quotations about women
Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
A Room of One's Own
Woman is the highest, holiest, most precious gift to man. Her mission and throne is the family, and if anything is withheld that would make her more efficient, useful, or happy in that sphere, she is wronged, and has not her rights.
JOHN TODD
Woman's Rights
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
Women are women and can't help themselves.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
The Red Planet
We never see the mass of women en costume, without being reminded of the artificial flies used in angling--tricked out, also, with much the same object, only that, like St. Peter, women are "fishers of men."
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
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
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 is not extraordinary that the extraterrestrial origin of women was a recurrent theme of science fiction.
KINGSLEY AMIS
The King's English: A Guide to Modern English Usage
A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.
COCO CHANEL
The Gospel According to Coco Chanel
All of a sudden, in the good-natured child, the woman stood revealed, a disturbing woman with all the impulsive madness of her sex, opening the gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was still smiling, but with the deadly smile of a man-eater.
EMILE ZOLA
Nana
Ay, Marry, sir -- the only rising up in arms is in the arms of a woman!
THOMAS DEKKER
Blurt, Master Constable
A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.
U2
"Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World"
Oh! too convincing -- dangerously dear --
In woman's eye the unanswerable tear!
LORD BYRON
The Corsair
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
Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being.... Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"The Tragedy of Women's Emancipation", Anarchism and Other Essays
We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Advertiser, September 9, 2004
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
No man with any sense assumes that a woman's words mean to her exactly what they mean to him.
REX STOUT
The Mother Hunt
The imaginative estimate or ideal conception of Woman by the Poets has always been deemed exceptionally interesting, especially by women themselves, for, as a rule, it is agreeable; and, even if the presentation be sometimes a little overcharged with glowing colour, all of us, men and women alike, are not otherwise than pleased with descriptions that portray us, not exactly as we are, but as we should like to be. Withal, a portrait, to obtain recognition, must have in it some resemblance to the original; and, speaking in the most prosaic manner, one need not hesitate to affirm that any representation of women, at least of womanly women, that was not attractive would be a travesty of the fact.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
Women are slaves to their beauty.
DORIS LESSING
Shikasta