterness leaks again out of my pen. What a dull lifeless quality this bitterness is. If I could I would write with love, but if I could write with love I would be another man; I would never have lost love.

Graham Greene

#38. What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today?

Henry David Thoreau

#39. We cannot keep to ourselves the words of eternal life given to us in our encounter with Jesus Christ: they are meant for everyone, for every man and woman ... It is our responsibility to pass on what, by God's grace, we ourselves have received.

Pope Benedict XVI

#40. What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has or how he is regarded by others.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#41. When people complain of the decay of manners they have in mind not the impudent abbreviations of the crowd, but the decline in bowing and scraping and in speaking of one's employer as "the master." What the rich mean by the good manners of the poor is usually not civility, but servility.

Robert Wilson Lynd

#42. Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in that work does what he wants to do.

Robin G. Collingwood

#43. This generation is so dead. You ask a kid, 'What are you doing this Saturday?' and they'll be playing video games or watching cable, instead of building model cars or airplanes or doing something creative. Kids today never say, 'Man, I'm really into remote-controlled steamboats.'

Jack White

#44. What we hope to achieve is a society that doesn't value a white man because he's a white man, but also doesn't value a woman because she's a woman, or a black because he's a black.

Elizabeth Edwards

#45. Any military man will tell you that the way to pull two divided groups together is to give them a common enemy. This is what Hitler did, when he came to power in 1933 as chancellor.

Jodi Picoult

#46. What are you looking for, little man? Is it yourself you're trying to identify?Are you looking at little things to avoid big things?

John Steinbeck

#47. Man is precisely what the Bible says he is. Human nature is behaving exactly as the Bible said it would. The course of human events is flowing just as Christ predicted.

Billy Graham

#48. A 'new thinker', when studied closely, is merely a man who does not know what other people have thought.

Frank Moore Colby

#49. Ask yourself what it is that a code of moral values does to a man's life, and why he can't exist without it, and what happens to him if he accepts the wrong standard, by which the evil is the good.

Ayn Rand

#50. No race has the last word on culture and on civilization. You do not know what the black man is capable of; you do not know what he is thinking and therefore you do not know what the oppressed and suppressed Negro, by virtue of his condition and circumstance, may give to the world as a surprise.

Marcus Garvey

#51. What a Christian portrays in his art is the totality of life. Art is not to be a vehicle for self-conscious evangelism. Christians ought not to be threatened by fantasy and imagination. The Christian is the really free man. He is free to have imagination.

Francis A. Schaeffer

#52. can't help but think once again what a foolish, loutish creature is man. Is there another on earth that kills for the pure joy of it?

Jim Fergus

#53. What I have absolutely no sympathy with is the legislator, the man who seeks, for his own profit, to exploit the weaknesses of those who are unable to help themselves and then to fasten some moral superscription upon it. This I loathe so much that I cannot conceivably explain how much it is.

Malcolm Lowry

#54. What you should be asking yourself," he said, indicating Mr. Wong with a nod as the departed man hovered in my corner, "is why a being that ungodly powerful is hanging out in your apartment.

Darynda Jones

#55. People call me all the time and say, "Man, your players aren't signed yet." Well, it doesn't really matter what time dinner is when you're the steak.

Scott Boras

#56. And if a man goes through fire for his doctrine - what does that prove? Verily, it is more if your own doctrine comes out of your own fire.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#57. Modern capitalism needs men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated ... what is the outcome? Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow man and from nature.

Erich Fromm

#58. When a man likes you, he will be interested in finding out what you like. If he makes you happy, he feels more secure. Everything men do is intended to impress women.

Sherry Argov

#59. I spent thirty-three years in another man's shadow. I went everywhere he went, I helped him with everything he did. I was in a sense a part of him. When you live like that for a long time, you gradually lose track of what it is you yourself really want out of life

Haruki Murakami

#60. You love a man, Millie, you believe in him, you take him as he is. You go on his journey with him no matter what happens, even if that means you have to walk through fire.

Kristen Ashley

#61. Never confuse lust for anything other than what it is. There isn't a man alive that wouldn't gladly take what you are so willing to offer."
"Any but you, apparently."
-Eric to Camile, Pawn of Innocence

Chameleon

#62. Man's desire for God is bedded in his unconscious & seeks to satisfy itself in physical possession of another human. This necessarily is a passing, fading attachment in its sensuous aspects since it is a poor substitute for what the unconscious is after.

Flannery O'Connor

#63. What is man's greatest bane? His brother man alone.

Bias Of Priene

#64. No man is truly free who is in financial bondage. 'Think what you do when you run in debt', said Benjamin Franklin, 'you give another power over your liberty.'

Ezra Taft Benson

#65. What is generally regarded as success - acquisition of wealth, the capture of power or social prestige - I consider the most dismal failures. I hold when it is said of a man that he has arrived, it means that he is finished - his development has stopped at that point.

Emma Goldman

#66. No matter what great characteristics a man may have, he cannot be equal to God

Sunday Adelaja

#67. Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Be humble, impotent reason! Be silent, feeble nature! Learn that man infinitely transcends man, hear from your master your true condition, which is unknown to you.

Blaise Pascal

#68. The man who succeeds proves himself an expert puzzle-solver, and the challenge of the puzzle is an important part of what usually drives him on.

Thomas S. Kuhn

#69. What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many?

Angela Carter

#70. What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily?

Seneca.

#71. This is what opportunity brings with it. It's the self-determination of man. Every man in the course of his life eternal life undergoes countless changes and has to appear once in this worlds as a thief in certain periods of his activity.

Jaroslav Hasek

#72. The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him

Voltaire

#73. What virtue is there in a man who demonstrates goodness because he has been bred to it? It is his habit from youth. But a man who has known unkindness and want, for him to be kind and charitable to those who have been the cause of his misfortunes, that is a virtuous man.

Deanna Raybourn

#74. There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, and not a grain more ... A man sees only what concerns him.

Henry David Thoreau

#75. Jeb Bush has to distance himself from what they call the Bush brand. So he keeps saying, 'I am my own man.' But when Governor Chris Christie is out on the campaign trail, he's always saying, 'I'm my own man, plus another guy.'

David Letterman

#76. Would that my hands were meant to build. I would know what to say. What to do. Maybe in another life I would have been that man. In this one, my words, like my hands, are clumsy. All they can do is cut. All they can do is break.

Pierce Brown

#77. Italian women are some of the most beautiful in the world. This is why the Vatican is in Italy. If a man can walk across Italy and retain his celibacy, he's got what it takes to be a priest - or an interior decorator.

Craig Ferguson

#78. A man does not come at what is mine, harm it, and walk away unscathed.

Lynn Kurland

#79. The beauty Snow White's got has nothing to do with him. She's scarred up and suspicious and shameless. Her pretty's not for him. It's like saying the moon's got a fine figure on her. Maybe true, but what good is that to a man? Snow

Catherynne M Valente

#80. Since nobody is in a position to substitute his own value judgments for those of the acting individual, it is vain to pass judgment on other people's aims and volitions. No man is qualified to declare what would make another man happier or less discontented.

Ludwig Von Mises

#81. wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. - ATTICUS FINCH, FROM HARPER LEE'S TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

Kristin Hannah

#82. I would have every zealous man examine his heart thoroughly, and I believe he will often find that what be calls a zeal for his religion is either pride, interest, or ill-repute.

Joseph Addison

#83. It was reasonable enough, of course, for people to wish to speak to a man, if that is what they wanted, but that did not mean that a man would be better.

Alexander McCall Smith

#84. Why should a man say what he feels, when a women is going to ignore what he says?

Laura Schlessinger

#85. I think that man has a fundamental obligation to extract from himself and from the earth all that it can give; and this obligation is all the more imperative that we are absolutely ignorant of what limits - they may still be very distant - God has imposed on our natural understanding and power.

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

#86. What I admire most in any man is a serene spirit, a steady freedom from moral indignation, and all-embracing tolerance
in brief,what is commonly called sportsmanship.

H.L. Mencken

#87. Justice requires that you should not place the burdens of one man on the shoulders of another man, even though he is better able to bear them. In plainer words, that you should not make one set of men pay for what is used by another set of men.

Auberon Herbert

#88. A man's name, title, and rank are artificial and impermanent; they do nothing to reveal what he really is, even to himself.

Jean Giraudoux

#89. 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

#90. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.

Oscar Wilde

#91. Is a man truly what he see himself to be?'
'Only if what he sees is true.

Lloyd Alexander

#92. I have no idea what the mind of a lowlife scoundrel is like, but I know what the mind of an honest man is like; it is terrifying.

Abel Hermant

#93. Was there ever a sillier thing before in the world than what I saw in Malabar country? The poor Pariah is not allowed to pass through the same street as the high-caste man, but if he changes his name to a hodge-podge English name, it is all right; or to a Mohammedan name, it is all right.

Swami Vivekananda

#94. What really matters is how God sees me. He isn't concerned with labels; he is concerned about the state of man's soul.

Billy Graham

#95. The medicine is strong. The cure is costly. But make no mistake: What Christ did on the cross works for every man and woman - no matter the ailment.

Adam T. Barr

#96. I only bet on what's dearest to a man's heart. Else there is no way to tell if he's bluffing. What a man is willing to risk or not to risk, that's a measure of his soul.

Davy Jones

#97. Each religion necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself. Religions, like languages, are necessary rivals. What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak.

George Santayana

#98. I read somewhere that some people believe that the entire universe is a matrix of living thought. And I said, Man, if that's not a definition of God, I don't know what is.

Alan Arkin

#99. The free man does what he likes in his working time and in his spare time what is required of him. The slave does what he is obliged to do in his working time and what he likes to do only when he is not at work.

Eric Gill

#100. And surely, he that hath taken the true Altitude of Things, and rightly calculated the degenerate state of this Age, is not like to envy those that shall live in the next, much less three or four hundred Years hence, when no Man can comfortably imagine what Face this World will carry.

Thomas Browne