What is manliness? What does it mean to be a man in the modern world?
We try to answer these questions and more with this, the ultimate collection of manly man quotes. We’ve got quotes from some quintessential men: Hemingway, Carnegie, Roosevelt… These men knew how to live. Here they are speaking to you. Let’s give them a listen.
Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor.Norman Mailer
Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman–a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting Nietzsche
The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.Andrew Carnegie
Find what you love and let it kill you.Bukowski
A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.Marcus Aurelius
The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.Thomas Carlyle
You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry.Abraham Lincoln
Genius is the power of carrying the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood.Samuel Taylor
Man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked.Viktor Frankl
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important.Ambrose Redmoon
One cannot always be a hero, but one can always be a man.Johann Wolfgang
If you’re going through hell, keep going.Winston Churchill
Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause; He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws.Richard Francis Burton
Here is the manliness of manhood, that a man has a good reason for what he does, and has a will in doing it.Alexander MacLaren
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.Ernest Hemingway
It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.Mark Twain
The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.George S. Patton
The way of a superior man is three-fold: virtuous, he is free from anxieties; wise, he is free from perplexities; bold, he is free from fear.Confucius
It is not necessary for a man to be actively bad in order to make a failure in life; simple inaction will accomplish it. Nature has everywhere written her protest against idleness; everything which ceases to struggle toward an ideal, the constant effort to get higher and further, which develops manhood and character.James Terry White
It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.Teddy Roosevelt
We need the iron qualities that go with true manhood. We need the positive virtues of resolution, of courage, of indomitable will, of power to do without shrinking the rough work that must always be done.Theodore Roosevelt
There is one rule, above all others, for a man. Whatever comes, face it on your feet.Robert Jordan
Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.Henry Rollins
The greatest thing a man can do in this world, is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other.Orison Swett Marden
A woman simply is, but a man must become… There’s no female Mozart because there’s no female Jack the Ripper.Camile Paglia
Courage – a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.William Tecumseh Sherman
In the end what separates a man from a slave? Money? Power? No, a man chooses, and a slave obeys!Andrew Ryan
We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.George Orwell
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.Hemingway
No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself.Seneca
Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength.Theodore Roosevelt
I came. I saw. I conquered.Julius Caesar
A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.Winston Churchill
Do not pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.Bruce Lee
Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.Benjamin Disraeli
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like workThomas Edison
The search after the great men is the dream of youth and the most serious occupation of manhood.Ralph Waldo Emerson
