“The distinguishing mark of man is the hand, the instrument with which he does all his mischief.”
“Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.”
“The more man learned, the more he realized he did not know.”
“What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment . . . inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.”
“sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man the most guilty.”
“the man in black travels with your soul in his pocket.”
“The measure of a man is not how much he suffers in the test, but how he comes out at the end.”
“Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”
“Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so.”
“In the year 2025, the best men don t run for president, they run for their lives. . . .”
“An ugliness unfurled in the moonlight and soft shadow and suffused the whole world. If I were an amoeba, he thought, with an infinitesimal body, I could defeat ugliness. A man isn’t tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.”
“You re the kind of man my mother warned me about.”
“Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life...”
“Are you a devil? I am a man, answered Father Brown gravely; and therefore have all devils in my heart.”
“Get to know the right, then you would know the people of right. Right Is not measured by its men, but men are measured by their right.”
“Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, Yes, I am willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of a man than any I yet behold”
“The Great Man... is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without fear of opinion ; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and respectability, and altogether everything that is the virtue of the herd. If he cannot lead, he goes alone... He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar... When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame.”