WOMEN QUOTES XVII

quotations about women

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

Tags: William Faulkner


I had long since given up trying to extract from a woman as it were the square root of her unknown quantity, the mystery of which a mere introduction was generally enough to dispel.

MARCEL PROUST

Sodom and Gomorrah

Tags: Marcel Proust


Oh! too convincing -- dangerously dear --
In woman's eye the unanswerable tear!

LORD BYRON

The Corsair

Tags: Lord Byron


It is pointless for a woman to be young unless pretty, or to be pretty unless young.

FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Tags: François de La Rochefoucauld


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!

Tags: Erma Bombeck


Grab a woman. Help the movement. Liberate a woman tonight. You'll get stale out here in the woods, living like a bear. Your balls will shrink, your tongue grow stiff and heavy. Your mind will wither away. Whatever became of William Gatlin? Went mad flogging his bloody duff.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Serpents of Paradise

Tags: Edward Abbey


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

Tags: D. H. Lawrence


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


Certainly, it is more reasonable to devote one's life to women than to postage stamps or old snuff-boxes, even to pictures or statues. But the example of other collections should be a warning to us to diversify, to have not one woman only but several.

MARCEL PROUST

The Guermantes Way

Tags: Marcel Proust


If I have sometimes seemed to make fun of Woman, I assure you it has only been for the purpose of egging her on.

JAMES THURBER

"The Duchess and the Bugs", Lanterns & Lances

Tags: James Thurber


A woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.

J. M. COETZEE

Disgrace

Tags: J. M. Coetzee


My son, beware of a plain damsel who charmeth thee, for she needeth much wile, and useth diverse weapons.

GELETT BURGESS

The Maxims of Methuselah

Tags: Gelett Burgess


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


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


Women's emotions are still fitted for a kind of society that no longer exists. My deep emotions, my real ones, are to do with my relationship with a man. One man. But I don't live that kind of life, and I know few women who do. So what I feel is irrelevant and silly.

DORIS LESSING

The Golden Notebook

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The burning gaze of a young woman, such as hath tasted man, shall not escape me; for I have a spirit keen to mark these things.

AESCHYLUS

fragment, Toxotides

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Any woman may act the part of a coquette successfully who has the reputation without the scruples of modesty. If a woman passes the bounds of propriety for our sakes, and throws herself unblushingly at our heads, we conclude it is either from a sudden and violent liking, or from extraordinary merit on our parts, either of which is enough to turn any man's head who has a single spark of gallantry or vanity in his composition.

WILLIAM HAZLITT

Characteristics

Tags: William Hazlitt


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"

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Every physical quality admired by men in women is in direct connection with the manifold functions of women for the propagation of the species.

JAMES JOYCE

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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It has been our experience that women usually prefer thin, undernourished, flatchested females, dressed to the teeth, as a concept of "feminine beauty" -- and that men prefer exactly the opposite: voluptuous, well-rounded and undressed. The women's idealization of woman is actually a male counterpart, competing with man in society; man's view of women is far more truly feminine.

HUGH HEFNER

The Realist, May, 1961

Tags: Hugh Hefner