Quotes about girls
page 12

Sara Teasdale photo

“With the man I love who loves me not
I walked in the street-lamps' flare —
But oh, the girls who can ask for love
In the lights of Union Square.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"Union Square"
Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911)

Carole King photo

“Hey girl I want you to know
I'm gonna miss you so much if you go.
And hey girl I tell you no lie,
Something deep inside of me's going to die
If you say so long, if this is goodbye.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

Hey Girl (1963), Co-written with Freddie Scott and Gerry Goffin, recorded by Freddie Scott and Donny Osmond
Song lyrics, Singles

Colette Dowling photo

“If girls could do nothing else in this world, they were supposed to be able to keep their blood from showing.”

Source: The Frailty Myth: Women Approaching Physical Equality (2000), p. 40

Anastacia photo

“You're the soldier girl who tells the other troops who haven't fought the battle what it's like so they can fight it better.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Anastacia: Speaks frankly about her new body, finding love again and using her voice to inspire other http://www.anastacia.com/hello-magazine/, Hello Magazine, April 14, 2014.
General Quotes

Jon Stewart photo

“You wake up and you're still a little drunk and you can't believe that hot girl from last night actually has a beard and a penis.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Cosmopolitan, January 1999, on embarrassing dates.

Arnold Schwarzenegger photo

“Eventually there was a split between my parents about me. My mother obviously knew what was going on with me and the girls my friends lined up. She never came out and said anything directly, but she let me know she was concerned. Things were different between me and my father. He assumed that when I was eighteen, I would just go into the Army and they would straighten me out. He accepted some of the things my mother condemned. He felt it was perfectly all right to make out with all the girls I could. In fact, he was proud I was dating the fast girls. He bragged about them to his friends. 'Jesus Christ, you should see some of the women my son's coming up with'. He was showing off, of course. But still, our whole relationship had changed because I'd established myself by winning a few trophies and now had some girls. He was particularly excited about the girls. And he liked the idea that I didn't get involved. 'That's right, Arnold', he'd say, as though he'd had endless experience, 'never be fooled by them'. That continued to be an avenue of communication between us for a couple of years. In fact, the few nights I took girls home when I was on leave from the Army, my father was always very pleasant and would bring out a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/067122879X (1977), New York: Simon & Schuster.
1970s, Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder (1977)

Ben Gibbard photo
Conor Oberst photo

“Her point of view about student work was that of a social worker teaching finger-painting to children or the insane.
I was impressed with how common such an attitude was at Benton: the faculty—insofar as they were real Benton faculty, and not just nomadic barbarians—reasoned with the students, “appreciated their point of view”, used Socratic methods on them, made allowances for them, kept looking into the oven to see if they were done; but there was one allowance they never under any circumstances made—that the students might be right about something, and they wrong. Education, to them, was a psychiatric process: the sign under which they conquered had embroidered at the bottom, in small letters, Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?—and half of them gave it its Babu paraphrase of Can you wait upon a lunatic? One expected them to refer to former students as psychonanalysts do: “Oh, she’s an old analysand of mine.” They felt that the mind was a delicate plant which, carefully nurtured, judiciously left alone, must inevitably adopt for itself even the slightest of their own beliefs.
One Benton student, a girl noted for her beadth of reading and absence of coöperation, described things in a queer, exaggerated, plausible way. According to her, a professor at an ordinary school tells you “what’s so”, you admit that it is on examination, and what you really believe or come to believe has “that obscurity which is the privilege of young things”. But at Benton, where education was as democratic as in “that book about America by that French writer—de, de—you know the one I mean”; she meant de Tocqueville; there at Benton they wanted you really to believe everything they did, especially if they hadn’t told you what it was. You gave them the facts, the opinions of authorities, what you hoped was their own opinion; but they replied, “That’s not the point. What do you yourself really believe?” If it wasn’t what your professors believed, you and they could go on searching for your real belief forever—unless you stumbled at last upon that primal scene which is, by definition, at the root of anything….
When she said primal scene there was so much youth and knowledge in her face, so much of our first joy in created things, that I could not think of Benton for thinking of life. I suppose she was right: it is as hard to satisfy our elders’ demands of Independence as of Dependence. Harder: how much more complicated and indefinite a rationalization the first usually is!—and in both cases, it is their demands that must be satisfied, not our own. The faculty of Benton had for their students great expectations, and the students shook, sometimes gave, beneath the weight of them. If the intellectual demands were not so great as they might have been, the emotional demands made up for it. Many a girl, about to deliver to one of her teachers a final report on a year’s not-quite-completed project, had wanted to cry out like a child, “Whip me, whip me, Mother, just don’t be Reasonable!””

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 3, pp. 81–83

Ben Hecht photo
Nastassja Kinski photo
Jahangir photo

“When Jahangir learnt that the Hindus and Muslims intermarried freely in Kashmir, “and both give and take girls, (he ordered that) taking them is good but giving them, God forbid”. And any violation of this order was to be visited with capital punishment.”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, II, p. 181. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 8

Maria Mitchell photo

“I know I shall be called heterodox, and that unseen lightning flashes and unheard thunderbolts will be playing around my head, when I say that women will never be profound students in any other department except music while they give four hours a day to the practice of music. I should by all means encourage every woman who is born with musical gifts to study music; but study it as a science and an art, and not as an accomplishment; and to every woman who is not musical, I should say, 'Don't study it at all;' you cannot afford four hours a day, out of some years of your life, just to be agreeable in company upon possible occasions. If for four hours a day you studied, year after year, the science of language, for instance, do you suppose you would not be a linguist? Do you put the mere pleasing of some social party, and the reception of a few compliments, against the mental development of four hours a day of study of something for which you were born? When I see that girls who are required by their parents to go through with the irksome practising really become respectable performers, I wonder what four hours a day at something which they loved, and for which God designed them, would do for them. I should think that to a real scientist in music there would be something mortifying in this rush of all women into music; as there would be to me if I saw every girl learning the constellations, and then thinking she was an astronomer!”

Maria Mitchell (1818–1889) American astronomer

Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals (illustrated) by Maria Mitchell, 1896, p. 189.

“It will interest artists because, in it, I have made a special study of the way of walking of this girl, and, in fact, I have succeeded in giving the illusion that she is in the process of moving forward.”

Giacomo Balla (1871–1958) Italian artist

quote c. 1900, in: 'Lista,' by Balla; in catalogue raisonné, Edizione Galleria Fonte d'Abisso, Modena, 1982, p. 248
Balla's quote refers to a photo of a moving girl he saw, made before 1900 by photographer Jules-Etienne Marey; the photo was exposed at the Exposition Universelle (1900), visited by Balla, then.

Bob Dylan photo

“There's lots of pretty girls in Mozambique.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Desire (1976), Mozambique

Larisa Oleynik photo
Elton Mayo photo
Conrad Aiken photo
Anthony Hope photo

“Boys will be boys—And even that … wouldn't matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.”

Anthony Hope (1863–1933) English novelist and playwright

"The House Opposite," http://books.google.com/books?id=UZ8uAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Boys+will+be+boys+And+even+that%22+%22wouldn't+matter+if+we+could+only+prevent+girls+from+being+girls%22&pg=PA137#v=onepage Westminster Gazette (1893)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“I have been strongly influenced by the Mahabharata, discourses of the Buddha, Sri Aurobindo and Plato. My masters have been Vyasa, Buddha and Sri Aurobindo, as elucidated by Ram Swarup. … Paganism was a term of contempt invented by Christianity for people in the countryside who lived close to and in harmony with Nature, and whose ways of worship were spontaneous as opposed to the contrived though-categories constructed by Christianity’s city-based manipulators of human minds. In due course, the term was extended to cover all spiritually spontaneous culture of the world – Greek, Roman, Iranian, Indian, Chinese, native American. It became a respectable term for those who revolted against Christianity in the modern West. But it has yet to recover its spiritual dimension which Christianity had eclipsed. For me, Hinduism preserves ancient Paganism in all its dimensions. In that sense, I am a Pagan. The term "Polytheism' comes from Biblical discourse, which has the term 'theism' as its starting point. I have no use for these terms. They create confusion. I dwell in a different universe of discourse which starts with 'know thyself' and ends with the discovery, 'thou art that'…
I met her [Mother Theresa] briefly in Calcutta in 1954 or 1955 when she was unknown. I had gone to see an American journalist who was a friend and had fallen ill, when she came to his house asking for money for her charity set-up. The friend went inside to get some cash, leaving his five or six year old daughter in the drawing room. Teresa told her, "He is not your real father. Your real father is in heaven." The girl said, "He is very ill." Theresa commented, "If he dies, your father does not die. For your real father who is in heaven never 'dies."”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

The girl was in tears.
Interview, The Observer. Date : February 22, 1997. http://sathyavaadi.tripod.com/truthisgod/Articles/goel.htm https://egregores.blogspot.com/2009/10/buddha-sri-aurobindo-and-plato.html https://egregores.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/hindus-and-pagans-a-return-to-the-time-of-the-gods/

Edvard Munch photo
Jozef Israëls photo

“I take advantage of a painting that I now have at the Paris' exhibition. 3 orphan girls who are sewing in an interior room. I have sold [it] there for a nice price and have heard some interesting reviews published about it. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

version in original Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls' brief, in het Nederlands): Ik heb nogal plaizier van eene schilderij die ik thans op de parijsche tentst. Heb. 3 weesmeisjes die in een binnekamer zitten te naaijen. Ik heb [het] daar voor een mooije prijs verkocht en hier en daar interessante kritieken over hooren uitbrengen.
In a letter to A.C. Vosmaer, June 1866; ARA - Tweede afdeling, Archief Vosmaer, input no. 249
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1840 - 1870

Anthony Trollope photo
Antonin Scalia photo
Warren Farrell photo
Pearl S.  Buck photo
Shashi Tharoor photo
Rachel Riley photo

“When you tell people that you are studying maths at uni, they are like, “Oh …”. Especially a blonde Essex girl.”

Rachel Riley (1986) television presenter

Interview, The Observer, 12 Oct 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/oct/12/rachel-riley-countdown-stop-saying-girls-arent-good-at-maths

Ray Comfort photo
Robert Jordan photo
James Pierpont (musician) photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Colette photo

“There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

“Wedding Day”, Earthly Paradise (1966) ed. Robert Phelps

Jeffrey Tucker photo

“A former high school principal accused of being impolite to a mixed-race girl was hired for an administrative job by the school district, over the objections of outsiders demanding ever more minority “rights.””

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Source: "Letter From Alabama" by Jeffrey Tucker, Chronicles, May 1996, UNZ.org, 2016-05-22 https://www.unz.org/Pub/Chronicles-1996may-00036,

Tori Amos photo
Edward Hopper photo
Spider Robinson photo
Kent Hovind photo
Wilfred Owen photo
Warren Farrell photo

“The world increasingly allows girls to be whoever they wish to be-- homemaker, mother, secretary, executive.”

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 167.

Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd photo

“I love a bright fort on a shining slope,
Where a fair, shy girl loves watching gulls.
I'd like to go, though I get no great love,
On a longed-for visit on a slender white horse
To seek my love of the quiet laughter,
To recite love, since it's come my way.”

Karafy gaer wennglaer o du gwennylan;
myn yd gar gwyldec gweled gwylan
yd garwny uyned, kenym cared yn rwy.
Ry eitun ouwy y ar veingann
y edrtch uy chwaer chwerthin egwan,
y adrawt caru, can doeth yn rann.
"Awdl V" (Ode 5), line 1; translation from Gwyn Williams (trans.) Welsh Poems, 6th Century to 1600 (London: Faber & Faber, 1973) p. 43.

Richard Rodríguez photo
Paul Weller (singer) photo

“The lords and ladies pass a ruling
That sons and girls go hand in land
From good stock and the best breeding
Paid for by the servile class.”

Paul Weller (singer) (1958) English singer-songwriter, Guitarist

The Whole Point Of No Return, from Café Bleu (1984)

Ann Coulter photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
John Fante photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Eliza Dushku photo
Randy Pausch photo
André Maurois photo
Frances Fuller Victor photo
Joseph Heller photo
Ned Kelly photo
Giovanni Boccaccio photo

“And if his own joy knew no bounds, the girl was no less delighted on seeing him.”

Se egli fu lieto assai, la letizia della giovane non fu minore.
Fifth Day, Third Story
The Decameron (c. 1350)

Preity Zinta photo
Karel Appel photo

“The wastelands belong to my youth [c. 1930's]. When I was young I played in the outskirts of the city - watching the cranes at the harbour. There was no law but garbage, grass and wildflowers like boys and girls, rough, hot and sexual and full of hidden pleasures. Life and death are overlapping in the wastelands like in my paintings.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Appel's quote is referring to his youth in Amsterdam, in the outskirts and the ports of the Dutch city
Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), pp. 75-77 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

Helen Rowland photo
Ibn Battuta photo
Ferdinand Marcos photo
Bob Seger photo
Gay Talese photo
David Bowie photo
David Cameron photo
Courtney Stodden photo
Maneka Gandhi photo

“You have 2,000 girls who are killed in the womb every day. Some are born and have pillows on their faces choking them.”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

On female foeticide and female infanticide, as quoted in "Indian minister says 2,000 girls 'killed' every day" http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/21/us-india-girls-abortions-idUSKBN0NC12320150421, Reuters (21 April 2015)
2011-present

Tom Stoppard photo
Annette Widmann-Mauz photo

“A ban does not solve the underlying problem behind it. We have to reach out to parents and make sure girls are empowered to make their own choices. At the same time, women who voluntarily choose to wear a headscarf should not be disadvantaged.”

Annette Widmann-Mauz (1966) German politician

About banning headscarves in Germany. German state looks to ban headscarves for girls https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/10/german-state-looks-ban-headscarves-girls/ (10 April 2018), The Daily Telegraph.

Theodore Roszak photo
Baba Amte photo
Jerome David Salinger photo
Julia Ward Howe photo

“Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms,
To deck our girls for gay delights!
The crimson flower of battle blooms,
And solemn marches fill the nights.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

"Our Orders" in The Atlantic Monthly (July 1861).

Paula Modersohn-Becker photo

“Today I painted my first plain air portrait at the clay pit, a little blond and blue-eyed girl. The way the little thing stood in the yellow sand was simply beautiful – a bright and shimmering thing to see. It made my heart leap. Painting people is indeed more beautiful than painting a landscape. I suppose you can notice that I am dead-tired, after this long day of hard work, cant you? But inside I am so peaceful and happy..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

in a letter to her mother, from Worpswede, August 1897; as quoted in Paula Modersohn-Becker, The Letters and Journals by Paula Modersohn-Becker, eds. Günter Busch, Liselotte von Reinken, Arthur S. Wensinger, Carole Clew Hoey - Northwestern University Press, 1998, p. 79
1897

Irving Kristol photo

“A liberal is one who says that it's all right for an 18-year-old girl to perform in a pornographic movie as long as she gets paid the minimum wage.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

1970s, Two Cheers for Capitalism (1978)

Chuck Berry photo
Lizabeth Scott photo

“When you say ambition to me, that's when you get me started! My greatest ambition is to be the whoppingest best actress in Hollywood. You can't blame a girl for trying! I don't want to be classed as a "personality," something to stare at. I want to have my talents respected, not only by the public but by myself.”

Lizabeth Scott (1922–2015) American actress and singer

McFadden, Robert D. (February 6, 2015). " Lizabeth Scott, Film Noir Siren, Dies at 92 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/movies/lizabeth-scott-film-noir-siren-dies-at-92.html". The New York Times.

Kate Bush photo

“This little girl inside me
Is retreating to her favourite place.
Go into the garden.
Go under the ivy,
Under the leaves,
Away from the party.
Go right to the rose.
Go right to the white rose
(For me.)”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Singles and rarities

Joanna Newsom photo
Kent Hovind photo
Larry the Cable Guy photo

“I went to the Talladega 500 with a girl I had just met. She was very sweet with childlike qualities. No titties!”

Larry the Cable Guy (1963) American stand-up comedian, actor, country music artist, voice artist

Source: Git-R-Done (book), p. 113

Tracey Ullman photo

“People think I'm a demented little pixie, but I'm not 'on' all the time. I'm sensible. I pay my bills. I've never done drugs. I don't drink or smoke. I eat organic. I'm a goody-goody, really, but I can play bad girls.”

Tracey Ullman (1959) English-born actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, author and businesswoman

"Q&A: Tracey Ullman" http://www.newsweek.com/newsmakers-127011 (Newsweek, 19 September 2004)

Hilary Duff photo
Thomas Hughes photo
Willa Cather photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
GG Allin photo
Remy de Gourmont photo
Jim Morrison photo

“You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn't get much higher.
Come on baby, light my fire —
Come on baby, light my fire —
Try to set the night on fire.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

"Light My Fire" (1967). Because Jim Morrison sang this as a breakthrough hit for The Doors and was the group's primary songwriter, this is often mistakenly thought to have been written by him. It was actually written by guitarist Robby Krieger, as were some other songs including "Love Her Madly," "You're Lost Little Girl" and "Touch Me" (as well as some other songs on the Soft Parade album). The second verse of the song, however, was written by Morrison.
Misattributed

Camille Paglia photo
Stevie Wonder photo
David Bowie photo

“My little China Girl
You shouldn't mess with me.
I'll ruin everything you are.
I'll give you television.
I'll give you eyes of blue.
I'll give you a man who wants to rule the world.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

China Girl, written with Iggy Pop — Video at YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A34kCOtegQ
Song lyrics, Let's Dance (1983)

John Hennigan photo
L. Frank Baum photo

“But girls often marry when they are too young," exclaimed Mary-Marie quickly; "so, if you don't object to my age —”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

"The Witchcraft of Mary-Marie", in Baum's American Fairy Tales (1908)
Short stories