Ay wolde man of happe more hente Then moghte by ryght upon hem cleven. Man always desires to seize more of happiness, Than rightfully belongs to him.

-Anonymous
c.1370  Pearl, l.1195^6.

I wyll that my son manhede take For reson wyll that there be threö A man, a madyn, and a tre. Man for man, tre for tre, Madyn for madyn; thus shall it be.

-Anonymous
?c.1450  God the Father explains how Christ will atone for Adam's sin. Towneley  Annunciation Play, l.30^5.

Would you buy a used car from this man?

-Anonymous
  Democratic slogan to disparage Richard M Nixon in the 1960 presidential campaign. Nixon had come across badly in television debates, in contrast to the charismatic  John F Kennedy.

He who has not travelled does not know the value of a man.

-Anonymous
Arab proverb. Quoted in Ingrid Cranfield TheChallengers (1976), preface.

The President is a walking dead man. He just doesn't know it yet.

-Anonymous
  Senior legislator on President Clinton's political future as he entered the second half of his term of office. In Nightline, ABC  T V broadcast, 6 Dec.

Solus homo delectatur in ipsa pulchritudine sensibilium secundum seipsam. Only man delights in the beauty of sense objects for their own sake.

-Aquinas, StThomas
c.1268  Summa Theologia, bk.1, question 91, article 3.

I am a free man, I do not need to copy Petrarch or Boccaccio. My own genius is enough. Let others worry themselves about style and so cease to be themselves. Without a master, without a model, without a guide, without artifice,Igotowork and earnmy living, my well- being, and my fame.What do Ineedmore? Witha goose quill and a few sheets of paper I mock the universe.

-Aretino, Pietro
Quoted in  J H Plumb (ed)  The Horizon Book of the Renaissance (1961, new edn by Penguin,1982).

Human good turns out to be activity of soul exhibiting excellence, and if there is more than one sort of excellence, in accordance with the best and most complete.Foroneswallowdoesnot makea summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

-Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics, bk.1, ch.7,1098 (translated by Sir David Ross).

Man is by nature a political animal; it is his nature to live in a state.

-Aristotle
c.330  BC  Politics, bk.1, ch.2,1253a (translated by T  A Sinclair).

'He knows'says Hebraism,'his Bible!'öwhenever we hear this said, we may, without any elaborate defence of culture, content ourselves with answering simply: 'No man, who knows nothing else, knows even his Bible.'

-Arnold, Matthew
  Culture and  Anarchy, ch.5.

Mr Salteena was an elderly man of 42 and was fond of asking peaple to stay with him.

-Ashford, Daisy Mary Margaret
  TheYoung Visiters, or Mr Salteena's Plan, ch.1.

His harmonical and ingenious soul did lodge in a beautiful and well proportioned body. He was a spare man†. He was so fair that they called him the lady of Christ's College.

-Aubrey,John
  Of Milton. Brief Lives (published1813),'John Milton'.

The first sense he had of God was when he was eleven years oldat Chigwell being retired intoa chamberalone: he was so suddenly surprised with a sense of inward comfort and (as he thought) an external glory in the room that he had many times said that from thence he has the Seal of Divinityand Immortality, that there was a God and thatthesoul of manwas capable ofenjoying his divine communications.

-Aubrey,John
  Of  William Penn, early Quaker. Brief Lives (published 1813).

   In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
  'In Memory of  W.B.Yeats', pt.3.

To save your world you asked this man to die: Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
  'Epitaph for the Unknown Soldier'.

Manisa history-making creaturewho canneither repeat his past nor leave it behind.

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
  The Dyer's Hand,'D.H. Lawrence'.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to beginwith doubts, he shall end in certainties.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  The Advancement of Learning, bk.1, ch.5, section 8.

Quod enim mavult homo verum esse, id potius credit. For what a man would like to be true, that he more readily believes.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Novum Organum, bk.1, aphorism 49.

There is no passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and mastersthefearofdeath. And therefore death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him that can win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honour aspireth to it; grief flieth to it.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.2,'Of Death'.

   Merit and good works is the end of man's motion, and conscience of the same is the accomplishment of man's rest.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.11,'Of Great Place'.