44 Inspirational Quotes About Men

In the intricate tapestry of the human experience, men have long stood at the juncture of strength and vulnerability, courage and introspection. They are fathers, brothers, leaders, and friends—each with a unique narrative that contributes to the broader human story. As we navigate life's complexities, the wisdom imparted through inspirational quotes about men offers guidance, reflection, and motivation. These carefully curated words can stir the spirit, provoke thought, and inspire action, reminding us of the profound impact that men have on the world around them. Join us as we explore a handpicked selection of 44 quotes that encapsulate the essence of manhood in all its forms, celebrating the virtues that define the male journey.

1. “I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.” - Anais Nin

2. “At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.” - P.G. Wodehouse

3. “The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.” - Alice Walker

4. “In the meantime: (1) be direct; (2) remember that, being smarter than men, women respond to courtesy and kindness; (3) if you want to know what kind of a wife someone will make, observe her around her father and mother; (4) as to who gets out of the elevator first, I just can't help you.” - David Mamet

5. “Of the Seven Dwarfs, the only one who shaved was Dopey. That should tell us something about the wisdom of shaving.” - Tom Robbins

6. “No matter what dimension you're in, there's a big-headed male trying to take over the world.” - Eoin Colfer

7. “Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What are men to rocks and mountains?” - Jane Austen

8. “Men don’t often know those times when a girl could be had for nothing.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

9. “I can’t bear the smell of cigars, can you?” said Lady Partridge. “Lionel hates it too,” murmured Rachel. As did Nick, to whom the dry lavatorial stench of cigars signified the inexplicable confidence of other men’s tastes and habits, and their readiness to impose them on their fellows.” - Alan Hollinghurst

10. “If you had a daily printout from the brain of an average twenty-four-year-old male, it would probably go like this: sex, need coffee, sex, traffic, sex, sex, what an asshole, sex, ham sandwich, sex, sex, etc” - Kate White

11. “Man...heats up like a lightbulb: red hot in the twinkling of an eye and cold again in a flash. The female, on the other hand...heats up like an iron. Slowly, over a low heat, like tasty stew. But then, once she has heated up, there's no stopping her.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

12. “This pre-eminence is something [men] have unjustly arrogated to themselves. And when it's said that women must be subject to men, the phrase should be understood in the same sense as when we say we are subject to natural disasters, diseases, and all the other accidents of this life: it's not a case of being subjected in the sense of obeying, but rather of suffering an imposition, not a case of serving them fearfully, but rather of tolerating them in a spirit of Christian charity, since they have been given to us by God as a spiritual trial.” - Moderata Fonte

13. “Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

14. “Give a man a centimeter and he'll think he's a ruler.” - Janet Skeslien Charles

15. “I've always loved strong women, which is lucky for me because once you're over about twenty-five there is no other kind. Women blow my mind. The stuff that routinely gets done to them would make most men curl up and die, but women turn to steel and keep on coming. Any man who claims he's not into strong women is fooling himself mindless; he's into strong women who know how to pout prettily and put on baby voices, and who will end up keeping his balls in her makeup bags.” - Tana French

16. “We were still at the age when girls are years older than guy, and the guys grow up by doing their best when the girls need them to.” - Tana French

17. “This is where men and women are different, we can put aside petty competition for relationships - they can't. It interferes.” - Adriana Trigiani

18. “Boys, be ambitious. Be ambitious not for money, not for selfish aggrandizement, not for the evanescent thing which men call fame. Be ambitious for the attainment of all that a man can be.” - William Clark

19. “The only problem with her is that she is too perfect. She is bad in a way that entices, and good in a way that comforts. She is mischief but then she is the warmth of home. The dreams of the wild and dangerous but the memories of childhood and gladness. She is perfection. And when given something perfect, it is the nature of man to dedicate his mind to finding something wrong with it and then when he is able to find something wrong with it, he rejoices in his find, and sees only the flaw, becoming blind to everything else! And this is why man is never given anything that is perfect, because when given the imperfect and the ugly, man will dedicate his mind to finding what is good with the imperfect and upon finding one thing good with the extremely flawed, he will only see the one thing good, and no longer see everything that is ugly. And so....man complains to God for having less than what he wants... but this is the only thing that man can handle. Man cannot handle what is perfect. It is the nature of the mortal to rejoice over the one thing that he can proudly say that he found on his own, with no help from another, whether it be a shadow in a perfect diamond, or a faint beautiful reflection in an extremely dull mirror.” - C. JoyBell C.

20. “Everything is a contest. All dealings among men are a contest in which some will succeed and others fail. And some are failing quite spectacularly.” - Brandon Sanderson

21. “Nearly everyone has had a box of secret pain, shared with no one. Will [Hamilton] had concealed his well, laughed loud, exploited perverse virtues, and never let his jealousy go wandering [...] He was always on the edge, trying to hold on to the rim of the family with what gifts he had - care, and reason, application. He kept the books, hired the attorneys, called the undertaker, and eventually paid the bills. The others didn't even know they needed him.” - John Steinbeck

22. “Henry liked fun and avoided when he could any solemn or serious matter, for he confused these with sorrow.” - John Steinbeck

23. “I have no fear of men, as such, nor of their books. I have mixed with them--one or two of them particularly-- almost as one of their own sex. I mean I have not felt about them as most women are taught to feel--to be on their guard against attacks on their virtue; for no average man-- no man short of a sensual savage--will molest a woman by day or night, at home or abroad, unless she invites him. Until she says by a look 'Come on' he is always afraid to, and if you never say it, or look it, he never comes.” - Thomas Hardy

24. “No: I shall not marry Samuel Fawthrop Wynne.""I ask why? I must have a reason. In all respects he is more than worthy of you."She stood on the hearth; she was pale as the white marble slab and cornice behind her; her eyes flashed large, dilated, unsmiling."And I ask in what sense that young man is worthy of me?” - Charlotte Brontë

25. “[I]f you seek in every way to minimise my firm beliefs by your anti-feminist attacks, please recall that a small dagger or knife point can pierce a great, bulging sack and that a small fly can attack a great lion and speedily put him to flight.” - Christine de Pizan

26. “Men were created before women. ... But that doesn't prove their superiority – rather, it proves ours, for they were born out of the lifeless earth in order that we could be born out of living flesh. And what's so important about this priority in creation, anyway? When we are building, we lay foundations on the ground first, things of no intrinsic merit or beauty, before subsequently raising up sumptuous buildings and ornate palaces. Lowly seeds are nourished in the earth, and then later the ravishing blooms appear; lovely roses blossom forth and scented narcissi.” - Moderata Fonte

27. “[M]en, though they know full well how much women are worth and how great the benefits we bring them, nonetheless seek to destroy us out of envy for our merits. It's just like the crow, when it produces white nestlings: it is so stricken by envy, knowing how black it is itself, that it kills its own offspring out of pique.” - Moderata Fonte

28. “Men are very sensitive, Mma Makutsi. You would not always think it to look at them, but they are. They do not like you to point out that they are wrong, even when they are. That is the way things are, Mma--it just is.” - Alexander McCall Smith

29. “Waiting turns men into bears in a barn, and women into cats in a sack.” - Robert Jordan

30. “He was like her favorite type of candy, she realized, a bit sour at first but all sweetness in the long run. Admittedly . . . that tartness was part of the allure all along.” - Victoria Kahler

31. “Women are females and men are males. According to gynaecologists, women menstruate every month or so, while men, being male, do not menstruate or suffer during the monthly period. A women, being female, is naturally subject to monthly bleeding. When a women does not menstruate, she is pregnant. If she is pregnant, she becomes, due to pregnancy, less active for about a year.” - Muammar Al-Qaddafi

32. “Men were not gods after all, but as human and as clumsy as girls.” - E.M. Forster

33. “Sam Littleton was a beautiful woman who would try to play women's games. That meant that if he asked her if she was upset with him about something, she would do what women all do at such times: She would deny that anything was wrong, then continue acting as if something was wrong, in hopes that he would do what men always do at such times -beg for an explanation, agonise over the answer, ask for hints, and agonise a little more.” - Judith McNaught

34. “Stimulated by the juice, I believe, men have even been known to ride alligators.” - P.G. Wodehouse

35. “That's a man's vital spot, the helpless thing he loves. ("Jane Brown's Body")” - Cornell Woolrich

36. “I rang the bell and she opened the door, dried her hands, and said heartily: 'Hello, stranger. I was just saying to Cliff only tonight, it's about time you showed up around here.' I wanted to detach him from her, but first I had to sit through about ten minutes of her. She was my sister, but you don't tell women things like I wanted to tell him. I don't know why, but you don't. You tell them the things you have under control; the things that you're frightened of, you tell other men if you tell anyone. ("Nightmare")” - Cornell Woolrich

37. “I am sensible that to own an inclination for a man is to put one's self wholly in his power; but sure you have generosity enough not to abuse it.” - Pierrepont Mary

38. “The best man day in the world would involve building a bridge and then blowing up that bridge. Which is why you can't make a better man movie than The Bridge on the River Kwai, unless you make Two Bridges on the River Kwai.” - Joel Stein

39. “I don't love men that love other women. I think more of myself then that.” - Rose The Vampire Diaries

40. “My mother always said - "Never run after a man or a bus - there is always another one coming.” - Tessa Kiros

41. “Oyster Tom said that they were not talking about people but about men. He agreed that most men remain accountable to themselves only, and that but poorly. He said that the proper chore of a man is to be chargeable for those and that dear to him and that this was something women understood and knew how to do without being told. It was a thing women looked for in their men, and this was why most women lived lives of bottomless sorrow.” - Lance Weller

42. “Men’s greatest weakness is their facade of strength, and women’s greatest strength is their facade of weakness.” - Warren Farrell

43. “Little girls fear being a princess that was never rescued but little boys fear being a prince that was too late.” - Tommy Tran

44. “I am the keeper of the beast, though all men harbor a beast in the depths of their heart -- callous, calamitous creatures, driven by deviant demands and derisive diligence. -- From the short story What Rough Beast” - Michael Hibbard