quotations about women
If thou makest a statement concerning women, lo, she shall immediately try to disprove it straightway. She goeth by contraries.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being.... Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"The Tragedy of Women's Emancipation", Anarchism and Other Essays
If a woman's got nothing but her fair fame to feed on, why, it's thin tack, and a donkey would die of it!
D. H. LAWRENCE
Sons and Lovers
Women are not allowed to be complicated in our society. We still very much have a Madonna-whore complex. We're comfortable seeing women as great mothers, and then we're comfortable seeing them as hookers, but there's no in-between.
CHARLIZE THERON
Glamour Magazine, July 2008
Woman's great strength lies in being late or absent. Presence immediately reveals the weak points of our beloved; when she is absent she become one of the sylph-like figures of our adolescence whom we endowed with perfection.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living
As such portraits as we have are almost invariably of the male sex, who strut more prominently across the stage, it seems worthwhile to take as a model one of those many women who cluster in the shade. For a study of history and biography convinces any right minded person that these obscure figures occupy a place not unlike that of the showman's hand in the dance of the marionettes; and the finger is laid upon the heart.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
"Phyllis and Rosamond", The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf
A lovely woman rolls up
The delicate bamboo blind.
She sits deep within,
Twitching her moth eyebrows.
Who may it be
That grieves her heart?
On her face one sees
Only the wet traces of tears.
LI BAI
"The Night of Sorrow"
Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated.
JOHN BERGER
Ways of Seeing
Don't tell me about God having made such creatures to be companions for us! I don't say but He might make Eve to be a companion for Adam in Paradise--there was no cooking to be spoilt there, and no other woman to cackle with and make mischief; though you see what mischief she did as soon as she'd an opportunity.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
It took him a moment to respond to the unguarded sweetness of her smile, her body calculated to a millimeter to suggest a bud yet guarantee a flower.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Tender Is the Night
I've always felt there are two things a woman should never do after the age of thirty-five: stand in natural light and have a baby.
ERMA BOMBECK
Family: The Ties that Bind ... and Gag!
Most of the women claimed to be emancipated and independent, as indeed they were in the sense that they were earning their own living. But they paid for it by the suppression of the mainsprings of their natures; fear of public opinion robbed them of love and intimate comradeship. It was pathetic to see how lonely they were, how starved for male affection, and how they craved children. Lacking the courage to tell the world to mind its own business, the emancipation of the women was frequently more of a tragedy than traditional marriage would have been. They had attained a certain amount of independence in order to gain their livelihood, but they had not become independent in spirit or free in their personal lives.
EMMA GOLDMAN
Living My Life
Does the imagination dwell the most
Upon a woman won or woman lost?
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"The Tower", The Tower
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
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
The spirit of Eve is strong in all her daughters.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Rose in Bloom
A reproof entereth more into a woman of sense than an hundred compliments into a fool.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
Some women destroy all your sensibility towards them by their coldness, others by their heat.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
There are few virtuous women who are not tired of their part.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
To know a mature woman is to know more than her body. It is to know her dreams and her secrets. It is to know that a dance is a fight, and a fight is a dance, and that passion and compassion beat in the same breast.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan