“One ought not to be unkind to a woman merely on account of her plainness, any more than one had a right to take liberties with her merely because she was handsome.”

— Murasaki Shikibu , book The Tale of Genji

Source: Tale of Genji, The Tale of Genji, trans. Arthur Waley, Ch. 36: Kashiwagi

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "One ought not to be unkind to a woman merely on account of her plainness, any more than one had a right to take liberti…" by Murasaki Shikibu?

Murasaki Shikibu 24

Japanese novelist, poet during the Heian period. best known… 973–1014

Related quotes

“A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

“And she did not have to ask if this was right, no one had to tell her, because this could not have been more right or perfect.”

Patricia Highsmith book The Price of Salt

Source: The Price of Salt

“It was one thing to be instantly attracted to a woman, and another to like her independence, the way she took no notice of what he thought of her, one way or the other. She was indeed a modern woman—not aggressive, yet not submissive. A self-possessed apartness, a lack of cling…
Yes, that was what held his attention: her reserve. The promise of depths you could not guess merely by seeing her in a swimsuit.”

Gregory Benford Artifact

Part 2, Chapter 6 (p. 80; ellipsis represents a minor elision of narration)
Artifact (1985)

“We would not think of allowing a man to determine a woman’s life merely because a fetus he helped create was in her womb; then why would we allow a woman to determine a man’s life merely because a fetus he helped create is in her womb?”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 137.

“There is no authority in the Bible for a woman to have a place of supremacy in the church. When she takes it she steps out of her right place. She goes against the plain teaching of The Bible when she takes the place of the authoritative teacher in the church.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Cults, Sects and Questions (c. 1979)

“LIBERTY enters the field of journalism to speak for herself because she finds no one willing to speak for her.”

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist

Libertys Declaration of Purpose (1881)
Context: LIBERTY enters the field of journalism to speak for herself because she finds no one willing to speak for her. She hears no voice that always champions her; she knows no pen that always writes in her defence; she sees no hand that is always lifted to avenge her wrongs or vindicate her rights. Many claim to speak in her name, but few really understand her. Still fewer have the courage and the opportunity to consistently fight for her. Her battle, then, is her own, to wage and win. She — accepts it fearlessly and with a determined spirit.
Her foe, Authority, takes many shapes, but, broadly speaking, her enemies divide themselves into three classes: first, those who abhor her both as a means and as an end of progress, opposing her openly, avowedly, sincerely, consistently, universally; second, those who profess to believe in her as a means of progress, but who accept her only so far as they think she will subserve their own selfish interests, denying her and her blessings to the rest of the world; third, those who distrust her as a means of progress, believing in her only as an end to be obtained by first trampling upon, violating, and outraging her. These three phases of opposition to Liberty are met in almost every sphere of thought and human activity.

“England is the natural home of liberty and free institutions, and in her endeavour to secure these blessings for the world no country ought to be quicker than she in acknowledging her debt to Hellas.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the annual meeting of the British School at Athens in London (2 November 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 205.
1926
Context: September of the year 490 B. C. was to my mind a more cardinal moment of fate for Europe than August 1914. Western civilization... was saved in its infancy at Marathon, and ten years later by Leonidas and by the men of Salamis... had it not been for that decade there would have been nothing to prevent Eastern Europe being orientalized and the ultimate fight for the hegemony of Europe would have been left to the Persians and the Carthaginians. But for the Greeks there would have been no civilization as we know it, and we should all have been dark-skinned people with long noses... England is the natural home of liberty and free institutions, and in her endeavour to secure these blessings for the world no country ought to be quicker than she in acknowledging her debt to Hellas.

“Discipline is the great equalizer. If a young woman is beautiful but has no discipline, she will lose her looks as she grows older. If a plain woman is disciplined she will undoubtedly become more beautiful with time.”

Sophia Loren (1934) Italian actress

“Gloria Estefan was a huge influence for me. Of course, she was one of the few Latina women around who had this major international success. She sang in Spanish and English, and she was very much the sort of woman I recognised from my culture. I go to her home, and I think that she is a woman who has got it just right. She has her music, she has her family, she has her relationship. I admire her so much because she has always put her family before everything. All her priorities are in place and she is still an amazingly creative artist.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

comment by "close friend" Jennifer Lopez, arts.guardian.co.uk (March 30, 2007)
2007, 2008

“Nothing is more devastating than a life without liberty. A life in which one can be forced into parenthood is just such a life. Rape is among the most profound denials of liberty, and compelling a woman to bear a rapist's child is an assault on her humanity. How different is it to force her to remain pregnant... because efforts at birth control accidentally failed?”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

Source: Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990), Approaching Abortion Anew

“One ought not to be unkind to a woman merely on account of her plainness, any more than one had a right to take liberties with her merely because she was handsome.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Murasaki Shikibu 24

Related quotes

Related topics