quotations about women
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
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
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
Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.
MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
The Neurotic's Notebook
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
PLATO
The Republic
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
When women express darker emotions, they are told to calm down, that their emotions are simply the result of "their time of the month," or that the emotional frustration they feel is not based in a rational (i.e., masculine) worldview. While men's emotional expression is marginalized as feminine, women's emotional expression is infantilized. It is in this repressed emotional space that the alarming sense of being gaslighted can emerge for women.
MARK GREENE
"Women Are Better At Expressing Emotions, Right? Why It's Not That Simple", Yes Magazine, January 27, 2016
Woman is the salvation or destruction of the family. She carries its destinies in the folds of her mantle.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
journal, December 11, 1872
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
Woman learns to hate to the extent to which her charms decrease.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
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
The finest compliment that can be paid to a woman of sense is to address her as such.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!
HONORE DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
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
You don't know a woman until you have had a letter from her.
ADA LEVERSON
Tenterhooks
A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments, her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly. She is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight. She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be thankful.
DANIEL DEFOE
The Education of Women
Any but the most brutish of men must be touched with a certain awe or wonder at the baring of a woman's naked soul.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
The Hour of the Dragon
A man in love ... is the master, so it seems, but only if his lady friend permits it! The need to interchange the roles of slave and master for the sake of the relationship is never more clearly demonstrated than in the course of an affair. Never is the complicity between victim and executioner more essential. Even chained, down on her knees, begging for mercy, it is the woman, finally, who is in command ... the all powerful slave, dragging herself along the ground at her master's heels, is now really the god. The man is only her priest, living in fear and trembling of her displeasure.
PAULINE RÉAGE
introduction, The Image
As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity, winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.
WASHINGTON IRVING
"The Wife", The Sketch Book
Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, February 19, 1937