Advice for Men from the 1850s

• Keep good company or none.
• Never be idle. If your hands cannot be usefully employed, attend to the cultivation of your mind.
• Always speak the truth.
• Make few promises. Live up to all your engagements.
• Have no very intimate friends.
• Keep your own secrets, if you have any.
• When you speak to a person, look him in the face.
• Good company and conversation are the very sinews of virtue.
• Good character is above all things else.
• Never listen to loose or infidel conversation.
• You had better be poisoned in your blood than in your principles.
• Your character cannot be essentially injured except by your own acts.
• If any one speak evil of you, let your life be so virtuous that none will believe him.
• Always speak and act as in the presence of God.
• Drink no kind of intoxicating liquors.
• Ever live (misfortune excepted) within your income.
• When you retire to bed, think over what you have been doing during the day.
• Never speak lightly of religion.
• Make no haste to be rich, if you would prosper.
• Small and steady gains give competency with tranquillity of mind.
• Never play at any game of chance.
• Avoid temptation, through fear that you may not withstand it.
• Earn your money before you spend it.
• Never run into debt, unless you see a way to get out again.
• Never borrow if you can possibly avoid it.
• Do not marry till you are able to support a wife.
• Never speak evil of any one.
• Be just before you are generous.
• Keep yourself innocent, if you would be happy.
• Save when you are young, to spend when you are old.
• Often think of death, and your accountability to God.
• Read over the above maxims at least once a week.

Emilia on men

EMILIA:
'Tis not a year or two shows us a man:
They are all but stomachs, and we are all but food;
They eat us hungrily, and when they are full
They belch us.

William Shakespeare - Othello (3,4)

Men should be a little bad

MARIANA:
They say, best men are moulded out of faults;
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad: so may my husband.

William Shakespeare - Measure for measure (V, 1)

How to pacify men

[...] I suggest you put a veto upon their possession of arms. Make them wear tunics under their cloaks, and high boots, and tell them to teach their sons to play the zither and harp, and to start shopkeeping. If you do that, my lord, you will soon see them turn into women instead of men [...]

Herodotus - Histories (I, 155)

There are no real men left

BEATRICE: But manhood is melted into curtsies, valour into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones too. He is now as valiant as Hercules that only tells a lie and swears it.

William Shakespeare - Much ado about nothing

Men's 'love oaths' are not to be trusted

BEATRICE: [...] I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.

William Shakespeare - Much ado about nothing (I.1)

Gail Wynand knows the truth

Men differ in their virtues, if any, but they are all alike in their vices.

Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead