SOME QUOTES ON MAN

 

                SOME QUOTES ON MAN

            Man is a mysterious being. His qualities,  both positive and negative,  are innumerable. He is the best ,  but also the worst, among living beings.  f he is an angel, he is also a devil. He creates as well as dissolves. His virtues and vices are almost equal in number. If he is calm, he is angry, too. If he is a builder, he is also demolisher. If he loves peace, he also likes war. He is a combination of godliness and devilishness. In short, as a poet has said:

            Wonders are many, but none, none is more wondrous than man. Man moves over the grey sea, using the wind and the storm, during the depths and surges. Even the eldest of all the gods ---Earth, inexhaustible Earth---man masters her with yearly ploughs that turn and return and the steady step of the horse. Language and thought, light and rapid as wind, man has taught himself these, and has learnt the ways of living in town and city, shelter from inhospitable frost, escape from the arrows of rain.  

            Cunning, cunning is man. Wise though his plans are, artful beyond all dreaming, they carry him both to evil and to good. (Quoted by Gilbert Highet in Man’s Unconquerable mind.)

            The Indo-Pak poet- philosopher Dr. Muhammad  Iqbal (1877-1938) said : Man is the deputy (vicegerent) of God on earth.

            In his play Hamlet, Act 2, Sc.2, the English poet-dramatist William Shakespeare (1564-1616) says: What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!

            Finally, the following lines from “Essay on Man : Epistle II”  by the English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744):

 Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;

The proper study of mankind is man.

Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,

A being darkly wise, and rudely great:

With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,

With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,

He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;

In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;

In doubt his mind or body to prefer;

Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;

Alike in ignorance, his reason such,

Whether he thinks too little, or too much:

Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd;

Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;

Created half to rise, and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd:

The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

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G. R. Kanwal

31 March 2026