Quotes
Quotes about Man
Remote from man, with God he passed the days;
Prayer all his business, all his pleasure praise.
At thirty, man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan.
Ah, how unjust to Nature and himself
Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!
The chamber where the good man meets his fate
Is privileg'd beyond the common walk
Of virtuous life, quite in the verge of heaven.
Heaven's Sovereign saves all beings but himself
That hideous sight,--a naked human heart.
Man makes a death which Nature never made.
Man wants but little, nor that little long.
'T is impious in a good man to be sad.
A Christian is the highest style of man.
While man is growing, life is in decrease;
And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb.
Our birth is nothing but our death begun.
The man of wisdom is the man of years.
Pygmies are pygmies still, though percht on Alps;
And pyramids are pyramids in vales.
Each man makes his own stature, builds himself.
Virtue alone outbuilds the Pyramids;
Her monuments shall last when Egypt's fall.
And all may do what has by man been done.
The man that blushes is not quite a brute.
A man of pleasure is a man of pains.
'T is elder Scripture, writ by God's own hand,--
Scripture authentic! uncorrupt by man.
The man that makes a character makes foes.
[Tar water] is of a nature so mild and benign and proportioned to the human constitution, as to warm without heating, to cheer but not inebriate.
First, then, a woman will or won't, depend on 't;
If she will do 't, she will; and there's an end on 't.
But if she won't, since safe and sound your trust is,
Fear is affront, and jealousy injustice.
Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains.
'T is the same with common natures:
Use 'em kindly, they rebel;
But be rough as nutmeg-graters,
And the rogues obey you well.
Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition and the pride of kings.
Let us (since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us, and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan.
Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can,
But vindicate the ways of God to man.
Say first, of God above or man below,
What can we reason but from what we know?
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest.
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
Why has not man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason,--man is not a fly.
