Misanthrope Quotes

• Since I no longer expect anything from mankind except madness, meanness, and mendacity; egotism, cowardice, and self-delusion, I have stopped being a misanthrope.

  Irving Layton

  Self, Madness, Cowardice

  Irving Layton (1969). “The whole bloody bird: obs, aphs & pomes”

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• Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.

  Giacomo Leopardi

  Philosophy, Real, Hatred

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• Betrayed and wronged in everything, I’ll flee this bitter world where vice is king, And seek some spot unpeopled and apart Where I’ll be free to have an honest heart. - Molière, The Misanthrope

  Moliere

  Kings, Heart, Vices

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• Misanthropes have some admirable if paradoxical virtues. It is no exaggeration to say that we are among the nicest people you are likely to meet. Because good manners build sturdy walls, our distaste for intimacy makes us exceedingly cordial "ships that pass in the night." As long as you remain a stranger we will be your friend forever.

  Florence King

  Friendship, Relationship, Wall

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• I could never find two people who are perfectly equal: one will always be more valuable than the other. And many people, as a matter of fact, simply have no value.

  Pentti Linkola

  Two, People, Matter

  Pentti Linkola (2011). “Can Life Prevail?”, p.118, Arktos

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• If you ever meet someone who cannot understand why solitary confinement is considered punishment, you have met a misanthrope.

  Florence King

  Punishment, Mets, Solitary

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• Let the misanthrope shun men and abjure; the most are rather lovable than hateful.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Men, Hateful, Lovable

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1849). “Poetical works”, p.255

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• I have stopped being a misanthrope.

  Irving Layton

  Irving Layton (1969). “The whole bloody bird: obs, aphs & pomes”

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• I'm tired of this back-slappin' "isn't humanity neat" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes.

  Bill Hicks

  Tired, Shoes, Bullshit

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• I wasn't a misanthrope and I wasn't a misogynist but I liked being alone. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.

  Charles Bukowski

  Space, Drink, Good Company

  Charles Bukowski (2001). “Ham On Rye”, p.308, Canongate Books

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• The misanthrope, as an essentially solitary man, is not a man at all: he must be a beast or a god.

  Aristotle

  Men, Beast, Solitary

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• It is the misanthrope who alone has clarity.By standing outside the huddles of man,he sees a lot,and what he often sees is the evidence that people are not as smart as dogs think they are.And he wants to see it time and again.In the fog of ambiguities and mysteries,he desperately searches for truths because truth usually shows humanity in a poor light

  Manu Joseph

  Dog, Smart, Men

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• I fall in love with everything I also hate everything. It’s very hard to be a misanthrope and a romantic.

  Marilyn Manson

  Falling In Love, Hate, Hard

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• I am a misanthrope yet utterly benevolent.

  Alfred Nobel

  Benevolent

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• You call me a misanthrope because I avoid society. You err; I love society. Yet in order not to hate people, I must avoid their company.

  Caspar David Friedrich

  Hate, Order, People

  "Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape". Book by Joseph Koerner, 1990.

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• Whenever I tell people I'm a misanthrope they react as though that's a bad thing, the idiots. I live in London, for God's sake. Have you walked down Oxford Street recently? Misanthropy's the only thing that gets you through it. It's not a personality flaw, it's a skill.

  Charlie Brooker

  Skills, Oxford, People

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• A fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope.

  Dean Koontz

  Lines, Bitter, Misanthropy

  Dean Koontz (2007). “Velocity: A Novel”, p.50, Bantam

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• Socializing is as exhausting as giving blood. People assume we loners are misanthropes, just sitting thinking, ‘Oh, people are such a bunch of assholes,’ but it’s really not like that. We just have a smaller tolerance for what it takes to be with others. It means having to perform. I get so tired of communicating.

  Anneli Rufus

  Tired, Mean, Thinking

  "The joys of solitude" by Phil Daoust, www.theguardian.com. February 1, 2010.

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• Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud--and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Two, Feelings, Forgiving

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• Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused - in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened - by the recurrence of Christmas.

  Charles Dickens

  Christmas, Men, Feelings

  Charles Dickens (1839). “Sketches by Boz”, p.172

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• Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any naturalobject, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of nature and has his senses still.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Sweet, Nature, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.84, Graphic Arts Books

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• Animal lovers often tend to be misanthropes or loners, and so they transfer their affection to the creature in their control.

  Paul Theroux

  Animal, Loner, Lovers

  "Living With Geese". www.smithsonianmag.com. December 2006.

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• My brother asked me once, 'Are you a misanthrope?' And I said, 'No, I just find people irritating.'

  Craig Kilborn

  Brother, People, Said

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• The big characters who occupy science, especially modern science, are all "off" in fundamental ways. I don't think that genius goes hand in hand with being socially inept or being a sociopath or being a misanthrope, but I do think that it is a mind that can think so differently - so beyond how one is supposed to think. I wanted to pay tribute to that mind.

  Hanya Yanagihara

  Character, Thinking, Mind

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Fossey, Fossey, you cranky difficult strong-arming self-destructive misanthrope, mediocre scientist, deceiver of earnest college students, probable cause of more deaths of the gorillas than if you had never set foot in Rwanda, Fossey, you pain-in-the-ass saint, I do not believe in prayers or souls, but I will pray for your soul, I will remember you for all of my days, in gratitude for that moment by the graves when all I felt was the pure, cleansing sadness of returning home and finding nothing but ghosts.

  Robert M. Sapolsky

  Gratitude, Strong, Prayer

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