John Fowles Men Quotations

That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see the relationships between objects.

Content is a word unknown to life; it is also a word unknown to man.

Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them.

Only fools think our attitude to our fellow men is a thing distinct from our attitude to 'lesser' life on this planet.

I am talking about the general psychological health of the species, man. He needs the existence of mysteries. Not their solution.

I think it is interesting that we have come back to star- and space ships. Jet will do for a transport shorthand; yet when man really reaches, across the vast seas of space, he still reaches in ships.

The noblest relationship is marriage, that is, love. Its nobility resides in its altruism, the desire to serve another beyond all the pleasures of the relationship; and in its refusal ever to regard the other as a thing, an object, a utilizability. Sex is an exchange of pleasures, of needs; love is a giving without return. It is this giving without return, this helping without reward, this surplus of pure good, that identifies the uniqueness of man as well as the true nature of the true marriage. This is the quintessence the great alchemy of sex is for.

She's always looking for poetry and passion and sensitivity, the whole Romantic kitchen. I live on a rather simpler diet.' 'Prose and pudding?''I don't expect attractive men necessarily to have attractive souls.

He was one of the most supremely stupid men I have ever met. He taught me a great deal.

It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me.

There are some men who are consoled by the idea that there are women less attractive than their wives; and others who are haunted by the knowledge that there are more attractive.

Evolution did not intend trees to grow singly. Far more than ourselves they are social creatures, and no more natural as isolated specimens than man is as a marooned sailor or hermit.

Man is about to be deprived of a great pole - work routine. The nightmare of capitalist society is unemployment; the nightmare of cybernetic society will be employment.

The practise of an art is essential to the whole man, not because of what art is but because of what art does to the artist.

The ordinary man is the curse of civilization.

That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.

The pronoun is one of the most terrifying masks man has invented.

The power of women! I've never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke. We're so weak physically, so helpless with things. Still, even today. But we're stronger than they are. We can stand their cruelty. They can't stand ours.

The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed." "I suppose one could say that Hitler didn't betray his self." "You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray their selves. That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.