WOMEN QUOTES XIII

quotations about women

A woman you've endured such a gnawing desire for, you can't help bearing a little grudge against, when the ache is gone.

JOHN UPDIKE

Rabbit at Rest

Tags: John Updike


The fear of women is the beginning of knowledge.

GELETT BURGESS

The Maxims of Methuselah

Tags: Gelett Burgess


Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do, and I gave the commonsensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.

GLORIA STEINEM

attributed, Quote Unquote

Tags: Gloria Steinem


No woman is all good or all bad, entirely "pure" or entirely sexual, or just a mother or daughter or student or teacher or business woman or sex worker. Newsflash: It's 2017, and women can be lots of things at once. Refusing to understand this fact contributes to our culture's insistence on defining women in terms of their relationships with other people.

JULIA O'DONNELL

"Women are so much more than just sisters, mothers, wives", The Badger Herald, March 14, 2017


Never trust girls who let themselves be touched right away. But even less those who need a priest for approval.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

The Shadow of the Wind

Tags: Carlos Ruiz Zafon


A woman has but eight roles open to her: ingénue, mother, witch, detective, nun, whore, queen, and corpse.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

Radiance


Why couldn't I be more like other girls my age? Take Mrs. Brown's niece. She spent every waking hour sizing up this beau or that, stitching tea towels and petticoats and putting aside a little each month for a set of Spode Buttercup dishes.

KIRBY LARSON

Hattie Ever After

Tags: Kirby Larson


We don't really have to go out of our way as parents to teach our kids how to respect men in the same way we do women because they're already growing up in a world where men are people and women are pretty toys.

CHRISSY BOBIC

"10 Ways Millennial Feminists Are Raising Sons Who Respect Women", Romper, February 9, 2016


The most important thing in knowing that women are necessary is knowing that men are necessary too.

TAMARA ANGELA GRANT

"Women Are Necessary...", Huffington Post, March 9, 2017


That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.

J. D. SALINGER

The Catcher in the Rye

Tags: J. D. Salinger


Men may weary by their constancy, but women never.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

A Daughter of Eve

Tags: Honoré de Balzac


I'm a failure as a woman. My men expect so much of me, because of the image they've made of me -- and that I've made of myself -- as a sex symbol. They expect bells to ring and whistles to whistle, but my anatomy is the same as any other woman's and I can't live up to it.

MARILYN MONROE

attributed, Marilyn, 1962

Tags: Marilyn Monroe


I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.

GEORGE MEREDITH

The Ordeal of Richard Feverel

Tags: George Meredith


Be delicate, little wife-woman. Never be without your veil, without many veils. Veil yourself in a thousand veils, all shimmering and glittering with costly textures and precious jewels. Never let the last veil be drawn. Against the morrow array yourself with more veils, ever more veils, veils without end. Yet the many veils must not seem many. Each veil must seem the only one between you and your hungry lover who will have nothing less than all of you. Each time he must seem to get all, to tear aside the last veil that hides you. He must think so. It must not be so. Then there will be no satiety, for on the morrow he will find another last veil that has escaped him.

JACK LONDON

The Valley of the Moon

Tags: Jack London


At some point in their career, it becomes obvious that women are more under-promoted than men are in the same field. There are many reasons as to why it happens and unfortunately, the result of this phenomenon actually perpetuates the problem. It's a cycle that's hard to break.

KAREN FRATTI

"Women Are More Under-Promoted Than Men & That's A Problem For Several Reasons", Romper, April 3, 2017


When a hen cackles, she's either layin' or lyin'.

KEN ALSTAD

Savvy Sayin's

Tags: Ken Alstad


What man can pretend to know the riddle of a woman's mind?

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

Don Quixote

Tags: Miguel de Cervantes


Love is wont to visit Man in the company of Desire; but Woman by himself.

RICHARD GARNETT

De Flagello Myrtes

Tags: Richard Garnett


Affection with some women amounts almost to disease.

LEWIS F. KORNS

Thoughts

Tags: Lewis F. Korns


Prejudice, in which there is truth, does cast, throughout the world but especially in France, a great stigma on the woman with whom no man has been willing to share the blessings or endure the ills of life. Now, there comes to all unmarried women a period when the world, be it right or wrong, condemns them on the fact of this contempt, this rejection. If they are ugly, the goodness of their characters ought to have compensated for their natural imperfections; if, on the contrary, they are handsome, that fact argues that their misfortune has some serious cause. It is impossible to say which of the two classes is most deserving of rejection. If, on the other hand, their celibacy is deliberate, if it proceeds from a desire for independence, neither men nor mothers will forgive their disloyalty to womanly devotion, evidenced in their refusal to feed those passions which render their sex so affecting. To renounce the pangs of womanhood is to abjure its poetry and cease to merit the consolations to which mothers have inalienable rights.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

The Vicar of Tours

Tags: Honoré de Balzac