quotations about women
A woman does not spend all her time in buying things; she spends part of it in taking them back.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!
HONORE DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
A woman who can threaten your life before breakfast is the only sort of woman worth having.
NORA ROBERTS
Black Hills
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
It is indeed a misfortune for a woman to be without beauty, as with men the eye is the chief arbiter of qualities in the sex. Her beauty is her capital--her worth in the market matrimonial depends upon it. With her the Virtues are less reverenced when unaccompanied by the Graces. The sex understand this very well; and hence they seek mainly to make captive the eye, knowing the mind and heart will follow as a matter of course.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
With other women he had not been able to touch their flesh without experiencing the desire to devour it, as though ravenous with an abominable hunger to butcher them. But this one, could he then love her, and not kill her?
ÉMILE ZOLA
La Bête Humaine
When a hen cackles, she's either layin' or lyin'.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Frailty, thy name is woman.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
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
Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated.
JOHN BERGER
Ways of Seeing
A good woman's arms round a man's neck is a lifebelt thrown out to him from heaven.
JEROME K. JEROME
"A Charming Woman"
An artful or false woman shall set thy pillow with thorns.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
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
The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China, August 31, 1995
Brother, do you know a nicer occupation,
Matter of fact, neither do I,
Than standing on the corner
Watching all the girls go by?
FRANK LOESSER
"Standing on the Corner"
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
Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
speech in San Francisco, July 1871
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
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
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