quotations about women
As God is my witness, the more I deal with women, the more I like my cat.
P. N. ELROD
The Dark Sleep
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
PLATO
The Republic
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
Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.
MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
The Neurotic's Notebook
There is no moment that exceeds in beauty that moment when one looks at a woman and finds that she is looking at you in the same way that you are looking at her. The moment in which she bestows that look that says, "Proceed with your evil plan, sumbitch."
DONALD BARTHELME
"The Sea of Hesitation"
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"
Whatever may be thought of "woman's sphere," it is certain that its boundaries have been steadily enlarged; that an increased liberty, not only of secular employments and civil rights, but also of social intercourse, has been accorded to her with increasing civilization; and that, so far from losing, either in the delicacy and refinement of her own character, or in the chivalric homage paid to her by man, she has gained in both respects in the same ratio in which she has been freed from the trammels of an unnatural conventionalism, and elevated to a position of real equality with the dominant sex.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
When women let their hair down, it means either sexiness or craziness or death, the three by Victorian times having become virtually synonymous.
MARGARET ATWOOD
"Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For"
Where neither love nor hatred is in the game, a woman's game is mediocre.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
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
Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The Scarlet Letter
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
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
The societies to which I have been exposed seemed to me largely machines for the suppression of women.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses
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
You don't know a woman until you've met her in court.
NORMAN MAILER
attributed, The Book of Poisonous Quotes
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
A reproof entereth more into a woman of sense than an hundred compliments into a fool.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity, winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.
WASHINGTON IRVING
"The Wife", The Sketch Book
For women, forming close, cooperative relationships with other women at once poses important opportunities and possible threats--including to mate retention. To maximize the benefits and minimize the costs of same-sex social relationships, we propose that women's mate guarding is functionally flexible and that women are sensitive to both interpersonal and contextual cues indicating whether other women might be likely and effective mate poachers. Here, we assess one such cue: other women's fertility. Because ovulating (i.e., high-fertility) women are both more attractive to men and also more attracted to (desirable) men, ovulating women may be perceived to pose heightened threats to other women's romantic relationships.
JAIMIA ARONA KREMS & REBECCA NEEL
The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, January 14, 2016