WOMEN QUOTES XX

quotations about women

The change needed to restore good feeling cannot be reached by remanding women to the spinning wheel, and the contentment of her grandmother, but by conceding to her every right which the spirit of the age demands. Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY

introduction, History of Woman Suffrage


What a thing of fantasy a woman may become after dusk.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Ferragus, chef des Dévorants

Tags: Honore de Balzac


Or light or dark, or short or tall, she sets a spring to snare them all; all's one to her--above her fan, she'd make sweet eyes at Caliban.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

"Coquette"

Tags: Thomas Bailey Aldrich


As a woman, I have an inherent need to be all things to all people, to make certain everybody's taken care of. I know I can't sustain that level all the time, so I'm finding the proper balance and it's made me infinitely happier.

SARAH JESSICA PARKER

Woman's Day Magazine, September 12, 2007

Tags: Sarah Jessica Parker


Nature admits of no permanence in the relation between man and woman.... It is only man's egoism that wants to keep woman like some buried treasure. All endeavors to introduce permanence in love, the most changeable thing in this changeable human existence, have gone shipwreck in spite of religious ceremonies, vows, and legalities.

LEOPOLD VON SACHER-MASOCH

Venus in Furs

Tags: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch


Man ... heats up like a lightbulb: red hot in the twinkling of an eye and cold again in a flash. The female, on the other hand ... heats up like an iron. Slowly, over a low heat, like tasty stew. But then, once she has heated up, there's no stopping her.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

The Shadow of the Wind

Tags: Carlos Ruiz Zafon


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


A woman's passion is like the tide, it stays for no man when the hour is come.

APHRA BEHN

The Lucky Chance

Tags: Aphra Behn


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


I have always found the female of the human species many times more difficult to understand than the male.

OSAMU DAZAI

No Longer Human


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

Tags: Louise Erdrich


Men look at women the way men look at cars. Everyone looks at Ferraris. Now and then we like a pickup truck, and we all end up with station wagons.

TIM ALLEN

Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man

Tags: Tim Allen


Ay, Marry, sir -- the only rising up in arms is in the arms of a woman!

THOMAS DEKKER

Blurt, Master Constable

Tags: Thomas Dekker


The marginalization of women's voices in the news media under-values their potential contributions to society, and in the processes, diminishes democracy.

CYNTHIA CARTER

"On The Internet, Women Are Still Seen And Not Heard", Vocativ, February 8, 2016


What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.

CESARE PAVESE

This Business of Living, November 13, 1938


Does the imagination dwell the most
Upon a woman won or woman lost?

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

"The Tower", The Tower

Tags: William Butler Yeats


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

Tags: Pauline Réage


You don't know a woman until you've met her in court.

NORMAN MAILER

attributed, The Book of Poisonous Quotes

Tags: Norman Mailer


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

Tags: F. Scott Fitzgerald


Women are slaves to their beauty.

DORIS LESSING

Shikasta

Tags: Doris Lessing