Forum: ell.stackexchange.com
Tags: <grammar>
Title: It takes a bigger man to walk away from a fight
Question: I found this sentence reading. But I didn't get the meaning. Could you explain it to me?  The sentence is:    It takes  a bigger man to walk away from a fight  than  it does to stay and fight   It takes what? And it takes more or less? Because we have "than" so more than or less than ... I need an explanation because it seems like something is missing in this sentence. Thank you.

Answers:
sents: text: "It takes" is an idiom that refers to the skills, character, or other qualities necessary to achieve something.
text: "It takes a bigger man to walk away from a fight" means that the man who can walk away from a fight is superior in morals, judgment, intelligence, etc.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/111962/SarahT
score: 23
sents: text: Answering directly your first question: It takes what?
text: According to the Free Dictionary what it takes The necessary expertise or qualities
text: She's got
text: what it takes to make a good doctor Inherited wealth is what it takes to maintain that lifestyle.
text: This idiom uses what in the sense of "that which" and take in the sense of "require."
text: The linked source extracts the text above from The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer
text: According to the Oxford Dictionary take 7.1 (of a task or situation) need or call for (a particular person or thing)
text: It will take an electronics expert to dismantle it Notice the distribution of the elements in the example, that match the ones in your question:
text: It takes - It's required
text: What?
text: An electronics expert / A bigger man
text: For what?
text: To dismantle it /
text: To walk away from a fight
text: The comparison being made in your sentence, the one that uses " than ", is between the man who avoids the fight and the one that stays.
text: The first is bigger morally speaking.
text: Let me rephrase your sentence: A more qualified man (First Man), morally speaking, is required for avoiding a fight than the one (Second Man) that stays.
text: First Man is bigger than Second Man.
text: And last but not least, notice that we are in front of a kind of proverb : a short, well-known pithy saying, stating a general truth or piece of advice .
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/48962/RubioRic
score: 6
sents: text: What the sentence is really saying is, "A man who refuses to fight is braver than a man who stays and fights."
text: The sentence structure is the same as "It takes a hotter furnace to melt iron than it does to melt tin."
text: In other words, the furnace which is needed in order to melt iron is hotter than the furnace which is needed in order to melt tin.
text: I admit that the exact phrasing is a little strange.
text: Why would we write something like "It takes a braver man" instead of "It takes more bravery"?
text: Maybe there isn't a good reason.
text: But that's the way the saying goes.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/2020/Tanner Swett
score: 5
sents: text: The meaning of take in the sentence is to require or to need : to need : Parachuting takes a lot of nerve.
text: Transitive verbs take a direct object.
text: [ + -ing verb ]
text: His story took some believing
text: (= was difficult to believe).
text: Big man is an idiom; a big man is exceptionally masculine (usually implied to be tough and strong).
text: The sentence is saying that, to start a fight, you must be a big, tough, manly man.
text: The than in the sentence compares the "big man" who would start a fight to a "bigger man" who has the wisdom to avoid the confrontation.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/18196/Harrison Paine
score: 2
sents: text: This is actually a normal comparison with than .
text: The phrase should actually be simplified for understanding the structure:
text: It takes a bigger man to walk away from a fight than it does to stay and fight
text: It takes more now than it took in the past
text: In both cases, the structure is roughly: [subject]
text: [verb]
text: [object in comparative] than [subject] [verb].
text: and it is equivalent to phrases:
text: He plays football better than I do
text: He is taller than me ( = ...than I am )
text: The only difference is that in our sentence, the comparative does not depend directly from the verb, but rather from a noun and it is that noun that depends from the verb (it is verbal object).
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/113544/Eleshar
score: 1

Summary of the answers:
"It takes a bigger man to walk away from a fight" means that the man who can walk away from a fight is superior in morals, judgment, intelligence, etc.
“It takes" is part of the idiom and refers to the quality required to achieve something.