quotations about women
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
While women once acquired relationship skills to "hook," "snare," or "catch" a husband who would provide access to economic security and social status, the position of contemporary women has not changed that radically. Much of our success still depends on our attunement to "male culture," our ability to please men, and our readiness to conform to the masculine values of our institutions.
HARRIET LERNER
The Dance of Intimacy: A Woman's Guide to Courageous Acts of Change in Key Relationships
Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.
MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
The Neurotic's Notebook
A woman who can threaten your life before breakfast is the only sort of woman worth having.
NORA ROBERTS
Black Hills
There is nothing in the female sex more graceful or becoming than Modesty. It adds charm to their beauty, and gives a new softness to their sex. Without it simplicity and innocence appear rude; reading and good sense, masculine; wit and humour, lascivious. This is so necessary a quality for pleasing, that the loose part of the sex, whose study it is to ensnare men's hearts, never fail to support the appearance of what they know is essential to that end.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
That's just what a woman is. She thinks she knows what's good for a man, and she's going to see he gets it; and no matter if he's starving, he may sit and whistle for what he needs, while she's got him, and is giving him what's good for him.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Sons and Lovers
Woman learns to hate to the extent to which her charms decrease.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
A reproof entereth more into a woman of sense than an hundred compliments into a fool.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
Woman is the salvation or destruction of the family. She carries its destinies in the folds of her mantle.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
journal, December 11, 1872
There's a lot of pressure on women to fulfill certain fantasies. They expect you to be a little bit of a tart, to flirt with all the men. A lot of women do it. But I'm not doing that. I talk with these guys about their wives and kids right away. When they say inappropriate things, I let them, because boys will be boys, but I'm not looking to participate in their conversations.
JESSICA ALBA
Marie Claire Magazine, March 2008
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
As God is my witness, the more I deal with women, the more I like my cat.
P. N. ELROD
The Dark Sleep
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
You don't know a woman until you have had a letter from her.
ADA LEVERSON
Tenterhooks
Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, February 19, 1937
The finest compliment that can be paid to a woman of sense is to address her as such.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The societies to which I have been exposed seemed to me largely machines for the suppression of women.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses
Where neither love nor hatred is in the game, a woman's game is mediocre.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
There is such a thing as the wrong woman. She makes a man a fraction.... But the right woman! She multiplies a man.
HORACE HOLLEY
"The Genius"
A good woman's arms round a man's neck is a lifebelt thrown out to him from heaven.
JEROME K. JEROME
"A Charming Woman"