quotations about women
No woman marries for money: they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, April 14, 1941
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
Women and music should never be dated.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
She Stoops to Conquer
Women themselves condition their daughters to serve the system of male primacy. If a daughter challenges it, the mother will generally defend the system rather than her daughter. These mothers, victims themselves, have unwittingly become wounded wounders. Women need to attack culture's oppression of women, for there truly is a godlike socializing power that induces women to "buy in" or collude, but we also need to confront our own part in accepting male dominance and take responsibility where appropriate.
SUE MONK KIDD
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
I have always found the female of the human species many times more difficult to understand than the male.
OSAMU DAZAI
No Longer Human
I think it's time we women stopped carrying supplies for the entire family. If children don't have room to carry their own toys, if men don't have pockets in their pants, tougho.
ERMA BOMBECK
Forever, Erma
The only way to win a wench is not to woo her; the only way to have her fast is to have her loose.
THOMAS DEKKER
Blurt, Master Constable
A woman is essentially a vessel made to be filled.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
Very handsome women have usually far less sensibility to compliments than their less beautiful sisters.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The notion that women are less aesthetically profound and innovative than men--just not very important, if you know what I mean--doubtless spreads back to our beginnings as upright animals: the males hunted and killed for the family while the females stayed home in the cave and tended the strange little creatures they were giving birth to.
EDWARD ALBEE
Stretching My Mind
Speak no evil of women; I tell thee the meanest of them deserves our respect; for of women do we not all come?
PEDRO CALDERON DE LA BARCA
The Mayor of Zalamea
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
It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status.
HOWARD ZINN
A People's History of the United States
Daughters of the attitude that produced them, certain women will not appeal to us without the double bed in which we find peace by their side, while others, to be caressed with a more secret intention, require leaves blown by the wind, water rippling in the dark, things as light and fleeting as they are.
MARCEL PROUST
The Guermantes Way
Most fashionable ladies are as diamonds because they are more costly than useful.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Modesty is the richest ornament of a woman ... the want of it is her greatest deformity.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
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
A woman needn't be dragged down by her functions.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
When my son said, "I can't stop thinking about girls," I said, "That's not gonna stop. Congratulations. You're in the club. From now until the day you die, one way or another you'll be thinking about girls."
PAUL REISER
Good Housekeeping, June 2011
Women are like those blinkin' little Greek islands, places to call at but not to stay.
STACY AUMONIER
"The Great Unimpressionable", The Golden Windmill and Other Stories