83 Quotes About Men

There’s something timeless and profoundly enlightening about quotes. They distill wisdom, humor, and insight into bite-sized reflections that resonate with our experiences and emotions. In this journey through words, we focus on men—exploring their roles, challenges, strengths, and idiosyncrasies. From revered philosophers and celebrated authors to contemporary thinkers and cultural icons, this curated collection of the top 83 quotes about men captures the essence of what it means to walk in their shoes. Whether you're looking for inspiration, understanding, or a touch of wit, these quotes are sure to offer both thought-provoking and heartwarming insights. So, sit back and let these words take you on a reflective dive into the multifaceted world of men.

1. “The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.” - Virginia Woolf

2. “Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men.” - Neil Gaiman

3. “Conversation between a princess and an outlaw: "If I stand for fairy-tale balls and dragon bait--dragon bait--what do you stand for?""Me? I stand for uncertainty, insecurity, bad taste, fun, and things that go boom in the night.""Franky, it seems to me that you've turned yourself into a stereotype.""You may be right. I don't care. As any car freak will tell you, the old models are the most beautiful, even if they aren't the most efficient. People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve.""Well, you may get off on being a beautiful stereotype, regardless of the social consequences, but my conscience won't allow it." "And I goddamn refuse to be dragon bait. I'm as capable of rescuing you as you are of rescuing me.""I'm an outlaw, not a hero. I never intended to rescue you. We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.” - Tom Robbins

4. “Some people are boys longer than others.” - Patricia Briggs

5. “Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. You have to teach them how to be there for you, and part of me feels tender toward them and gentle, and part of me is so afraid of them, afraid of any more violation.” - Anne Lamott

6. “It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.” - Ian Fleming

7. “I don't stand for black man's side, I don't stand for white man's side, I stand for God's side.” - Bob Marley

8. “Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.” - Jane Austen

9. “Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography. ” - Robert Byrne

10. “Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.” - W. Somerset Maugham

11. “Don't leave a piece of jewelry at his house so you can go back and get it later; he may be with his real girlfriend.” - Amy Sedaris

12. “I'm tired of waiting by the phone, and second-guessing what a guy says and trusting someone not to hurt me. Again. I've been storming the relationship castle for fifteen years, and I still don't have my prince. I've got a bunch of battle scars from the field and I want to go home and nurse my wounds. I don't want to fight anymore.” - Kim Gruenenfelder

13. “Men didn't respect beauty...they used it.” - Nora Roberts

14. “He feared me as many men fear women: because their mistresses (or their wives) understand them. They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them.” - Julian Barnes

15. “I try to make my comments like a woman's skirt: long enough to be respectable and short enough to be interesting. ” - Adam Clayton Powell

16. “Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.” - Niccolo Machiavelli

17. “I grieve and dare not show my discontent, I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,I do, yet dare not say I ever meant, I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate. I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned, Since from myself another self I turned. My care is like my shadow in the sun, Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it, Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.” - Elizabeth I

18. “Why do gentlemen's voices carry so clearly, when women's are so easily stifled?” - Sarah Waters

19. “I realize that they giggle and I actually laugh, that they show their cleavage and I have none to show, but just so you know, I am also a girl. I'm one of the three wise MEN. And it's gay to think that James Bond is hot.” - John Green

20. “Men, I thought, were more trouble than they were worth. Really, one should stick to books where one sees the hero coming a mile off.” - Eva Rice

21. “If a man doesn't know how to dance he doesn't know how to make love, there I said it!” - Craig Ferguson

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

23. “Hitch: making rules about drinking can be the sign of an alcoholic,' as Martin Amis once teasingly said to me. (Adorno would have savored that, as well.) Of course, watching the clock for the start-time is probably a bad sign, but here are some simple pieces of advice for the young. Don't drink on an empty stomach: the main point of the refreshment is the enhancement of food. Don't drink if you have the blues: it's a junk cure. Drink when you are in a good mood. Cheap booze is a false economy. It's not true that you shouldn't drink alone: these can be the happiest glasses you ever drain. Hangovers are another bad sign, and you should not expect to be believed if you take refuge in saying you can't properly remember last night. (If you really don't remember, that's an even worse sign.) Avoid all narcotics: these make you more boring rather than less and are not designed—as are the grape and the grain—to enliven company. Be careful about up-grading too far to single malt Scotch: when you are voyaging in rough countries it won't be easily available. Never even think about driving a car if you have taken a drop. It's much worse to see a woman drunk than a man: I don't know quite why this is true but it just is. Don't ever be responsible for it.” - Christopher Hitchens

24. “Your husband this morning! Mine tonight! What do you take him for?''A man' smiled Cynthia. 'And therefore, if you won't let me call him changeable, I'll coin a word and call him consolable.” - Elizabeth Gaskell

25. “That men of this kind despise women, though a not uncommon belief, is one which hardly appears to be justified. Indeed, though naturally not inclined to 'fall in love' in this direction, such men are by their nature drawn rather near to women, and it would seem that they often feel a singular appreciation and understanding of the emotional needs and destinies of the other sex, leading in many cases to a genuine though what is called 'Platonic' friendship. There is little doubt that they are often instinctively sought after by women, who, without suspecting the real cause, are conscious of a sympathetic chord in the homogenic which they miss in the normal man.” - Edward Carpenter

26. “Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.” - samuel jackson

27. “And now you're off to Port Caynn. Watch them sailor lads. They'll have your skirts up and a babe in your belly afore you know what you're about.""Everyone keep warning me about sailors," I complained. "Why can't someone tell the sailors to stay clear of me?"Granny snorted. "Oh, you're the fierce one now! Just take care no one else catches you unawares and knocks you on the nob!” - Tamora Pierce

28. “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

29. “When you look for a man- what you want to look for is a man with the heart of a poor boy and the mind of a conqueror.” - C. JoyBell C.

30. “The tape measures and weighing scales of the Victorian brain scientists have been supplanted by powerful neuroimaging technologies, but there is still a lesson to be learned from historical examples such as these. State-of-the-art brain scanners offer us unprecedented information about the structure and working of the brain. But don't forget that, once, wrapping a tape measure around the head was considered modern and sophisticated, and it's important not to fall into the same old traps. As we'll see in later chapters, although certain popular commentators make it seem effortlessly easy, the sheer complexity of the brain makes interpreting and understanding the meaning of any sex differences we find in the brain a very difficult task. But the first, and perhaps surprising, issue in sex differences research is that of knowing which differences are real and which, like the intially promising cephalic index, are flukes or spurious.” - Cordelia Fine

31. “Men are easily threatened. And whenever a man is threatened, when he becomes uncomfortable in places within himself that he does not understand, he naturally retreats into an arena of comfort or competence, or he dominates someone or something in order to feel powerful. Men refuse to feel the paralyzing and humbling horror of uncertainty, a horror that could drive them to trust, a horror that could release in them the power to deeply give themselves in relationship. As a result, most men feel close to no one, especially not to God, and no one feels close to them. Something good in men is stopped and needs to get moving. When good movement stops, bad movement (retreat or domination) reliably develops.” - Larry Crabb

32. “Sometimes, somehow...I feel that ocean contains tears of mother earth,that mourns over terrible great sin done by men.” - Toba Beta

33. “Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered, and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe.” - Mary Shelley

34. “It's always seemed to me that flirtation is a man's device for avoiding responsibility. He can say whatever he wants and knows he won't be taken seriously.” - G.G. Vandagriff

35. “Often men who have been emotionally neglected and abused as children by dominating mothers bond with assertive women, only to have their childhood feelings of being engulfed surface. While they could not 'smash their mommy' and still receive love, they find that they can engage in intimate violence with partners who respond to their acting out by trying harder to connect with them emotionally, hoping that the love offered in the present will heal the wounds of the past. If only one party in the relationship is working to create love, to create the space of emotional connection, the dominator model remains in place and the relationship just becomes a site for continuous power struggle.” - bell hooks

36. “Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys. Love cannot exist in any relationship that is based on domination and coercion. Males cannot love themselves in patriarchal culture if their very self-definition relies on submission to patriarchal rules. When men embrace feminist thinking and practice, which emphasizes the value of mutual growth and self-actualization in all relationships, their emotional well-being will be enhanced. A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving.” - bell hooks

37. “They dream of men with gentle hands, eloquent with tenderness, fingers that brushed along a cheek, that outlined open lips in the lovers' braille. Hands that sculpted sweetness from sullen flesh, that traced breast and ignited hips, opening, kneading. Flesh becomes bread in the heat of those hands, braided and rising.” - Janet Fitch

38. “I gave myself to you sooner than I ever did to any man, I swear to you; and do you know why? Because when you saw me spitting blood you took my hand; because you wept; because you are the only human being who has ever pitied me. I am going to say a mad thing to you: I once had a little dog who looked at me with a sad look when I coughed; that is the only creature I ever loved. When he died I cried more than when my mother died. It is true that for twelve years of her life she used to beat me. Well, I loved you all at once, as much as my dog. If men knew what they can have for a tear, they would be better loved and we should be less ruinous to them.” - Alexandre Dumas-fils

39. “Listen, there is no way any true man is going to let children live around him in his home and not discipline and teach, fight and mold them until they know all he knows. His goal is to make them better than he is. Being their friend is a distant second to this.” - Victor Devlin

40. “Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less then Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.” - Oscar Wilde

41. “As far as I'm concerned, men like you were put on this world to entertain women like me.” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

42. “Although I'm sure there are plenty of tall, gorgeous, life-of-the-party guys who are also true to their wives, I happen to believe that a disproportionate number of them are cheaters.” - Emily Giffin

43. “Are you listening, Jasper? Sometimes you'll be walking in the city late at night, and a woman walking in front of you will spin her head around and then cross the street simply because some members of your gender rape women and molest children!” - Steve Toltz

44. “Women fall in love when they get to know you. Men are just the opposite. When they finally know you they're ready to leave” - James Salter

45. “Love lasts a long time but burning desire lasts two to three weeks.” - Carla Bruni

46. “Then he's inside you, and your body remembers, each time, every man, even if you try to forget.” - Jayne Anne Phillips

47. “Men have been pacifists for every reason under the sun except to avoid danger and fighting.” - William Faulkner

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

49. “Facing them (men) with knives and spears was much easier than loving them, much easier.” - Robert Jordan

50. “--the ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted by temperament and instinct to fulfil the conditions of the matrimonial relation with Phillotson, possibly with scarce any man...” - Thomas Hardy

51. “[S]ince you are angry at me without reason, you attack me harshly with, "Oh outrageous presumption! Oh excessively foolish pride! Oh opinion uttered too quickly and thoughtlessly by the mouth of a woman! A woman who condemns a man of high understanding and dedicated study, a man who, by great labour and mature deliberation, has made the very noble book of the Rose, which surpasses all others that were ever written in French. When you have read this book a hundred times, provided you have understood the greater part of it, you will discover that you could never have put your time and intellect to better use!" My answer: Oh man deceived by willful opinion! I could assuredly answer but I prefer not to do it with insult, although, groundlessly, you yourself slander me with ugly accusations. Oh darkened understanding! Oh perverted knowledge ... A simple little housewife sustained by the doctrine of Holy Church could criticise your error!” - Christine de Pizan

52. “And what of failure?"He shrugged."The consequence of not succeesing.Remember what Homer said.Circumstances rule men,not men circumstances.” - Steve Berry

53. “Many women to whom I have preached the doctrine of freedom have weakly replied, 'But who is to support the children?' It seems to me that if the marriage ceremony is needed as a protection to insure the enforced support of children, then you are marrying a man who, you suspect, would under certain conditions, refuse to support his children, and it is a pretty low-down proposition. For you are marrying a man whom you already suspect of being a villain. But I have not so poor an opinion of men that I believe the greater percentage of them to be such low specimens of humanity.” - Isadora Duncan

54. “[In 16th century European society] Marriage was the triumphal arch through which women, almost without exception, had to pass in order to reach the public eye. And after marriage followed, in theory, the total self-abnegation of the woman.” - Antonia Fraser

55. “Causing any damage or harm to one party in order to help another party is not justice, and likewise, attacking all feminine conduct [in order to warn men away from individual women who are deceitful] is contrary to the truth, just as I will show you with a hypothetical case. Let us suppose they did this intending to draw fools away from foolishness. It would be as if I attacked fire -- a very good and necessary element nevertheless -- because some people burnt themselves, or water because someone drowned. The same can be said of all good things which can be used well or used badly. But one must not attack them if fools abuse them.” - Christine de Pizan

56. “What a woman wants is a reaction. What a man wants is a woman.” - Charles Bukowski

57. “Cocoa-buttered girls were stretched out on the public beach in apparently random alignments, but maybe if a weather satellite zoomed in on one of those bodies and then zoomed back out, the photos would show the curving beach itself was another woman, a fractal image made up of the particulate sunbathers. All the beaches pressed together might form female landmasses, female continents, female planets and galaxies. No wonder men felt tense.” - Bonnie Jo Campbell

58. “And we all know love is a glass which makes even a monster appear fascinating.” - Alberto Moravia

59. “I cant take it like this much longer, Milt," Karen said muffledly into the big CKC shirt with its male smell, allowing herself the luxury of letting the bars all the way down for once, enjoying for just this moment the eternal degradation of being a woman."I cant take it much longer," she whimpered, tasting it, the eternally caught and held hard in the grasp of some man, the forever humiliated heavy weight it was impossible to squirm out from under, the forever helpless except for the mercy of him who always takes what he wants without any, and that all women learn instinctively not to expect [...] That was all they wanted. That was all any of them wanted. You give them the greatest thing you possess, the most intimate secret, and they --- just take it. Well, let them have it. Let them all have some of it. Let them root and rut and rowel, as if it was no more important than that why were they all so anxious to keep it away from each other?” - James Jones

60. “I sort of got off on making bad guys sweat. Which was not unlike my love of making good guys sweat, just by very different means.” - Darynda Jones

61. “Funny how women are ashamed of their inner fairy whereas men are forever proudly displaying their inner cowboy or fireman” - Dawn French

62. “I took it for granted that there must be a few men left in the world who had that kind of strength. I assumed that those men would also be looking for women with principle. I did not want to be among the marked-down goods on the bargain table, cheap because they’d been pawed over. Crowds collect there. It is only the few who will pay full price. "You get what you pay for.” - Elisabeth Elliot

63. “Give a man your attentionLose hisIgnore a manGain his attention” - KC Rhoads

64. “Men are like roses. You have to watch out for the pricks.” - Jill Shalvis

65. “man can not live on chocolate .... but women can” - Hannah

66. “...Gentlemen don't understand anything, however wise they may be.” - Georgette Heyer

67. “Claude rubs the back of his neck and wrinkles his nose, about to tell me he was never sad. I believe this is called bravado and is not limited to lawyers, or even men, although that combination makes it almost unavoidable.” - Rachel Hartman

68. “If she had learnt any lesson today it was that men were stupid, helpless creatures made needlessly cruel by their terror of showing their feelings.” - Jayne Bauling

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

70. “Wie so oft erhebt sich die Frage, weshalb Männer in ihrer Persönlichkeit oft diffus sind, wie es sein kann, daß sie an einem Obduktionstisch, in einer Küche, hinter einem Hundeschlitten virtuose Equilibristen sein können, während sie, wenn sie einem Fremden die Hand geben müssen, in infantiler Unbeholfenheit versinken.” - Peter Høeg

71. “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

72. “Take pride away from a man and you might as well run a knife through his heart.” - Julie Garwood

73. “The world expected girls to pluck and primp and put on heels. Meanwhile, boys dressed in rumpled T-shirts and baggy pants and misplace their combs, and yet you were suppose to fall at their feet? Unacceptable.” - Libba Bray

74. “A man who does not doubt the courage of a woman, is a man that is subjugated by her will and allure.” - Lionel Suggs

75. “First, they set the hook with mind-bending kinky shit. Then a year later you're living in a Talking Heads song, dressed like Teddy Ruxpin, living with a strange woman in a big house full of frilly throw pillows, experiencing the frequency of sex that can only be charted by Halley's Comet. and you're wondering: How did I get here?” - Tim Dorsey

76. “Self-pity, while it should be accorded due respect, is the greatest of all acids to the human soul.” - Paul Hoffman

77. “How men envy and often hate these warm clocks, these wives, who know they will live forever. So what do we do? We men turn terribly mean, because we can't hold to the world or ourselves or anything. We are blind to continuity, all breaks down, falls, melts, stops, rots, or runs away. So, since we cannot shape Time, where does that leave men? Sleepless. Staring.” - Ray Bradbury

78. “A weapon men use against women is the refusal to take them seriously.” - David Mitchell

79. “Heartbroken men are like wild animals, running around with hysteria in their eyes, desperately trying to knock the dents out of their egos. ” - Jessica Thompson

80. “Did you know I have always suspected that men were idiots," Daphne ground out, "but I was never positive until today.” - Julia Quinn

81. “Any man, you'll soon learn, has an insurmountable need to blame someone else when he is made to look a fool.” - Julia Quinn

82. “There is a cruelty that lurks in some men’s souls which is only released when they have other men in their power.” - Morgan Llywelyn

83. “... for when a man's spirit has been thoroughly crushed, he may be peevish at small offenses, but never resentful of great ones.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne