quotations about women
Some women think they need to be overpowering in order to be powerful. This is so far from the truth. What is so great about being a women is how powerful we are quite naturally.
ROBI LUDWIG
interview, The Romance Files, February 16, 2011
If young women were not deceived into a belief that affectation pleases, they would scarcely trouble themselves to practise it so much.
MARIA EDGEWORTH
Mademoiselle Panache
Difficult folk, these women!
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Master and Margarita
Love deceives the best of womankind.
HOMER
The Odyssey
Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder.
THORNTON WILDER
The Matchmaker
We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn't fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
The Virgin Suicides
Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow,
A herb most bruised is woman.
EURIPIDES
Medea
Destruction often lurks in women's eyes.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The problem with life is, by the time you can read women like a book, your library card has expired.
MILTON BERLE
attributed, quotefancy
I don't think a woman should be in any government job whatever. I mean, I really don't. The reason why I do is mainly because they are erratic. And emotional.
RICHARD NIXON
conversation with John Mitchell, Slate, October 11, 2001
When God makes a beautiful woman, the devil opens a new register.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
Most women, I think, though they may complain a little about this, would agree that meeting the needs of others is not a real burden; it is what makes life worth living. It is probably the deepest satisfaction a woman has.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
You Learn by Living
Men are forever eager to press drink upon those they consider their superiors, hoping thereby to eliminate that distinction between them.... And women, when confronted by superiors, substitute for drink the crippling liquor of their sex.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Take my advice. Make love to every pretty woman you meet. And remember, if you get 5 per cent on your outlay it's a good return.
ARNOLD BENNETT
diary, May 24, 1904
My further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, love one."
HONORE DE BALZAC
The Lily of the Valley
Let woman be a plaything, pure and fine, like a precious stone, illumined with the virtues of a world not yet come.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Only a numskull is pleased at being a so-called "success" with women, only a dunderhead is puffed up by it. A real man is much more likely to be dismayed at realizing that a woman has lost her heart to him when he can't reciprocate her feelings.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
The opinion I have of the generality of women--who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time, forms a barrier against matrimony which I rejoice in.
JOHN KEATS
letter to George and Georgiana Keats, October 14, 1818
Women are beautiful when they're young, and not after. Men can still preserve their sex appeal well into old age.... Some men can maintain, if they embrace it ... cragginess, weary masculinity. Women just get old and fat and wrinkly.
TRACY LETTS
August: Osage Country
Under his forming hands a creature grew,
Man-like, but different sex; so lovely fair
That what seemed fair in all the world, seemed now
Mean, or in her summed up, in her contained,
And in her looks; which from that time infus'd
Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before,
And into all things from her air inspir'd
The spirit of love and amorous delight.
She disappear'd, and left me dark; I wak'd
To find her, or for her ever to deplore
Her loss, and other pleasures abjure:
When out of hope, behold her, not far off,
Such as I saw her in my dream, adorn'd
With what all Earth or Heaven could bestow
To make her amiable: On she came,
Led by her Heavenly Maker, though unseen,
And guided by his voice; nor uninform'd
Of nuptial sanctity, and marriage rites:
Grace was in her steps, heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost