quotations about women
Frailty, thy name is woman.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
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Hamlet
Because a woman brought death
a bright Maiden overcame it,
and so the highest blessing
in all of creation
lies in the form of a woman,
since God has become man
in a sweet and blessed Virgin.
HILDEGARD OF BINGEN
"Quia ergo femina"
According to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome, the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man. A man's presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies.... A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. His presence may be fabricated, in the sense that he pretends to b capable of what he is not. But the pretence is always towards a power which he exercises on others. By contrast, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her.
JOHN BERGER
Ways of Seeing
A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
You've heard it before, but are afraid to say it aloud for fear of sounding boastful. Southern women are prettier than others. But wait just a cotton pickin' minute. Is it true? Are we really prettier? I'll let you in on a little secret. We're not. Everyone just has that illusion because the truth is, we only try harder. Our secret weapon for loveliness, passed down by generations of Southern ladies, is our ability to make the best out of what we have, or in other words, "effort."
LESLIE ANNE TARABELLA
"Are Southern women prettier?", AL, April 3, 2017
Women are the backbone of this country. We do it all -- we are the most organized and compassionate workers -- and we do it knowing our counterparts are paid more.
TONYA MURRAY
Los Angeles Times, March 8, 2017
There are women who never had an intrigue; but there are scarce any who never had but one.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
Modesty is the richest ornament of a woman ... the want of it is her greatest deformity.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
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
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
A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult.
MELINDA GATES
Woman's Day Magazine, October 2, 2007
A woman in power is hardly a routine matter. Historically, 63 of 142 nations studied by the World Economic Forum have had a female head of government or state at some point in the half-century preceding 2014. However, in nearly two-thirds of those nations a woman was in power for less than four of the 50 years. And in 11 countries (17%), a woman led for less than a year.
TARA SONENSHINE
"U.S. vs the World? Women as Top Political Leaders", The Globalist, February 10, 2016
Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
A Room of One's Own
Woman began at zero, and has through ages slowly unfolded and risen. Each age has protested against growth as unsexing woman.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
When the hour of adversity arrives, when false friends are scattered, when we are moving through the keen atmosphere of selfishness, then it is that the virtuous wife, like an angel of light, shines with peculiar lustre.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
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
No man can have a reasonable opinion of women until he has long lost interest in hair-restorers.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Everywhere there is pleasure you will find a woman in disguise.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
Cool Memories
A woman is essentially a vessel made to be filled.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.
HONORE DE BALZAC
A Woman of Thirty