Masculinity Quotes

“Leo: Rainbows. Very macho.
Annabeth: Butch is our best equestrian, he gets along great with the pegasi.
Leo: Rainbows, ponies...
Butch: I'm gonna toss you off this chariot.”
― Rick Riordan, The Lost Hero

“Dudes," He said, "Do not follow other dudes to the bathroom."

Isabelle sighed. "Latent homosexual panic will do you in every time”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels

“Dude, I don’t want to talk about Lacey’s prom shoes. And I’ll tell you why: I have this thing that makes me really uninterested in prom shoes. It’s called a penis.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat.”
― David Sedaris, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

“Manliness consists not in bluff, bravado or loneliness. It consists in daring to do the right thing and facing consequences whether it is in matters social, political or other. It consists in deeds not words.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“I had a romance novel inside me, but I paid three sailors to beat it out of me with steel pipes.”
― Patton Oswalt

“She was so delicate that, while we sat beneath the linden branches, a leaf would fall and drift down and touch her skin, and it would leave a bruise. So as we sat in the afternoon hour, beneath that fragrant linden bower, I had to chase all of the leafs that fell away.”
― Roman Payne

“Simon turned to Jordan, who was lying down across the futon, his head propped against one of the woven throw pillows. "How much of that did you hear?"
"Enough to gather that we're going to a party tonight," said Jordan. "I heard about the Ironworks event. I'm not in the Garroway pack, so I wasn't invited."
"I guess you're coming as my date now." Simon shoved the phone back into his pocket.
"I'm secure enough in my masculinity to accept that," said Jordan. "We'd better get you something nice to wear, though," he called as Simon headed back into his room. "I want you to look pretty.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels

“Wise men are not pacifists; they are merely less likely to jump up and retaliate against their antagonizers. They know that needless antagonizers are virtually already insecure enough.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Gay men are guardians of the masculine impulse. To have anonymous sex in a dark alleyway is to pay homage to the dream of male freedom. The unknown stranger is a wandering pagan god. The altar, as in pre-history, is anywhere you kneel.”
― Camille Paglia

“And if all womankind banded together and took the male path, the world would turn into one huge brothel.”
― M. Ageyev, Novel with Cocaine

“There is a time in a boy’s life when the sweetness is pounded out of him; and tenderness, and the ability to show what he feels, is gone.”
― Norah Vincent

“Their feelings were suppressed so carefully in everyday life, forced into smaller and smaller spaces, until seemingly minor events took on insane and frightening significance. It was permissible to touch each other and cry during football matches.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“DESTINY (Determined Effort So Tanacious It Negates Yuck)”
― Frank Chase Jr

“Masculinity cannot exist without femininity. On its own, masculinity has no meaning, because it is but one half of a set of power relations. Masculinity pertains to male dominance as femininity pertains to female subordination.”
― Sheila Jeffreys, Unpacking Queer Politics: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective

“Once upon a time black male “cool” was defined by the ways in which black men confronted hardships of life without allowing their spirits to be ravaged. They took the pain of it and used it alchemically to turn the pain into gold. That burning process required high heat. Black male cool was defined by the ability to withstand the heat and remain centered. It was defined by black male willingness to confront reality, to face the truth, and bear it not by adopting a false pose of cool while feeding on fantasy; not by black male denial or by assuming a “poor me” victim identity. It was defined by individual black males daring to self-define rather than be defined by others.”
― bell hooks, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity

“Sweeney: I can just see all you tough young soldiers cuddling together.
Richard: Not cuddling, huddling. There's a difference.”
― Linda Howard, Now You See Her

“I do not like the killers, and the killing bravely and well crap. I do not like the bully boys, the Teddy Roosevelt’s, the Hemingways, the Ruarks. They are merely slightly more sophisticated versions of the New Jersey file clerks who swarm into the Adirondacks in the fall, in red cap, beard stubble and taut hero’s grin, talking out of the side of their mouths, exuding fumes of bourbon, come to slay the ferocious white-tailed deer. It is the search for balls. A man should have one chance to bring something down. He should have his shot at something, a shining running something, and see it come a-tumbling down, all mucus and steaming blood stench and gouted excrement, the eyes going dull during the final muscle spasms. And if he is, in all parts and purposes, a man, he will file that away as a part of his process of growth and life and eventual death. And if he is perpetually, hopelessly a boy, he will lust to go do it again, with a bigger beast.”
― John D. MacDonald, A Deadly Shade of Gold

“The self-esteem of western women is founded on physical being (body mass index, youth, beauty). This creates a tricky emphasis on image, but the internalized locus of self-worth saves lives. Western men are very different. In externalizing the source of their self-esteem, they surrender all emotional independence. (Conquest requires two parties, after all.) A man cannot feel like a man without a partner, corporation, team. Manhood is a game played on the terrain of opposites. It thus follows that male sense of self disintegrates when the Other is absent.”
― Antonella Gambotto-Burke, The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide

“Our culture is now one of masculine triumphalism, in which transhistorically feminine expressions – empathy, sweetness, volubility, warmth – are seen as impediments to a woman’s professional trajectory in many sectors.”
― Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Mama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love

“If men and women were surer of their God there would be more genuine manliness, womanliness, and godliness in the world, and a whole lot less fear of each other.”
― Elisabeth Elliot

“riley: give me a romantic comedy any day.
rhoan: your jest a girly-girl at heart, arent you?
riley: takes one to know one, bro.”
― Keri Arthur

“By the way, don't 'weep inwardly' and get a sore throat. If you must weep, weep: a good honest howl! I suspect we - and especially, my sex - don't cry enough now-a-days. Aeneas and Hector and Beowulf, Roland and Lancelot blubbered like schoolgirls, so why shouldn't we?”
― C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950 - 1963

“The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost maidenlike, guest in a hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth. The man who combines both characters – the knight – is not a work of nature but of art; of that art which has human beings, instead of canvas or marble, for its medium.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Black males who refuse categorization are rare, for the price of visibility in the contemporary world of white supremacy is that black identity be defined in relation to the stereotype whether by embodying it or seeking to be other than it…Negative stereotypes about the nature of black masculinity continue to overdetermine the identities black males are allowed to fashion for themselves.”
― bell hooks, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity

“Lyra had never seen such a sight, never heard such a bellow; it was like a mountain laughing.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“ Confession time: I doubt I would ever have picked up one of Marjorie’s books, had I not met her in person. The reason is they’re categorized as Romances, which is where they are shelved in bookstores. Though I have no justification for avoiding it, the romance section is an area in bookstores I seldom wander into. Her novels also have traditional-looking romance book covers, which are occasionally a bit off-putting to us mighty manly men.

Then again, who knows? I don’t carry many biases where good storytelling is concerned. I’m willing to find it anywhere, as too many of my friends will attest, when I try to drag them to wonderful movies that they aren’t eager to go to, simply because they fall under the chick-flick rubric. So, in any case, I’m glad I did meet Marjorie Liu in person, because it would have been a shame to miss out on the work of an author this talented due to whatever degree of cultural prejudices I might still possess. I trust you who read this won’t make the same mistake. ”
― Bill Willingham

“Sometimes I hear the world discussed as the realm of men. This is not my experience. I have watched men fall to the ground like leaves. They were swept up as memories, and burned. History owns them. These men were petrified in both senses of the word: paralyzed and turned to stone. Their refusal to express feeling killed them. Anachronistic men. Those poor, poor boys.”
― Antonella Gambotto-Burke, The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide

“His masculinity was only too apparent”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Curse of the Pharaohs

“I liked the way he looked at me. I thought he was the kindest man in the world. Maybe everybody was kind. Maybe even my father. But Mr. Quintana was brave. He didn't care if the whole world knew he was kind. Dante was just like him.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe