WOMEN QUOTES XVIII

quotations about women

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

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If you're a woman, it's almost impossible to establish a relationship. You're too much for everybody. It's too much. The woman always has to play this role of being fragile and dependent. And if you're not, they're fascinated by you, but only for a little while. And then they want to change you and crush you. And then they leave.

MARINA ABRAMOVIC

The Guardian, May 12, 2014

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A lovely woman rolls up
The delicate bamboo blind.
She sits deep within,
Twitching her moth eyebrows.
Who may it be
That grieves her heart?
On her face one sees
Only the wet traces of tears.

LI BAI

"The Night of Sorrow"

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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

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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

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A woman's heart is much like the moon, always changing but always has a man in it.

GRENVILLE KLEISER

Dictionary of Proverbs

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I've always felt there are two things a woman should never do after the age of thirty-five: stand in natural light and have a baby.

ERMA BOMBECK

Family: The Ties that Bind ... and Gag!

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Women are not allowed to be complicated in our society. We still very much have a Madonna-whore complex. We're comfortable seeing women as great mothers, and then we're comfortable seeing them as hookers, but there's no in-between.

CHARLIZE THERON

Glamour Magazine, July 2008

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Woman's great strength lies in being late or absent. Presence immediately reveals the weak points of our beloved; when she is absent she become one of the sylph-like figures of our adolescence whom we endowed with perfection.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS

An Art of Living


The mere idea of marriage, as a strong possibility, if not always nowadays a reasonable likelihood, existing to weaken the will by distracting its straight aim in the life of practically every young girl, is the simple secret of their confessed inferiority in men's pursuits and professions today.

WILLIAM BOLITHO

Twelve Against the Gods

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As such portraits as we have are almost invariably of the male sex, who strut more prominently across the stage, it seems worthwhile to take as a model one of those many women who cluster in the shade. For a study of history and biography convinces any right minded person that these obscure figures occupy a place not unlike that of the showman's hand in the dance of the marionettes; and the finger is laid upon the heart.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

"Phyllis and Rosamond", The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf

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Don't tell me about God having made such creatures to be companions for us! I don't say but He might make Eve to be a companion for Adam in Paradise--there was no cooking to be spoilt there, and no other woman to cackle with and make mischief; though you see what mischief she did as soon as she'd an opportunity.

GEORGE ELIOT

Adam Bede


Most of the women claimed to be emancipated and independent, as indeed they were in the sense that they were earning their own living. But they paid for it by the suppression of the mainsprings of their natures; fear of public opinion robbed them of love and intimate comradeship. It was pathetic to see how lonely they were, how starved for male affection, and how they craved children. Lacking the courage to tell the world to mind its own business, the emancipation of the women was frequently more of a tragedy than traditional marriage would have been. They had attained a certain amount of independence in order to gain their livelihood, but they had not become independent in spirit or free in their personal lives.

EMMA GOLDMAN

Living My Life

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The imaginative estimate or ideal conception of Woman by the Poets has always been deemed exceptionally interesting, especially by women themselves, for, as a rule, it is agreeable; and, even if the presentation be sometimes a little overcharged with glowing colour, all of us, men and women alike, are not otherwise than pleased with descriptions that portray us, not exactly as we are, but as we should like to be. Withal, a portrait, to obtain recognition, must have in it some resemblance to the original; and, speaking in the most prosaic manner, one need not hesitate to affirm that any representation of women, at least of womanly women, that was not attractive would be a travesty of the fact.

ALFRED AUSTIN

The Bridling of Pegasus

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Women are like that they don't acquire knowledge of people we are for that they are just born with a practical fertility of suspicion that makes a crop every so often and usually right they have an affinity for evil for supplying whatever the evil lacks in itself for drawing it about them instinctively as you do bed-clothing in slumber fertilizing the mind for it until the evil has served its purpose whether it ever existed or no.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

The Sound and the Fury

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

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

"The Tower", The Tower

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This is woman's great benevolence, that she will become a martyr for beauty, so that the world may have pleasure.

ROBERT WILSON LYND

Irish & English: Portraits and Impressions

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The spirit of Eve is strong in all her daughters.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

Rose in Bloom

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A reproof entereth more into a woman of sense than an hundred compliments into a fool.

GELETT BURGESS

The Maxims of Methuselah


Some women destroy all your sensibility towards them by their coldness, others by their heat.

FULKE GREVILLE

Maxims, Characters, and Reflections

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