quotations about women
Every physical quality admired by men in women is in direct connection with the manifold functions of women for the propagation of the species.
JAMES JOYCE
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being.... Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"The Tragedy of Women's Emancipation", Anarchism and Other Essays
There are two kinds of spiritual law, two kinds of conscience, one in man and another, altogether different, in woman. They do not understand each other; but in practical life the woman is judged by man's law, as though she were not a woman but a man.
HENRIK IBSEN
From Ibsen's Workshop
Some women destroy all your sensibility towards them by their coldness, others by their heat.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
If family and society tell you its unfeminine, not really womanly, to be aggressive, to speak up, to have strong opinions, to take up space, then women won't trust their own voice, because to be heard and to be influential, you've got to have a way to sing out with passion and love and self-trust--to sing out your song for everyone to hear.
ELIZABETH LESSER
"What's Possible: An Interview With Elizabeth Lesser", Omega, May 8, 2012
No man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a ticket in his pocket.
REX STOUT
Some Buried Caesar
A woman in Deep Sleep is one who goes about in an unconscious state. She seems unaware or unfazed by the truth of her own female life, the truth about women in general, the way women and the feminine have been wounded, devalued, and limited within culture, churches, and families. She cannot see the wound or feel the pain. She has never acknowledged, much less confronted, sexism within the church, biblical interpretations, or Christian doctrine. Okay, so women have been largely missing from positions of church power, we've been silenced and relegated to positions of subordination by biblical interpretations and doctrine, and God has been represented to us as exclusively male. So what? The woman in Deep Sleep is oblivious to the psychological and spiritual impact this has had on her. Or maybe she has some awareness of it all but keeps it sequestered nicely in her head, rarely allowing it to move down into her heart or into the politics of her spirituality.
SUE MONK KIDD
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.
MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
The Neurotic's Notebook
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
Women can sometimes be unpredictable. Even as a woman, I regularly don't understand the choices of my female friends, mother (love you) and sisters (love you lots!).
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
"Why Women Are So Complicated", Huffington Post, February 9, 2016
There are two races of people -- men and women -- no matter what women's libbers would have you pretend. The male is motivated by toys and science because men are born with no purpose in the universe except to procreate. There is lots of time to kill beyond that. They've got to find work. Men have no inherent center to themselves beyond procreating. Women, however, are born with a center. They can create the universe, mother it, teach it, nurture it. Men read science fiction to build the future. Women don't need to read it. They are the future.
RAY BRADBURY
Playboy, 1996
A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.
COCO CHANEL
The Gospel According to Coco Chanel
To know a mature woman is to know more than her body. It is to know her dreams and her secrets. It is to know that a dance is a fight, and a fight is a dance, and that passion and compassion beat in the same breast.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
We never see the mass of women en costume, without being reminded of the artificial flies used in angling--tricked out, also, with much the same object, only that, like St. Peter, women are "fishers of men."
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
REX STOUT
Three Doors to Death
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
A woman's lot is made for her by the love she accepts.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
attributed, Great Hollywood Wit
Man dreams of fame while woman wakes to love.
ALFRED TENNYSON
Idylls of the King
A woman, like a cross-eyed man, looks one way, but goes another--hence her mysteriousness.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought