Quotes About Men

I observed with assumed innocence that no man was safe from trouble in this world.

We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil.

On men reprieved by its disdainful mercy, the immortal sea confers in its justice the full privilege of desired unrest.

We had enlisted some of these chaps on the way for a crew. Fine fellows—cannibals—in their place. They were men one could work with, and I am grateful to them. And, after all, they did not eat each other before my face:

And after some more talk we agreed that the wisdom of rats had been grossly overrated, being in fact no greater than that of men.

A cloud of unreality hangs about men, events, discourses, purposes.

History is made by men, but they do not make it in their heads.

What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! … The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.

This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be.

The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—this suspicion of their not being inhuman.

Naive Heyst! As if anybody would . . . Nobody amongst us had any interest in men who went home. They were all right; they did not count any more. Going to Europe was nearly as final as going to Heaven. It removed

Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors.

It was only when it dawned upon me that the purloiner of the treasure need not necessarily be a confirmed rogue, that he could be even a man of character, an actor and possibly a victim in the changing scenes of a revolution, it was only then that I had the first vision of a twilight country which was to become the province of Sulaco, with its high shadowy Sierra and its misty campo for mute witnesses of events flowing from the passions of men short-sighted in good and evil.

Hubo un tiempo en que los hombres contaban.

Don't imagine that a college education is necessary to success as a writer. Far from it. Some of our college men are dead-heads, drones, parasites on the body social, not alone useless to the world but to themselves.

Waving his arm over the carnage, the German remarked that the American attack that morning had been a "foolish affair." He himself had known for weeks that the war was coming to an end and had taken no unnecessary risks with the lives of his men.

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity trust upon them.

You wouldn't be normal if you were never afraid. Even the bravest men experience fear. One of the biggest jobs we all face in combat is to overcome fear.

Her own body was such a familiar and unremarkable thing to her that she was puzzled by the convulsive ecstasy men could take from it, by the intense and amusing need they had merely to touch it, to reach out urgently and press it, squeeze it, pinch it, rub it. She did not understand Yossarian's lust; but she was willing to take is word for it.

She destroyed egos by the score and made men hate themselves in the morning by the way she found them, used them, and tossed them aside.

Like all the other officers at Group Headquarters except Major Danby, Colonel Cathcart was infused with the democratic spirit: he believed that all men were created equal, and he therefore spurned all men outside Group Headquarters with equal fervor.

This stuff is better than cotton candy, really it is. It's made out of real cotton. Yossarian, you've got to help me make the men eat it. Egyptian cotton is the finest cotton in the world.

Some men were born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. Major Major was all three.

The men were perfectly content to fly as manny missions as we asked them as long as thought they had no alternative. Now you've given them hope, and they're unhappy. So the blame is all yours.