Quotes About Men

For history records the patterns of men's lives, they say: Who slept with whom and with what results; who fought and who won and who lived to lie about it afterwards.

As Brother Jack had said, History makes harsh demands of us all. But they were demands that had to be met if men were to be the masters and not the victims of their times. Did I believe that? Perhaps I had already begun to pay.

These people are old. Men grow old and types of men grow old. And these are very old. All they have left is their religion. That's all they can think about. So they'll be cast aside. They're dead, you see, because they're incapable of rising to the necessity of the historical situation.

H}istory records the patterns of men's lives, they say: Who slept with whom and with what results; who fought and who and who lived to lie about it afterwards. All things, it is said, are duly recorded--all things of importance, that is. But not quite, for actually it is only the known, the seen, the heard and only those events that the recorder regards as important that are set down, those lies his keepers keep their power by. -- Ralph Ellison, in Invisible Man

H}istory records the patterns of men's lives, they say: Who slept with whom and with what results; who fought and who won and who lived to lie about it afterwards. All things, it is said, are duly recorded--all things of importance, that is. But not quite, for actually it is only the known, the seen, the heard and only those events that the recorder regards as important that are set down, those lies his keepers keep their power by.

Whenever a clamor is raised, and idle men get to work, it is highly necessary to examine facts carefully, and without unreasonably suspecting men of falshood, to examine, and enquire attentively, under what impressions they act.

The fickle and ardent, in any community, are the proper tools for establishing despotic government. But it is deliberate and thinking men, who must establish and secure governments on free principles.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.

War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man.

The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide. Him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him because he did not need it.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner.

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.

Those who have ruled human destinies, like planets, for thousands of years, were not handsome men.

True courage is not ostentatious; men who wish to inspire terror seem thereby to confess themselves cowards. Why do they rely on it, but because they know how potent it is with themselves?

What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian period.

Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise.

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.

Many times the reading of a book has made the fortune of the man-has decided his way of life. 'Tis a tie between men to have been delighted with the same book.

Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been simple, and all great pictures are.

the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.

Those that say the kali yuga is an age of evil forget that this wonderful age is the yuga when moksha is nearest. I say to you, Bhakti, this is the most wonderful of all the ages of men!

The sources of great rivers, like those of great men, are often obscure – some hidden crevice high on a mountain. But in the fullness of time, the world sees their glory. So, too, shall it be with us.