quotations about women
While women once acquired relationship skills to "hook," "snare," or "catch" a husband who would provide access to economic security and social status, the position of contemporary women has not changed that radically. Much of our success still depends on our attunement to "male culture," our ability to please men, and our readiness to conform to the masculine values of our institutions.
HARRIET LERNER
The Dance of Intimacy: A Woman's Guide to Courageous Acts of Change in Key Relationships
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
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
Women and music should never be dated.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
She Stoops to Conquer
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
PLATO
The Republic
Woman is the heart of humanity ... its grace, ornament, and solace.
SAMUEL SMILES
Character
A man who admires a fine woman, has yet not more reason to wish himself her husband, than one who admired the Hesperian fruit, would have had to wish himself the dragon that kept it.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
Women, you overheated dipsomaniacs, never passing up a chance to wangle a drink, a great boon to bartenders but a bane to us--not to mention our crockery and our woolens!
ARISTOPHANES
Women at the Thesmophoria
There is no beast, no rush of fire, like woman so untamed. She calmly goes her way where even panthers would be shamed.
ARISTOPHANES
Lysistrata
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
For I cannot think that GOD Almighty ever made them [women] so delicate, so glorious creatures; and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind; with souls capable of the same accomplishments with men: and all, to be only Stewards of our Houses, Cooks, and Slaves.
DANIEL DEFOE
The Education of Women
It had always bothered Tom that women thought they could win an argument with a man simply by appealing to his baser instincts, by holding out the mere possibility of award-winning carnal knowledge. It was the gender equivalent of a preemptive nuclear strike. He thought it unfair and, quite frankly, disrespectful of the entire male population. And yet he heard himself saying, "Look, baby doll, I don't want to argue either."
DAVID BALDACCI
The Christmas Train
Somehow, everyone hates to see an unusually pretty girl get married. It is like taking a bite out of a very fine-looking peach.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
Woman began at zero, and has through ages slowly unfolded and risen. Each age has protested against growth as unsexing woman.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
As God is my witness, the more I deal with women, the more I like my cat.
P. N. ELROD
The Dark Sleep
In the choice of a wife, we ought to make use of our ears, and not our eyes.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
With women the best part is the discovery. There's nothing like the first time, nothing. You don't know what life is until you undress a woman the first time. A button at a time, like peeling a hot sweet potato on a winter's night.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
The societies to which I have been exposed seemed to me largely machines for the suppression of women.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses
A woman needn't be dragged down by her functions.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover