12 essential quotes for manly men

The following quotes come from a new title that Glenn Beck has described as "game-changing," Stephen Mansfield’s Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self.

The below represent twelve of Mansfield's selected quotes; you'll have to purchase the book for the complete list. And be sure to check out mansfieldsbookofmanlymen.com for much much more! 

And if you missed our manly book list, check it out here.

Quotes and commentary excerpted from Mansfield’s “The Fifty Essential Quotes for Manly Men” section.

1. "Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul." Thomas MertoninNew Seeds of Contemplation

Thomas Merton. (Image Source: PBS)

2. "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moment of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." Martin Luther King Jr.inStrength to Love

3. "We live in a feminist and effeminate culture. Because of this, at best, as a people we are uneasy with masculinity, and with increasing regularity, whenever it manages to appear somehow, we call for someone to do something about it." Douglas WilsoninFuture Men

[sharequote align="center"]The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue[/sharequote]

4. "Happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves….The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spend in amusement." AristotleinThe Nicomachean Ethics

Detail of Plato and Aristotle from The School of Athens by Raphael. (Image Credit: Ted Spiegel/ Ted Spiegel/CORBIS)

5. "The difference between the old and the new education will be an important one. Where the old initiated, the new merely ‘conditions.’ The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach them to fly; the new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds—making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation—men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda." C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man

[sharequote align="center"]the old was a kind of propagation—men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda[/sharequote]

6. "What the superior man seeks is in himself. What the small man seeks is in others." Confucius from The Ethics of Confucius, Analetics

Confucius. (Image Source: Biography.com)

7. "The small man gossips. The average man lets him. The great man stays silent and allows what is said of him to make him greater still." Stephen Mansfield in Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

8. "Fathers are to sons what blacksmiths are to swords. It is the job of the blacksmith not only to make a sword but also to maintain its edge of sharpness. It is the job of the father to keep his son sharp and save him from the dullness of foolishness. He gives his son that sharp edge through discipline." Steve Farrar in King Me: What Every Son Wants and Needs from His Father

[sharequote align="center"]the last requisite for a good fight, the last proof and test of our courage...must be...truth[/sharequote]

9. "All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible." T.E. Lawrence in Seven Pillars of Wisdom

10. "In this life-long fight, to be waged by every one of us singlehanded against a host of foes, the last requisite for a good fight, the last proof and test of our courage and manfulness, must be loyalty to truth—the most rare and difficult of all human qualities. For such loyalty, as it grows in perfection, asks ever more and more of us, and sets before us a standard of manliness always rising higher and higher." Thomas Hughes in The Manliness of Christ

[sharequote align="center"]History is strewn with...nations which have gained...progressiveness at the cost of ...manliness[/sharequote]

11. "History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it." Walter Bagehot from “The Use of Conflict” in Physics and Politics

Benjamin Disraeli. (Image Source: Wikipedia Commons)

12. "Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor." Benjamin Disraeli in Coningsby: or The New Generation