Quotes about woman
page 16

“I always say to these here, marry the first man that asks you. There's only three classes of men a woman should never marry - a delicate man, a drunken man, and a lazy man. I'm not so sure that the lazy man isn't the worst.”

Patrick Kavanagh (1904–1967) poet

Prose, Tarry Flynn (1948)

Men

“If you are like most people, you have an assortment of friends and family you can call upon in times of trouble. For instance, if you woke up in the middle of the night and saw a masked woman trying to crawl through your bedroom window, you might call your mother or father to help you push her back out. If you found yourself hopelessly lost in the middle of a strange city, you might ask the police to give you a ride home. And if you were an author locked in an Italian restaurant that was slowly filling up with water, you might call upon your acquaintances in the locksmith, pasta, and sponge businesses to come and rescue you.”

Daniel Handler book The Hostile Hospital

Lemony Snicket
The Hostile Hospital (2001)

People, Family, Home, Business

“The nadir came out in Gordon Brown’s ‘that bigoted woman’ moment when I think what we saw was where a completely normal person, a Labour supporter too, expresses something about what she could see in her life about there being a lot of immigrants and Brown dismissed her as a bigot. Well, I saw that as an absolute manifestation of a self-righteous, self-regarding, elitism in Labour that really despises the concerns of working people. Labour had reached a situation under Brown where most of the people in the party hated one another and they hated people outside the party too.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Interview with Inside Politics, 4 February 2015 https://www.holyrood.com/articles/inside-politics/architect-blue-labour-interview-lord-glasman

Life, Hate, People, Support

“I'm really shallow when I come to guys. I only date really good looking, well-endowed guys, with great bodies. My friends are always going on at me. I'm like "I can't help it! I'm just a woman with high standards!"”

Josie Maran (1978) American model and actress

IMDB Profile http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1036691/bio

Guy, Help

“Now you play the loving woman;
I'll play the faithful man.
But just don't look too close into the palm of my hand.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Brilliant Disguise"
Song lyrics, Tunnel Of Love (1987)

Love, Faith

“When I held that statuette, I felt as if I had won a triumph not just for myself, but for every other woman who'd struggled to overcome the same sort of background.”

Halle Berry (1966) American actress

On winning an Academy Award — reported in Barbara Davies (August 10, 2008) "Lost and Found", Sunday Telegraph Magazine, p. 18.

“It is the secret that a man and a woman keep from each other that makes them a couple”

Max Frisch book Gantenbein

Gantenbein (1964)

Secret

“The problem is that sex is the most dangerous way of trying to achieve personal growth, because the life force has mixed it so liberally with a string sense of "magic", which, in the attempt at possession turns out to be an illusion. The attempt to possess a woman through an act of sex is as frustrating as trying to possess the scent of a rose by cooking and eating it.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: The Corpse Garden (1998), p. 250

Life, Sex, Way, Problem

“Until recently, the question was 'Why can't a woman be more like a man?' It should have been changed to 'Why can't both sexes be more like the best parts of each other?' Instead, the pendulum swung to the 1960s feminist lapel button Adam Was a First Draft. True enough. So are we all.”

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

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 310.

Sex, Question, Change, Parting

“How old are you, Brian? You ought to know by now that something always breaks up love affairs unless both parties are willing to compromise themselves. And that compromising is harder to do the older and less flexible and more independent you are. It just isn’t in you, Brian. You could no more get married now than you could become a priest, or a sculptor, or a greengrocer.”
Duffy opened his mouth to voice angry denials, then one corner turned up and he closed it. “Damn you,” he said wryly. “Then why do I want to, half the time?”
Aurelianus shrugged. “It’s the nature of the species. There’s a part of a man’s mind that can only relax and go to sleep when he’s with a woman, and that part gets tired of always being tensely awake. It gives orders in so loud a voice that it often drowns out the other components. But when the loud one is asleep at last, the others regain control and chart a new course.” He grinned. “No equilibrium is possible. If you don’t want to put up with the constant seesawing, you must either starve the logical components or bind, gag and lock away in a cellar that one insistent one.”
Duffy grimaced and drank some more brandy. “I’m used to the rocking, and I was never one to get motion-sick,” he said. “I’ll stay on the seesaw.”

Tim Powers book The Drawing of the Dark

Aurelianus bowed. “You have that option, sir.”
Source: The Drawing of the Dark (1979), Chapter 18 (p. 247)

Love, Nature, Sleep, Time

“The more a man is trained to “be a man,” the more he is trained to protect women and children, not hurt women and children. He is trained to volunteer to die before even a stranger is hurt – especially a woman or child.”

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

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Women, Children, Hurt, Training

“"Do you not quarrel, brother Heber?" says one. No, I do not. But; when a woman begins to dispute me, about nine times out of ten I get up and say, "Go it," and then go off about my business; and if ever I am so foolish as to quarrel with a woman, I ought to be whipped; for you may always calculate that they will have the last word.”

Heber C. Kimball (1801–1868) American Mormon leader

Journal of Discourses 5:277 (Sept. 27, 1857)

Business, Time

“A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips
and vegetables were never enough.
She thinks she can warm the stars.
A writer is essentially a spy.
Dear love, I am that girl.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

"The Black Art"
All My Pretty Ones (1962)

Love, Children, Feeling, Girl

“Almost all of our fellow-beings deceive us, but a few of us have known the joy of meeting a woman or a man whose sincerity and frankness were genuine, who in almost every situation has behaved according to our wishes, and who in our most difficult moments has not forsaken us. Those few are familiar with that marvelous feeling: confidence. With at least one person they are able for a little while each day to lift the heavy visor of their helmets, breathe freely, and show their faces and their hearts without fear.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

Fear, Feeling, Confidence, Heart

“I join the whole country in extending my sympathies to the Aquino and Cojuangco families on the passing of a humble and noble woman, former President Corazon C. Aquino.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Statement: on the Passing of Former President Corazon C. Aquino

Family, Country

“If a woman does need a hero, she needs him today, not tomorrow.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Egwene al'Vere
(7 January 2003)

“Finally, let me explain why this De la Rosa World Summit is the last Neo-Tech summit -- and why that may be the best news. But, first, I want to hail whom I believe to be the most genuinely-happy spirit in today’s anticivilization -- a beautiful person who brings to us her happiness made from the love of life as we travel toward the Civilization of the Universe. Let us emblazon our own spirits by remembering this lovely beam of light -- this enduring beacon of joy, this amazingly-wonderful person -- our free-spirit Summit impresario, Rosa María Wallace. …What a woman!”

Frank R. Wallace (1932–2006) Philosopher, author, entrepreneur

Keynote Address for The Neo-Tech 2003 World Summit. Pax Neo-Tech. http://www.neo-tech.com/neotech/pax-b1/a3.php

Love, Life, Happiness, World

“In a sane society no woman would be left to struggle on her own with the huge transformation that is motherhood, when a single individual finds herself joined by an invisible umbilical cord to another person from whom she will never be separated, even by death.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

Mothers (pg. 209)
The Whole Woman (1999)

Death, Personality

“Here's what I advise any young struggling actress today: The important thing is to develop as a woman first, and a performer second. You wouldn't prostitute yourself to get a part, not if you're in the right mind. You won't be happy, whatever you do, unless you're comfortable with your own conscience.”

Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman

Page 42
Love, Lucy (1996)

Happiness, Parting

“Our tasks are definite. The first to see that no man, woman, or child shall go hungry or unsheltered through the approaching winter.
The second is to see that our great benevolent agencies for character building, for hospitalization, for care of children and all their vast number of agencies of voluntary solicitude for the less fortunate are maintained in full strength.
The third is to maintain the bedrock principle of our liberties by the full mobilization of individual and local resources and responsibilities.
The fourth is that we may maintain the spiritual impulses in our people for generous giving and generous service—in the spirit that each is his brother’s keeper.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

The Hoover Policies (1937)

Children, People, Winter

“Ah, wasteful woman, she who may
On her sweet self set her own price,
Knowing man cannot choose but pay,
How has she cheapen'd paradise;
How given for nought her priceless gift,
How spoil'd the bread and spill'd the wine,
Which, spent with due, respective thrift,
Had made brutes men, and men divine.”

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) English poet

Book I, Canto III, III Unthrift.
The Angel In The House (1854)

Men, Wine

“I am an inveterate homemaker, it is at once my pleasure, my recreation, and my handicap. Were I a man, my books would have been written in leisure, protected by a wife and a secretary and various household officials. As it is, being a woman, my work has had to be done between bouts of homemaking.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Source: My Several Worlds (1954), p. 239

Pleasure, Books

“I myself have experienced the volcanic existential depths of the Greek language. It was during a performance of Medea by Tzeni Karezi at the Herod Atticus theatre in Athens, when she was pleading to the callous Jason to take pity on her and she used the word ' splachniasou'. 'Pity' is too weak a word to describe the emotional and psychological depths ' splachniasou' expresses. 'Splachna 'is the part of the body where a woman carries her unborn children, the very root of ontological existence. How deep can you get!”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

On the Greek language
Interview on Helenism .net (September 2011)

Children, Parting

“Girl-power feminists who got where they are by marrying men with money or power — Hillary Rodham Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Arianna Huffington and John Kerry — love to complain about how hard it is for a woman to be taken seriously. It has nothing to do with their being women. It has to do with their cheap paths to power. Kevin Federline isn't taken seriously either.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

I am woman, hear me bore
2007-01-24
Townhall
http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2007/01/24/i_am_woman,_hear_me_bore/page/full/
2007

Love, Women, Men, Money

“About three decades ago, when I needed to purchase some office equipment, chiefly steel filing cabinets, I was amused by a firm whose computer, having been informed that R. P. Oliver was the purchasing agent for R. P. Oliver, offered the former a secret "kick back" of 20% if he would buy their products at the expense of the latter. Another firm offered the purchasing agent a "complimentary" woman's mink jacket, which would be sent with his compliments to "any address," thus tactfully permitting him to choose between his wife and his doxy. That would have been good business, had the computers been operated by someone with intelligence enough to notice the odd coincidence between the name of the purchasing agent and the name of the owner to be exploited.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Spiced Crambe", Liberty Bell magazine (March 1993)
1990s

Secret, Intelligence, Business

“You walk down the street at night. It's raining out. The only sound is that of your own feet. There are city sounds too, but these you don't hear because at the end of the street is the woman you've been waiting for for seven long years and each muffled tread of your footsteps takes you closer and closer and the sound of them marks off seconds and days and months of waiting.
Then, suddenly, you're there, outside a dark-faced building, a brownstone anachronism that stares back dully with the defiant expression of the moronic and you have an impending sense of being challenged.”

Mickey Spillane book The Snake

The Snake (1964)

Sense, Waiting, Night

“The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool!”

Rudyard Kipling book Plain Tales from the Hills

Three and—an Extra.
Plain Tales from the Hills (1888)

Fools

“I'm not interested in being Wonder Woman in the delivery room. Give me drugs.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

The biggest mother of them all, The Independent, 1996-10-16 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/the-biggest-mother-of-them-all-1358620.html,

“For the presidency, I don't think it really matters if it's a man or a woman, it has to be the right person for the job”

RoseMarie Panio (1941) politician

The Journal News (2007) http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:zcK-Qu47mLwJ:www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article%3FAID%3D2007701220356+%22linda+cooper%22+biography+yorktown&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us

Thinking, Personality

“I've been looking for a woman to save my life
Not to beg or to borrow
A woman with the feeling of losing once or twice.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

I've Been Waiting for You
Song lyrics, Neil Young (1968)

Life, Feeling

“Lydgate opened the sort of letter…”My dear husband I very good…I come in flying ship…we be very happy…love.” It was as satisfactory a letter as he had ever received from a woman.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Devil of a State (1961)

Love, Happiness, Flying

“Living with a woman is going to be really tough. They tend to be really domesticated, you know. They fold things and clean things and know what they are going to have for dinner several hours before it's time to eat.”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Time

“A “shared choice” movement sees the fetus as the genes of a woman and the genes of a man; the flesh of the woman, the flesh of the man; the bone of a woman, the bone of a man; the responsibility of a woman, the responsibility of a man; the rights of a woman, the rights of a man. It desires a transition to equality.”

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

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 158.

“It used to be said of a woman: why she's a Velázquez infanta! Now it is said: she's a Renoir blonde! I have no doubt that, in the future, it will be proclaimed: she's as exuberant as a Delaunay, as noble as a Le Fauconnier, as beautiful as a Braque or Picasso.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Note sur la Peinture (1910)

Beauty, Future

“Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives. So, in compliance with nature’s working plan, we must permit womanhood its full development before we can expect of it efficient motherhood. If we are to make racial progress, this development of womanhood must precede motherhood in every individual woman.”

Margaret Sanger book Woman and the New Race

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 18, "The Goal"

Law, Birth, Nature

“Sexy for me is a curvy woman — doesn't have to be skinny, which I hate anyway. I'm glad [the fashion industry] is changing slowly a little bit now to get more into the boobs and hips again.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

In an interview for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Special 1998.

Hate, Fashion, Change

“The first woman minister, Antoinette Brown, had to meet ridicule and opposition that can hardly be conceived to-day. Now there are women ministers, east and west, all over the country.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

The Progress of Fifty Years (1893)

Women, Country

“The belief that women are discriminated against in the workplace reinforces a couple's tendency to have the woman stay at home. It is the tendency for women to stay at home that makes the workplace value her less. then, shortly after she is married, it begins to make sense for her to move for her husband's career, not for her husband to move for her career. Conversely, it makes sense for them to invest in his medical, law, or engineering degree--rather than hers… ironically, then, a reality has been created from a false reality. And, ironically, women's careers are hurt via comments meant to prod a society into helping women's careers. The road to hell is paved…”

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

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 145.

Women, Law, Home, Hell

“When a man is forced into early retirement, he is often being ‘given up for a younger man.’ Being forced into early retirement can be to a man what being ‘given up for a younger woman’ is for a woman… Why do many men get more upset by retirement than women do from the empty nest —when their children leave home? When females retire from children, they can try a career; when a man retires from a career, his children are gone.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 174.

Women, Men, Children, Home

“If you were to take a plastic bag and place it inside a large bowl, and then, using a wooden spoon, stir the bag around, you could use the expression 'a mixed bag' to describe what you had in front of you, but you would not be using the expression in the same way I am about to use it now. Although 'a mixed bag' sometimes refers to a plastic bag that has been stirred in a bowl, more often, it is used to describe a situation that has both good parts and bad parts. An afternoon movie theater, for example, would be a mixed bag if your favorite movie were showing, but if you had to eat gravel instead of popcorn. A trip to the zoo would be a very mixed bag if the weather were beautiful, but all the man and woman-eating lions were running around loose.”

Daniel Handler book The Ersatz Elevator

Lemony Snicket
The Ersatz Elevator (2001)

Beauty, Way, Parting, Weather

“Have you yet read Miss Martineau’s and Mr. Atkinson’s new work, Letters on the Nature and Development of Man? If you have not, it would be worth your while to do so. Of the impression this book has made on me, I will not now say much. It is the first exposition of avowed atheism and materialism I have ever read; the first unequivocal declaration of disbelief in the existence of a God or a future life I have ever seen. In judging of such exposition and declaration, one would wish entirely to put aside the sort of instinctive horror they awaken, and to consider them in an impartial spirit and collected mood. This I find difficult to do. The strangest thing is, that we are called on to rejoice over this hopeless blank — to receive this bitter bereavement as great gain — to welcome this unutterable desolation as a state of pleasant freedom. Who could do this if he would? Who would do this if he could? Sincerely, for my own part, do I wish to know and find the Truth; but if this be Truth, well may she guard herself with mysteries, and cover herself with a veil. If this be Truth, man or woman who beholds her can but curse the day he or she was born. I said however, I would not dwell on what I thought; rather, I wish to hear what some other person thinks,--someone whose feelings are unapt to bias his judgment. Read the book, then, in an unprejudiced spirit, and candidly say what you think of it. I mean, of course, if you have time — not otherwise.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë, on Letters on the Nature and Development of Man (1851), by Harriet Martineau. Letter to James Taylor (11 February 1851) The life of Charlotte Brontë

Life, God, Truth, Books

“Fortune have somewhat the nature of a woman; if she be too much wooed, she is the farther off.”

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500–1558) Holy Roman Emperor

Source: As quoted in The Advancement of Learning (1605), Book II, by Francis Bacon

Nature

“Harry Dresden: Susan smiled at me, giving Molly the Female Once-Over--a process by which one woman creates a detailed profile of another woman based upon about a million subtle details of clothing, jewelry, makeup, and body type, and then decides how much of a social threat she might be. Men have a parallel process, but it's binary: Does he have beer? If yes, will he share with me?”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Changes (2010), Chapter 9

Men, Smile, Beer, Clothes

“Woman has suffered for eons, and that has given her infinite patience and infinite perseverance.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Suffering, Patience, Perseverance

“Another response to racism has been the establishment of unlearning racism workshops, which are often led by white women. These workshops are important, yet they tend to focus primarily on cathartic individual psychological personal prejudice without stressing the need for corresponding change in political commitment and action. A woman who attends an unlearning racism workshop and learns to acknowledge that she is racist is no less a threat than one who does not. Acknowledgment of racism is significant when it leads to transformation.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

(1984)

Women, Learning, Change, Personality

“The brave deserve the lovely—every woman may be won.”

Charles Godfrey Leland (1824–1903) Union Army soldier

The Masher.

Love

“That's why my generation thinks we need a constitutional amendment to protect the sanctity of marriage that guarantees that, in America, the only marriage to be recognized is the marriage between a man and a woman! In the house of God! There are so many things in America that have changed. That should never change. And you listen to me: If it does, you can kiss this country goodbye.”

John Hagee (1940) American pastor, theologian and saxophonist

Hagee: Gay Marriage = 'Kiss This Country Goodbye'
Right Wing Watch
People for the American Way
2008-05-20
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/hagee-gay-marriage-kiss-country-goodbye
2011-08-06

God, Marriage, Kiss, Thinking

“It is also possible for a woman to go back to a man’s room, tell him she doesn’t want to have intercourse, mean it, start kissing, have intercourse, and then wish she hadn’t in the morning. How? Kissing is like eating potato chips. Before we know it, we’ve gone further than we said we would.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 311.

Kiss

“On the September 26, 2008 broadcast of CNN's "Situation Room", while sitting next to Wolf Blitzer, Cafferty directly highlighted Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's abysmal interview performance with Katie Couric earlier in the week. Cafferty stated, prior to playing a particularly embarrassing segment of the interview in which Palin stumbles across a murky, confused, ambiguous answer to Couric's query regarding the pending economic bailout package, "There's a reason the McCain campaign keeps Sarah Palin away from the press." After the clip's conclusion, he then went on to say, "…Did you get that? If John McCain wins, this woman will be one 72 year-old's heartbeat away from being president of the United States, and if that doesn't scare the Hell out of you, it should…I'm 65 and have been covering politics as you have [addressing Blitzer] for a long time, and that is one of the most pathetic pieces of tape I have ever seen for someone aspiring to one of the highest offices in this country. That's all I have to say." Blitzer responded in a light-hearted, seemingly forced defense of Palin, stating, "Yeah, but she's cramming a lot of information…" Cafferty interrupted, "There's no excuse for that. She's supposed to know a little bit of this, you know. Don't make excuses for her - that's pathetic."”

Jack Cafferty (1942) American journalist

Blitzer replied, "It was not her best answer. I agree with you on that," and the segment came to a close.
[CNN, Jack Cafferty on Sarah Palin, 26 September 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8__aXxXPVc]
2008

Hell, Light, Wolf, Time

“The result sends a clear message to the powers at Westminster that people have become completely disenfranchised with their politics, and that the politicians have become completely detached from the issues which really concern the working man and woman. I have always believed that Britain is big enough and strong enough to stand on its own two feet, and to truly thrive when freed from the shackles of EU bureaucracy. Now we have the opportunity to prove it.”

Jill Seymour (1958) British politician

Today we celebrate our Independence Day http://jillseymourukip.org/today-we-celebrate-our-independence-day/ (June 24, 2016)

People, Strong

“And if a woman
She used a life line
As something more than
Some man's servant mother wife time
Well I wonder what would happen to this world.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

I Wonder What Would Happen to this World
Song lyrics, Living Room Suite (1978)
Variant: Oh, if a man tried
To take his time on earth
And prove before he died
What one man's life could be worth,
I wonder what would happen to this world.

Life, World, Time

“Mightier far
Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway
Of magic potent over sun and star,
Is Love, though oft to agony distrest,
And though his favorite seat be feeble woman's breast.”

William Wordsworth Laodamia

Stanza 14.
Laodamia (1814)

Love, Star, Sun

“Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move-and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman book The Yellow Wall Paper

The Yellow Wallpaper (1891)

Change, Night

“Men will not change as long as women ‘marry up.’ Men won't change until we have a perspective on how powerless power makes us. A woman cannot help a man change until she has a perspective on how powerless power makes men.”

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

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 314.

Women, Men, Change, Help

“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.

Love, Life, Women, God

“The young woman had turned toward him and thrust her pink gloves up in the air in a gesture that, from a man, meant “Touchdown!” and, from a woman, “I will hug you now!””

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Thanksgiving (prologue)
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

“And there is another feeling, one which he shares with most of humankind. He knows he's screwed up his life, or something has twisted it. Every thinking man and woman knows this. Even the smug and dimwitted realize this unconsciously. But a baby, that beautiful being, that unsmirched blank tablet, unformed angel], represents a new [[hope. Perhaps it won't screw up. Perhaps it'll grow up to be a healthy confident reasonable good-humored unselfish loving man or woman. 'It won't be like me or my next-door neighbor,' the proud, but apprehensive, parent swears.”

Philip José Farmer book Riders of the Purple Wage

Of Chib
Riders of the Purple Wage (1967)

Love, Life, Beauty, Hope

“Love is free: to promise for ever to love the same woman, is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed: such a vow in both cases, excludes us from all enquiry.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Queen Mab

Notes
Queen Mab (1813)

Love

“We have a saying, we travelers: ‘For a man’s business, go to your troupe leader; for a woman’s business, go to Women’s Country. For a fool’s business, go to the warriors.”

Sheri S. Tepper book The Gate to Women's Country

Source: The Gate to Women's Country (1988), Chapter 16 (p. 173)

Women, Fools, Travel, Business

“Her rival—hers—language has not a word
By woman's ear so utterly abhorr'd.
No marvel, for it robs her only part
Of sweet dominion—empire o'er the heart.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Title poem, section IV.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Heart, Parting

“She was an extremely attractive woman if you like the type, which could best be described as homicidal schizophrenic paranoiac with kittenish overtones.”

Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) American writer

Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 5 (p. 45)

“(Woman on television) Frank, Frank, make me feel like a woman. (Man on television) Could you pick up my laundry?”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p.173

Feeling

“It may seem fanciful, but to me the violet is the very emblem of woman's love; it springs up in secret; it hides its perfume even when gathered; how timidly its deep blue leaves bend on their slight stem! The resemblance may be carried yet further — woman's love is but beautiful in its purity; let the hot breath of passion once sully it, and its beauty is departed — thus as the summer advances, the violet loses its fragrance; June comes, but its odours are fled — the heart too has its June; the flower may remain, but its fragrance is gone for ever.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Other Gift Books

Love, Secret, Beauty, Spring

“But, oh! what mighty magician can assuage
A woman's envy?”

George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne (1666–1735) 1st Baron Lansdowne

Progress of Beauty; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), "Envy", p. 226-27.

Envy

“I now have an abundance of models. Every woman I address on the street understands me pretty well. I never experienced anything like that, otherwise they always called me names. It is horrible that I don't have anyone [in Amsterdam] like you, because the only good I have heard about my works came from you. So visit me often.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Ik heb tegenwoordig een zee van modellen. Iedere vrouw die ik op straat aanspreek, vat het nogal goed op. Ik heb nog nooit zoo iets bijgewoond, anders schelden ze me altijd uit ‘t is toch naar dat ik niemand heb, eigenlijk zooals jij, want het enige goed dat ik gehoord heb, over mijn werken is van jou geweest. Kom dus maar dikwijls over. quote of Breitner in a letter to his friend Herman van der Weele, Amsterdam, 14 June 1893, original text in RKD-Archive, The Hague https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/54 1890 - 1900

Understanding

“I managed to become a member of a government cabinet, of the first Bolshevik cabinet in the years 1917/18. I am also the first woman ever to have been appointed ambassadress, a post which I occupied for three years and from which I resigned of my own free will. This may serve to prove that woman certainly can stand above the conventional conditions of the age. The World War, the stormy, revolutionary spirit now prevalent in the world in all areas has greatly contributed to blunting the edge of the unhealthy, overheated double standard of morality. We are already accustomed not to make overly taxing demands, for example, on actresses and women belonging to the free professions in matters relating to their married life. Diplomacy, however, is a caste which more than any other maintains its old customs, usages, traditions, and, above all, its strict ceremonial. The fact that a woman, a "free," a single woman was recognized in this position without opposition shows that the time has come when all human beings will be equally appraised according to their activity and their general human dignity.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Life, Women, War, Age

“To be sure he's a "Man," the male must see to it that the female be clearly a "Woman," the opposite of a "Man," that is, the female must act like a faggot. And Daddy's Girl, all of whose female instincts were tromped out of her when little, easily and obligingly adapts herself to the role.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 8.

Girl

“The woman takes one for all, and the man all for one.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

“I just think it's double standards the whole time. On the one hand people say, 'Oh, women have equal rights now, women can be as powerful as men and do the same jobs as men', but we're still not allowed to talk about sex, 'cos that's unladylike. It's like that old thing, if a man has slept with loads and loads of women, he's a stud. But if a woman has slept with loads of boys, she's a slag. Well, why? Why? What makes a man a stud 'cos he's pulled loads of women? And what makes me a slag 'cos I've slept with more than 10 men? It's ridiculous!”

Jodie Marsh (1978) English glamour model and television personality

Interview in The Guardian, 25 January 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jan/25/broadcasting.bigbrother

Women, Men, People, Sex

“Given the way these mutants treat women in their societies, the women are probably better off in U. S. custody. They treat women like furniture in those countries. If I was a woman, I think I’d rather be in an American jail cell than I would be living with one of those-whatever they are over there.”

Jack Cafferty (1942) American journalist

On the subject of terrorist demands for the release of two female scientists from an Iraqi prison, September 23, 2004.
[American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Jack Cafferty In His Own Words, 18 November 2004, http://www.adc.org/index.php?id=2386]
2004

Women, Way, Thinking, Country

“We have entered 'The Era of the Three-Option Woman and the No-Option Man.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power, p. 52.

“Whenever I say something, I say it right at the moment I'm thinking it. As soon as I saw Magic Johnson's press conference, I said, "Hey, this is bullshit. Why are you idolizing a guy who runs around and is a tremendous womanizer? He's running around having unprotected sex in a day and age when he should know better. I don't think you should treat him as a hero.”

Howard Stern (1954) American radio personality

Playboy interview, Playboy magazine (April 1994).

Age, Sex, Guy, Thinking

“I tell you they are," rejoined Elder Rigdon, "and no man or woman shall put up a prayer in this place to-day.”

Lucy Mack Smith (1775–1856) American religious leader

The History of Joseph Smith by His Mother (1853), "Rigdon's Depression"

“It’s easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (January 2, 1894)
Letters

Cooking

“So don't tell me the story of your life
I'd rather watch the movie
Your Hollywood smile is not enough
You're giving me the blues
So when are you going to understand
I'm not the woman to make you a man”

Anni-Frid Lyngstad (1945) Swedish female singer

That's Tough (Non-album single credited to Lyngstad, Hans Fredriksson, and Kirsty MacColl), from Shine (1984)
Lyrics, Shine (1984)

Life, Smile, Understanding

“One of feminism’s irritating reflexes is its fashionable disdain for “patriarchal society,” to which nothing good is ever attributed. But it is patriarchal society that has freed me as a woman. It is capitalism that has given me the leisure to sit at this desk writing this book. Let us stop being small-minded about men and freely acknowledge what treasures their obsessiveness has poured into culture.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 37

Men, Books, Fashion

“Woman's sexuality is disruptive of the dully mechanical workaday world, in which efficiency means uniformity. The problems of woman's entrance into the career system spring from more than male chauvinism. She brings nature into the social realm, which may be too small to contain it.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 52

World, Spring, Nature, Problem

“You are the man newly arriving
at history’s worm-ravaged door,
the woman whose shadows are salves
upon the bleeding breasts of the earth,
the infant whose heartbeat
floods every harp in Paradise.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(Self Knowledge in the New Millennium, p. 57).
Book Sources, I Made My Boy Out of Poetry (1998)

History

“It’s a women’s issue, but a lot of the women wouldn’t be having abortions if the men would step up and be a part of what they are already biologically a part of. Raising children and having children, even though the women birthed the child, is designed for two people to do it. And there is so much undue stress and pressure on the woman if the other one isn’t there. So, really one thing we do is say it’s a woman’s issue, forcing the woman to have to deal with it on her own, so that way men don’t have to. As a man, I am going to passive-aggressively tell you you are in control, when really I am just telling you that because it makes my life easier, cause that way I don’t have to step up and make a decision. I obviously think that a man has just as much invested in that child as the woman does. He need to be there to support her through the physical changes of the pregnancy, and help and provide emotional strength, and do it together. As much as he has a role in making the baby in the first place, it needs to take both of them the whole way through. Any idea that a man doesn’t have a role in it is not true, and is simply more about politics and making a man’s life easier.”

Benjamin Watson (1980) gridiron football player

Benjamin Watson Interview, Part Two http://turningpointfriends.org/benjamin-watson-interview-part-two/

Life, Women, Men, Children

“The irony of primary parent laws is that on the one hand feminists were arguing for women’s equal rights to jointly-created career assets that emanated from the male financial womb, but arguing against men’s equal rights to jointly-created children that emanated from the woman’s child-bearing womb.”

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

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 167.

Women, Men, Children, Law

“""We work in order to be at leisure."" […] Doesn't this statement appear almost immoral to the man or woman of the world of ""total work""? Is it not an attack on the basic principles of human society?
Now I have not merely constructed a sentence to prove a point. The statement was actually made — by Aristotle [Nichomachean Ethics X, 7 (1177b4–6)]. Yes, Aristotle: the sober, industrious realist, and the fact that he said it, gives the statement special significance. What he says in a more literal translation would be: ""We are not-at-leisure in order to be-at-leisure."" For the Greeks, ""not-leisure"" was the word for the world of everyday work; and not only to indicate its ""hustle and bustle,"" but the work itself. The Greek language had only this negative term for it (ά-σχολία), as did Latin (neg-otium).
The context not only of this sentence but also of another one from Aristotle's Politics (stating that the ""pivot"" around which everything turns is leisure [Politics VII, 3 (1337b33)]) shows that these notions were not considered extraordinary, but only self-evident. […] Could this also imply that people in our day no longer have direct access to the original meaning of leisure?”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, pp. 4–5

People, World, Appearance

“My father had a dark glimmer in his eye as he moved behind her. “Old?” He spoke in a low voice as he began to rub her shoulders again. “Woman, I have a mind to prove you wrong.”
She smiled a wry smile. “Sir, I have a mind to let you.””

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 14, “The Name of the Wind” (p. 113)

Smile

“That was the most terrible thing that a woman could to a decent man: look vulnerable and ask him for mercy. If he refused her he'd be denying all his instincts as a provider and protector.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

“God's rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman!”

George Meredith (1828–1909) British novelist and poet of the Victorian era

Source: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4412/4412.txt (1859), Ch. 33.

God

“Would the delicate ladies who devour sanguinary beef-steaks like to see their sons working as slaughtermen? If not, then they have no right to put this task upon some other woman's son. We have no right to impose upon a fellow-citizen work which we ourselves should decline to do. It may be said that we force no one to undertake this abominable means of livelihood; but that is a mere tergiversation, for in eating this horrible food we are making a demand that some one shall brutalize himself, that some one shall degrade himself below the level of humanity.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Vegetarianism and Occultism (1913), p. 27

Food

“After making careful inquiry I can not find a half a dozen cases of a man or woman who has completed a full course of education in any of our reputable institutions like Hampton, Tuskegee, Fiske, or Atlanta, who are imprisoned. The records of the South show that 90 percent of the colored people imprisoned are without knowledge of trades and 61 percent are illiterate. But it has been said that the negro proves economically valueless in proportion as he is educated. Let us see. All will agree that the negro in Virginia, for example, began life forty years ago in complete poverty, scarcely owning clothing or a day's food. The reports of the State auditor show the negro today owns at least one twenty-sixth of the real estate in that Commonwealth exclusive of his holdings in towns and cities, and that in the counties east of the Blue Ridge Mountains he owns one-sixteenth. In Middlesex County he owns one-sixth: in Hanover, one-fourth. In Georgia the official records show that, largely through the influence of educated men and women from Atlanta schools and others, the negroes added last year $1,526,000 to their taxable property, making the total amount upon which they pay taxes in that State alone $16,700,000. Few people realize under the most difficult and trying circumstances, during the last forty years, it has been the educated negro who counseled patience, self-control, and thus averted a war of races. Every negro going out of our institutions properly educated becomes a link in the chain that shall forever bind the two races together in all essentials of life.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

Speech in New York (12 February 1904), as quoted in speech by Edward de Veaux Morrell in the House of Representatives https://cdn.loc.gov/service/rbc/lcrbmrp/t2609/t2609.pdf (4 April 1904) 1900s

Life, Women, Men, War

“He who has found a good wife has found great happiness, but a quarrelsome woman is like a roof that lets in the rain.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

Happiness

“[This is] the basis of the Innocent Woman Defense —the Innocent Woman Principle : Women are believed when they say they are innocent of violence and most easily doubted when they say they are guilty of violence.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 255.

Women

“A significant gender pay gap still persists. That's why we cannot be passive as we acknowledge Equal Pay Day, which marks the day when a woman's earnings catch up to what her male peers earned in the previous year. To millennials, it's startling to see that women still earn just 77 cents to the dollar of what men earn.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

CNN, (April 17, 2012).
Articles

Women, Men

“While nearly all of us use the Internet to fact check, learn about topics and read the news, some of us contribute more than others to the knowledge pool. Adrianne Wadewitz was one such woman.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Brandt, Shane (April 22, 2014). "Wikipedia editor dies, leaving behind appreciative students" http://thedailycougar.com/2014/04/22/wikipedia-editor-dies-leaving-behind-appreciative-students/. The Daily Cougar (Houston, Texas: thedailycougar.com; University of Houston). About

Knowledge, Learning, Reading

“It is impossible to overstate the significance of this. This is the last citadel for women in our Army. The bias towards officers with an arms corps affiliation in choosing senior leaders has some justification. Close combat is the core business of the Army. But women are already ‘in combat’ due to the changing character of war. Formal recognition of this removes the last defence of those who are resistant to the widest employment of women in the Army, and by extension their promotion to the most senior ranks. It is quite conceivable now that a woman will serve as the Chief of the Army in light of this decision.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

Women, War, Business, Decision

“It’s not a weapon or a woman can make a man, or magery either, or any power, anything but himself.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, Tehanu (1990), Chapter 12, "Winter"

“Being fresh out of college, I found myself in the typically feminine dilemma of carving out for myself in a male world a way of life appropriate to a young woman of taste, cultivation and sensitivity. There must be nothing crass—like work. However, a girl must survive. So, after a cool appraisal of the social scene, I finally hit upon an excellent-paying occupation, challenging to the ingenuity, dealing on one's own terms with people and affording independence, flexible hours, great stability and, most important, a large amount of leisure time, an occupation highly appropriate to female sensibilities. I contemplate my good fortune as I begin work for the day: "Pardon me, Sir, do you have fifteen cents?"”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

"A Young Girl's Primer" (1966)

Life, People, World, Way

“A man's rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://books.google.ca/books?id=zFclDyk2LTEC&pg=PA57#v=onepage&q&f=false (15 November 1867). 1860s

Sex, Color, Box

“The two divinest things this world has got,
A lovely woman in a rural spot!”

Leigh Hunt (1784–1859) English critic, essayist, poet and writer

Poem The Story of Rimini, iii, 257

Love, World

“I went shopping with Danielle yesterday, and we were in a bookstore. And this woman actually said, "Look, Russell Crowe reads— who'd have known?"”

Russell Crowe (1964) New Zealand-born Australian actor, film producer and musician

GQ Interview (2005)

Reading

“…she kept her arm raised and thus allowed me to observe her armpit, and when a naked woman allows you to do that, uncovering one or both, it's as if she were offering up to you an additional nakedness.”

Javier Marías book Tu rostro mañana

...al mantener el brazo en alto me permitió contemplar su axila, y cuando una mujer desnuda permite ver eso, y descubre una o ambas, es como si ofreciera un suplemento de desnudez con ello.
Source: Tu rostro mañana, 1. Fiebre y lanza [Your Face Tomorrow, Vol. 1: Fever and Spear] (2002), p. 269

“The man that lays his hand upon a woman,
Save in the way of kindness, is a wretch
Whom't were gross flattery to name a coward.”

John Tobin The Honey Moon

The Honeymoon (1805), Act ii. Sc. 1.

Way

“Arriving in Berlin, I found myself in my element, and began to breathe freely. Jerusalem and Lessing had given us letters of introduction to the greatest men in Berlin; but they knew us already, Leisewitz as author of "Julius Von Tarent," and myself as author of my Dissertation. We had daily the choice of the first society; covers were laid for us in the first families daily, for dinner as well as supper. Von Zetlitz sent a general invitation that covers were laid for us every day during our stay in Berlin. Most of the time we could spare was divided between physicians and philosophers, of which the latter had the greater share. Spalding, Mendelsohn, Eberhard, Engel, Nicolai, Reichard, and Madame Bamberger, daughter of Doctor Sack, Bishop of Berlin, honoured us with their most sincere friendship. The latter, a highly gifted and accomplished lady, possessed the rare art of spreading over the most abstract hypothesis and theorem the brightest and most charming light; Jerusalem, the father of the ill-fated Werther (see the "Sorrows of Werther," by Goethe), used to send her his works to correct, and she alone was able to console and comfort him, when he was informed of the death of his beloved son. This amiable lady assumes in common life the character of a plain woman, and when at court, as friend of the Queen and the Princess Amalie, she won all hearts by her truly noble man ners and unconstrained courtesy: at court beloved, she was admired, nay, adored in the philosophical clubs. But do not think that here alone we spent all our time; Madame Bamberger knew how to blend study with amusement; she issued frequently cards of invitation to select parties, for suppers and balls, and her house was the point of union of all that was learned, beautiful, and amiable. Thus Berlin became my Paradise. I had the most tempting offers from the Minister of State to stay here; but the illness of my father obliged me, after a stay of three months, to return home. I visited Lessing on my journey back; stayed two days, which were the most interesting of all days I ever remember.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Life, Death, Men, Friendship

“If, as I have said, the things already listed were all we had had to contribute, America would have made no distinctive and unique gift to mankind. But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

James Truslow Adams (1878–1949) American writer and historian

Adams first coined the phrase http://memory.loc.gov/learn/lessons/97/dream/thedream.html "the American dream" in The Epic of America (2nd ed., Greenwood Press, 1931), p. 404

Life, Dreams, Cars, Birth

Quotes about woman page 16

Quotes about woman
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