The Man Who Never Was Quotes

#1. 'The Man Who Never Was,' by Ewen Montagu, remains the best book about wartime espionage written by an active participant - incomplete, and dry in parts, it nonetheless summons up the ingenuity and sheer eccentricity of those who played this strange and dangerous game.

Ben Macintyre

#2. My father was the only man I ever knew who really loved me unselfishly, who never used me for personal gain.

Jayne Mansfield

#3. I was the man who never lied
Never lied until today
But I just couldn't break your heart
Like you did mine yesterday

Maroon 5

#4. now,
never mind
the boy who came out of that reading room
a new man,
safe in the hope of what was to come
in the summers of his life.

Thabo Jijana

#5. There is only one sin and it is: weakness. When I was a boy, I read Milton's Paradise Lost. The only good man I had any respect for was Satan. The only saint is that person who never weakens, faces everything, and determines die game.

Swami Vivekananda

#6. About how their song had never sounded so sweet.
And of the man who held her.
Of how it felt as if he was the home she'd never had.

Juliana Stone

#7. He was a man who had never accepted the creed that others had the right to stop him. He set his goal and moved toward it ...

Ayn Rand

#8. Perhaps someone will have seen mine, the one I'm waiting for, just as I saw him, in a ditch when his hands were making their last appeal and his eyes no longer could see. Someone who will never know what that man was to me; someone whose name I'll never know.

Marguerite Duras

#9. To me, the labor movement was never just a way of getting higher wages. What appealed to me was the spiritual side of a great cause that created fellowship. You wanted the girl or the man who worked beside you to be treated just as well as you were, and an injury to one was the concern of all.

Rose Schneiderman

#10. Life, as I see it, is not a location, but a journey. Even the man who most feels himself "settled" is not settled - he is probably sagging back. Everything is in flux, and was meant to be. Life flows. We may live at the same number of the street, but it is never the same man who lives there.

Henry Ford

#11. Our fathers knew that the flag was never intended to protect any man who wanted to assail it.

Robert Green Ingersoll

#12. His glance was like a plea, like the cry for help of a man who could never cry.

Ayn Rand

#13. My husband has a cousin who discovered, in his fifties, that the man he thought was his father was actually not, and that he had not only a father he had never met, but brothers.

Jane Green

#14. It was obvious that he was a man who marched through life to the rhythms of some drum I would never hear.

Hunter S. Thompson

#15. I am the one who needs rescuing. Save me ( ... ) Save me from going back to being the man I was before I came here. Save me from all the years of loneliness I'll have to endure without you in my arms. Save me from spending the rest of my life longing for a woman I can never have.

Teresa Medeiros

#16. The President was in seventh heaven when he heard himself being teased like this; he strutted about and thrust his chest out; never did a man of the robe stick out his neck so far, not even one who has just hanged a man.

Marquis De Sade

#17. Who owned no property and never desired to since the earth was no man's but all men's, as light and air and weather were.

William Faulkner

#18. Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.

James Baldwin

#19. Yes, sir, Hicks said. He was a small young man, very officious, who would never contradict a superior. If Morris claimed the clouds were made of cheese Hicks would just stand to attention, twitch his nose, and swear blind he could smell Cheddar.

Bernard Cornwell

#20. Study was never a one-way thing. A man might spend his life peering at the private life of elementary particles and then find he either knew who he was or where he was, but not both.

Terry Pratchett

#21. How majestic is naturalness. I have never met a man whom I really considered a great man who was not always natural and simple. Affectation is inevitably the mark of one not sure of himself.

Charles G. Dawes

#22. Winston was an odd mix, Fitz thought: aristocrat and man of the people, a brilliant administrator who could never resist meddling in other people's departments, a charmer who was disliked by most of his political colleagues.

Ken Follett

#23. Never forget," I say, quietly now, "that if I wanted your job, I could have it. And never forget that the man you so eagerly serve is the same man who taught me how to fire a gun when I was nine years old.

Tahereh Mafi

#24. There are many men who are forgotten, who are despised, and who are trampled on by their fellows, but there never was a man who was so despised as the everlasting God has been!

Charles Spurgeon

#25. There's no money in that," said Will. "Farmers don't make any money. It's the man who buys from him and sells. You'll never make any money farming." Will knew that Cal was feeling him, testing him, observing him, and he approved of that.

John Steinbeck

#26. I'll tell you how I'd like to be remembered: As a black man who won the heavyweight title - Who has humorous and who never looked down on those who looked up to him - A man who stood for freedom, justice and equality - And I wouldn't even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was.

Muhammad Ali

#27. William Andrews Clark was caught in a bribery scandal during a campaign for the U.S. Senate - he was said to describe the Montana legislators this way: 'I never bought a man who wasn't for sale.'

Bill Dedman

#28. Don't be afraid of the dark." She tousled his hair tolerantly. "I've never known a man who wasn't scared of more things than I was.

Edward Hoagland

#29. I never met a man who was bad in bed and was good at life.

Samantha

#30. Phoebe was thinking, Insubordinate. What a lovely word. And when was the last time she'd heard a nice-looking young man use it? Why-never, that's when. What a treat. And to have a ruler who could say conscientious and citizenry in the same sentence. Lovely.

Jean Ferris

#31. This was a young man who had killed, but never before been in imminent danger of being killed. I felt oddly qualified to introduce him to the sensation.

Robin Hobb

#32. I'd never seen Marcello [Mastroianni] truly in love with a woman. I called him "the man who couldn't love." He was capable of enormous amounts of affection. He respected the women who were close to him, but never once fell in love.

Giovanna Cau

#33. But I also knew that there was no going back. One can never go back; nothing and no one is ever the same. All that remained was an occasional evening of sadness, the sadness that we all feel because everything passes and because man is the only animal who knows it.

Erich Maria Remarque

#34. The most important in the history of nations and individuals was once the most trivial, and vice versa. The plebeian, who is called today the 'man in the street,' can never see and understand the significance of the hidden seed of things, which in time must develop or die.

Ameen Rihani

#35. That picture of me running down the beach - I'll never forget doing that, because I made the hairdresser, who was the only man on the shoot, turn his back.

Kate Moss

#36. Most people forget that Danny Biasone was the Wilbur Wright of basketball. Because he invented the 24-second clock, the game took off. Yet he was a man who never played the game.

Dolph Schayes

#37. Because the path of the righteous man was never supposed to be easy,' I whispered. 'Those who are chosen by the Lord are given a hard journey. The rewards will come later.

Alexandra Adornetto

#38. There was never a man in the game who could put mind and muscle together quicker and with better judgment than (Jackie) Robinson.

Branch Rickey

#39. Was he the kind of man you wanted next to you in a foxhole? - a saying used almost always by men who had never been in foxholes about other men who had never been in foxholes either.

David Halberstam

#40. While he was in the service, in the South and in Oklahoma, he was refused service at a couple of places where he was in uniform, and was told that African Americans, blacks, Negros, were not served. And in spite of that, I've never known a man who loved this country more than my father did.

Eric Holder

#41. Although Garfield was dangerously ill, the idea of taking him to a hospital was never considered. Hospitals were only for people who had nowhere else to go. "No sick or injured person who could possibly be nursed at home or in a medical man's private residence,

Candice Millard

#42. Denton struck Charley as the kind of man who never wasted energy on extra movement or idle chitchat. He was foursquare Sonny Boy Williamson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a Silvertone guitar, older than old school.

Natalie Baszile

#43. is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed' was the ninth beatitude." Alexander Pope (1688-1744), English poet

Robert Courtade

#44. I was falling for the man who had turned me. He could never know.

Heather Heffner

#45. What Brother Pepe saw in Edward Bonshaw was a man who looked like he belonged - like a man who had never felt at home, but who'd suddenly found his place in the scheme of things.

John Irving

#46. The people told me, however, that the big ear was not only a man, but a great man, a genius. But I never believed in the people when they spake of great men - and I hold to my belief that it was a reversed cripple, who had too little of everything, and too much of one thing.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#47. We have all heard the story of the man who preached so well and lived so badly, that when he was in the pulpit everybody said he ought never to come out again, and when he was out of it they all declared he never ought to enter it again.

Charles Spurgeon

#48. There was I, devouring books and yet allowing a man who had never read a book to walk me home for a bit of harmless fumbling on the front steps.

Edna O'Brien

#49. He was a man who knew there were such things as jokes in the world or people would not write about them, but had never actually been introduced to one or shaken its hand.

Susanna Clarke

#50. The world is forever babbling of originality; but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world; the first man himself
who according to the Rabbins was also the first author
not being an original; the only original author being God.

Herman Melville

#51. Who was I now - woman or man? That question could never be answered as long as those were the only choices; it could never be answered if it had to be asked.

Leslie Feinberg

#52. Once there was a man who filmed his vacation./He went flying down the river in his boat/with his video camera to his eye, making/a moving picture of the moving river/ ... [At the end of his vacation,]/With a flick of the switch, there it would be./But he would not be in it. He would never be in it.

Wendell Berry

#53. When earth as if on evil dreams Looks back upon her wars, And the white light of Christ outstreams From the red disc of Mars, His fame, who led the stormy van Of battle, well may cease; But never that which crowns the man Whose victory was peace.

John Greenleaf Whittier

#54. And if the man who once upon a time had been a boy who promised he'd never fall in love with another girl as long as he lived kept his promise, it wasn't because he was stubborn or even loyal. He couldn't help it.

Nicole Krauss

#55. 'Magneto' is a tragic figure. He is a man who has stared right into the face of ultimate evil ... and he was broken into pieces by what he saw. When he healed, he healed stronger, but he also never fully recovered.

Cullen Bunn

#56. But it was Eve who was vilified, never the serpent. Just as it was the lady who was ruined, never the man.

Sarah MacLean

#57. He who fears death will never do anything worthy of a living man. But he who knows that this was the condition laid down for him at the moment of his conception will live on those terms, and at the same time he will guarantee with a similar strength of mind that no events take him by surprise.

Seneca.

#58. I'd never felt more human than I did when my mother lay in bed, dying. This was not the frailty of a man who is said to be "only human," subject to a weakness or a vulnerability. This was a wave of sadness and loss that made me understand that I was a man expanded by grief.

Don DeLillo

#59. So long as you believe that man is essentially evil in nature, and a more vicious doctrine was never promulgated, it follows that he is often going to need to have his ears slapped back, and who should do this but the clergy?

Anne Roe

#60. The demon blood inside me burned my soul to ashes long ago.
I am a monster who once dreamed he was a man. Never mistake
me again.

Carol Oates

#61. Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

Alexander Pope

#62. The truth was, I loved a man who would never love me. I wasn't enough for him, or he would have stayed. Chasing him was futile. He didn't want to be found. He'd given me what I had come here for: closure. I had my closure, and he had his.

Abbi Glines

#63. I never worried about the genius: genius takes care of the genius in a man. My concern was always for the nobody, the man who is lost in the shuffle, the man who is so common, so ordinary, that his presence is not even noticed. One genius does not inspire another.

Henry Miller

#64. Though you may have known clever men who were indolent, you never knew a great man who was so; and when I hear a young man spoken of as giving promise of great genius, the first question I ask about him always is, Does he work?

John Ruskin

#65. There was a man who I once knew,
for me there was no other.
The closer to loving me he grew,
the more he would grow further.
I tried to love him as his friend,
then to love him as his lover;
but he never loved me in the end
his heart was for another.

Lang Leav

#66. He was the lover who never showed his face, the man most avid for love as well as most niggardly with it, the man who gave nothing and wanted everything, the man who did not allow anyone to leave a trace of her passing in his heart, the hunter lying in ambush.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

#67. It was the kiss of a man who had waited years for the moment, and feared that it would never come again.

Jana Oliver

#68. The basic equation that mystified me as a young man was looking at guys who could actually get girls. I was always amazed, because they never seemed to care. I was like, 'How do they do that?'

Andy Richter

#69. It had never crossed my mind that a man could think he had the right to stop me from being who I was.

Gioconda Belli

#70. She felt the lurch of a head rush. The boy who had not paid attention to her; the man who'd embarked on an affair knowing she could never be his; at the last moment he was asking for more. A piece of her was elated. But she was also struck by his selfishness.

Jhumpa Lahiri

#71. The good man never wrote or read a sermon, but talked to his people as one who would meet what was in them with what was in him.

George MacDonald

#72. I have never met the man who had vision large enough to appreciate my genius," he said simply. "Perhaps it was not to be expected.

Georgette Heyer

#73. There have been men who could play delightful music on one string of the violin, but there never was a man who could produce the harmonies of heaven in his soul by a one-stringed virtue.

Edwin Hubbel Chapin

#74. Grandma married him because he was the first man she'd ever met who wasn't affected by her telepathy. This is the sort of thing that Internet dating sites never have a field for.

Seanan McGuire

#75. I wanted to be the one who eased the pain for him, to give him what he wanted. The sad reality of the story was I would never be that girl. And he would never be that man.

Lucia Franco

#76. There's not a man on Earth who doesn't wish he was me right now. Your mind and your body will never forget the things I'm going to do to you tonight. Every ... single ... inch of your body is going to feel me."
"Oh my God."
"Yes.

Gail McHugh

#77. So great is the effect of cleanliness upon man, that it extends even to his moral character. Virtue never dwelt long with filth; nor do I believe there ever was a person scrupulously: attentive to cleanliness, who was a consummate villain.

Benjamin Thompson

#78. It was never the fame or fortune that drove me to act. It was something I love and enjoy doing it. A lot of people identify who they are by what they do and that's not me. It's what I do but not who I am. Who I am is a parent. I'm a family man.

Adam Baldwin

#79. I never saw a useful Christian who was not a student of the Bible. If a man neglects his Bible, he may pray and ask God to use him in His work; but God cannot make much use of him, for there is not much for the Holy Ghost to work upon.

Dwight L. Moody

#80. The first person besides my mother who believed in me was a man whose last name I never knew. He was my boss, the manager of Swenson's Ice Cream shop.

Mona Simpson

#81. The exorcist had a slightly Australian tinge to his voice, and the laid-back, whatever-comes-next attitude of a man who had suddenly realised two degrees short of a sunstroke that exorcism was the perfect career choice he'd never been offered in school.

Kate Griffin

#82. Why good news involved the man being pounded, Ian had never understood, but he knew that the gestures made Mac, Cam and Hart happy. Ian stood quietly and took their hand claps, arms around his shoulders, liking that he was part of them, brothers who had never deserted him.

Jennifer Ashley

#83. I met this homeless man who had never owned a shirt in his life. He had taken his pants and worn them as a shirt and I thought it was so creative. He was liberated from the conventions of fashion.

Julia Stiles

#84. He was once the man I loved more than anything in the world. But he was also the man who would never be mine.

Karina Halle

#85. A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.

Raymond Chandler

#86. There is no harm in not forgetting. Think of a small ship amid storming waters - raging and cruel; who forgets that? Not the man who was rescued. Never the man who rescued consciously. Neither the man whose kin could not be rescued. Nor the man who decided not to rescue.

Ashfaq Saraf

#87. There never was a man who could sit down and say: 'Now I am going to be the first man to write.

David Diringer

#88. There never was a man on earth who pitched as much as me. But the more I pitched, the stronger my arm would get.

Satchel Paige

#89. Changing a man was never a goal of mine, and I disliked women who fell in love with the idea of a man only to then spend the rest of their lives trying to change him to be what they wanted.

Nina Levine

#90. I never understood how someone who was dying could say he was the luckiest man in the world, but now I understand.

Mickey Mantle

#91. In the light of reincarnation life changes its aspect, for it becomes the school of the eternal Man within us, who seeks therein his development, the Man that was and is and shall be, for whom the hour will never strike.

Annie Besant

#92. 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

#93. Never had he seen a man who looked so lonely, so far from the run of human life with its fellowship and warmth. To see him here, in this place of fiesta, only underlined the truth of him: he was the last. There was no other.

Stephen King

#94. No one can say 'He jests at scars who never felt a wound' for I have never for one moment been in a state of mind to which even the imagination of serious pain was less than intolerable. If any man is safe from the danger of under-estimating this adversary, I am that man.

C.S. Lewis

#95. Trouble was, they never let on to their sons how scared they was - so scared they forgot the color of a man because he could outshoot the man who scared 'em. And bein ashamed, they never talked about it or discussed it in the family.

Peter Matthiessen

#96. Where is Wilkins, anyway?" Cameron asked.
"In the living room, being accosted by eighteen women who think he's a stripper. I thought it was best to duck in here."
"So much for never leaving a man behind."
"If he starts screaming, I'll lay down a cover fire and go pull him out.

Julie James

#97. Hilbert once had a student in mathematics who stopped coming to his lectures, and he was finally told the young man had gone off to become a poet. Hilbert is reported to have remarked: 'I never thought he had enough imagination to be a mathematician.'

George Polya

#98. Daniel held himself very still, waiting for the wave of jealousy that never came. He was furious with the man who'd taken advantage of her innocence, but he did not feel jealous. He did not need to be her first, he realized. He simply needed to be her last. Her only.

Julia Quinn

#99. I never yet heard man or woman much abused that I was not inclined to think the better of them, and to transfer the suspicion or dislike to the one who found pleasure in pointing out the defects of another.

Jane Porter

#100. It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

Harper Lee