Man And Van Quotes & Sayings

A man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man. The instructed man is ashamed to pronounce in an orphic manner what everybody knows, and because he is silent people think he is making fun of them. They like a man who expresses their own superficial thoughts in a manner that appears to be profound. This enables them to feel that they are themselves profound. — Van Wyck Brooks

The cat, it is well to remember, remains the friend of man because it pleases him to do so and not because he must. — Carl Van Vechten

Altho' I rarely waste time in reading on theological subjects, as mangled by our Pseudo-Christians, yet I can readily suppose Basanistos may be amusing. Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. If it could be understood it would not answer their purpose. Their security is in their faculty of shedding darkness, like the scuttlefish, thro' the element in which they move, and making it impenetrable to the eye of a pursuing enemy, and there they will skulk.
[Letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp on 30 July 1810 denouncing the Christian doctrine of the Trinity] — Thomas Jefferson

I have divers times examined the same matter (human semen) from a healthy man ... not from a sick man ... nor spoiled by keeping ... for a long time and not liquefied after the lapse of some time ... but immediately after ejaculation before six beats of the pulse had intervened; and I have seen so great a number of living animalcules ... in it, that sometimes more than a thousand were moving about in an amount of material the size of a grain of sand ... I saw this vast number of animalcules not all through the semen, but only in the liquid matter adhering to the thicker part. — Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek

The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest lawsof atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. — Willard Van Orman Quine

He reached for the door handle. Fear nestled into his throat, but he did not stop. He pulled the handle, opened the door, and stepped out. It was dark. The streetlights in Soho were nearly worthless, like pen beams in a black hole. Lights drifting out from nearby windows provided more of an eerie kindle than real illumination. There were plastic garbage bags out on the street. Most had been torn open; the odor of spoiled food wafted through the air. The van slowly cruised toward him. A man stepped out from a doorway and approached without hesitation. The man wore a black turtleneck under a black overcoat. He pointed a gun at Myron. The van stopped, and the side door slid open. "Get in, asshole," the man with the gun said. Myron pointed at himself. "You talking to me?" "Now, asshole. Haul ass." "Is that a turtleneck or a dickey?" The man with the gun moved closer. "I said, now. — Harlan Coben

I never wanted to be an actor, and to this day I don't. I can't get a handle on it. An actor wants to become someone else. I am a song-and-dance man, and I enjoy being myself, which is all I can do. — Dick Van Dyke

Modern man has lost the sense of wonder
about the unknown and he treats it as
an enemy. — Laurens Van Der Post

I am always in the hope to express the love of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors - colors which marry each other ... complement each other as a man and a woman do. — Vincent Van Gogh

Middle children weep longer than their brothers and sisters. Over her mother's shoulder, stilling her pains and her injured pride, Jackie Lacon watched the party leave. First, two men she had not seen before: one tall, one short and dark. They drove off in a small green van. No one waved to them, she noticed, or even said goodbye. Next, her father left in his own car; lastly a blond, good-looking man and a short fat one in an enormous overcoat like a pony blanket made their way to a sports car parked under the beech trees. For a moment she really thought there must be something wrong with the fat one, he followed so slowly and so painfully. Then, seeing the handsome man hold the car door for him, he seemed to wake, and hurried forward with a lumpy skip. Unaccountably, this gesture upset her afresh. A storm of sorrow seized her and her mother could not console her. — John Le Carre

Down the Woodstock Road towards them an elderly, abnormally thin man was pedalling, his thin white hair streaming in the wind and sheer desperation in his eyes. Immediately behind him, running for their lives, came Scylla and Charybdis; behind them, a milling, shouting rout of undergraduates, with Mr Adrian Barnaby (on a bicycle) well in the van; behind them, the junior proctor, the University Marshal, and two bullers, packed into a small Austin car and looking very elect, severe and ineffectual; and last of all, faint but pursuing, lumbered the ungainly form of Mr Hoskins. — Edmund Crispin

[The intellect of fallen man] may be compared to a buzz-saw that is sharp and shining, ready to cut the boards that come to it. Let us say that a carpenter wishes to cut fifty boards for the purpose of laying the floor of a house. He has marked his boards. He has set his saw. He begins at one end of the mark on the board. But he does not know that his seven-year-old son has tampered with the saw and changed its set. The result is that every board he saws is cut slantwise and thus unusable because too short except at the point where the saw made its first contact with the wood. As long as the set of the saw is not changed, the result will always be the same. So also whenever the teachings of Christianity are presented to the natural man, they will be cut according to the set of sinful human personality. — Cornelius Van Til

If prisons, freight trains, swamps, and gators don't get ya to write songs, man, y'ain't got no business writin' songs. — Ronnie Van Zant

I cannot believe that I get a tour bus. I've been traveling in a van for 15 years. I used to look at people who were on buses and be like, 'Whoa, man, some day.' — Rachel Platten

Due to their deep conviction of the sovereignty of God, the Word of God was taken very seriously by Calvinists. It became the unconditional norm for faith and life to the believer. The Divine injunction not to add or take away has been scrupulously observed by Calvinism. Thus, a Calvinistic ethic was developed with its high theism. Because God was held to be the absolute sovereign for man's life, it became simply a question of determining the will of God from His Word. Calvinistic ethics is not a system of opinion, but an attempt to make the will of God as revealed in the Bible the authoritative guide for social as well as personal direction. — Henry R. Van Til

Dear God, she couldn't give this man sex. She could barely give it to Van, and he currently smelled so good she just wanted to shove her face under his t-shirt and eat whatever she found there. — Charlotte Stein

Johnette Foltz had hold of the Roy fellow's coat now with both hands and was trying to pull the fellow off, Keds scrabbling for purchase on the smooth parquet, saying 'Yo Roy T. man, easy there Dude, Man, Esse, Bro, Posse, Crew, Homes, Jim, Brother, he's just new is all'; but by this time Erdedy had both arms around the guy's neck and was hugging him with such vigor Kate Gompert later told Joelle van Dyne it looked like Erdedy was trying to climb him. — David Foster Wallace

The family is the simplest and smallest unit of society and the real fountain of culture. If this fountain remains pure, man's culture has promise. But if it becomes polluted, all the rest will turn to dust and ashes, since the home is the foundation of the entire social structure. — Henry R. Van Til

Van Houten was still staring at the ceiling beams. He took a drink. The glass was almost empty again. 'Lidewij, I can't do it. I can't. I can't.' He leveled his gaze to me. 'Nothing happens to the Dutch Tulip Man. He isn't a con man or not a con man; he's God. He's an obvious and unambiguous metaphorical representation of God, and asking what becomes of him if the intellectual equivalent of asking what becomes of the disembodied eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg in Gatsby. Do he and Anna's man get married? We are speaking of a novel, dear child, not some historical enterprise. — John Green

Four things a man must learn to do If he would make his record true; To think without confusion clearly; To love his fellowmen sincerely; To act from honest motives purely; To trust in God and Heav'n securely. — Henry Van Dyke

Life, she felt, is like a long unbroken line when one dies in the same place in which he was born. Childhood doesn't seem long ago when every day a man sees the same things he saw the first time he began to look around. Then there can't seem such a sharp division between youth and age. A person would grow into his years like a tree. — Judy Van Der Veer

Man said, I am tired of kings! Sons of the robber-chiefs of yore, They make me pay for their lust and their war; I am the puppet, they pull the strings; The blood of my heart is the wine they drink. I will govern myself for awhile I think, And see what that brings! — Henry Van Dyke

[He] had the hard eyes of the disciplinarian and the smile of a man who must be tactful and pleasant to many people. — A.E. Van Vogt

Deeds not Words: I say so too! And yet I find it somehow true, A word may help a man in need, To nobler act and braver deed. — Henry Van Dyke

Abortion is not allowed
because apparently it is against the law of god.
Yes, that butter-wouldn't-melt deity
who ordered babies to be slaughtered,
killed all the first-born in Egypt
And caused an entire human race to drown.

From: "Gesels van een imaginaire god"
(Scourges of an imaginary god) — A.J. Beirens

I played 'Eruption' two times for the record, and we kept the one that seemed to flow ... there's a mistake at the top end of it whenever I hear it, I always think, Man I could've played it better ... but I like the way it sounds. I'd never heard a guitar sound like that before ... — Eddie Van Halen

I was a kind of a one-man army. I could solder circuits together, I could turn out things on the lathe, I could work with rockets and balloons. I'm a kind of a hybrid between an engineer and a physicist and astronomer. — James Van Allen

He can't understand people who long to retire. How can anyone spend their whole life longing for the day when they become superfluous? Wandering about, a burden on society, what sort of man would ever wish for that? Staying at home, waiting to die. Or even worse: waiting for them to come and fetch you and put you in a home. Being dependent on other people to get to the toilet. Ove can't think of anything worse. His wife often teases him, says he's the only man she knows who'd rather be laid out in a coffin than travel in a mobility service van. — Fredrik Backman

That's one thing that's always, like, been a difference between, like, the performing arts, and being a painter, you know. A painter does a painting, and he paints it, and that's it, you know. He has the joy of creating it, it hangs on a wall, and somebody buys it, and maybe somebody buys it again, or maybe nobody buys it and it sits up in a loft somewhere until he dies. But he never, you know, nobody ever, nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Paint a Starry Night again, man!' You know? He painted it and that was it. — Joni Mitchell

It made me the worst type of man to willingly walk into something, knowing that I wasn't going to stay. I may not be lying to her about my actions. But I knew that actions helped people form opinions, and my actions would lead her to believe I wanted more than the next few days - and that was the last thing I could afford. A relationship past the few days we had. — Rachel Van Dyken

He had never imagined so clearly the consequences of mailing a letter - the impossibility of retrieving it from the iron mouth of the box; the inevitability if its steady progress through the postal system; the passing from bag to bag and postman to postman until a lone man in a van pulls up to the door and pushes a small pile through the letterbox. It seemed suddenly horrible that one's words could not be taken back, one's thoughts allowed none of the remediation of speaking face to face. — Helen Simonson

Culture is any and all human effort and labor expended upon the cosmos, to unearth its treasures and its riches and bring them into the service of man for the enrichment of human existence unto the glory of God. — Henry R. Van Til

Soon after this incident the court rose. As I was being taken from the courthouse to the prison van, I was conscious for a few brief moments of the once familiar feel of a summer evening out-of-doors. And, sitting in the darkness of my moving cell, I recognized echoing in my tired brain, all the characteristic sounds of a town I'd loved, and of a certain hour of the day which I had always particularly enjoyed. The shouts of newspaper boys in the already languid air, the last calls of birds in the public garden, the cries of sandwich vendors, the screech of streetcars at the steep corners of the upper town, and that faint rustling overhead as darkness sifted down upon the harbor. All these sounds made my return to prison like a blind man's journey along a route whose every inch he knows by heart. — Albert Camus

There comes a time for each of us when we realize the truth about the enemy. Which is that he is not an idea, or some faceless demon. He is a man. And every man is much like ourselves. — Brian Van Reet

Cheerfulness is the daughter of employment; and I have known a man come home in high spirits from a funeral, merely because he has had the management of it. — William Cornelius Van Horne

Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air;
And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair;
And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living, there is no place like home. — Henry Van Dyke

Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane sadness of modern society comes from the vain ideas that every man is bound to be a critic for life. — Henry Van Dyke

To divide life into areas of sacred and secular, letting our devotions take care of the former while becoming secular reformers during the week, is to fail to understand the true end of man — Henry R. Van Til

A peaceful man must fight For that which peace demands,- Freedom and faith, honor and right, Defend with heart and hands. — Henry Van Dyke

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

The brave man is intelligent; he faces danger because he understands it and is prepared to meet it. The drunkard who runs, in the delirium of intoxication, into a burning house is not brave; he is only stupid. But the clear-eyed hero who makes his way, with every sense alert and every nerve strung, into the hell of flames to rescue some little child, proves his courage. — Henry Van Dyke

But I bet they don't know what I saw." Puller sat down in a chair next to her bed. "So why don't you tell me what that was?" Knox glanced at the glass door to her room and saw a police officer, a man in a suit, and a burly MP standing guard there. "They're not taking any chances with you," he said, following her gaze. "Cops, FBI, and the military." She turned back to Puller and slowly but clearly told him what she had seen. The van, the kid, everything. "So it was a deliberate setup the whole way," Puller concluded. "It appeared to be. But why target Carter?" "Well, he heads up an important part of our nation's defenses. He's a target just by virtue — David Baldacci

Guess it'll be Rory then." Great. More females she'd have to kick out on a daily basis, no matter how many times the man promised the latest one-night stand was the last. "He won't mind."
"I bet he won't," Van Holtz muttered, slamming his own plate of cake down as he sat cattycorner from her.
"Is there a problem?" she asked.
"No. Not at all. Crash at Reed's, if that's what you want. Hope you two are very happy together."
"Just because I'm crashing at Rory's place don't mean we're doing anything together ... and why am I explaining this to you?"
He stared at her and asked, "Why do you think?"
Dee thought about it a minute. "You're interested in Rory Lee?" Ric lowered his head, his eyes shifting from human to wolf. They were blue when wolf. Like an Arctic wolf's. "You cannot be that clueless, Dee-Ann. — Shelly Laurenston

It's always best to feel fulfilled first, before finding a man. Then you'll know the value of yourself, and you'll hold the key to your own happiness. So you won't turn into a vulnerable, needy, emotional mess the minute you fall in love. — Menna Van Praag

Carezza, like Tantra, considers the sex act to be a true feast of love, and ejaculation is seen as a clumsy, crude incident-something quite banal which kills sexual desire. The man who, a few minutes before was seized by a frantic sexual desire, changes as soon as he has ejaculated and turns away from his wife, damaging her in her self-respect and her love as well. — Andre Van Lysebeth

What's all this about sin, eh?'
'That,' I said, very sick. 'Using Ludwig van like that. He did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music.' And then I was really sick and they had to bring a bowl that was in the shape of like a kidney.
'Music,' said Dr. Brodsky, like musing. 'So you're keen on music. I know nothing about it myself. It's a useful emotional heightener, that's all I know. Well, well. What do you think about that, eh, Branom?'
'It can't be helped,' said Dr. Branom. 'Each man kills the thing he loves ... — Anthony Burgess

The need to control others as a prerequisite for male agency presupposed self-control. That imperative, in turn, included both the physical and emotional dimensions of a man's bodily self. — Thomas Van Nortwick

I decided to walk alongside Beth and the annoying little ass. It seemed right that it wouldn't be her walking toward me or me waiting for her, but us traveling on the journey together. Because sometimes, that's how love is. It isn't a man chasing a woman, it isn't a man storming the castle, and it isn't the girl waiting for love to happen. It's two people making a commitment. It's two people realizing that they hold the keys to their own happiness in their own damn hands. The problem? Most people forget that they have the power to live the fairytale. I'd forgotten I had the power, and in the end, I'd been willing to walk away from my future. — Rachel Van Dyken

It makes me feel kind of weird, but obviously the Man Upstairs gave me something and it touches people, and I'm just so blessed. — Eddie Van Halen

By working hard, old man, I hope to make something good one day. I haven't yet, but I am pursuing it and fighting for it ... — Vincent Van Gogh

As a younger man, though, I lacked confidence, the confidence that comes with experience. I worried and stressed way more than I should have. Now I see that worrying and stressing never helped accomplish anything. It was only when I let myself go and had fun that the magic happened - and continues to happen. Here — Dick Van Dyke

The fields that push up the corn, and the water that rushes down the ravine, the juice of the grape, and the life of a man as it flows past him, are all one and the same thing. The sole unity in life is the unity of rhythm. A rhythm to which we all dance; men, apples, ravines, ploughed fields, carts among the corn, houses, horses, and the sun. The stuff that is in you, Gauguin, will pound through a grape tomorrow, because you and the grape are one. When I paint a peasant labouring in the field, I want people to feel the peasant flowing down into the soil, just as the corn does, and the soil flowing up into the peasant. I want them to feel the sun pouring into the peasant, into the field, the corn, the plough, and the horses, just as they all pour back into the sun. When you begin to feel the universal rhythm in which everything on earth moves, you begin to understand life ... . — Irving Stone

Of course my moods change, but the average is serenity. I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidence in its being a powerful stream which carries a man to a harbor, though he himself must do his bit too; at all events, I think it such a great blessing when a man has found his work that I cannot count myself among the unfortunate. I mean, I may be in certain relatively great difficulties, and there may be gloomy days in my life, but I shouldn't like to be counted among the unfortunate, nor would it be correct if I were. — Vincent Van Gogh

It was informational. About how to perform oral sex on men. You know, one man teaching another. It was really fascinating and I've always wondered about the techniques he discussed - ow. Ow! You're squeezing a little hard, Van Holtz."
...
"Well, if you're willing to be my test subject - ack! — Shelly Laurenston

Geology is part of that remarkable dynamic process of the human mind which is generally called science and to which man is driven by an inquisitive urge. By noticing relationships in the results of his observations, he attempts to order and to explain the infinite variety of phenomena that at first sight may appear to be chaotic. In the history of civilization this type of progressive scientist has been characterized by Prometheus stealing the heavenly fire, by Adam eating from the tree of knowledge, by the Faustian ache for wisdom. — Reinout Willem Van Bemmelen

The love between Uncle Dees and Roger was every bit as enduring as it had been immediate. They were never to be seen apart, man and dog, not since the moment of their introduction. Very quickly after their arrival in Amsterdam four years earlier, Roger had given Alma to understand that he was no longer her dog
that, in fact, he had never been her dog, nor had he ever been Ambrose's dog, but that he had been Dees' dog all along, by force of pure and plain destiny. The fact that Roger was born in distant Tahiti, whereas Dees van Devender resided in Holland, had been the result, Roger appeared to believe, of an unfortunate clerical error, now thankfully rectified. — Elizabeth Gilbert

We should not feel so sorely grieved if no man who had not attained the full stature of a Webster, Clay, Van Buren, or Gerrit Smith could claim the right of the elective franchise. But to have drunkards, idiots, horse-racing, rum-selling rowdies, ignorant foreigners, and silly boys fully recognized, while we ourselves are thrust out from all the rights that belong to citizens, it is too grossly insulting to the dignity of woman to be longer quietly submitted to. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

There was something inhuman about being dutiful workaholics, something that wrecked marriages, shattered families, and made a man and woman shrivel up inside. It was going to kill them both someday. Without his wife and his child, hinges had popped loose in Van's soul. He could feel that something quiet but vital to his humanity was slowly going down the shredder. — Bruce Sterling

Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one's course by it, still one must try to follow its direction. — Vincent Van Gogh

What the world thought made little difference. Rembrandt had to
paint. Whether he painted well or badly didn't matter; painting was the
stuff that held him together as a man. The chief value of art, Vincent, lies
in the expression it gives to the artist. Rembrandt fulfilled what he knew
to be his life purpose; that justified him. Even if his work had been
worthless, he would have been a thousand times more successful than if
he had put down his desire and become the richest merchant in
Amsterdam. (Mendes Da Costa — Irving Stone

My art teacher in junior high was a very out gay man and a mentor to me. He would tell us about Greenwich Village and show us the 'Village Voice' and describe his life, but it was all sort of subversive and below the radar. — Gus Van Sant

When van Gogh paints sunflowers, he reveals, or achieves, the vivid relation between himself, as man, and the sunflower, as sunflower, at that quick moment of time. His painting does not represent the sunflower itself. We shall never know what the sunflower itself is. And the camera will visualize the sunflower far more perfectly than van Gogh can. — D.H. Lawrence

Once we were driving in the midwest and we pulled into a McDonald's. Someone came up to me and asked me why I have Feynman diagrams all over my van. I replied, "Because I am Feynman!" The young man went, "Ahhhhh!" — Richard P. Feynman

I'm Popeye the sailor man dum dum I live in a cara-van dum dum I op-en the door And fall-on the floor I'm Popeye the sailor man dum dum — Arundhati Roy

Our ice cream man was found lying on the floor of his van covered with hundreds and thousands. Police say that he topped himself. — Tommy Cooper

As a single parent, I had become tyrannical in order to survive, and anything I couldn't control caused me enormous anxiety. As a naturally untidy, disorganised man who never made lists or kept receipts, morphing into someone who could take care of a toddler on his own may have caused me to overcompensate a little. — Simon Van Booy

Anyone could buy a green Jaguar, find beauty in a Japanese screen two thousand years old. I would rather be a connoisseur of neglected rivers and flowering mustard and the flush of iridescent pink on an intersection pigeon's charcoal neck. I thought of the vet, warming dinner over a can, and the old woman feeding her pigeons in the intersection behind the Kentucky Fried Chicken. And what about the ladybug man, the blue of his eyes over gray threaded black? There were me and Yvonne, Niki and Paul Trout, maybe even Sergei or Susan D. Valeris, why not? What were any of us but a handful of weeds. Who was to say what our value was? What was the value of four Vietnam vets playing poker every afternoon in front of the Spanish market on Glendale Boulevard, making their moves with a greasy deck missing a queen and a five? Maybe the world depended on them, maybe they were the Fates, or the Graces. Cezanne would have drawn them in charcoal. Van Gogh would have painted himself among them. — Janet Fitch

I saw a man walk into my camera viewfinder from the left. He took a pistol out of his holster and raised it. I had no idea he would shoot. It was common to hold a pistol to the head of prisoners during questioning. So I prepared to make that picture - the threat, the interrogation. But it didn't happen. The man just pulled a pistol out of his holster, raised it to the VC's head and shot him in the temple. I made a picture at the same time. (On his 1968 photograph of the summary street corner execution of prisoner Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnam's police chief, Lt. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan.) — Eddie Adams

To the majority of those on the job his presence had been magical. Years afterward, the wife of one of the steam-shovel engineers, Mrs. Rose van Hardevald, would recall, "We saw him ... on the end of the train. Jan got small flags for the children, and told us about when the train would pass ... Mr. Roosevelt flashed us one of his well-known toothy smiles and waved his hat at the children ... " In an instant, she said, she understood her husband's faith in the man. "And I was more certain than ever that we ourselves would not leave until it [the canal] was finished." Two years before, they had been living in Wyoming on a lonely stop on the Union Pacific. When her husband heard of the work at Panama, he had immediately wanted to go, because, he told her, "With Teddy Roosevelt, anything is possible." At the time neither of them had known quite where Panama was located. — David McCullough

I was slipping, man, and it was definetly time to get a grip. — Wendelin Van Draanen

I saw the gun. I sensed the van as it rushed forward, seconds away and coming faster. I heard the screams of the fight behind us. But nothing that night was louder than the masked man's astonished whisper as he looked at the boy who stood beside me and said, 'you? — Ally Carter

Daemonic compulsiveness can kill as easily as it can save.
The true novelist must be at once driven and indifferent. Van
Gogh never sold a painting in his life. Poe came close with
poetry and fiction, selling very little. Drivenness only helps if
it forces the writer not to suicide but to the making of splendid
works of art, allowing him indifference to whether or not the
novel sells, whether or not it's appreciated. Drivenness is trouble
for both the novelist and his friends; but no novelist, I
think, can succeed without it. Along with the peasant in the
novelist, there must be a man with a whip. — John Gardner

Had I known you had pure, or what you thought were pure intentions, in that silly mind of yours, I wouldn't have tried to kill you."
Philip let out a bark of laughter. "Well, as far as apologies go, that wasn't half bad. Not every day a man comes in and apologises for wishing you dead. — Rachel Van Dyken

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily. — Vincent Van Gogh

I am a man of passions, capable of and subject to doing more or less foolish things- which I happen to regret, more or less, afterwards. — Vincent Van Gogh

From all accounts, Ted Bundy had been a good looking and charming man. How many women had he tricked into his van, raped, and then killed? — Charity Parkerson

Fear and love might leave a man complacent, but jealousy will always get him out of the van. — Brock Clarke

To say my day sucked would be like saying the Sicilians were only mildly intimidating.
FYI, they were terrifying. Many a man shit their pants in their presence and I was living in my own personal hell. — Rachel Van Dyken

If we study Japanese art, we see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time doing what? He studies a single blade of grass. — Vincent Van Gogh

What am I in the eyes of most people? A good-for-nothing, an eccentric and disagreeable man, somebody who has no position in society and never will have. Very well, even if that were true, I should want to show by my work what there is in the heart of such an eccentric man, of such a nobody. — Vincent Van Gogh

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

Logic stems from the mind of man, therefore it's limited, it's flawed. Faith gives you hope, keeps you from despair. Faith is what picks you up and ensures you keep going. Logic keeps you lying facedown in the muck at your feet. — Eric Van Lustbader

This is why a tainted society has invented psychiatry to defend itself against the investigations of certain superior intellects whose faculties of divination would be troublesome.
No, van Gogh was not mad, but his paintings were bursts of Greek fire, atomic bombs, whose angle of vision would have been capable of seriously upsetting the spectral conformity of the
bourgeoisie.
In comparison with the lucidity of van Gogh, psychiatry is no better than a den of apes who are themselves obsessed and persecuted and who possess nothing to mitigate the most appalling states of anguish and human suffocation but a ridiculous terminology. To a man, this whole gang of pected scoundrels and patented quacks are all erotomaniacs. — Antonin Artaud

What would life be like if everybody insisted you must have actually built such-and-such a thing by yourself? I'd be an old man and have nothing to show for the aging. — Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

A carpenter is hired- a roof repaired, a porch built. Everything that can be fixed. June, July, August. Everyday we hear their laughter. I think of the painting by van Gogh, the man in the chair. Everything wrong, and nowhere to go. His hands over his eyes. — Mary Oliver

Humans can't live in the present, like animals do. Humans are always thinking about the future or the
past. So it's a veil of tears, man. I don't know anything that's going to benefit me now, except love. I
just need an overwhelming amount of love. And a nap. Mostly a nap. — Townes Van Zandt

Balt Van Tassel was an easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything. — Washington Irving

How I wish we could spend a couple of Christmas days together, for instance - I would also dearly like to have you in my studio once more.
I, too, have been toiling quite hard recently, precisely because I was full of the Christmas feeling, and feeling isn't enough, one must bring it into one's work.
So I'm now occupied with two large heads of an orphan man, with his white beard and old-fashioned, old top hat.
This chap has the sort of old, lively face that one would wish for beside a cosy Christmas fire. — Vincent Van Gogh

What Manner Of Men Are These That Wear The Maroon Beret?

They are firstly all volunteers and are toughened by physical training. As a result they have infectious optimism and that offensive eagerness which comes from well-being. They have 'jumped' from the air and by doing so have conquered fear.

Their duty lies in the van of the battle. They are proud of this honour. They have the highest standards in all things whether it be skill in battle or smartness in the execution of all peace time duties. They are in fact - men apart - every man an emperor.

Of all the factors, which make for success in battle, the spirit of the warrior is the most decisive. That spirit will be found in full measure in the men who wear the maroon beret — Bernard Montgomery

In a profound sense every man has two halves to his being; he is not one person so much as two persons trying to act in unison. I believe that in the heart of each human being there is something which I can only describe as a child of darkness who is equal and complementary to the more obvious child of light. — Laurens Van Der Post

Listen to that voice that tells you not to trust someone, even though he's deliciously charming, remember Wickham and Willoughby and all those cads. And give another man a chance, even though he's not your usual type - remember Mr Knightly and Colonel Brandon and all those quiet heroes. — Menna Van Praag

Arsenal are the most beautiful club in England. At Man City and Chelsea, they will never have that class and style. — Marco Van Basten

I believe in the Rip Van Winkle theory - that a man from 1910 must be able to wake up after being asleep for seventy years, walk into a ballpark, and understand baseball perfectly. — Bowie Kuhn

We all do things in a certain individual way, according to our temperaments.
Every human act - no matter how large or how small - is a direct expression of
a man's personality, and bears the inevitable impress of his nature. — S. S. Van Dine

When all was over, I could see how much Arthur was weakened. I dressed the wound and took his arm to bring him away, when Van Helsing spoke without turning round, the man seems to have eyes in the back of his head, "The brave lover, I think, deserve another kiss, which he shall have presently." And as he had now finished his operation, he adjusted the pillow to the patient's head. As — Bram Stoker

Before Van realized it, he was walking her back toward her stairs. He didn't stop kissing her, he wouldn't. The last thing he wanted was for her to change her mind. He managed to get her to the upstairs hallway before she pulled her mouth away. "What are you doing?" she panted out.
"Taking you to your bed."
"Forget it."
And Van, if he were a crying man, would be sobbing. Until uptight Irene Conridge added, "The wall. Use the Wall. — Shelly Laurenston

Because this week I've started in on a hundred reproductions of Rembrandt van Rijn, a hundred portraits of the old artist with the mushroom face, the face of a man pushed to the brink of eternity by art and drink, the door handle starting to turn, the final door pushed open from without by an unknown hand, and I'm beginning to have his puff-paste face, that peeling, piss-soaked wall of a face, I'm beginning to smile his half-moronic smile, to look at the world from the other side of human causes and events, and all my bales these days are framed with that portrait of Rembrandt van Rijn as an old man while I keep filling my drum with wastepaper and open books. — Bohumil Hrabal

There are colors which cause each other to shine brilliantly, which form a couple which complete each other like man and woman. — Vincent Van Gogh

Peabody waved her PPC triumphantly. "It's the Kirk thing, The Enterprise thing. It reminded me I'd hit this name that made me snicker when I was running the van - the Cargo. Here it is. Tony Stark."
"Oh, baby." McNab blew her a double-handed kiss. "Good call."
"It's gotta be, right?" Peabody said to McNab. "It's his style."
"Who the hell is Tony Stark?" Eve demanded.
"Iron Man," Roarke told her. "Superhero, genius, innovative engineer, and billionaire playboy."
"Iron Man? You're talking about a comic book guy?"
"Graphic novel," Roarke and McNab said together. — J.D. Robb