What Men Know About Women Quotes

If Shane had learned one thing, it was to never tamper with a firecracker during an explosion. That stood double when applied to women – especially when you were the idiot who'd lit the fuse. ~ Kimberly Krey

The first rule of snooping is to come at it sideways
when you began writing me dizzy letters about Alexander, I didn't ask if you were in love with him, I asked what his favorite animal was. And your answer told me everything I needed to know about him
how many men would admit that they loved ducks? ~ Annie Barrows

Seemed like the flaw in life, that God had given men the freedom to do good or evil. And yet that freedom, a true free will, was at the heart of what he believed about life. Driven by love, God had created people with a free will, had given people the freedom to decide what they wanted to do, so God could know who wanted to freely love Him back. Most people rejected God and the world turned evil. But in the midst of that, God was still good, He still acted in love in every situation. ~ Dee Henderson

Ludwig von Mises referred to Ayn Rand as 'the most courageous man in America.' If that doesn't say it all about the economist's man-centric frame of reference, I don't know what does. ~ Ilana Mercer

When I came back, I found Mom sobbing at the kitchen table ... Then I asked her what had happened.
'Nothing,'she said. 'I was thinking about that man ... I started thinking about ... if he and his wife and their other child are okay, and I don't know. It just got to me.'
'I know,' I said, because I did know. Sometimes it's safer to cry about people you don't know than to think about people you really love. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Strength of 100 men? I'd probably just get mad and hurt somebody and end up in jail. I think invisibility would probably be the best thing. I could be like, 'You know what, let me just see what these folks are talking about over here.' Then you could sneak into Rams cheerleaders' locker room. ~ Nelly

It is the search for beauty ... That is what it is. We find ourselves on this earth
gods and men
and we know that it is beautiful. That is one of the few things we understand
beauty; because it is there, in the world, and we can see it all about us. We want beauty. It requires our love. It just does. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

The great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

But this man had set down with a hammer and chisel and carved out a stone water trough to last ten thousand years. Why was that? What was it that he had faith in? It wasn't that nothin' would change. Which is what you might think, I suppose. He had to know better'n that. I've thought about it a good deal ... And I have to say that the only thing I can think is that there was some sort of promise in his heart. And I don't have no intentions of carvin' a stone water trough. But I would like to be able to make that kind of promise. I think that's what I would like most of all. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Look at me, man, look at me and tell me I don't know what I'm about. I'm Conor Larkin. I'm an Irishman and I've had enough. ~ Leon Uris

I know I'm not a man-about that much I'm very clear, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably not a woman either, at least not according to a lot of people's rules on this sort of thing. The trouble is, we're living in a world that insists we be one or the other-a world that doesn't bother to tell us exactly what one or the other is. ~ Kate Bornstein

I once wrote you a letter and you never replied, which makes me wonder if you ever received it. This time it's a more personal delivery - and I need a reply, even if it's not the one I want.

I'm listening to you - I can hear every word, however softly you speak - and I'm half-agony, half-hope. You're saying that men are realists - that, when the woman they love is no longer available, they move on. Well, believe me, I tried - and I thought I had. But seeing you again, after so many years, just proved how little I knew...

You told me to trust myself. So here I am back in Bath, putting everything on the line for a second chance with you. Is that what you want, too? Whatever your answer, remember this: I may not deserve you - when I think of how I've behaved, I know I've shown little self-control and even less forgiveness - but I've never stopped loving you.

You're talking about heartless men... But I have a heart, and it's the same one you almost broke ten years ago, and it belongs to you, and only you, even more than it did then. And yes, I'm a realist: if you no longer love me, I will accept it. But don't say that only a woman can keep on loving someone who's no longer part of her life! Because I will keep on loving you until there are no stars in the sky.

Tell me tonight how you feel. If there's any chance of you loving me back, then I'll wait for you as I should have waited before. If not, say the word and I'll leave you in peace. ~ Juliet Archer

That fellow was like all of us: descended from good people who were stolen from their families and country, sailed over the sea, and forced into slavery. 'We don't let them steal our dignity,' that preacher said. Richard, his name was. He said they cannot steal our honor, our strength, or our love." "True words," I said. "Do you know what he said about this America?" Henry asked. I shook my head. "Remember, lads?" Henry asked his mates. "Join with me. He said, 'This land . . .'" A half dozen voices spoke with Henry, strong black men sharing the preacher's words like a hymn or a prayer. "'Which we have watered with our tears and our blood, is now our mother country.'" The words drifted up to the stars with the sparks from the fire. "We go to war, Missus Isabel," Henry added, "in order to make our mother country, this land, free for everyone. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Did you know that Darfur was a great country long ago, so great that it was both in Sudan and also in Chad? Did you know that the French who controlled Chad, and the British, who later controlled Sudan, drew a line putting half of Darfur in each new nation? Did you know that? What do you care about this line if you are darfur men? What business is it of yours if the British and the French drew lines on maps? What does it have to do with the fact that we are brothers? The boys were moved by this ... ~ Daoud Hari

Beyond the clouds, above people, beneath the skin, inside people, we're waiting for you. We see you now, as you read. We'll see you when you stop thinking about these words. Above and inside your face, we know your secrets. We know what you hide from yourself. You can't escape us. We hold your heart in the palm of our hand. If we like, we can squeeze it. If we like, we can crush it. There's nothing you can do to stop us. Our gaze notices your every single move and your every single word. Say a word now. Make a move. We smile at your words, as we smile at your silence. No one will be able to protect you. No one can protect you now. You're even less than you imagine. We've seen a thousand generations of men like you. It was our pleasure to let them walk on the lines of our hands. It was our pleasure to take everything away from them. We guided entire generations of men through tunnels we built that led nowhere. And when they arrived at nothing, we smiled. You're just like them. We're waiting for you above and inside your face. Continue on your way. Follow that line of our hand. We know where that tunnel you walk through will end. Keep on walking. We see you and smile. Beyond the clouds, we are fear. Beneath the skin, we are fear. ~ Jose Luis Peixoto

Oh, blast, this is all so confusing!" she complained. "How is a woman supposed to figure out what a man really wants?"
"If you learn the answer to that question, do be a dear and tell the rest of us," Minerva quipped. "Though as far as I can tell, men are simple creatures, for all their posturing. They want food, drink, and a wench to bed, not necessarily in that order."
"And love?" Celia asked.
Minerva smiled. "That, too. Some men do, anyway. You'll just have to spend some time with Mr. Pinter and find out if that's what he wants from you."
"And how on earth am I supposed to spend time with him when he's been avoiding me ever since the last time we kissed?"
"Perhaps he's worried about the difference in your stations."
"That didn't keep him from kissing me." She scowled. "Besides, you've heard what he says about our sort. If anything, he thinks himself above us, not below us. He didn't even ask me to dance tonight! He could have. No one would have thought anything of that. Instead, he spent the entire ball standing about, looking disappointed, and talking to servants."
"Perhaps because you spent the entire ball in the company of your suitors."
Celia released an exasperated breath. "What else was I supposed to do? I'm not allowed to ask a man to dance. And at least I know what my suitors want. Lord Devonmont wants to seduce me, the viscount wants peace in his old age, and the duke wants to marry me. I don't have any idea what Jackson wan ~ Sabrina Jeffries

What I mean is, I didn't fall in love with you all as a whole. I fell in love with each of you because of who you are. I don't care about you because you come with Mara. I care about you because you're a good kid. You're smart. You're loyal. And you love and look out for your sister and Mara. I know grown men who do not have a character as fine as yours. Those are the reasons I love you. There are different reasons I love Billie. And there are different reasons I love Mara. Today, what we had together was good. But the feelings I feel for you aren't feelings I have to have in order to have Mara. They're feelings you earned. Now, you with me? ~ Kristen Ashley

More to the point, I know why soldiers, home from war, seldom tell their families about their exploits in more than general terms. We who survive must go on in the names of those who fall, but if we dwell too much on the vivid details of what we've witnessed of man's inhumanity to man, we simply can't go on. perseverance is impossible if we don't permit ourselves to hope. ~ Dean Koontz

I have nothing to complain of. For three days I have tramped the desert, have known the pangs of thirst, have followed false scents in the sand, have pinned my faith on the dew. I have struggled to rejoin my kind, whose very existence on earth I had forgotten. These are the cares of men alive in every fibre, and I cannot help thinking them more important than the fretful choosing of a night-club in which to spend the evening. Compare the one life with the other, and all things considered this is luxury! I have no regrets. I have gambled and lost. It was all in the day's work. At least I have had the unforgettable taste of the sea on my lips.

I am not talking about living dangerously. Such words are meaningless to me. The toreador does not stir me to enthusiasm. It is not danger I love. I know what I love. It is life. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

I work out with alot of gay guys at the gym. I do, because my only goal is to get into gay shape. Now, you know what I'm talking about. Gay men are the most ripped kind of ... listen ... I don't know how strong you have to be to blow a guy, but I'm guessin', there is some muscle involved. ~ Alonzo Bodden

Men know what they want. Men make concrete plans. Men own alarm clocks. Men sleep on a mattress that isn't on the floor. Men tip generously. Men buy new shampoo instead of adding water to a nearly empty bottle of shampoo. Men go to the dentist. Men make reservations. Men go in for a kiss without giving you some long preamble about how they're thinking of kissing you. Men wear clothes that have never been worn by anyone else before. (Okay, maybe men aren't exactly like this. This is what I've cobbled together from the handful of men I know or know of, ranging from Heathcliff Huxtable to Theodore Roosevelt to my dad.) Men know what they want and they don't let you in on their inner monologue, and that is scary. ~ Mindy Kaling

You`re happy, but you don`t know it. You`re even overflowing with happiness, and you don`t know how to rejoice in it. All your life, you`ve only listened to other people-your teachers and your holy men, your leaders and your demons-and they`ve spoken to you of nothing but wrongs and bitterness and war. That`s what your ears are filled with; that`s why your hands shake. And that`s why you`re afraid to listen to your heart right now and seize the opportunity that`s come to you at last. Listen to your heart. It`s the only voice that`s talking to you about yourself, the only counselor that knows the real truth. Its reasons are stronger than all the reasons in the world. Trust your heart and let it guide your steps. And above all, don`t be afraid. ~ Yasmina Khadra

I'm writing a novel about two actresses who go to New York, because that's what I know about. One has lost touch with reality, disappears and is picked up by a man. ~ Julie Walters

You know what gets to me, though? You know what's truly ironic?

What?

She needed us. She was exactly the kind of person that my father and I have sworn our lives to protect. She wasn't tough. She made bad choices. She drank too much, she dated the wrong men, she believed anyone's pack of lies. God, she desperately needed someone to save her from herself. And we didn't do it. I spent so much of my childhood resenting her. Crying, complaining Mandy who was always upset about something. Now, I just wonder why we didn't take better care of her. She was in our own family. How could we fail her so completely? ~ Lisa Gardner

And that's what your holy men discuss, is it?" "Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example." "And what do they think? Against it, are they?" "It's not as simple as that. It's not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray." "Nope." "Pardon?" "There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is." "It's a lot more complicated than that - " "No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts. ~ Terry Pratchett

History tells us more than we want to know about what is wrong with man, and we can hardly turn a page in the daily press without learning the specific time, place, and name of evil. But perhaps the most pervasive evil of all rarely appears in the news. This evil, the waste of human potential, is particularly painful to recognize for it strikes our parents and children, our friends and brothers, ourselves. ~ George Leonard

After all the work of the philosophers on his soul and the doctors on his body, what can we really say we know about a man? That he is, when all is said and done, just a passage for liquids and solids, a pipe of flesh. ~ Lawrence Durrell

Miss Dearheart gave him a very brief look, and shook her head. There was movement under the table, a small fleshy kind of noise and the drunk suddenly bent forward, colour draining from his face. Probably only he and Moist heard Miss Dearheart purr: 'What is sticking in your foot is a Mitzy "Pretty Lucretia" four-inch heel, the most dangerous footwear in the world. Considered as pounds per square inch, it's like being trodden on by a very pointy elephant. Now, I know what you're thinking: you're thinking, "Could she press it all the way through to the floor?" And, you know, I'm not sure about that myself. The sole of your boot might give me a bit of trouble, but nothing else will. But that's not the worrying part. The worrying part is that I was forced practically at knifepoint to take ballet lessons as a child, which means I can kick like a mule; you are sitting in front of me; and I have another shoe . Good, I can see you have worked that out. I'm going to withdraw the heel now.'

There was a small 'pop' from under the table. With great care the man stood up, turned and, without a backward glance, lurched unsteadily away.

'Can I bother you?' said Moist. Miss Dearheart nodded, and he sat down, with his legs crossed. 'He was only a drunk,' he ventured.

'Yes, men say that sort of thing,' said Miss Dearheart. ~ Terry Pratchett

Entirely my own opinion," said Ivanov. "I am glad that we have reached the heart of the matter soon. In other words: you are convinced that "we" – that is to say, the Party, the State and the masses behind it – no longer represent the interests of the Revolution."
"I should leave the masses out of it," said Rubashov. […] "Leave the masses out of it, " he repeated. "You understand nothing about them. Nor, probably, do I any more. Once, when the great "we" still existed, we understood them as no one had ever understood them before. We had penetrated into their depths, we worked in the amorphous raw material of history itself…" […] "At that time," Rubashov went on, "we were called the Party of the Plebs. What did the others know of history? Passing ripples, little eddies and breaking waves. They wondered at the changing forms of the surface and could not explain them. But we had descended into the depths, into the formless, anonymous masses, which at all times constituted the substance of history; and we were the first to discover her laws of motion. We had discovered the laws of her inertia, of the slow changing of her molecular structure, and of her sudden eruptions. That was the greatness of our doctrine. The Jacobins were moralists; we were empirics. We dug in the primeval mud of history and there we found her laws. We knew more than ever men have known about mankind; that is why our revolution succeeded. And now you have buried it all again…." […] "Well," said Rubashov ~ Arthur Koestler

I said something that surprised me. I said, after two such men had just walked slowly by, "I know it's terrible of me, but I'm almost jealous of them. Because they have each other, they're tied together in a real community." And he looked at me then, and with real kindness on his face, and I see now that he recognized what I did not: that in spite of my plenitude, I was lonely. Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me. He saw this that day, I think. And he was kind. "Yes" is all he said. He could easily have said, "Are you crazy, they're dying!" But he did not say that, because he understood that loneliness about me. That is what I want to think. That is what I think. ~ Elizabeth Strout

Why, these men would destroy the Bible on evidence that would not convict a habitual criminal of a misdemeanor. They found a tooth in a sand pit in Nebraska with no other bones about it, and from that one tooth decided that it was the remains of the missing link. They have queer ideas about age too. They find a fossil and when they are asked how old it is they say they can't tell without knowing what rock it was in, and when they are asked how old the rock is they say they can't tell unless they know how old the fossil is. ~ William Jennings Bryan

Then Toohey moved through the crowd, and smiled at his friends. But between smiles and sentences, his eyes went back to the man with the orange hair. He looked at the man as he looked occasionally at the pavement from a window on the thirtieth floor, wondering about his own body were it to be hurled down and what would happen when it struck against that pavement. He did not know the man's name, his profession or his past; he had no need to know; it was not a man to him, but only a force; Toohey never saw men. Perhaps it was the fascination of seeing that particular force so explicitly personified in a human body. ~ Ayn Rand

You know all of the young gentlemen better than I do," Lady Manston continued. "Are there any we should avoid?"
All of them, George wanted to say.
'What about Ashbourne's son?'
"No."
"No?" his mother echoed. "No, as in you don't have an opinion?"
"No, as in no. He is not for Billie."
Who, George could not help but note, was watching the mother-son exchange with an odd mix of curiosity and alarm.
"Any particular reason?" Lady Manston asked.
"He gambles," George lied.
Well, maybe it wasn't a lie. All gentlemen gambled. He had no idea if the one in question did so to excess.
"What about the Billington heir? I think he - "
"Also no."
His mother regarded him with an impassive expression.
"He's too young," George said, hoping it was true.
"He is?" She frowned. "I suppose he might be. I can't remember precisely. ~ Julia Quinn

We learned in class, were lectured to about wars and famines, ancient kings and queens, the habits of presidents. But the lectures were cursory. We needed to know what happened, because we were the well-bred daughters of men who could afford to educate us--but not why, or how. ~ Anton DiSclafani

I said, 'I have heard people talk about war as if it was a very fine thing.'
Ah!' said [Captain], 'I should think they never saw it. No doubt it is very fine when there is no enemy, when it is just exercise and parade, and sham-fight. Yes, it is very fine then; but when thousands of good brave men and horses are killed, or crippled for life, it has a very different look.'
Do you know what they fought about?' said I.
No,' he said, 'that is more than a horse can understand, but the enemy must have been awfully wicked people, if it was right to go all that way over the sea on purpose to kill them. ~ Anna Sewell

The style of a soul

"What's the matter with both of you, Ellsworth? Why such talk - over nothing at all? People's faces and first impressions don't mean a thing."

"That, my dear Kiki," he answered, his voice soft and distant, as if he were giving an answer, not to her, but to a thought of his own, "is one of our greatest common fallacies. There's nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we're not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge. Have you ever thought about the style of a soul, Kiki?"

"The … what?"

"The style of a soul. Do you remember the famous philosopher who spoke of the style of a civilization? He called it 'style.' He said it was the nearest word he could find for it. He said that every civilization has its one basic principle, one single, supreme, determining conception, and every endeavor of men within that civilization is true, unconsciously and irrevocably, to that one principle. … I think, Kiki, that every human soul has a style of its own, also. Its one basic theme. You'll see it reflected in every thought, every act, every wish of that person. The one absolute, the one imperative in that living creature. Years of studying a man won't show it to you. His face will. You'd have to write volumes to describe a person. Think of his face. You need nothing else."
Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand