Quotes & Sayings About What Defines A Man

The man who denounces life merely defines himself as the man who is unequal to it. — Aleister Crowley

The most important thing in life is style. That is the style of one s existence the characteristic mode of one s actions is basically ultimately what matters. For if man defines himself by doing then style is doubly definitive because style describes the doing. The point is this happiness is a learned condition. And since it is learned and self generating it does not depend upon external circumstances for its perpetuation. This throws a very ironic light on content. And underscores the primacy of style. It is content or rather the consciousness of content that fills the void. But the mere presence of content is not enough. It is style that gives content the capacity to absorb us to move us it is style that makes us care. — Tom Robbins

Existence loves laughter. You may have observed, or not, that man is the only animal in the whole of existence who is capable of laughing. Laughter is the only distinguishing mark that you are not a buffalo, you are not a donkey; you are a human being. Laughter defines your humanity and your evolution. And the greatest laugh is at your own ridiculous things. — Rajneesh

I'm more than the flesh and bone that defines me. More than the pain that consumes me and the madness radiating through me. I am a man. And I am still alive ... — Christine Fonseca

Mariac tells us about the books he's read, the painters he's liked, the plays he's seen. He finds himself by looking in the works of others. He defines his own faith by a passionate anger against Gide the Luciferian. Reading his 'memories' is like meeting a man on a train who says, 'Don't look at me; that's misleading. If you want to know what I'm like, wait until we're in a tunnel, and then study my reflection in the window.' You wait, and look, and catch a face against a shifting background of sooty walls, cables, and sudden brickwork. The transparent shape flickers and jumps, always a few feet away. You become accustomed to its existence, you move with its movements; and though you know its presence is conditional, you feel it to be permanent. Then there is a wail from ahead, a roar and a burst of light; the face is gone for ever. — Julian Barnes

Ultimately, the body is just a shell; it is the soul which defines the man or woman, god or goddess. — P.C. Cast

Pender laughed. Verify? In this day and age? Who cares about verifying anything? It's all about the speed. Who gets there first defines the truth. You know that as well as any man living. — David Baldacci

No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as 'what a man does with his solitude.' — C.S. Lewis

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterward. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The choice of a man defines is paths. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Freedom is what we all seek, but it's what we do with that freedom that ultimately defines our character. In the end, a man's character cements his fate, good or bad. — Sonny Barger

You've read the Torah, right? So you know the Torah defines marriage as being between one man and one woman. — Josh Mandel

Men's economic privilege, their social value, the prestige of marriage, the usefulness of masculine support - all these encourage women to ardently want to please men. They are on the whole still in a state of serfdom. It follows that woman knows and chooses herself not as she exists for herself but as man defines her. She thus has to be described first as men dream of her since her being-for-men is one of the essential factors of her concrete condition. — Simone De Beauvoir

There is nothing called 'Extraordinary', it is just the way the World defines an 'ordinary' man or woman , who has recognized his own 'power to achieve' the IMPOSSIBLE ! Let us be ORDINARY, but an 'aware' ordinary , aware of our own selves ! — Abha Maryada Banerjee

I do not think men are good at all. I have seen enough to know that humans are a wicked race from their very birth. Selfishness defines us. Greed and lust motivate us. And even the best man who ever lived would lie to preserve his own life or beliefs. No, mankind is far from being essentially good. It takes exceptional individuals to change the world, to make a difference. Give the average person a choice, and he will make life miserable for others if only it will make his own life easier. — Brondt Kamffer

A man defines his standing at the court of chastity by his views of women. — Amos Bronson Alcott

In the past, dictionaries had been less scientific, and definitions often crudely brief. One example historians like to cite is the definition of 'mucus' in John Kersey's Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum (1708) as 'snot or snivel'. Johnson, by contrast, defers to the authority of the medic John Quincy, and defines 'mucus' as 'that which flows from the papillary processes through the os cribriforme into the nostrils'. Kersey exemplifies the simplicity of the older dictionaries. He defines 'coffin' as 'a case for a dead body', 'penis' as 'a man's yard', 'eye' as 'the wonderful instrument of sight', — Henry Hitchings

The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun to Be With. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing devision of the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes, — Douglas Adams

A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. By contrast, a woman's presence ... defines what can and cannot be done to her. — John Berger

One foot in Austria, the other in Italy, it's funny how man defines borders. An imaginary line is all that is needed to split continents apart, to separate men and cultures, to spark wars and injustices - a line in pencil, drawn on some agreement or a peace treaty ages ago. Insanity, it's nothing but insanity. Free movement of man, something that is and has been ingrained in our essence of being, is nothing more than an illusion. We are not free to walk where we please; we are not capable of overcoming the resistance of these imaginary lines, etching deep chasms into the face of the world. — Henry Martin

Every man makes mistakes, Shade, it's a cross every person has to bare. People make mistakes. It is the way we feel about those mistakes, the way we come back from them, that defines who we really are. — Caitlin Perry

Here, then, is Jesus's radical redefinition of what is wrong with us. Nearly everyone defines sin as breaking a list of rules. Jesus, though, shows us that a man who has violated virtually nothing on the list of moral misbehaviors can be every bit as spiritually lost as the most profligate, immoral person. Why? Because sin is not just breaking the rules, it is putting yourself in the place of God as Savior, Lord, and Judge just as each son sought to displace the authority of the father in his own life. — Timothy Keller

So in a man's mind, he appraises, negotiates, defines, delineates, weighs the information, and that includes God. As you can see, this is a relationship of management, not trust. You don't trust things you can manage, you manage them. And so, God as information is managed and no relationship of trust is fostered. — Geoffrey Wood

Man exists, turns up, appears on the scene and only afterwards, defines himself — Jean-Paul Sartre

What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The present defines the future. The future builds on the foundation of the past. — Lailah Gifty Akita

As a dimension of man, rebellion actually defines him. — Robert M. Lindner

A man could build whatever monuments he wanted in the worlds of politics, sports, entertainment, and business, but if they come at the expense of his children, then he has failed. Once the attention fades and the crowds stop cheering his name and his accomplishments are little more than fine print in a history book, the only thing that truly survives him is his child. That is his legacy. That is what defines him. All else is but a footnote. — Steve Pemberton

Remember that, as George Whitefield said, man is immortal till his work is done (though God alone defines the work), and get on with what you know to be God's task for you here and now. — J.I. Packer

It is not triumph which defines a man, but tragedy. Triumph always brings out the best in men, but tragedy shows us what we are made of. — Jocelyn Murray

[defines a madman as] a man who preferred to become mad,in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. — Antonin Artaud

Government defines the physical aspects of man by means of The Printed Form, so that for every man in the flesh there is an exactly corresponding man on paper. — Jean Giraudoux

Neither woman nor man lives by work, or love, alone ... The human self defines itself and grows through love and work: All psychology before and after Freud boils down to that. — Betty Friedan

What, then, is patriotism? "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels," said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the average workingman. — Emma Goldman

I support and have always supported passage of a federal constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman. As President, I will fight for passage of this amendment. My personal belief is that marriage is between one man and one woman, for life. — Mike Huckabee

Conflict, not progress, is the word that defines man's path from darkness into light. No holiness is won by any other means than this, that wickedness should be slain day by day, and hour by hour. — Alexander MacLaren

Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our time, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment in the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the honest workingman. — Emma Goldman

By now you've already formed your own impression. you believe that an act committed a lifetime ago defines a man, or you believe that a person's past has nothing to do with his future. you think i am either a hero, or a monster. maybe knowning more about circumstances will make you think differently about me, but it won't change what happened twenty-eight years ago. — Jodi Picoult

I can't promise you an ordinary experience, Kate. I wish I could transform myself into a normal man and be there for you, always, without the trauma that defines my life as "the walking dead." Since that isn't possible, I can only reassure you that I will do everything in my power to make it up to you. To give you more than a normal boyfriend could.
I have no idea what that will mean, exactly, but I'm looking forward to finding out. With you. — Amy Plum

Men have no special right because they belong to one race or another: the word man defines all rights. — Jose Marti

This is the truth: We are a nation accustomed to being afraid. If I'm being honest, not just with you but with myself, it's not just the nation, and it's not just something we've grown used to. It's the world, and it's an addiction. People crave fear. Fear justifies everything. Fear makes it okay to have surrendered freedom after freedom, until our every move is tracked and recorded in a dozen databases the average man will never have access to. Fear creates, defines, and shapes our world, and without it, most of us would have no idea what to do with ourselves. Our ancestors dreamed of a world without boundaries, while we dream new boundaries to put around our homes, our children, and ourselves. We limit our potential day after day in the name of a safety that we refuse to ever achieve. We took a world that was huge with possibility, and we made it as small as we could. — Mira Grant

Today the law defines death, with appropriate blurriness, as the cessation of brain function. Though the heart may still throb and the unknowing bone marrow create new cells, no man's history can outlive his brain. — Sherwin B. Nuland

The state of the mind defines a man. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Existentialism is no mournful delectation but a humanist philosophy of action, effort, combat, and solidarity. Man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines say what this man is before he dies, or what mankind is before it has disappeared. — Jean-Paul Sartre

It's never enough to just accumulate knowledge and skills. It's what a person does with what he knows that defines who he is." "Every man must decide the kind of path he'll walk. — Alyson Noel

The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as 'Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With'. — Douglas Adams

When it defines man as the enemy, feminism is alienating women from their own bodies. — Camille Paglia

A man defines
himself by his make-believe as well as by his sincere impulses. — Albert Camus

Yes," he said. "But what is the character of the regime? And what are the mistakes which we were saying it contains?" "First," I said, "the very thing that defines the regime is one. Reflect: if a man were to choose pilots of ships in that way - on the basis of property assessments - and wouldn't entrust one to a poor man, even if he were a more skilled pilot - " "They would make a poor sailing," he said. — Plato

In a word, man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines himself. — Jean-Paul Sartre

But can you imagine how some of them were envying you your freedom to work, to think, to travel, to enter a room as yourself, not as some child's mother or some man's wife? ... we have no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines herself, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself. — Adrienne Rich

Swag defines an artist, period. Lil Wayne has his super-tattooed pierces and dreads swag. Jay-Z has his New York, grown man, Beyonce and 40/40 Club swag. — Soulja Boy

Nothing matures a Man like RESPONSIBILITIES,
Nothing humbles him like MISSED OPPORTUNITIES,
What makes him are his CHOICES,
And nothing changes him like LOVE.
Nothing defines a Man like his CHARACTER,
Nothing teaches him like his EXPERIENCE,
What drives him is his VISION,
And nothing weakens him like BETRAYAL.
Nothing scares a Man like losing his EGO,
Nothing pursues him like his PASSION,
What interests him is his GAME,
And nothing intoxicates him like his DESIRES.
But above all, NOTHING FAVOURS A MAN
LIKE FINDING A GOOD WOMAN. — Olaotan Fawehinmi

[The humanities] invite - they compel - us to confront the truth about ourselves and help us to inhabit with greater understanding the disjointed condition of longing and defeat that defines the human condition. Achilles' reflections on honor and memory and the fleeting beauty of youth; Shakespeare's defense of love against the powers of "sluttish time" Kant's struggle to put our knowledge of certain things on an unchallengeable foundation so as to place the knowledge of others forever beyond reach; Caravaggio's painting of the sacrifice of Isaac, which depicts a confusion of loves that defeats all understanding; and so on endlessly through the armory of humanistic works: the subject is always the same. The subject is always man, whose nature it is to yearn to be more than he is. — Charles Murray

To exist is equivalent to an act of faith, a protest against the truth, an interminable prayer. As soon as they consent to live, the unbeliever and the man of faith are fundamentally the same, since both have made the only decision that defines a being. — Emile M. Cioran

She's different."
"Everyone is different."
"Then let's say I like the ways in which she's different. A wise man once told me no man can escape death, but it's how we run that defines us. And if I have to run, I think I'd like to go where she's going. — Michael J. Sullivan