| Madam: If you discover any more comets, can you not wait until they are announced by the proper authorities? | — George Phillips Bond |
| Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Man gives indifferent names to one and the same thing from the difference of their own passions; as they that approve a private opinion call it opinion; but they that mislike it, heresy: and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion. — from Leviathan, 1651, Pt. I, ch. 11 | — Thomas Hobbes |
| Man is a military animal, glories in gunpowder, and loves parade. | — Philip James Bailey |
| Man is a special being, and if left to himself, in an isolated condition, would be one of the weakest creatures; but associated with his kind, he works wonders. | — Daniel Webster |
| Man is more than half of nature's treasure. — Friendship | — Hartley Coleridge |
| Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief, and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.
— The Spectator, Sep. 13, 1711 | — Joseph Addison |
| Man is the artificer of his own happiness. — Journal | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Man is the summit, the crown of nature's development, and must comprehend everything that has preceded him, even as the fruit includes within itself all the earlier developed parts of the plant. In a word, Man must represent the whole world in miniature.
— Elements of Physiophilosophy (1847) | — Lorenz Oken |
| Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire. | — Alexander Pope |
| Man often acquires just so much knowledge as to discover his ignorance, and attains so much experience as to regret his follies, and then dies. | — William Benton Clulow |
| Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. | — Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
| Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. | — Denis Diderot |
| Man will ultimately be governed by God or by tyrants. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Man's greatest wisdom consists in being aware of his follies. | — Madeleine de Souvre |
| Man's only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever. | — John Ruskin |
| Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so. | — Edgar Allan Poe |
| Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government. | — George Washington |
| Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Many a man's strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use. | — Francis Bacon |
| Many foxes grow gray but few grow good. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing. | — Alexander Pope |
| Many of the finest and most interesting emotions perish forever, because too complex and fugitive for expression. Of all things relating to man, his feelings are perhaps the most evanescent, the greater part dying in the moment of their birth. But while emotions perish, thought blended in diction is immortal. | — William Benton Clulow |
| Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Many words are not wanting to show that the particular view of each court occasioned the dangers which affected the public tranquillity; yet the whole is charged to my account. Nor is this sufficient. | — Robert Walpole |
| Mark this well, you proud men of action! you are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought. | — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel |
| Marriage is...the most natural state of man, and therefore the state in which you are most likely to find solid happiness.... It is the man and woman united that makes the complete human being..... man has not nearly the value he would have in the state of union. He is an incomplete animal; he resembles the odd half of a pair of scissors.
— Advice on the Choice of a Mistress, 25 Jun 1745 | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before. — Lucy, in The Country Wife, act 4 | — William Wycherley |
| Master Kingston, I see the matter against me now it is framed; but if I had served God as diligently as I have done the King He would not have given me over in my gray hairs. — To the messenger summoning him to see Henry VIII | — Thomas Wolsey |
| Mathematical Knowledge adds a manly Vigour to the Mind, frees it from Prejudice, Credulity, and Superstition.
— An Essay On the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, (1701) | — John Arbuthnot |
| Mathematics is written for mathematicians — De Revolutionibus | — Nicolaus Copernicus |
| Mathematics make the mind attentive to the objects which it considers. This they do by entertaining it with a great variety of truths, which are delightful and evident, but not obvious. Truth is the same thing to the understanding as music to the ear and beauty to the eye. The pursuit of it does really as much gratify a natural faculty implanted in us by our wise Creator as the pleasing of our senses: only in the former case, as the object and faculty are more spiritual, the delight is more pure, free from regret, turpitude, lassitude, and intemperance that commonly attend sensual pleasures.
— An Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning (1701) | — John Arbuthnot |
| Mathematics was hard, dull work. Geography pleased me more. For dancing I was quite enthusiastic. | — John James Audubon |
| May God save the country, for it is evident that the people will not. | — Millard Fillmore |
| May Heaven be propitious, and smile on the cause of my country. | — Zebulon Pike |
| May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us in all our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.
— Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, August 17, 1790 | — George Washington |
| May the same Almighty Goodness banish the accursed monster, war, from all lands, with her hated associates, rapine and insatiable ambition! | — Daniel Boone |
| May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love! | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Measures which serve to abridge the free competition of foreign Articles, have a tendency to occasion an enhancement of prices.
— Report on Manufactures, December 5, 1791 | — Alexander Hamilton |
| Men and melons are hard to know. — Poor Richard's Almanack | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Men are born to succeed, not to fail. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Men are commonly complaining how hard they are forc'd to labour, only to maintain their Wives in Pomp and Idleness, yet if you go among the Women, you will learn, that they have always more Work upon their Hands than they are able to do; and that a Woman's Work is never done, &c.
— Silence Dogood Letter No. 5 (May 28, 1722) | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Men are not to be judged by their looks, habits, and appearances; but by the character of their lives and conversations, and by their works. | — Roger L'Estrange |
| Men argue. Nature acts. | — Voltaire |
| Men at a distance, who have admired our systems of government unfounded in nature, are apt to accuse the rulers, and say that taxes have been assessed too high and collected too rigidly. | — Henry Knox |
| Men at most differ as Heaven and Earth, but women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell. | — Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
| Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other. | — Francis Bacon |
| Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Men have become the tools of their tools. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Men indulge those opinions and practices that favor their pretensions. | — Roger L'Estrange |
| Men indulge those opinions and practices that favor their pretensions. | — Roger L'Estrange |
| Men must be ready, they must pride themselves and be happy to sacrifice their private pleasures, passions and interests, nay, their private friendships and dearest connections, when they stand in competition with the rights of society. — Letter to Mercy Warren, April 16, 1776 | — John Adams |
| Men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot. | — Alexander Pope |
| Men of authority have employed all the destructive agents around them to promote their own personal interests at the sacrifice of every just, honorable, and lawful consideration. | — John W. Geary |
| Men of warm imaginations and towering thoughts are apt to overlook the goods of fortune which are near them, for something that glitters in the sight at a distance; to neglect solid and substantial happiness for what is showy and superficial; and to contemn that good which lies within their reach, for that which they are not capable of attaining. Hope calculates its schemes for a long and durable life; presses forward to imaginary points of bliss; grasps at impossibilities; and consequently very often ensnares men into beggary, ruin, and dishonour. — The Spectator, Nov. 13, 1712 | — Joseph Addison |
| Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Men talk as if they believed in God, but they live as if they thought there was none; their vows and promises are no more than words, of course. | — Roger L'Estrange |
| Men who content themselves with the semblance of truth, and a display of words, talk much of our obligations to Great Britain for protection. Had she a single eye to our advantage? A nation of shopkeepers are very seldom so disinterested
— Speech at the State House, Philadelphia, August 1, 1776 | — Samuel Adams |
| Men who profess a state of neutrality in times of public danger, desert the common interest of their fellow subjects; and act with independence to that constitution into which they are incorporated. The safety of the whole requires our joint endeavours. When this is at stake, the indifferent are not properly a part of the community; or rather are like dead limbs, which are an encumbrance to the body, instead of being of use to it.
— The Freeholder, Feb. 3, 1716 | — Joseph Addison |
| Men wholly bent on wordly treasures were the dupes of their own passions, rather than deceived by the writings or pretenses of those who claimed to be Alchemists. | — Ethan A. Hitchcock |
| Men will not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. | — Voltaire |
| Men would be angels, angels would be gods. | — Alexander Pope |
| Men's happiness springs mainly from moderate troubles, which afford the mind a healthful stimulus, and are followed by a reaction which produces a cheerful flow of spirits. | — Edward Wigglesworth |
| Men, to act with vigour and effect, must have time to mature measures, and judgment and experience, as to the best method of applying them. They must not be hurried on to their conclusions by the passions, or the fears of the multitude. They must deliberate, as well as resolve. — Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833 | — Joseph Story |
| Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Mere goodness can achieve little against the power of nature. | — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel |
| Method and punctuality are so little natural to man that where they exist they are commonly the effect of education or discipline. | — William Benton Clulow |
| Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute. | — Charles Cotesworth Pinckney |
| Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered. | — Daniel Webster |
| Mine is better than ours. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Minorities have a right to appeal to the Constitution as a shield against such oppression. | — James K. Polk |
| Mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges... which are employed altogether for their benefit. | — Andrew Jackson |
| Mistake me not, my brethren: I am not speaking against learning in itself; it is a precious gift of God, and may be happily improved in the service of the gospel; but I will venture to say, in the spirit of the apostle Paul's writings in general, and of this passage in particular, Accursed be all that learning which sets itself in opposition to the cross of Christ! Accursed be all that learning which disguises or is ashamed of the cross of Christ! Accursed be all that learning which fills the room that is due to the cross of Christ! and once more, Accursed be all that learning which is not made subservient to the honour and glory of the cross of Christ! — From the sermon "Glorying in the Cross", published in 1768 | — John Witherspoon |
| Mistress-like, its brilliance vain, highly capricious and inane. | — Alexander Pushkin |
| Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice. | — Thomas Paine |
| Modesty is a virtue that can never thrive in public. | — John Adams |
| Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Money is in some respects life's fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master. | — P. T. Barnum |
| Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread. | — Francis Bacon |
| Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Money is power, and in that government which pays all the public officers of the states will all political power be substantially concentrated. | — Andrew Jackson |
| Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million. | — Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
| Money never stays with me. It would burn me if it did. I throw it out of my hands as soon as possible, lest it should find its way into my heart. | — John Wesley |
| Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Moonlight is sculpture. | — Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions. | — Alexander Pushkin |
| Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the conversation, and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify our appetites, and aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different. — from Leviathan, 1651, Pt. I, ch. 15 | — Thomas Hobbes |
| More permanent and genuine happiness is to be found in the sequestered walks of connubial life than in the giddy rounds of promiscuous pleasure.
— Letter to the Marquis de la Rourie, August 10, 1786 | — George Washington |
| Moscow... how many strains are fusing in that one sound, for Russian hearts! What store of riches it imparts! | — Alexander Pushkin |
| Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. — Civil Disobedience and Other Essays | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older. | — Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
| Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Most of the memorable events I have myself been exercised in; and, for the satisfaction of the public, will briefly relate the circumstances of my adventures, and scenes of life, from my first movement to this country until this day. | — Daniel Boone |
| Most people return small favors, acknowledge medium ones and repay greater ones - with ingratitude. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children. | — William Makepeace Thackeray |
| Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments. | — Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. | — Edgar Allan Poe |
| Mr. Van Buren, your friends may be leaving you but my friends never leave me. | — Andrew Jackson |
| Much of the Strength and Efficiency of any Government in procuring and securing Happiness to the People depends on Opinion, on the general Opinion of the Goodness of that Government as well as of the Wisdom and Integrity of its Governors. I hope therefore that for our own Sakes, as a Part of the People, and for the sake of our Posterity we shall act heartity and unanimously in recommending this Constitution, wherever our Influence may extend, and turn our future Thoughts and Endeavours to the Means of having it well administred.
— Speech on Sept. 17 1787 | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Much tongue and much judgment seldom go together.
— “Fables of Aesop ... By Sir Roger L'Estrange ... The Fifth Edition Corrected”, p.276 (1708) | — Roger L'Estrange |
| Music has charms to sooth a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. | — William Congreve |
| Music tells no truths. | — Philip James Bailey |
| Mutual forbearance and reciprocal concessions: thro' their agency the Union was established - the patriotic spirit from which they emanated will forever sustain it. | — Martin Van Buren |
| My anxious recollections, my sympathetic feeling, and my best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom.
— Letter to Pierre Auguste Adet, January 1, 1796 | — George Washington |
| My ardent desire is, and my aim has been... to comply strictly with all our engagements foreign and domestic; but to keep the U States free from political connections with every other Country. To see that they may be independent of all, and under the influence of none. In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home. — Letter to Patrick Henry, October 9, 1775 | — George Washington |
| My child, you are going to be a great king; do not imitate me in the taste I have had for building, or in that I have had for war; try, on the contrary, to be at peace with your neighbors. | — Louis XIV |
| My conviction of the necessity of further legislative provisions for the safe-keeping and disbursement of the public moneys and my opinion in regard to the measures best adapted to the accomplishment of those objects have been already submitted to you. | — Martin Van Buren |
| My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived. — Upon being elected as the first Vice President | — John Adams |
| My country is the world, and my religion is to do good. | — Thomas Paine |
| My court was divided between peace and war according to their various interests, but I considered only their reasons. | — Louis XIV |
| My days have been so wondrous free, The Little birds that fly With Careless ease from tree to tree, Were but as blest as I, Were but as blest as I. Ask the gliding waters, If a tear of mine Increased their stream, And ask the breathing gales If ever I lent a sigh to them, If I lent a sigh to them. — My days Have Been So Wondrous Free, 1759 | — Francis Hopkinson |
| My dear sister, I hope, when God Almighty in his righteous providence shall take me out of time into eternity, that it will be by a flash of lightning. | — James Otis Jr. |
| My drawings at first were made altogether in watercolors, but they wanted softness and a great deal of finish. | — John James Audubon |
| My dreams, my dreams! What has become of their sweetness? What indeed has become of my youth? | — Alexander Pushkin |
| My first wish is to be free, my second, to be reconciled to Great Britain. — to Joseph Hewes, April 14, 1776 | — William Hooper |
| My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth. | — George Washington |
| My fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered. | — Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| My friend is one... who take me for what I am. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| My hand trembles, but my heart does not. — (attributed), at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 | — Stephen Hopkins |
| My heart is set. All goodly sport For my comfort Who shall me let? | — Henry VIII |
| My Master said, on another Occasion, that those who doubt most, always erred least. — Pamela, 1740 | — Samuel Richardson |
| My mind is my own church. | — Thomas Paine |
| My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her. | — George Washington |
| My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty... it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein. | — George Washington |
| My only books were woman's looks, and folly's all they've taught me. | — Thomas Moore |
| My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| My policy has been, and will continue to be, while I have the honor to remain in the administration of the government, to be upon friendly terms with, but independent of, all the nations of the earth. To share in the broils of none. To fulfill our own engagements. To supply the wants, and be carriers for them all: Being thoroughly convinced that it is our policy and interest to do so. — Letter to Gouverneur Morris, December 22, 1795 | — George Washington |
| My progress through Virginia, was marked with nothing extraordinary. . . . . The language of Virginia is uniformly for independence. If there is a single man in that province who preaches a different doctrine I had not the fortune to fall in his company. But rapid as the change has been in Virginia, North Carolina has the honour of going far before them. Our late instructions afford you some specimen of the temper of the present Congress and of the people at large. It would be more than unpopular, it would be Toryism, to hint the possibility of future reconciliation. For my part if it were my sentiment that such conduct was premature, I should not think it prudent to avow it We can not stem a torrent and one had better swim on the democratic flood than, vainly attempting to check it, be buried in it. . . . . Britain has lost us by a series of impolitic, wicked and savage actions as have disgraced a nation of Hottentots. Human patience can bear no more and all ranks people cry, that the cup of bitterness is full running over. Let the miseries of be what they will they can not enhance misery. We may be better, we can not be worse. Thus they reason and when I survey what been done I have too much the feeling of a man to attempt to reason them out of this effusion — to Joseph Hewes, April 14, 1776 | — William Hooper |
| My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| My rule in which I have always found satisfaction, is never to turn aside in public affairs through views of private interest, but to go straight forward in doing what appears to me right at the time, leaving the consequences with Providence.
— Letter to Jane Mecom (30 Dec. 1770) | — Benjamin Franklin |
| My sentiments for the American cause, from the Stamp Act downward, have never changed... I am still of opinion that it is the cause of liberty and of human nature. | — Christopher Gadsden |
| My steamboat voyage to Albany and back, has turned out rather more favorable than I had calculated. The distance from New York to Albany is one hundred and fifty miles; I ran it up in thirty-two hours, and down in thirty. I had a light breeze against me the whole way, both going and coming, and the voyage has been performed wholly by, the power of the steam engine. I overtook many sloops and schooners beating to windward and parted with them as if they had been at anchor. The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved. — Letter to Joel Barlow, Philadelphia, from New York (22 Aug 1807), in The Literary Magazine, and American Register for 1807 | — Robert Fulton |
| My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure. | — Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
| My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| My whole life has been pledged to this meeting with you. | — Alexander Pushkin |
| My wife determined that my genius should prevail, and that my final success as an ornithologist should be triumphant. | — John James Audubon |
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