Being A Man Means Quotes & Sayings

Tacitus laughed at the Germanic tribes who tried to stop a torrent with their shields, but it is no less naive to believe in planetary migration or to believe in the establishment by purely human means of a society fully satisfied and perfectly inoffensive and continuing to progress indefinitely. Al lthis proves that man ,thoough he has inevitably become less naive in some things, has nontheless learned nothing as far as essentials are concerned; the only thing that man is capable of when left to himself is to "commit the oldest sins the newest kind of ways," as Shakespeare would say. And the world being what it is, one is doubtless not guilty of a truism in adding that it is better to go to Heaven naively than to go intelligently to hell. — Frithjof Schuon

We cannot gain an essential knowledge of man through any method that is based on externalization of man's inner being and the placing of this externalized man, of the man who stands at the rim of the wheel of existence, as the subject that knows. If "essential" has any meaning at all, it must be related to the essence, to the Centre or axis which at once generates the spokes and the rim. Only the higher can comprehend the lower, for to "comprehend" means literally "to encompass", and only that which stands on a higher level of existence can encompass that which lies below it. The essence of man, that which is essential to human nature, can be understood only by the intellect, through "the eye of the heart" as traditionally understood. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr

All I'm telling you to do is to be smart about it. Know that if this man isn't looking for a serious relationship, you're not going to change his mind just because you two are going on dates and being intimate. You could be the most perfect woman on the Lord's green earth-you're capable of interesting conversation, you cook a mean breakfast, you hand out backrubs like sandwiches, you're independent (which means, to him, that you're not going to be in his pockets)-but if he's not ready for a serious relationship, he going to treat you like sports fish. — Steve Harvey

Man's life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless brute, of a looting thug or a mooching mystic, but the life of a thinking being - not life by means of force or fraud, but life by means of achievement - not survival at any price, since there's only one price that pays for man's survival: reason. — Ayn Rand

But innovation is more than a new method. It is a new view of the universe, as one of risk rather than of chance or of certainty. It is a new view of man's role in the universe; he creates order by taking risks. And this means that innovation, rather than being an assertion of human power, is an acceptance of human responsibility. — Peter Drucker

Anarchism asserts the possibility of an organization without discipline, fear, or punishment, and without the pressure of poverty: a new social organism which will make an end to the terrible struggle for the means of existence,
the savage struggle which undermines the finest qualities in man, and ever widens the social abyss. In short, Anarchism strives towards a social organization which will establish well-being for all. — Emma Goldman

That night at the Brooklyn party, I was playing the girl who was in style, the girl a man like Nick wants: the Cool Girl. Men always say that as the defining compliment, don't they? She's a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she's hosting the world's biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. — Gillian Flynn

Oppression is often the consequence, but seldom or never the means of riches; and though avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy. — Thomas Paine

An exact poetic duplication of a man is for the poet a negation of the earth, an impossibility of being, even though his greatest desire is to speak to many men, to unite with them by means of harmonious verses about the truths of the mind or of things. — Salvatore Quasimodo

To me, being a man means being kind, generous, and a good provider. The most important part of being a man is being strong. Having the self-confidence to handle any situation you face, whether you live in the city and face traffic, congestion, and crowds, or you live in remote areas with wild animals and inclement weather. And it's a quiet self-confidence. A strong, self-confident man doesn't announce his strength to the world. He leads by example. He's the guy who steps up and takes charge when a challenge is faced, and then quietly fades into the background when the issue is resolved. — John Sowers

Do I believe a thing has limits!? Of course! Nothing exists that doesn't have limits. Existence means there's always something else, and so everything has limits. Why is it so hard to conceive that a thing is a thing, and that it isn't always being some other thing that's beyond it?"

At that moment I felt in my bones not that I was talking to a man, but to another universe. I tried one last time, from another angle, which I felt compelled to consider legitimate.

"Look, Caeiro... think about numbers... Where do they end? Take any number - say 34. Past it we have 35, 36, 37, 38 - there can be no end to it. There is no number so big that there is no number larger..."

"But that's just numbers," protested my master Caeiro.

And then, looking at me out of his formidable, childlike eyes:

"What is 34 in Reality, anyway? — Alvaro De Campos

Lehi, in counseling his son Jacob, makes a very challenging statement: "All things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things." (2 Ne. 2:24.) If I interpret this statement correctly, it means that one's wisdom is proportionate to his knowledge. This being so, how insignificant is the wisdom of man, which is based upon his limited mortal experience, when compared with the wisdom of God, which is based upon his knowledge of all things. — Marion G. Romney

He wasn't tough. A tough man has to win and lose. He has to come up after being knocked down, he has to have taken a few beatings, and know what it means to win the hard way. Anybody, he said dryly, can knock a man down. When you've been knocked down at least three times yourself, and then got up and floored the other man, then you can figure you're a tough hombre. — Louis L'Amour

[Naaman] dipped himself," it says, "seven times in Jordan." It was not for nothing that Naaman of old, when suffering from leprosy, was purified upon his being baptized, but as an indication to us. For as we are lepers in sin, we are made clean by means of the sacred water and the invocation of the Lord from our old transgressions, being spiritually regenerated as new-born babes, even as the Lord has declared: "Except a man be born again through water and the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. — Irenaeus Of Lyons

Your objective is to avoid being on a string.
The first step, I think, is to get over the fear of losing a man by confronting him. Just stop being afraid, already. The most successful people in this world recognize that taking chances to get what they want is much more productive than sitting around being too scared to take a shot. The same philosophy can be applied to dating: if putting your requirements on the table means you risk him walking away, it's a risk you have to take. Because that fear can trip you up every time; all too many of you let the guy get away with disrespecting you, putting in minimal effort and holding on to the commitment to you because you're afraid he's going to walk away and you'll be alone again. And we men? We recognize this and play on it, big time. — Steve Harvey

The sabbath was made for men. But man now behaves like the Pharisees and insists that he is made for all the things - science , nation , money, religion, schools - which were really made for him. Why? Because he is so little aware of his own interests as a human being that he feels irresistibly tempted to sacrifice himself to these idols. There is no remedy except to become aware of one's interest as a human being , and , having become aware , to learn to act on that awareness. Which means learning to use the self and learning to direct the mind. It's almost wearisome, the way one always comes back to the same point. Wouldn't it be nice , for a change , if there were another way out of our difficulties! A short cut. A method requiring no greater personal effort than recording a vote or ordering some " enemy of society" to be shot. A salvation from outside, like a does of calomel. — Aldous Huxley

If the world is made to furnish each individual with the means of livelihood and the instruments for his growth and progress, each man has therefore the right to find in the world what is necessary for himself. The recent Council reminded us of this: "God intended the earth and all that it contains for the use of every human being and people. Thus, as all men follow justice and unite in charity, created goods should abound for them on a reasonable basis." — Pope Paul VI

No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes - forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique. — Neil Gaiman

Love, the great, the strong, the conquering god
Love that subdues a world, and rides roughshod over principle, virtue, tradition, over home, kindred, and religion
what cares he for the easy conquest of the pathetic being, who appeals to his sympathy?
Love means equality
the same height of heroism or of sin. When Love stoops to pity, he has ceased to soar in the boundless space, that rarefied atmosphere wherein man feels himself made at last truly in the image of God. — Emmuska Orczy

Landsman recognizes the expression on Dick's face ... The face of a man who feels he was born into the wrong world. A mistake has been made; he is not where he belongs. Every so often he feels his heart catch, like a kite on a telephone wire, on something that seems to promise him a home in the world or a means of getting there. An American car manufactured in his far-off boyhood, say, or a motorcycle that once belonged to the future king of England, or the face of a woman worthier than himself of being loved. — Michael Chabon

For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. — Karl Marx

My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby ... I am very fortunate in having a wife who likes being a woman, which means that she likes men, not elderly babies. — John Steinbeck

Effort is between you, and you, and nobody else. So that team that thinks it's ready to see you, they think what they've seen on film, they ain't saw what film shows, because every day is a new day. Every moment is a new moment. So now you've got to go out and show them that I'm a different creature now, than I was five minutes ago, cause I'm pissed off for greatness. Cause if you ain't pissed off for greatness, that just means you're okay with being mediocre, and ain't no man in here okay with just basic. — Ray Lewis

And in the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Henceforth, any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all that bears a human form. Through fellowship and communion with the incarnate Lord, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time we are delivered from that individualism which is the consequence of sin, and retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race. By being partakers of Christ incarnate, we are partakers in the whole humanity which he bore. We now know that we have been taken up and borne in the humanity of Jesus, and therefore that new nature we now enjoy means that we too must bear the sins and sorrows of others. The incarnate Lord makes his followers the brothers of all mankind. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

They were complicated years. The order of the world in which we had grown up was dissolving. The old skills resulting from long study and knowledge of the correct political line suddenly seemed senseless. Anarchist, Marxist, Gramscian, Communist, Leninist, Trotskyite, Maoist, worker were quickly becoming obsolete labels or, worse, a mark of brutality. The exploitation of man by man and the logic of maximum profit, which before had been considered an abomination, had returned to become the linchpins of freedom and democracy everywhere. Meanwhile, by means legal and illegal, all the accounts that remained open in the state and in the revolutionary organizations were being closed with a heavy hand. One might easily end up murdered or in jail, and among the common people a stampede had begun. — Elena Ferrante

Upbringing is an immeasurable and subtle influence upon ma's soul. It is completely indirect through love, examples, forgiveness, and punishment with the intention of initiating an inner activity in man himself. Drill , being essentially bestial, is a system of measures and action taken to force a certain behavior, the so-called right behavior, upon a human being. Upbringing belongs to man; drill is designed for the animal. By means of drill, it is possible to form citizens who obey the law not out of respect but out of fear or habit. Their inside may be dead, their feelings withered; yet, they still do not break the law because they have been drilled. — Alija Izetbegovic

While an increasing number of male academic, political, and cultural figures have felt comfortable enough in recent years to proclaim themselves feminists, absorbing aspects of feminist politics and theory into their thinking, their gestures are most often built on an essentialized and static dichotomy between men and women. But men must do more than admit their complicity in patriarchy; they must begin to rethink the very boundaries that shape and define what it means to be a man.

Conversely, women must play an important part in this reevaluation, an idea suggest by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwikc's admonition that "when something is about masculinity, it isn't always 'about men'." Far from being just about men, the idea of masculinity engages, inflects, and shapes everyone. — Maurice Berger

Vicki is a young woman who through the sheer exuberance of her imagination is prone to exaggeration. Will, being a steady young man who is realizing that there is more to his life than what he's known, simply cannot resist her.
Their journey is about being the person you need to be, living the life you are meant to live, finding the courage and the means to make it happen. And that might just mean not doing it all on your own as you thought. — Ava Pashley

To follow art for the sake of being a great man, and therefore to cast about continually for some means of achieving position or attracting admiration, is the surest way of ending in total extinction. — John Ruskin

Taoism means streching your being, becoming both a man and a woman and joining within yourself, to be the heavens themselves, to stretch your awareness beyond the breaking point until all opposites are reconciled within yourself. — Frederick Lenz

You say that my way of thinking cannot be tolerated? What of it? The man who alters his way of thinking to suit othere is a fool. My way of thinking is the result of my reflections. It is part of my inner being,the way I am made. I do not contradict them, and would not even if I wished to. For my system, which you disapprove of is also my greatest comfort in life, the source of all my happiness -it means more to me than my life itself. — Marquis De Sade

...asked by his wife whether he wants to have his bowling shoes laced over or laced under, Archie Bunker answers the question: "What's the difference?" Being a reader of sublime simplicity, his wife replies by patiently explaining the difference between lacing over and lacing under, whatever this may be, but provokes only ire. "What's the difference" did not ask for difference but means instead "I don't give a damn what the difference is. — Paul De Man

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it's pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We're on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on — C.S. Lewis

Why, my man is created from the outside, that is, he is inauthentic in essence- he is always not-himself, because he is determined by form, which is born between people. His "I", therefore, is marked for him in that "interhumanity." An eternal actor, but a natural one, because his artificiality is inborn, it makes up a feature of his humanity-to be a man means to be an actor-to be a man means to pretend to be a man-to be a man means to "act like" a man while not being one deep inside-to be a man is to recite humanity. — Witold Gombrowicz

Women should never be ashamed to be feminine. Strength comes from conviction, not from acting like a man. Being feminine doesn't mean you're weak, it just means you're proud to be a woman. — Steven James

Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them. For practical purposes it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful. — G.K. Chesterton

To these children, the door William has just come through is a portal. Being shoved through it means a trip to hell where only demons come to visit and the man before them fits that description; his deep, hard eyes frame his long, winding scar and behind him, flames rise as the smell of smoke and charring meat waft into the room. — M.R. Gott

And so we see the paradox that evolution has handed us. If man is the only animal whose consciousness of self gives him an unusual dignity in the animal kingdom, he also pays a tragic price for it. The fact that the child has to identify -first- means that his very first identity is a social product. His habitation of his own body is built from the outside in; not from the inside out. He doesn't unfold into the world, the world unfolds into him. As the child responds to the vocal symbols learned from his object, he often gives the pathetic impression of being a true social puppet, jerked by alien symbols and sounds. What sensitive parent does not have his satisfaction tinged with sadness as the child repeats with such vital earnestness the little symbols that are taught him? — Ernest Becker

Nails. The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men, as if being a man means looking the way a sculptor or an art director says. — Chuck Palahniuk

It must make you feel nice and young to say that being a man means nothing and being a woman means nothing and what matters is being a ... person. How about being a spider, Gwyn. Let's imagine you're a spider. You're a spider, and you've just had your first serious date. You're limping away from that now, and you're looking over your shoulder, and there's your girlfriend, eating one of your legs like a chicken drumstick. What would you say? I know. You'd say: I find I never think in terms of male spiders or in terms of female spiders. I find I always think in terms of ... spiders — Martin Amis

Howard Roark built a temple to the human spirit. He saw man as strong, proud, clean, wise and fearless. He saw man as a heroic being. And he built a temple to that. A temple is a place where man is to experience exaltation. He thought that exaltation comes from the consciousness of being guiltless, of seeing the truth and achieving it, of living up to one's highest possibility, of knowing no shame and having no cause for shame, of being able to stand naked in full sunlight. He thought that exaltation means joy and that joy is man's birthright. He tho ... ught that a place built as a setting for man is a sacred place. That is what Howard Roark thought of man and of exaltation. — Ayn Rand

Since reason is man's basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil. — Ayn Rand

Am I just prey to you?"
"Some things are worth chasing."
"Some things can't be caught."
His finger outlined my jaw as if he were putting me to memory.
"I have spent a lifetime being chased by females, and I know what it means to run. There's something different about you, Silver. You incite the hunter in me."
My saddened eyes wandered up to his, and I made a promise I didn't know if I could keep. "I'll never love again, Logan. If that's what you're asking, then I won't give it to a man that I can't trust with my life and my heart. You kill without regret, and I never know from one minute to the next what your intentions are. I don't want an indecisive man in my life any more than a controlling one."
A torch lit behind those eyes, burning bright as he leaned in and whispered softly beside my ear. "Sweet little raven, dusted in sugar - I will possess your heart. — Dannika Dark

[I]t is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or of any number of men, at the entering into society to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights, when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are life, liberty, and property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up an essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right of freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave. — Samuel Adams

Persistence - This is another way to relieve her of any responsibility for what is happening. Of course, don't confuse persistence with begging, arguing, or being pushy, needy, or creepy. All it means is don't give up too easily. Girls may test you to find out how easily you throw in the towel - they want to gauge your self-confidence. Just assume that she is giving a little token resistance, and continue. If she didn't resist at least a little bit, she would feel like a slut - and that's not going to happen. And if you can't take her crap, how in the world are you going to protect her from other people's crap?
This can be tricky - an overly aggressive man might misinterpret all resistance as being merely token and could eventually find himself facing a rape charge. However, a man who isn't persistence enough will acquiesce every time a women resists, when in may cases she was secretly hoping he could be a little more forceful. — Mystery

Nothing expresses Kafka's innermost sense of self more profoundly than his lapidary definition of "writing as a form of prayer": he was a writer. Not a man who wrote, but one to whom writing was the only form of being, the only means of defying death in life. — Ernst Pawel

What is the task of higher education? To make a man into a machine. What are the means employed? He is taught how to suffer being bored. — Friedrich Nietzsche

[W]hereas a few hundred years ago man suspected and imagined that the universe was, for all intents and purposes, limitless, today he knows this to be true. His improved understanding of the material world around him has given him the means to make sure that his original conception of the universe was correct, in that every day its limits are being pushed aside and new horizons appear."

His Highness the Aga Khan's 1964 First World Socio-Economic Conference address (Karachi, Pakistan) — Aga Khan

It is in hope, therefore, that a man lives, as the 'son of the resurrection'; it is in hope that the City of God lives, during its pilgrimage on earth, that City which is brought into being by faith in Christ's resurrection. For Abel's name means 'lamentation',109 and the name of Seth, his brother, means 'resurrection'. And so in those two men the death of Christ and his life from among the dead, are prefigured. As — Augustine Of Hippo

When man has mastered money he shall have mastered not only his economic problem of prosperity but also his political problem, for he will see that money has no place in state functions, and, the money power being entirely in his own hands, he will easily master the state and clearly define its services. Thus money must be seen as the means of mastery of all economic and political problems. Until we have mastered money we shall not master any of our problems. Not money, but a false money system, is the root of all evil. — E.C. Riegel

And since you know what a tree-climbing weenie I am, I think it's pretty clear that I'm willing to do anything to get her to talk to me. Man, I'll dive after her into a chicken coop full of poop if that's what it takes. I'll ride my bike all the stinkin' way to school for the rest of eternity if it means being with her — Wendelin Van Draanen

If in this supreme test, in face of which the braggart falls silent and every heroic gesture is paralyzed, a man walks straight up to the cause of his fear and is not deterred from doing that which is good
which ultimately means for the sake of God, and therefore not from ambition or from fear of being taken for a coward
this man, and he alone, is truly brave. — Josef Pieper

There are more locations than girl and boy, man and woman. Decamping from one does not have to mean climbing into another. There's plenty of space in between, or beyond the bounds, or all along and across the plane or sphere or whatever of gender, and it is entirely okay to say, "I do not like being a girl, and so I shall be a boy." But it must also be okay to say, "I do not like being a girl, so I shall set about changing what it means to be a girl," and, yes, okay to say, "I do not like being a girl, and so I shan't. — S. Bear Bergman

Being a feminist simply means you believe in equal rights, and I think if you ask anybody if they believe in equal rights, they'll say yes, man or woman. And if they don't - who the heck would say that? — Leighton Meester

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

The guy was just sitting there," Tom added happily. "Am I right?" Gabe nodded, generous in his small smile. "That's right. John, chapter nine. Jesus and his disciples were having a discussion, it seems, about human suffering being a punishment for sin. The disciples pointed to the blind man begging. This man was born blind, they said, was it because his parents sinned? It was the belief in those days," he added, young scholar, "that blindness or deformity was a punishment for the parents' sins." "Grateful to be an orphan," Tom said suddenly, and looked at my mother and me, smiling. "Or maybe that means I'm in more trouble than most." "Well, we're all sinners," Gabe said. "But the point is, no one was asking Jesus to cure the man, they were just using him to illustrate their question. And yet, Our Lord, out of compassion alone, it seems to me, approaches the man, picks up some dirt - " He paused, ducking his head with a wry smile. "We all know the story." "Right," Tom cried. — Alice McDermott

The day that the black man takes an uncompromising step and realizes that he's within his rights, when his own freedom is being jeopardized, to use any means necessary to bring about his freedom or put a halt to that injustice, I don't think he'll be by himself. — Malcolm X

Being heartbroken doesn't mean you stop feeling. Just the opposite - it means you feel it all more.
With your heart in fragments, every sensation is sharper, every emotion more acute. Your feelings are enhanced, like a blind man with an impeccable sense of smell, or a deaf woman whose eyes can perceive things a normal person would never recognize.
The brokenhearted are the best empaths of all. — Julie Johnson

Don't you miss having a man? Don't you want to get married?"
He [Patrick Sonnier] is simple and direct. I'm simple and direct back.
I tell him that even as a young woman I didn't want to marry one man and have one family, I always wanted a wider arena for my love. But intimacy means a lot to me, I tell him. "I have close friends - men and women. I couldn't make it without intimacy."
"Yeah?" he says.
"Yeah," I say. "But there's a costly side to celibacy, too, a deep loneliness sometimes. There are moments, especially on Sunday afternoons, when I smell the smoke in the neighborhood from family barbecues, and feel like a fool not to have pursued a "normal" life. But, then, I've figured out that loneliness is part of everyone's life, part of being human - the private, solitary part of us that no one else can touch." (p. 127) — Helen Prejean

I remember, around age ten, beholding the scene in The Shining in which the hot young woman whom Jack Nicholson is lewdly embracing in the haunted hotel bathroom ages rapidly in his arms, screeching from nubile chick to putrefying corpse within seconds. I understood that the scene was supposed to represent some kind of primal horror. This was The Shining, after all. But the image of that decaying, cackling crone, her arms outstretched in desire toward the man who is backing away, has stayed with me for three decades, as a type of friend. She's part baths-ghost, part mad-Naomi. She didn't get the memo about being beyond wanting or being wanted. Or perhaps she just means to scare the shit out of him, which she does. — Maggie Nelson

I don't like being called 'macho.' Macho basically means stupid and a real Italian man is not macho, he's smart. That's smart in both senses: elegant and clever. — Andrea Bocelli

I'm a man." Koll's shoulders sagged. "When did that happen?" "It just happens." "I wish I knew what it meant, being a man." "Guess it means something different for each one of us. The gods know I'm no sage, but if I've realized anything, it's that life isn't about making something perfect. — Joe Abercrombie

YOU MEANS BE MINE

You've asked me a question:
Do i want you?
In this phrase, 'you' means
So many things my dear...
You means,
The bruises of your soul
The wrong parts of your thoughts,
The diseases of your being.

You means a lot of things my dear...
Broken hopes, wounded hearts, tipsy nights
An ignoble past
And a kid
Crying inside.

You means a lot, my dear.
You means the man
I don't dare to-

You've asked me
Do i want you

No.
I dont't want you.
But I want you
To be mine. — Arzum Uzun

Whatever the variations by race, class, age, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, being a man means "not being like women." This notion of antifemininity lies at the heart of contemporary and historical conceptions of manhood, so that masculinity is defined more by what one is not rather than who one is. — Michael S. Kimmel

There was another thought which a scanning of those tiny electronic headlines often invoked. The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry or depressing its contents seemed to be. Accidents, crimes, natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict, gloomy editorials - these still seemed to be the main concern of the millions of words being sprayed into the ether. Yet Floyd also wondered if this was altogether a bad thing; the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull. From — Arthur C. Clarke

Sophie dear,' I said. 'Are you in love with him - with this spider-man?'
'Oh, don't call him that - please - we can't any of us help being what we are. His name's Gordon. He's kind to me, David. He's fond of me. You've got to have as little as I have to know how much that means. You've never known loneliness. You can't understand the awful emptiness that's waiting all round us here. I'd have given him babies gladly, if I could ... I - oh, why do they do that to us? Why didn't they kill me? It would have been kinder than this ... '
She sat without a sound. The tears squeezed out from under the closed lids and ran down her face. I took her hand between my own.
I remembered watching. The man with his arm linked in the woman's, the small figure on top of the pack-horse waving back to me as they disappeared into the trees. Myself desolate, a kiss still damp on my
cheek, a lock tied with a yellow ribbon in my hand. I looked at her now, and my heart ached. — John Wyndham

For several thousand years man has been in contact with animals whose character and habits have been deformed by domestication. He has ended by believing that he understands them. All he means by this is that he is able to rely on certain reflex actions which he himself has implanted in them. He will flatter himself at times on the grasp of animal psychology which has brought him the love of the dog and the purr of the cat; and on the strength of such assumptions he approaches the beasts of the jungle. The old tag about nature being an open book is just not true. What nature offers on a first examination may appear to be simple but it is never as simple as it appears. — Hans Brick

Publicity in itself, of whatever nature, connotes a disturbance of the natural equilibrium of a man. Under normal circumstances, the name a human being bears is no more than the band is to a cigar: a means of identification, a superficial, almost unimportant thing that is only loosely related to the real subject, the true ego. In the event of a success the name begins to swell, so to say. It loosens itself from the human being that bears it and becomes a power in itself, a force, an independent thing, an article of commerce, a capital asset; and psychologically again with strong reaction it becomes a force which tends to influence, to dominate, to transform the person who bears it. — Stefan Zweig

In his very rejection of art Walt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect by certain means and he succeeded ... He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him. — Oscar Wilde

Jeff Chu's pilgrimage across America to discover his own place as a gay man in the Christian church as well as attitudes about being gay and Christian across denominations is at once timely, smart, poignant, disturbing, inspiring, and maddening. It's essential reading for anyone who cares about the rights of the LGBTQ community to be treated as equal citizens at every level, including the religious-which means it should be essential reading for everybody. — Donna Freitas

I teach my sons that there are really only three rules to being a good man. The first rule is to fish often. And by fish, I mean find the quiet times to fish around in your minds for what is most important. The second rule is to protect everyone smaller than them. This means physically smaller, and in all other ways ... protect the more vulnerable. The third rule states that if something is truly important to you, then you should prove it. You say you would lay your life down for someone, but will you give them the busiest five minutes of your day, if they need it? — Spuds Crawford

No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual's individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol - cross or crescent or whatever - that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race. — William Faulkner

When you're washing up, pray. Be thankful that there are plates to be washed; that means there was food, that you fed someone, that you're lavished care on one or more people, that you cooked and laid the table. ...
There are women who say: "I'm not going to do the washing up let the men do it." Fine, let the men do it if they want to, but that has nothing to do with equality ... I'd be accused of working against the feminist cause. Nonsense! As if washing up or wearing a bra or having someone open or close a door could be humiliating to me as a woman. The fact is, I love it when a man opens the door for me. ... in my soul is written: "I'm being treated like a goddess. I'm a queen. — Paulo Coelho

For the modern economist this is very difficult to understand. He is used to measuring the "standard of living" by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is "better off" than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption. Thus, if the purpose of clothing is a certain amount of temperature comfort and an attractive appearance, the task is to attain this purpose with the smallest possible effort, that is, with the smallest annual destruction of cloth and with the help of designs that involve the smallest possible input of toil. The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. — E.F. Schumacher

What they have is science, and in science only that which is subject to the senses. The spiritual world, on the other hand, the loftier half of the man's being, is rejected altogether, cast out with a certain triumph, hatred even. The world has proclaimed freedom of theirs: nothing but servitude and suicide! For the world says: 'You have needs, so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the wealthiest and most highly placed of men. Do not be afraid to satisfy them, but even multiply them'
that is the present-day teaching of the world. In that, too, they see freedom. And what is the result of this right to the multiplication of needs? Among the rich solitariness and spiritual suicide, and among the poor
envy and murder, for while they have been given rights, they have not yet been afforded the means with which to satisfy their needs. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Calling means so much to me. It's this idea of perception and how the mythology of the universe and Earth have played out and how I get to re-write that based on my imagination and some of my true feelings. It's about being a man pushing 35 and not having a sense of direction. It's about finding love and being totally unwilling to let it go. - About Qualia — Stephan Lawrence Theodore Clifford

If man did not exist as a world-spanning receptive realm of perception, if he were not engaged in this capacity, nothing at all could exist. 'Being,' in its traditional usage, means 'presence' and 'persistence.' To achieve presence, and thereby being, an entity requires some sort of open realm in which presence and persistence can take place. Thus an open realm of perception like that of human existence is the one being that makes being possible. — Medard Boss

There are two ways of being happy: We may either diminish our wants or augment our means- either will do- the result in the same; and it is for each man to decide for himself, and do that which happens to be the easiest. If you are idle or sick or poor, however hard it may be to diminish your wants, it will be harder to augment your means. If you are active and prosperous or young and in good health, it may be easier for you to augment your means than to diminish your wants. But if you are wise, you will do both at the same time, young or old, rich or poor, sick or well; and if you are very wise you will do both in such a way as to augment the general happiness of society. — Benjamin Franklin

We cannot make ourselves known to each other; we are not healed and forgiven by each other's presence. With words as valueless as poker chips, we play games whose object it is to keep us from seeing each other's cards. Chit-chat games in which "How are you?" means "Don't tell me who you are," and "I'm alone and scared" becomes "Fine thanks." Games where the players create the illusion of being in the same room but where the reality of it is that each is alone inside a skin in that room, like bathyspheres at the bottom of the sea. Blind man's buff games where everyone is blind. — Frederick Buechner

We don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise.
We are oppressed at being men - men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

When someone tells a man to be a man, they mean that there is a way to be a man. A man is not just a thing to be - it is also a way to be, a path to follow and a way to walk. Some try to make manhood mean everything. Others believe that it means nothing at all. Being good at being a man can't mean everything, and it has always meant something — Jack Donovan

Reason is your means of survival - so that for you, who are a human being, the question 'to be or not to be' is the question 'to think or not to think..'. — Ayn Rand

Modern man, brought up on Kantian idealism, regards nature as being no more than an outcome of the laws of the mind. Losing all their independence as divine works, things gravitate henceforth round human thought, whence their laws are derived. What wonder, after that, is if criticism had resulted in the virtual disappearance of all metaphysics? [...] As soon as the universe is reduced to the laws of mind, man, now become creator, has no longer any means of rising above himself. Legislator of a world to which his own mind has given birth, he is henceforth the prisoner of his own work, and he will never escape from it anymore. [...] if my thought is the condition of being, never by thought shall I be able to transcend the limits of my being and my capacity for the infinite will never be satisfied. — Etienne Gilson

I'm back there again, broken from being a champion,
The boy that no one loved,
The years I spent training like a method actor to
Become the man that everyone admired,
But it means nothing,
Like ashes on a forehead, they marked me inferior,
When I was still young enough to receive it into the grain of my being — Terrence Alonzo Craft

Dr Grantly is by no means a bad man; he is exactly the man which such an education as his was most likely to form; his intellect being sufficient for such a place in the world, but not sufficient to put him in advance of it. — Anthony Trollope

The scenario where the sprawling anti-hero gets his comeuppance and the champion walks off into the sunset with his arm around the prize, usually a woman, is a pleasing one. This media personification of what a hero is all about used to be the common norm. Examining past events can confirm this convoluted outlook that sees the baddie being portrayed as some sort of evil manifestation sent to cause havoc by any means possible. — Stephen Richards

The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the man. He was by no means ill-looking; quite the contrary. — Herman Melville

1. It is necessary for me to be extremely frugal for some time, till I have paid what I owe. 2. To endeavor to speak truth in every instance; to give nobody expectations that are not likely to be answered, but aim at sincerity in every word and action - the most amiable excellence in a rational being. 3. To apply myself industriously to whatever business I take in hand, and not divert my mind from my business by any foolish project of suddenly growing rich; for industry and patience are the surest means of plenty. 4. I resolve to speak ill of no man whatever.17 — Walter Isaacson

The day may come when, contemplating a world given back to the primeval forst, a human survivor will have no means of even guessing how much intelligence Man once imposed upon the forms of the earth, when he set up the stones of Florence in the billowing expanse of the Tuscan olive-groves. No trace will be left then of the palaces that saw Michelangelo pass by, nursing his grievances against Raphael; and nothing of the little Paris cafes where Renoir once sat beside Cezanne, Van Gogh beside Gauguin. Solitude, vicegerent of Eternity, vanquishes men's dreams no less than armies, and men have known this ever since they came into being and realized that they must die. — Andre Malraux

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity. — Leo Tolstoy

Know what being a man's pet means. And if you're ever lucky enough to find yourself with the choice, choose the pasture. — Stacy Overman Morrison

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

The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men, as if being a man means looking the way a sculptor or art director says.
Like Tyler says, even a souffle looks pumped. — Chuck Palahniuk

Man is the being, among whom only a small minority of the elite ones, find the Greatness of Glorious God, from the study of things and therefrom acquire perfect faith. But the same tool has become the means of deviation for the rest of them. — Muhammad Atta-ullah Faizani

Being a man is a privilege, not an entitlement. It is a surrender of our priority. It is a laying down of our lives, not physically but inwardly - our preferences, our pleasures, sometimes even our dreams. Our version of Witold Pilecki's medals comes in the lives we offer to God, lives we have bled and sweated and prayed and given ourselves for. This is what it means to be a man. — Stephen Mansfield

All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior. — Sarah Moore Grimke

Mr. Langton one day asked him [Samuel Johnson] how he had acquired so accurate a knowledge of Latin, in which, I believe, he was exceeded by no man of his time; he said, 'My master whipt me very well. Without that, Sir, I should have done nothing.' He told Mr. Langton, that while Hunter was flogging his boys unmercifully, he used to say, 'And this I do to save you from the gallows.' Johnson, upon all occasions, expressed his approbation of enforcing instruction by means of the rod. 'I would rather (said he) have the rod to be the general terrour to all, to make them learn, than tell a child, if you do thus, or thus, you will be more esteemed than your brothers or sisters. The rod produces an effect which terminates in itself. A child is afraid of being whipped, and gets his task, and there's an end on't; whereas, by exciting emulation and comparisons of superiority, you lay the foundation of lasting mischief; you make brothers and sisters hate each other. — James Boswell

The only victory that really counts in prison is survival. But survival means more than simply being alive. It's not just the body that must survive a jail term; the spirit and the will and the heart have to make it through as well. If any one of them is broken or destroyed, the man whose living body walks through the gate, at the end of his sentence, can't be said to have survived it. And it's for those small victories of the heart, and the spirit, and the will that we sometimes risk the body that cradles them. — Gregory David Roberts

Industry and frugality, as the means of procuring wealth ... thereby [secures] virtue, it being more difficult for a man in want to act always honestly ... — Benjamin Franklin

Not being a man of means, I knew that if I did not stay sober enough to earn money, I would run out of liquor. — Alcoholics Anonymous