WOMEN QUOTES XIX

quotations about women

The mere idea of marriage, as a strong possibility, if not always nowadays a reasonable likelihood, existing to weaken the will by distracting its straight aim in the life of practically every young girl, is the simple secret of their confessed inferiority in men's pursuits and professions today.

WILLIAM BOLITHO

Twelve Against the Gods

Tags: William Bolitho


This is woman's great benevolence, that she will become a martyr for beauty, so that the world may have pleasure.

ROBERT WILSON LYND

Irish & English: Portraits and Impressions

Tags: Robert Wilson Lynd


A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.

COCO CHANEL

The Gospel According to Coco Chanel

Tags: Coco Chanel


Centuries roll, customs change, but, ever since the time of the earliest mother, woman yearns to be the soother.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

Pausanias, the Spartan

Tags: Edward Bylwer Lytton


The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

The Philanderer

Tags: George Bernard Shaw


Women are like that they don't acquire knowledge of people we are for that they are just born with a practical fertility of suspicion that makes a crop every so often and usually right they have an affinity for evil for supplying whatever the evil lacks in itself for drawing it about them instinctively as you do bed-clothing in slumber fertilizing the mind for it until the evil has served its purpose whether it ever existed or no.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

The Sound and the Fury

Tags: William Faulkner


A woman's lot is made for her by the love she accepts.

GEORGE ELIOT

Felix Holt


Women ... have long been discouraged from the awareness and forthright expression of anger. Sugar and spice are the ingredients from which we are made. We are the nurturers, the soothers, the peacemakers, and the steadiers of rocked boats.

HARRIET LERNER

The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships

Tags: Harriet Lerner


A man in love ... is the master, so it seems, but only if his lady friend permits it! The need to interchange the roles of slave and master for the sake of the relationship is never more clearly demonstrated than in the course of an affair. Never is the complicity between victim and executioner more essential. Even chained, down on her knees, begging for mercy, it is the woman, finally, who is in command ... the all powerful slave, dragging herself along the ground at her master's heels, is now really the god. The man is only her priest, living in fear and trembling of her displeasure.

PAULINE RÉAGE

introduction, The Image

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In a society that is becoming desensitized, robotic and in some cases debilitatingly prescriptive. Women are faking orgasms more -- maybe to just get it all over with.

PAMELA ANDERSON

blog post, Pamela Anderson Foundation, March 30, 2017

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The marginalization of women's voices in the news media under-values their potential contributions to society, and in the processes, diminishes democracy.

CYNTHIA CARTER

"On The Internet, Women Are Still Seen And Not Heard", Vocativ, February 8, 2016


It is usual for a woman, even though she may ardently desire to give herself to a man, to feign reluctance, to simulate alarm or indignation. She must be brought to consent by urgent pleading, by lies, adjurations, and promises. I know that only professional prostitutes are accustomed to answer such an invitation with a perfectly frank assent -- prostitutes, or simple-minded, immature girls.

STEFAN ZWEIG

Letter from an Unknown Woman

Tags: Stefan Zweig


Ay, Marry, sir -- the only rising up in arms is in the arms of a woman!

THOMAS DEKKER

Blurt, Master Constable

Tags: Thomas Dekker


The original oppression of Woman was based on crude denigration. She caused Man to fall, so she became a scapegoat. No, not a scapegoat which might be blameless but a culprit richly deserving of whatever suffering Man chose thereafter to heap on her. That is Woman in the Book of Genesis. Out here, our ancestors, without the benefit of hearing about the Old Testament, made the very same story differing only in local color. At first the Sky was very close to the Earth. But every evening Woman cut off a piece of the Sky to put in her soup pot, or in another version, she repeatedly banged the top end of her pestle carelessly against the Sky whenever she pounded millet or, as in yet another rendering -- so prodigious is Man's inventiveness, she wiped her kitchen hands in the Sky's face. Whatever the detail of Woman's provocation, the Sky moved away in anger, and God with it.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Anthills of the Savannah

Tags: Chinua Achebe


A woman's passion is like the tide, it stays for no man when the hour is come.

APHRA BEHN

The Lucky Chance

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The average woman was firmly convinced, it seemed, that she could not make a man recognize her worth unless every time she opened her legs she did so as if it were a scene in a soap opera.

KOBO ABE

The Woman in the Dunes

Tags: Kobo Abe


You all know that even when women have full rights, they still remain fatally downtrodden because all housework is left to them. In most cases housework is the most unproductive, the most barbarous and the most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and does not include anything that would in any way promote the development of the woman.

VLADIMIR LENIN

"The Tasks of the Working Women's Movement in the Soviet Republic", Collected Works

Tags: Vladimir Lenin


Very handsome women have usually far less sensibility to compliments than their less beautiful sisters.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!

HONORE DE BALZAC

Père Goriot

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To sew is to pray. Men don't understand this. They see the whole but they don't see the stitches. They don't see the speech of the creator in the work of the needle. We mend. We women turn things inside out and set things right. We salvage what we can of human garments and piece the rest into blankets. Sometimes our stitches stutter and slow. Only a woman's eyes can tell. Other times, the tension in the stitches might be too tight because of tears, but only we know what emotion went into the making. Only women can hear the prayer.

LOUISE ERDRICH

Four Souls

Tags: Louise Erdrich