95 Inspiring Quotes About Men

In a world where the challenges and triumphs of men are often highlighted in various spheres, words have the power to inspire and motivate. The right quote can encapsulate the essence of strength, vulnerability, leadership, and growth, offering a moment of reflection or a spark of inspiration. Whether you're seeking motivation for a personal endeavor or looking to celebrate the multifaceted nature of men, exploring a curated collection of inspiring quotes can provide new perspectives and encouragement. Dive into this compilation of the top 95 quotes that honor the complexities and beauties of manhood, and let these words resonate with your journey or that of someone you admire.

1. “Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power.” - Gloria Steinem

2. “Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

3. “I like men who have a future and women who have a past.” - Oscar Wilde

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

5. “The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance.” - Jane Austen

6. “Man can never know the loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in the woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. Woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which she is bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love a taking of man within her, an act of birth and rebirth, of child rearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to be. But for woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment man rests inside of her.” - Anais Nin

7. “...and then she realized: they WERE all alike!” - Anne Taintor

8. “A study in the Washington Post says that women havebetter verbal skills than men. I just want to say to the authors of that study: 'Duh.” - Conan O'Brien

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

10. “Woman, especially her sexuality, provides the object of endless commentary , description, supposition. But the result of all the telling only deepens the enigma and makes woman's erotic force something that male storytelling can never quite explain or contain.” - Peter Brooks

11. “Mrs. MacAndrew shared the common opinion of her sex that a man is always a brute to leave a woman who is attached to him, but that a woman is much to blame if he does.” - W. Somerset Maugham

12. “Why did God make women so beautiful and man with such a loving heart?” - Walker Percy

13. “I shudder at the thought of men....I'm due to fall in love again” - Dorothy Parker

14. “He'll be cross if he sees I have been crying. They don't like you to cry. He doesn't cry. I wish to God I could make him cry. I wish I could make him cry and tread the floor and feel his heart heavy and big and festering in him. I wish I could hurt him like hell.He doesn't wish that about me. I don't think he even knows how he makes me feel. I wish he could know, without my telling him. They don't like you to tell them they've made you cry. They don't like you to tell them you're unhappy because of them. If you do, they think you're possessive and exacting. And then they hate you. They hate you whenever you say anything you really think. You always have to keep playing little games. Oh, I thought we didn't have to; I thought this was so big I could say whatever I meant. I guess you can't, ever. I guess there isn't ever anything big enough for that.” - Dorothy Parker

15. “Men had no purpose on earth whereas women were gods walking unrecognized among them.” - Kate Atkinson

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

17. “It seems to Henry, as he takes his seat in his usual middle pew, that women are far braver than men” - Elizabeth Strout

18. “How many men with a microphone can tell you what he loves the most?” - The White Stripes

19. “men do not suspect faults which they do not commit” - Samuel Johnson

20. “As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.” - Virginia Woolf

21. “In particular, husbands and wives who do poorly at nonverbal communication tend to be dissatisfied with their marriages. Moreover, when such problems occur, it's usually the husband's fault .In the first ingenious study of this sort, Patricia Noller (1980) found thathusbands in unhappy marriages sent more confusing messages and made more decoding errors than happy husbands did. There were no such differences among the wives, so the poorer communication Noller observed in the distressed marriages appeared to be the husbands' fault. Men in troubled marriages were misinterpreting communications from their wives that were clearly legible to total strangers.Even worse, such husbands were completely clueless about their mistakes; they assumed that they were doing a fine job communicating with their wives, and were confident that they understood their wives and that their wives understood them. The men were doing a poor job communicating and didn't know it, and that's why they seemed to be at fault.” - Rowland Miller

22. “The only type of men Julia's mother had warned her about were wealthy industrialist who polluted the environment and took advantage of third-world countries. And Republilicans.” - Cathie Linz

23. “The language of Cat's generation was far harder than that of her own, and more pithily correct: in their terms, he was a hunk. But why, she wondered, should anybody actually want a hunk, when non-hunks were so much more interesting?” - Alexander McCall Smith

24. “He should in humility have asked her why it was that he was naturally a cuckold, why two women of different temperaments and characters had been inspired to have lovers at his expense. He should be telling her, with the warmth of her body warming his, that his second wife had confessed to greater sexual pleasure when she remembered that she was deceiving him.” - William Trevor

25. “And I can't die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I'm a cracked plate.” - Zora Neale Hurston

26. “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

27. “Nothing is more appealing than a handsome man who is also uncertain of himself.” - Laurell K. Hamilton

28. “Yes, it's a well-known fact about you: you're like death, you take everything.” - Milan Kundera

29. “[A]s people are beginning to see that the sexes form in a certain sense a continuous group, so they are beginning to see that Love and Friendship which have been so often set apart from each other as things distinct are in reality closely related and shade imperceptibly into each other. Women are beginning to demand that Marriage shall mean Friendship as well as Passion; that a comrade-like Equality shall be included in the word Love; and it is recognised that from the one extreme of a 'Platonic' friendship (generally between persons of the same sex) up to the other extreme of passionate love (generally between persons of opposite sex) no hard and fast line can at any point be drawn effectively separating the different kinds of attachment. We know, in fact, of Friendships so romantic in sentiment that they verge into love; we know of Loves so intellectual and spiritual that they hardly dwell in the sphere of Passion.” - Edward Carpenter

30. “I don't think he was ever happy unless someone was in love with him, responding to him like filings to a magnet, helping him to explain himself, promising him something. What it was I do not know. Perhaps they promised that there would always be women in the world who would spend their brightest, freshest, rarest hours to nurse and protect that superiority he cherished in his heart.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

31. “Society shall never make progress unless it changes its basic objective of making things easier;instead our main objective should be to make men stronger!I say "men" as women have always had and shall continue to have all the strength needed!!-Ashoka Jahnavi Prasad(Woods oration-2008)” - Ashoka Prasad

32. “I'm getting the impression that women, in any form, scare you."He shrugged. "They're the more violent species. And unpredictable. I'd rather take on a wild boar. You can't shoot women.” - Maya Banks

33. “Part of water which is cooler always flows to below surface.I understand that hotheaded men always want to be noticed.” - Toba Beta

34. “It is not titles that honour men, but men that honour titles.” - Niccolo Machiavelli

35. “Buy for me from the King's own kennels, the finest elk hounds of the Royal strain, male and female. Bring them back without delay. For," he murmured, scarcely above his breath as he turned to his books, "I have done with men.” - Virginia Woolf

36. “Proper handling of a horse like this is no simple matter. He was trained to race, from birth. Not only to race, but to be the best. Once a champion, he was spoiled with attention and permissive handling. Add to that, he's an ungelded male, with a strong natural mating drive. It all adds up to a horse with a mile-wide streak of arrogance, bloody bored out of his mind. Without proper exercise and opportunities to mate, all that aggressive energy festers. He becomes moody, intractable, withdrawn, destructive."Ashworth raised an eyebrow at Bellamy. "Is it just me, or is this conversation becoming uncomfortably personal?"Spencer fumed. "I'm not referring to myself, you ass.” - Tessa Dare

37. “Men are bad cyclists, hunters of wild animals, kamikazes, samurai and Christian martyrs.” - Christine Grän

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

39. “To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?"[To the Women of India (Young India, Oct. 4, 1930)]” - Mahatma Gandhi

40. “Individual heterosexual women came to the movement from relationships where men were cruel, unkind, violent, unfaithful. Many of these men were radical thinkers who participated in movements for social justice, speaking out on behalf of the workers, the poor, speaking out on behalf of racial justice. However when it came to the issue of gender they were as sexist as their conservative cohorts.” - bell hooks

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

42. “There is not a man of common sense who would not chuse to be agreeable in company; and yet, strange as it may seem, very few are” - The Town and Country Magazine. vol. 11, 1779

43. “A man who offers to cook after he's seen you trying to freeze a dead dog has to be at least a little bit keen.” - Rosen Trevithick

44. “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

45. “I looked from one to the other, and realized that Barrons and my dad were having one of those wordless conversations he and I have from time to time. Though the language was, by nature, foreign to me, I grew up in the Deep South where a man’s ego is roughly the size of his pickup truck, and women get an early and interesting education in the not-so-subtle roar of testosterone.” - Karen Marie Moning

46. “When in a relationship, a real man doesn't make his woman jealous of others, he makes others jealous of his woman.” - Steve Maraboli

47. “I really think guys only need two pairs of shoes. A nice pair of black shoes and a pair of Chuck Taylors.” - Mindy Kaling

48. “I want a man with nuclear power.” - Carla Bruni

49. “Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick.BEATRICEIndeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one: marry, once before he won it of me with false dice, therefore your grace may well say I have lost it.DON PEDROYou have put him down, lady, you have put him down.BEATRICESo I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I should prove the mother of fools.” - William Shakespeare

50. “Of course, fashions come and go but metrosexuality isn’t a fashion – it’s an epoch. It represents a fundamental shift in what men are allowed to be and to want. Men are now permitted to be ‘passive’ – inviting our gaze.” - Mark Simpson

51. “Men! Dead or alive, they could be exactly the same.” - Charlaine Harris

52. “Not all men (and especially the wisest) share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated. But it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did.” - Christine de Pizan

53. “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

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. “Women get into a relationship hoping a man will change, and he never does; men get into a relationship hoping the woman don't change, but she always does. Men want their partners to be consistent. That they won't make impromptu impossible demands nor baffle him with classically female sudden-onset hysterical behavior.” - Valerie Frankel

56. “To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one's comrades. It is to feel, when setting one's stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

57. “There is no deception on the part of the woman, where a man bewilders himself: if he deludes his own wits, I can certainly acquit the women. Whatever man allows his mind to dwell upon the imprint his imagination has foolishly taken of women, is fanning the flames within himself -- and, since the woman knows nothing about it, she is not to blame. For if a man incites himself to drown, and will not restrain himself, it is not the water's fault.” - John Gower

58. “[Y]ou are not ashamed of your sin [in committing adultery] because so many men commit it. Man's wickedness is now such that men are more ashamed of chastity than of lechery. Murderers, thieves, perjurers, false witnesses, plunderers and fraudsters are detested and hated by people generally, but whoever will sleep with his servant girl in brazen lechery is liked and admired for it, and people make light of the damage to his soul. And if any man has the nerve to say that he is chaste and faithful to his wife and this gets known, he is ashamed to mix with other men, whose behaviour is not like his, for they will mock him and despise him and say he's not a real man; for man's wickedness is now of such proportions that no one is considered a man unless he is overcome by lechery, while one who overcomes lechery and stays chaste is considered unmanly.” - Augustine of Hippo

59. “Wine and women make wise men dote and forsake God's law and do wrong." However, the fault is not in the wine, and often not in the woman. The fault is in the one who misuses the wine or the woman or other of God's crations. Even if you get drunk on the wine and through this greed you lapse into lechery, the wine is not to blame but you are, in being unable or unwilling to discipline yourself. And even if you look at a woman and become caught up in her beauty and assent to sin [= adultery; extramarital sex], the woman is not to blame nor is the beauty given her by God to be disparaged: rather, you are to blame for not keeping your heart more clear of wicked thoughts. ... If you feel yourself tempted by the sight of a woman, control your gaze better ... You are free to leave her. Nothing constrains you to commit lechery but your own lecherous heart.” - Anonymous

60. “One way, he thought, the whole thing of ring fighting was hurting somebody else, deliberately, and particularly when it was not necessary. Two men who have nothing against each other get in a ring and try to hurt each other, to provide vicarious fear for people with less guts than themselves. And to cover it up they called it sports and gambled on it. He had never looked at that way before, and if there was any single thing he could not endure it was to be a dupe.” - James Jones

61. “Foolish men always believe that a little knowledge will give them control over the world, but it is no more than a display of their vanity.” - J. P. Vinluca

62. “Is there a more pitiable spectacle than that of a wife contending with others for that charm in her husband's sight which no philters and no prayers can renew when once it has fled forever?Women are so unwise. Love is like a bird's song beautiful and eloquent when heard in forest freedom, harsh and worthless in repetition when sung from behind prison bars.You cannot secure love by vigilance, by environment, by captivity. What use is it to keep the person of a man beside you if his soul be truant from you?” - Ouida

63. “There were seven men, but just one language. They also moved as one and ate one meal a day and slept in the same bed and knew the same women with whom they'd made the same child. They worked for the same firm as the father. They were the future.” - Blake Butler

64. “When a man in purple and screaming pink stares at you, you know it's time to change your appearance.” - Susan Ee

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

66. “To us, your power comes from one simple thing: you’re a woman, and we men will doanything humanly possible to impress you so that, ultimately, we can be with you. You’re the driving force behind why we wake up every day. Men go out and get jobs and hustle to makemoney because of women. We drive fancy cars because of women. We dress nice, put on cologne, get haircuts and try to look all shiny and new for you. We do all of this because the more our game is stepped up, the more of you we get. You’re the ultimate prize to us.” - Steve Harvey

67. “Men and the pursuit of them are strongly intertwined with my mental health. I would say, in my defensive defense, that the problem with being a serial monogamist is, there isn't anybody random or unimportant: everybody you sleep with really means something, which is to say each of them is on your public record. At some point I wake up thinking, Fuck this! I don't want another man in my bed ever again. What I really want is a cat.” - Emma Forrest

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

69. “You know how it is - some hot guys don't make your hormones go crazy, while some unattractive guys have massive sex appeal. This guy had it all.” - Sylvia Day

70. “Men lie the most,women tell the biggest lies.” - Chris Rock

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

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

73. “Men are like busses. I mean, you wait for ages and ages, and when one does finally come along you can't get on. And that bit about them coming in threes, well, that's just a myth.” - Eleanor Prescott

74. “Men do suck.” - Candace Bushnell

75. “We tried not to smile, for smiling only encourages men to bore you and waste your time.” - Sheila Heti

76. “All those men who end up disappointing you. After a while, you don't even want to have feelings anymore. You just want to get on with your life.” - Candace Bushnell

77. “But I tended not to date men who ever showed up for me.” - Kimberly Novosel

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

79. “Girls say to me, very reasonably, 'why isn't it a bunch of girls? Why did you write this about a bunch of boys?' Well, my reply is I was once a little boy - I have been a brother, a father, I am going to be a grandfather. I have never been a sister, or a mother, or a grandmother. That's one answer. Another answer is of course to say that if you - as it were - scaled down human beings, scaled down society, if you land with a group of little boys, they are more ike a scaled-down version of society than a group of little girls would be. Don't ask me why, and this is a terrible thing to say because I'm going to be chased from hell to breakfast by all the women who talk about equality - this is nothing to do with equality at all. I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been. But one thing you can't do with them is take a bunch of them and boil them down, so to speak, into a set of little girls who would then become a kind of image of civilisation, of society. The other thing is - why aren't they little boys AND little girls? Well, if they'd been little boys and little girls, we being who we are, sex would have raised its lovely head, and I didn't want this to be about sex. Sex is too trivial a thing to get in with a story like this, which was about the problem of evil and the problem of how people are to live together in a society, not just as lovers or man and wife.” - William Golding

80. “We love men because they can never fake orgasms, even if they wanted to.Because they write poems, songs, and books in our honor.Because they never understand us, but they never give up.Because they can see beauty in women when women have long ceased to see any beauty in themselves.Because they come from little boys.Because they can churn out long, intricate, Machiavellian, or incredibly complex mathematics and physics equations, but they can be comparably clueless when it comes to women.Because they are incredible lovers and never rest until we’re happy.Because they elevate sports to religion.Because they’re never afraid of the dark.Because they don’t care how they look or if they age.Because they persevere in making and repairing things beyond their abilities, with the naïve self-assurance of the teenage boy who knew everything.Because they never wear or dream of wearing high heels.Because they’re always ready for sex.Because they’re like pomegranates: lots of inedible parts, but the juicy seeds are incredibly tasty and succulent and usually exceed your expectations.Because they’re afraid to go bald.Because you always know what they think and they always mean what they say.Because they love machines, tools, and implements with the same ferocity women love jewelry.Because they go to great lengths to hide, unsuccessfully, that they are frail and human.Because they either speak too much or not at all to that end.Because they always finish the food on their plate.Because they are brave in front of insects and mice.Because a well-spoken four-year old girl can reduce them to silence, and a beautiful 25-year old can reduce them to slobbering idiots.Because they want to be either omnivorous or ascetic, warriors or lovers, artists or generals, but nothing in-between.Because for them there’s no such thing as too much adrenaline.Because when all is said and done, they can’t live without us, no matter how hard they try.Because they’re truly as simple as they claim to be.Because they love extremes and when they go to extremes, we’re there to catch them.Because they are tender they when they cry, and how seldom they do it.Because what they lack in talk, they tend to make up for in action.Because they make excellent companions when driving through rough neighborhoods or walking past dark alleys.Because they really love their moms, and they remind us of our dads.Because they never care what their horoscope, their mother-in-law, nor the neighbors say.Because they don’t lie about their age, their weight, or their clothing size.Because they have an uncanny ability to look deeply into our eyes and connect with our heart, even when we don’t want them to.Because when we say “I love you” they ask for an explanation.” - Paulo Coelho

81. “Don’t go to Men about God. Go to God about Men.” - Todd Stocker

82. “I have met so many heartbroken men. It's a catastrophe. Women are easily overcome by the process that happens when a boy falls in love and becomes a man. Men's hearts are so often broken. Still, you have to leave your broken heart in a place where- when the woman who knows how to see what a gift is, sees it- your broken heart can be picked up again. I think that it takes a very strong woman (inner strength) to be able to handle a man falling in love with her, without morphing into a monster (the process is a very potent process, it can poison a woman, really). A woman thinks she wants a man to fall in love with her for all the perks that come with it; but when a real love really does happen, when a real man shows his manhood; it's often too powerful a thing to endure without being poisoned. Hence, all the heartbroken men. But, I do believe that there are strong women in the world today. A few. But there are. You could say, that the mark of a real woman, is a woman who can handle a man- a man falling in love with her. A woman who can recognize that, and keep it with her.” - C. JoyBell C.

83. “I like the way men cry. They're efficient.” - Kaui Hart Hemmings

84. “They sounded like intestines, only on the outside, and the men in the Bible were always having them cut off and not being able to go to church. Horrid.” - Jeanette Winterson

85. “Nine women possess the same rights as a man... to learning and knowledge.” - Kathleen Krull quote by Eliza Orzeskowa

86. “Okay, guys. Stop it. Are you going to start peeing on me to mark your territory?” - Maegan Lynn Moores

87. “We men are very simple people: if we like what we see, we’re coming over there. If we don’t want anything from you, we’re not coming over there. Period. Please highlight this part right here so you can always remind yourself the next time a man steps to you: a man always wants something. Always. And when it comes to women, that plan is always to find out two things: (1) if you’re willing to sleep with him, and (2) if you are, how much it will cost to get you to sleep with him.” - Steve Harvey

88. “The one who can make full sense of love and lives within its narrow expections undresses no weeping face.” - Darmie Orem

89. “Scopul existenței fiecărui individ este plăcerea și cine o contestă ori e ipocrit, ori imbecil.” - Rodica Ojog - Brasoveanu

90. “The difference between men and women is this--if you catch a woman butt-naked, she tries to cover the private parts with her hands. A man will sit there just like you found him even if he doesn't have much to be proud of.” - Deb Baker

91. “Love tames the benumbed beast. A man is put to use regarding a woman's physical safety, but a woman is put to use regarding a man's mental safety.” - Criss Jami

92. “As Miriam released my hand I felt that she and Midwife Bell had returned to a more primitive world, where men never intruded and even their role in conception was unknown. Here the chain of life was mother to daughter, daughter to mother. Fathers and sons belonged in the shadows with the dogs and livestock, like the retriever growling at Midwife Bell's unfamiliar car from the window of my neighbours' living room.” - J.G. Ballard

93. “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

94. “If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men.” - Michel de Montaigne

95. “Men were notorious for their acts of disloyalty.” - Margaret Way