Mansfield's Book of Manly Men Quotes

“a man cannot fulfill his purpose if he is living for applause, approval, and affirmation in this world. It simply will not come—not enough, certainly, to answer the needs of his soul.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“If a man lives for the glory of God, he stops looking for affirmation from other human beings after every good deed, a pat on the head every time he does his duty. Instead, he throws himself into his role unselfishly. He contents himself with knowing he is fulfilling his purpose in this world and pleasing the God who made him.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“Honorable men don’t settle for lives of regret.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“Ultimately, though, you only know who a man is and what he believes by what he does. Not by what he sits around talking about.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“What are you reading, watching, memorizing, and applying that will make you an exceptional man?”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“David knew what it was to be a man. As he lay dying, he called his son Solomon to his bedside and gave him final instructions: “I am about to go the way of all the earth. So be strong and show yourself a man.” These are the last recorded words of one of the greatest kings to ever live. Of all he might have said to his son with his final breath, he chose to instruct him to be a man. They are words we should never forget.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“IF— If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!” If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son! —”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“This is a good moment to remember one of Mansfield’s Manly Maxims: “Manly men tend their fields.” It means that we take care of the lives and property entrusted to us. It means that we take responsibility for everything in the “field assigned to us.” We cannot do this without knowledge. We cannot do it if we are ignorant of our times, blind to the trends shaping our lives, and oblivious to the basic knowledge that allows us to do what we are called to do as men. We must know enough about law, health, science, economics, politics, and technology to fulfill our roles. We should also know enough about our faith to stand our ground in a secular age, resist heresies, and teach our families. We also shouldn’t be without the benefits of literature and poetry, of good novels and stirring stories, all of which make us more relevant and more effective. We need all of this, and no one is going to force it upon us. Nor will we acquire what we need from a degree program or a study group alone, as valuable as these can be. The truth is that men who aspire to be genuine men and serve well have no choice: they must devote themselves to an aggressive program of self-education. They have to read books, stay current with websites and periodicals, consult experts, and put themselves in a position to know. It isn’t as hard as it sounds, particularly in our Internet age. Much of what a man needs to know can land in his iPad while he is sleeping, but he has to know enough to value this power in the first place. To ignore this duty can mean disaster. How many men have lost jobs because they did not see massive trends on the horizon? How many men have failed to stay intellectually sharp and so gave up ground in their professions to others with more active minds? How many have lost money through uninformed investments or have not taken opportunities in expanding fields or have missed promotions because they had not bothered to learn about new technologies or what changes social media, for example, would bring to their jobs? I do not want to be negative. Learning is a joy. Reading is one of the great pleasures of life. A man ought to invest in knowledge because it is part of living in this world fully engaged and glorifying God. Yet our times also make it essential. The amount of knowledge in the world is increasing. Technology is transforming our lives. New trends can rise like floodwaters and sweep devastation into our homes. Men committed to tending their fields learn, study, research, dig out facts, and test theories. They know how to safeguard their families. They serve well because they serve as informed men.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“Being a man is a privilege, not an entitlement. It is a surrender of our priority. It is a laying down of our lives, not physically but inwardly—our preferences, our pleasures, sometimes even our dreams. Our version of Witold Pilecki’s medals comes in the lives we offer to God, lives we have bled and sweated and prayed and given ourselves for. This is what it means to be a man.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“Depend upon it, behind all great achievement there lies great toil: nothing that is worth doing is done easily.”
― Lieutenant General Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“We just do not need thought as a substitute for action. It’s killing us.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“El gran error que hemos cometido en nuestra generación es pensar que podemos formar un hombre con palabras. Por cierto, las palabras son necesarias. Pero no solo con palabras. Mas por haber usado palabras como nuestra herramienta principal para formar hombres, hemos hablado al hombre moderno hasta su muerte; ha sido inundado en un mar de palabras. Tiene lenguaje para cosas que ni siquiera ha pensado en hacer, etiquetas de una docena de sistemas de terapia, listas y descripciones, eslóganes ingeniosos para mantenerlo inspirado. Está bien, ¿pero lo han convertido en un hombre? ¿Lo han llevado a actuar en maneras nobles y con hombría?”
― Stephen Mansfield, El libro de hombres: Una guía hacia la verdadera masculinidad

“Action is character. Manhood is action.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“1. MANLY MEN DO MANLY THINGS. 2. MANLY MEN TEND THEIR FIELDS. 3. MANLY MEN BUILD MANLY MEN. 4. MANLY MEN LIVE TO THE GLORY OF GOD.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“I suggest you pray Psalm 23:3 every day. Lord, please be my good shepherd and restore my soul.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success. —Francis Bacon, “Of Youth and Age, “from The Essays; Or Counsels, Civil and Moral”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“I keep it simple. I can’t live up to God’s standards without God’s resources. I become the man I am made to be by living to the glory of God.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“Clearly, we are given faith and we are taught knowledge, but to make both productive, we have to devote ourselves to a lifelong project of developing traits, attitudes, and habits.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“For example, many men are convinced it is somehow manly to produce children yet unmanly to take responsibility for them. This is why there are American households teeming with children but absent a father.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“Churchill wrote, “In my belief, you cannot deal with the most serious things in the world unless you also understand the most amusing.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. —Helen Keller, from The Open Door (1957)”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“A NATION’S STRENGTH What makes a nation’s pillars high And its foundations strong? What makes it mighty to defy The foes that round it throng?
It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand Go down in battle shock; Its shafts are laid on sinking sand, Not on abiding rock.
Is it the sword? Ask the red dust Of empires passed away; The blood has turned their stones to rust, Their glory to decay.
And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown Has seemed to nations sweet; But God has struck its luster down In ashes at his feet.
Not gold but only men can make A people great and strong; Men who for truth and honor’s sake Stand fast and suffer long.
Brave men who work while others sleep, Who dare while others fly . . . They build a nation’s pillars deep And lift them to the sky. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“QUALITIES OF A GREAT GENERAL” 1. Tactically aggressive (loves a fight) 2. Strength of character 3. Steadiness of purpose 4. Acceptance of responsibility 5. Energy 6. Good health and strength
George Patton Cadet”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“NOTHING GREAT WILL EVER BE ACHIEVED WITHOUT GREAT MEN, AND MEN ARE GREAT ONLY IF THEY ARE DETERMINED TO BE SO. FOR GLORY GIVES HERSELF ONLY TO THOSE WHO HAVE ALWAYS DREAMED OF HER.” —Charles De Gaulle, from The Army of the Future (Vers l’armée de métier), 1941”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle said, “Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way . . . you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“HAVING THUS CHOSEN OUR COURSE, WITHOUT GUILES AND WITH PURE PURPOSE, LET US RENEW OUR TRUST IN GOD, AND GO FORWARD WITHOUT FEAR AND WITH MANLY HEARTS.” —Abraham Lincoln, Address to Congress, July 4, 1861”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“SOMEONE ONCE TRIED TO SUMMARIZE A PRINCIPLE IN Aristotle’s epic work Poetics with these words: “Action is character.” Now Aristotle was describing the elements of drama when he wrote his Poetics, so he didn’t necessarily mean what I mean here. Still, his basic premise is true: we know what a person’s character is by what he does.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“True manliness is about the determination to act according to a noble definition of what it means to be a man. This is within the reach of every man, no matter how he looks or sounds.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“So we forgive. We send away the wrongs done to us. We let people out of the little cages we keep them in while we enjoy our feelings of moral superiority. We hand the feelings of wrong to God and refuse to ever take them back. Then we shut up and never mention the matter again. When the time comes, we put our arm around the offender and we ask him how he is.”
― Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self