Virtuous and vicious every man must be,
Few in the extreme, but all in the degree.
Men Quotes
Little here is prose, and the list is short. Shakespeare leads, then Byron, Pope, Dryden and Josiah Gilbert Holland. Byron’s lines are the best-sourced: sighing that Nature formed but one such man, and broke the die in moulding Sheridan (1816), and the Manfred passage (1817) on men who name themselves sovereigns of the earth yet are half dust, half deity.
The one flagged entry is “The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man,” credited to Madame de Staël and marked disputed.
Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds
Of high resolve; on fancy's boldest wing.
He only fears men who does not know them, and he who avoids them will soon misjudge them.
It is easier to know mankind in general than man individually.
Man, living, feeling man is the easy prey of the powerful present.
Sighing that Nature formed but one such man,
And broke the die, in molding Sheridan.
Obedience, submission, discipline, courage — these are among the characteristics which make a man.
For men, like butterflies,
Show not their mealy wings but to the summer.
How dull, and how insensible a beast
Is man, who yet would lord it o'er the rest.
The proper Science and Subject for Man's Contemplation is Man himself.
Some men sleep
with loose hands that by day are fists
holding fear
Man is no thing, but a drama... Man, in a word, has no nature; what he has is... history.