quotations about women
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
When a hen cackles, she's either layin' or lyin'.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Love is wont to visit Man in the company of Desire; but Woman by himself.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
There is an age old prejudice the world over to effect that women talk too much. But is this really a weakness? Could it not in fact be a strength? Recent scientific research on the human brain has revealed that women are better at verbal skills while men tend towards physical action. Psychological research has shown on the other hand that disinformation engendered by men has a far more damaging effect on its victims than feminine gossip. Surely these discoveries indicate that women have a most valuable contribution to make in situations of conflict, by leading the way to solutions based on dialogue rather than on viciousness or violence.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China, August 31, 1995
The faces of most American women over thirty are relief maps of petulant and bewildered unhappiness.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
letter to "Scottie" Fitzgerald, October 5, 1940
It is often asserted that as woman has always been man's slave--subject--inferior--dependent, under all forms of government and religion, slavery must be her normal condition. This might have some weight had not the vast majority of men also been enslaved for centuries to kings and popes, and orders of nobility, who, in the progress of civilization, have reached complete equality.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
introduction, History of Woman Suffrage
If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself;--all that runs over will be yours.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
They often say woman cannot keep a secret, but every woman in the world, like every man, has a hundred secrets in her own soul which she hides from even herself. The more respectable she is, the more certain it is the secrets exist.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
The woman born to physical subjection and degradation can never seek or use knowledge as her birthright. Never till she holds her sex in honor, as man holds his, can she be his equal, even in her own realm.
MARY CLEMMER AMES
Outlines of Men, Women, and Things
People may talk about the equality of the sexes! They are not equal. The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman will vanquish ten men.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
No man ever reaches manhood
till a woman's tenderness
is a part of his possession.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Conquerors"
The really clever thing, in affairs of this sort, is not to win a woman already desired by everyone, but to discover such a prize while she is still unknown.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, October 7, 1940
These little women are very important, and those that appear to be the humblest, often assume great authority in their homes.
GASTON BACHELARD
The Poetics of Space
In the choice of a wife, sundry men are of sundry minds. One looketh high as one that feareth no chips, saying that the oil that swimmeth on the top is the wholesomest. Another poreth in the ground, as dreading all dangers that happen in great stocks, alleging that the honey that lieth in the bottom is the sweetest.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit
The prolonged slavery of woman is the darkest page in human history.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
introduction, History of Woman Suffrage
Almost all women will give a sympathizing hearing to men who are in love. Be they ever so old, they grow young again with that conversation, and renew their own early times.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Philip
Yesterday woman was a chattel. Now she is, in law, a minor. Tomorrow she will be free, or partially so--that is to say, as free as man.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
A woman in Deep Sleep is one who goes about in an unconscious state. She seems unaware or unfazed by the truth of her own female life, the truth about women in general, the way women and the feminine have been wounded, devalued, and limited within culture, churches, and families. She cannot see the wound or feel the pain. She has never acknowledged, much less confronted, sexism within the church, biblical interpretations, or Christian doctrine. Okay, so women have been largely missing from positions of church power, we've been silenced and relegated to positions of subordination by biblical interpretations and doctrine, and God has been represented to us as exclusively male. So what? The woman in Deep Sleep is oblivious to the psychological and spiritual impact this has had on her. Or maybe she has some awareness of it all but keeps it sequestered nicely in her head, rarely allowing it to move down into her heart or into the politics of her spirituality.
SUE MONK KIDD
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
Women are women and can't help themselves.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
The Red Planet