quotations about women
Women have been called queens for a long time, but the kingdom given them isn't worth ruling.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
An Old-Fashioned Girl
Your anatomy is a mystery that nobody bothers explaining to us. Even when we think we have mastered one woman's body, every body is different.
CHRIS ABANI
"What Men Aren't Telling Us", O Magazine, July 2008
A goodlookin horse is like a goodlookin woman.... They're always more trouble than what they're worth. What a man needs is just one that will get the job done.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses
A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
letter to "Scottie", November 18, 1938
As one person at the dinner table leans back, stretches, and opens their mouth in a gaping yawn, others will soon follow suit. Catching a yawn is more likely to occur between relatives than strangers, and scientists believe it's a sign of empathy. Plus, other social primates like chimps and bonobos do it, too. A new study suggests that women (traditionally branded the more empathetic sex) might be more susceptible to copycat yawning than men. Researchers surreptitiously analyzed more than 4000 real-world yawns on planes and trains, in restaurants, and in offices. They noted when someone yawned, and then whether a nearby acquaintance or friend did the same within a 3-minute period. Men and women spontaneously yawned with about the same frequency. But when someone else yawned first, women were more likely than men to follow suit. Women picked up yawns about 55% of the time, whereas men only did so 40% of the time.
LAUREL HAMERS
"Women are more empathetic than men, yawning study suggests", Science Mag, February 2, 2016
Let men be men -- and let women be women -- Women competing with men- does not help us -- We have better things to do -- like being mothers.
PAMELA ANDERSON
blog post, Pamela Anderson Foundation, April 4, 2017
Some women are to be captured by storm and some taken by siege; yet if there be not a traitor in her heart that shall deliver up the garrison, thou shalt not prevail over her.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
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
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
The women are, of course, the biggest single group of oppressed people in the world and, if we are to believe the Book of Genesis, the very oldest.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the Savannah
Very handsome women have usually far less sensibility to compliments than their less beautiful sisters.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Women don't want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think -- in a deeper voice.
BILL COSBY
attributed, The Best Book of Useless Information Ever
A man, at least, is free; he can explore every passion, every land, overcome obstacles, taste the most distant pleasures. But a woman is continually thwarted. Inert and pliant at the same time, she must struggle against both the softness of her flesh and subjection to the law. Her will, like the veil tied to her hat by a string, flutters with every breeze; there is always some desire luring her on, some convention holding her back.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Madame Bovary
A woman's passion is nothing less than the sea that tosses a man's ship, and to weather the storm he must use skill and humility to ride her waves, having given up his own course and dragged down his sails, letting the sea take him where it will. For a sailor who knows that there is nothing to fear, this is the greatest adventure of life, as he lashes himself to the mast, knowing that his surrender is his strength and the chance for his redemption.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
But to proceed; as in order and place, so also in matter of her Creation, Woman far excells Man. things receive their value from the matter they are made of, and the excellent skill of their maker: Pots of common clay must not contend with China-dishes, nor pewter utensils vye dignity with those of silver.... Woman was not composed of any inanimate or vile dirt, but of a more refined and purified substance, enlivened and actuated by a Rational Soul, whose operations speak it a beam, or bright ray of Divinity.
HEINRICH CORNELIUS AGRIPPA
Female Pre-eminence, or, The Dignty and Excellency of that Sex above the Male
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
He who has found a good wife has found great happiness, but a quarrelsome woman is like a roof that lets in the rain.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
The Silence of Colonel Bramble
I think it says that women are tired of being left behind, having to wait their turn for the men.
YOLIE FLORES
"Half the candidates in L.A.'s congressional race are women: Trump was wake-up call", Los Angeles Times, April 3, 2017
The heart of a coquette, like the tail of a lizard, always grows again after she has lost it.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
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