WOMEN QUOTES XX

quotations about women

Woman is the heart of humanity ... its grace, ornament, and solace.

SAMUEL SMILES

Character


The original oppression of Woman was based on crude denigration. She caused Man to fall, so she became a scapegoat. No, not a scapegoat which might be blameless but a culprit richly deserving of whatever suffering Man chose thereafter to heap on her. That is Woman in the Book of Genesis. Out here, our ancestors, without the benefit of hearing about the Old Testament, made the very same story differing only in local color. At first the Sky was very close to the Earth. But every evening Woman cut off a piece of the Sky to put in her soup pot, or in another version, she repeatedly banged the top end of her pestle carelessly against the Sky whenever she pounded millet or, as in yet another rendering -- so prodigious is Man's inventiveness, she wiped her kitchen hands in the Sky's face. Whatever the detail of Woman's provocation, the Sky moved away in anger, and God with it.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Anthills of the Savannah

Tags: Chinua Achebe


As a woman, I have an inherent need to be all things to all people, to make certain everybody's taken care of. I know I can't sustain that level all the time, so I'm finding the proper balance and it's made me infinitely happier.

SARAH JESSICA PARKER

Woman's Day Magazine, September 12, 2007

Tags: Sarah Jessica Parker


Hurry not a woman's favor; neither forcer her hastily to surrender to thee. For she goeth into love as she goeth into the waters at the seashore; first a hand and then a lip goeth she in by littles. She diveth not, she leapeth not from the pier; but by gentle shocks and cries of protest she entereth slowly; yet when the waters of love encompass her, then she is supported. She swimmeth in her joy; she floateth on the tide of happiness.

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 are slaves to their beauty.

DORIS LESSING

Shikasta

Tags: Doris Lessing


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

Tags: Emma Goldman


A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon


The change needed to restore good feeling cannot be reached by remanding women to the spinning wheel, and the contentment of her grandmother, but by conceding to her every right which the spirit of the age demands. Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY

introduction, History of Woman Suffrage


To sew is to pray. Men don't understand this. They see the whole but they don't see the stitches. They don't see the speech of the creator in the work of the needle. We mend. We women turn things inside out and set things right. We salvage what we can of human garments and piece the rest into blankets. Sometimes our stitches stutter and slow. Only a woman's eyes can tell. Other times, the tension in the stitches might be too tight because of tears, but only we know what emotion went into the making. Only women can hear the prayer.

LOUISE ERDRICH

Four Souls

Tags: Louise Erdrich


The societies to which I have been exposed seemed to me largely machines for the suppression of women.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

All the Pretty Horses


Nature admits of no permanence in the relation between man and woman.... It is only man's egoism that wants to keep woman like some buried treasure. All endeavors to introduce permanence in love, the most changeable thing in this changeable human existence, have gone shipwreck in spite of religious ceremonies, vows, and legalities.

LEOPOLD VON SACHER-MASOCH

Venus in Furs

Tags: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch


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

Tags: Wellins Calcott


What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.

CESARE PAVESE

This Business of Living, November 13, 1938


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


You don't know a woman until you've met her in court.

NORMAN MAILER

attributed, The Book of Poisonous Quotes

Tags: Norman Mailer


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


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"

Tags: Horace Holley


The marginalization of women's voices in the news media under-values their potential contributions to society, and in the processes, diminishes democracy.

CYNTHIA CARTER

"On The Internet, Women Are Still Seen And Not Heard", Vocativ, February 8, 2016


Women are necessarily capable of almost anything in their struggle for survival and can scarcely be convicted of such manmade crimes as "cruelty."

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

Tender Is the Night

Tags: F. Scott Fitzgerald