A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797): Speech on the Conciliation of America. Vol. ii. p. 117.

  The disappointment of manhood succeeds to the delusion of youth: let us hope that the heritage of old age is not despair.

Benjamin Disraeli (Earl Beaconsfield) (1805-1881): Vivian Grey. Book viii. Chap. iv.

  Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.

Benjamin Disraeli (Earl Beaconsfield) (1805-1881): Coningsby. Book iii. Chap. i.

  There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part I. Act i. Sc. 2.

  It can be said of him, when he departed he took a Man's life with him. No sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of Time.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881): Sir Walter Scott. London and Westminster Review, 1838.