Quotes about woman (4135 quotes, page 23)

“"She's like a woman, sir, take care of her and she'll take care of you." "You'll notice he let Mister Sharpe do the ramming, sir."”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Rifleman Hagman and Sergeant Patrick Harper, p. 188
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Havoc (2003)

“When a young woman's cheeks redden for no apparent reason, there is usually a man involved.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Sorilea to Egwene al'Vere
(15 October 1994)

“Look at a woman's Wikipedia page and you can't believe a word of it.”

Cathy Newman (1974) journalist

Cited in " Cathy Newman: 'The internet is being written by men with an agenda' https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/mar/19/cathy-newman-the-internet-is-being-written-by-men-with-an-agenda", 25 March 2018.

“Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Women & men

Sex

“A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments, her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly. She is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight. She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be thankful.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

The Education of Women (1719)

Love , Peace , Angels , Way

“No man can bear to live with a woman who speaks nothing but the truth to him.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

Truth

“This bored fantastic woman, with her animal nature, giving herself the pleasure of seeing her enemy struck down, not a particularly keen one for her because she is so weary of having all her desires satisfied. This woman, walking nonchalantly in a vegetal, bestial manner, through the gardens that have just been stained by a horrible murder, which has frightened the executioner himself and made him flee distracted…. When I want to render these fine nuances, I do not find them in the subject, but in the nature of women in real life who seek unhealthy emotions and are too stupid even to understand the horror in the most appalling situations.”

Gustave Moreau (1826–1898) French painter

On Salomé, p. 113
Gustave Moreau (1972)

Life , Women , Pleasure , Stupidity

“(Man at bar) You know the kind of woman I could really go for?... Someone intelligent, witty, passionate about her work, totally involved in life, and willing to give it all up for me.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, pp. 216-217

Life , Intelligence , Passion

“Judge and prosecutor had hammered it home that Lady Chatterly was an immoral woman, that she had had sexual relations before marriage, that she had committed adultery under her husband's roof; as if these charges somehow disqualified her from participation in serious literature. Indeed, there were long periods of the trial during which an outsider might well have assumed that a divorce case was being heard.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

"Lady Chatterly's Trial (The Old Bailey, 20 October - 2 November 1960)", p. 409
Tynan Right and Left (1967)

Marriage , Home , Literature

“On April 3, 1956, according to news reports, a Mrs. Julia Chase of Hagerstown, Maryland, while on a tour of the White House, slipped away from her tour group and vanished into the heart of the building. For four and a half hours, Mrs. Chase, who was described later as “dishevelled, vague and not quite lucid,” wandered through the White House, setting small fires—five in all. That’s how tight security was in those days: a not-quite-lucid woman was able to roam unnoticed through the executive mansion for more than half a working day.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 62

Heart , Housing

“Gradually I got tuned into the world — that happens on every movie. I did a women's movie, and I'm not a woman. I did a gay movie, and I'm not gay. I learned as I went along.”

Ang Lee (1954) Taiwanese-born American film director, screenwriter and film producer

On developing a sensitivity for authentic details in the making of movies, Salon (17 October 1997).

Women , World , Learning

“To promote a woman to beare rule, superioritie, dominion or empire above any realme, nation, or citie, is repugnant to nature, contumelie to God, a thing most contrarious to his reveled will and approved ordinance, and finalie it is the subversion of good order, of all equitie and justice.”

John Knox (1514–1572) Scottish clergyman, writer and historian

The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous regiment of women 1558 reprint New York: Da Capo Press, 1972, p.9 as quoted in "Gender Difference and Tudor Monarchy: The Significance of Queen Mary I" https://muse.jhu.edu/article/474844/pdf, Judith Richards

God , Justice , Nature

“I will not admit that a woman can draw like that.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Je n'admets pas qu'une femme puisse dessiner comme ca.
Quoted in Forbes Watson, Mary Cassatt (1932)
this quote is referring to some etchings by Cassatt, which Degas admired
quotes, undated

Drawing

“When a woman get pregnant, it's an issue between her and her girlfriends. When a woman get pregnant, her and her girlfriends form an abortion tribunal, and they vote on the child like it was Survivor. Then the first girlfriend throws in her two cents: "Child, you should have that baby, that man got some good hair, it's wavy, it's wavy." Then second girlfriend throws in her two cents: "Girl, why are we even talking about this? Ain't we supposed to go to Cancun next weekend? Get rid of that baby." And that's how life is decided in America.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Never Scared (HBO, 2004)

Life , Girl , Baby

“(Man at dinner table) Bet you don't know what a male swan is called. (Woman at dinner table) Sure I do. A swine.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 71

Swine

“When Sartre and I met not only did our backgrounds fuse, but also our solidity, our individual conviction that we were what we were made to be. In that framework we could not become rivals. Then, as the relationship between Sartre and me grew, I became convinced that I was irreplaceable in his life, and he in mine. In other words, we were totally secure in the knowledge that our relationship was also totally solid, again preordained, though, of course, we would have laughed at that word then. When you have such security it's easy not to be jealous. But had I thought that another woman played the same role as I did in Sartre's life, of course, I would have been jealous.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Interview by John Gerassi in Society (January-February 1976) http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/1976/interview.htm
General sources

Life , Knowledge

“We speak of concrete and not abstract painting because nothing is more concrete, more real then a line, a colour, a surface. A woman, a tree, a cow; are these concrete elements in a painting? No. A woman, a tree and a cow are concrete only in nature; in painting they are abstract, illusionistic, vague and speculative. However, a plane is a plane, a line is a line and no more or no less than that. 'Concrete paintin.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Spirit has arrived at the age of maturity...
Quote in 'Comments on the basic of concrete painting', Paris, January 1930, in 'Art Concret', April 1930, pp. 2–4
1926 – 1931

Age , Nature , Tree , Painting

“I think it was my grandmother who gave me my ease in being a woman. She was unquestionably feminine — small and dainty and pretty and wholly without masculine protest or feminist aggrievement. She had gone to college when this was a very unusual thing for a girl to do, she had a very firm grasp of anything she paid attention to, she had married and had a child, and she a career of her own. All this was true of my mother as well. But my mother was filled with passionate resentment about the condition of women, as perhaps my grandmother might have been had my grandfather lived and had she borne five children and had little opportunity to use her special gifts and training. As it was, the two women I knew best were mothers and had professional training. So I had no reason to doubt that brains were suitable for a woman. And as I had my father's kind of mind — which was also his mother's — I learned that the mind is not sex-typed.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1970s, Blackberry Winter, 1972, p. 54-55

Women , Children , Sex , Girl

“The “magnificent Psalm of Praise to the Creator with which Genesis opens” is filled with magnificent mistakes, and is utterly absurd. “The beautiful legend of the first sin and its fateful consequences” is probably the most contemptible story that was ever written, and the treatment of the first pair by Jehovah is unparalleled in the cruelty of despotic governments. According to this infamous account, God cursed the mothers of the world, and added to the agonies of maternity. Not only so, but he made woman a slave, and man something, if possible, meaner—a master.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Answer to Lyman Abbott (unfinished), responding to Abbott, Lyman. "Flaws in Ingersollism." The North American Review 150, no. 401 (1890): 446-457.

God , Fate , World , Beauty

“It is an interesting law of romance that a truly strong woman will choose a strong man who disagrees with her over a weak one who goes along. Strength demands intelligence, intelligence demands stimulation, and weakness is boring. It is better to find a partner you can contend with for a lifetime than one who accommodates you because he doesn't really care. … Sixty seconds of wondering if someone is about to kiss you is more entertaining than 60 minutes of kissing. … Spill the beans, and the conversation is history. Speak in code, with wit and challenge, and the process of decryption is like foreplay.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-winslow-boy-1999 of The Winslow Boy (28 May 1999)
Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

Law , History , Intelligence , Kiss

“I was at god's order
To looking for you in every woman's eye.”

Antoni Lange (1862–1929) Polish writer and philosopher

Vita Nova

God

“The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

On Joe DiMaggio's marriage to Marilyn Monroe, in Marilyn (1973)

Men , World , Beauty , Heart

“A woman should be good for everything at home, but abroad good for nothing.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Meleager, Frag. 525

Home

“There are two moments in the life of any fag that you can never forget: your first kiss with another man and your first argument with a heterosexual friend that doesn't get the difference between being a homosexual and wanting to be a woman. On first sight I can't calibrate which will be repeated more times during our sexually emancipated lifetime. Lucky enough, I can tell which we all prefer to be repeated: the argument with the heterosexual friend… if it ends in a long, wet, passionate kiss.”

Miss Shangay Lily (1963–2016) Spanish artivist and drag queen

Miss Shangay Lily, Mari, ¿me pasas el poppers?

Life , Kiss , Passion , Time

“An attractive woman likes feminine company until she's twenty, and after she's twenty-five.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Women & men

“There's good reason to be excited. You have the first woman running who is qualified, and a very attractive African-American who has demonstrated crossover appeal. I got involved in politics 40 years ago during the civil rights movement, so yes, it's an exciting thing.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Biden officially running for president, MSNBC.com, January 31, 2007, 2007-02-01 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16901147/,
The average voter out there understands that the next president is going to have to be prepared to immediately step in without hesitation and end our involvement in Iraq. It's very difficult to figure out how to move on to broader foreign policy concerns without fixing Iraq first.

“From the fact that many libertarians believe that the state has no legitimacy, they arrive at the position that anything the state does is illegitimate. This is a logical confusion. Consider the murderer who happens on a scene of a rape while fleeing the law, saves the woman, and pounds the rapist. Is this good deed illegitimate because performed by a murderer?”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Libertarian Wrangling,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=320 WorldNetDaily.com, July 31, 2002.
2000s

Law

“And at that point, too, in Buddhist India as in Babylon, in Rome as in our own cities, a man's choice of the woman who is to be, not mother of his children as amongst peasants and primitives, but his own "companion for life", becomes a problem of mentalities. The Ibsen marriage appears, the "higher spiritual affinity" in which both parties are "free"—free, that is, as intelligences, free from the plantlike urge of the blood to continue itself, and it becomes possible for a Shaw to say "that unless Woman repudiates her womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and to everyone but herself, she cannot emancipate herself." The primary woman, the peasant woman, is mother. The whole vocation towards which she has yearned from childhood is included in that one word. But now emerges the Ibsen woman, the comrade, the heroine of a whole megalopolitan literature from Northern drama to Parisian novel. Instead of children, she has soul-conflicts; marriage is a craft-art for the achievement of "mutual understanding"….
At this level all Civilizations enter upon a stage, which lasts for centuries, of appalling depopulation. The whole pyramid of cultural man vanishes. It crumbles from the summit, first the world-cities, then the provincial forms, and finally the land itself, whose best blood has incontinently poured into the towns, merely to bolster them up awhile. At the last, only the primitive blood remains, alive, but robbed of its strongest and most promising elements. This residue is the Fellah type.
If anything has demonstrated the fact that Causality has nothing to do with history, it is the familiar "decline" of the Classical, which accomplished itself long before the irruption of Germanic migrants. The Imperium enjoyed the completest peace; it was rich and highly developed; it was well organized; and it possessed in its emperors from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius a series of rulers such as the Caesarism of no other Civilization can show. And yet the population dwindled, quickly and wholesale. The desperate marriage-and-children laws of Augustus—amongst them the Lex de maritandis ordinibus, which dismayed Roman society more than the destruction of Varus's legions—the wholesale adoptions, the incessant plantation of soldiers of barbarian origin to fill the depleted country-side, the immense food-charities of Nerva and Trajan for the children of poor parents—nothing availed to check the process.”

Oswald Spengler book The Decline of the West

Vol. II, Alfred A. Knopf, 1928, pp. 104–06 https://archive.org/stream/Decline-Of-The-West-Oswald-Spengler/Decline_Of_The_West#page/n573/mode/2up/search/depopulation
The Decline of the West (1918, 1923)

Life , Marriage , Children , World

“Josh Smith: But specifically where you stand when it comes to rape, and should it be legal for a woman to get an abortion if she's —
Paul Ryan: Yeah, well, so I'm very proud of my pro-life record, and I've always adopted the idea — the position that the method of conception doesn't change the definition of life.”

Paul Ryan (1970) American politician

WJHL interview http://video.wjhl.com/v/61772220/exclusive-interview-josh-smith-sits-down-with-vp-candidate-paul-ryan.htm,

Life , Idea , Change

“You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence: and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

Exiles (1915), Act II http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/exiles2.html

Suffering , Forgetting

“Can man be free if woman be a slave?”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Revolt of Islam

Canto II, st. 43
The Revolt of Islam (1817)

“Then sing as Martin Luther sang,
As Doctor Martin Luther sang,
“Who loves not wine, woman and song,
He is a fool his whole life long.””

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

A Credo, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love , Life , Fools , Wine

“The Oresteia, King Lear, Dostoevsky's The Devils no less than the art of Giotto or the Passions of Bach, inquire into, dramatize, the relations of man and woman to the existence of the gods or of God.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), III: Presences, Ch. 6 (p. 225).

God , Art , Passion

“Because of the nature of the penis, men have performance anxiety, whereas no woman ever has to prove herself in this way. So men's egos are totally involved in performance, in doing, achieving. An erection is a kind of achievement. So is peeing. As I've said, a boy has to learn to aim in order to no longer be infantile. So it's an accomplishment. The male orgasm is short-lived and transient — and that's the irony of men's sexuality. It's ironic that feminism looks at the penis as power and violence when in fact it is very weak.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)

Men , Way , Boy , Nature

“Inside every woman there is a Kali. [Hindu goddess who morphed into seven hidden beings to win a battle] Do not mistake the exterior for the interior.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview with Canadian Press (17 February 2011) http://ca.news.yahoo.com/flashdance-force-beals-top-cop-chicago-code-20110217-102915-894.html.

“Is there any sex-distinction in the Atman (Self)? Out with the differentiation between man and woman—all is Atman! Give up the identification with the body, and stand up!”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

Sex

“Off screen, I was friends with people I was nasty to in pictures. Judy Canova and I were friends. There’s a terrific line in ‘WAC From Walla Walla’ where she’s trying to pick out a shade of lipstick. I walk by and say ‘window shade.’ [Laughs] Judy played the star bit to the hilt! She had an entourage that followed her around. One woman held an umbrella over Judy’s head to keep the sun off her.”

June Vincent (1920–2008) actress

An Interview with June Vincent (1996)

People , Star , Sun

“But no one can eat the flesh of a slaughtered animal without having used the hand of a man as slaughterer. Suppose that we had to kill for ourselves the creatures whose bodies we would fain have upon our table, is there one woman in a hundred who would go to the slaughterhouse to slay the bullock, the calf, the sheep or the pig?”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Humanimal http://books.google.co.in/books?id=KwmMAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA140, p. 140

Animals

“I was at some night once, right. It was some night out and er, some people come running on stage. And some music started coming on. These four people came running out, it was two women, two blokes. It wasn't gay an' that. It was just a normal night -well, y'know, some party night out. These people come running on. You've got two women, you've got two blokes. They whip their knickers off. The fellas whip their undies off. All at the same time, like er, whatsit? Cheryl Baker was in it… Bucks Fizz. So that happened and all I'm saying is, right; before I had a look at the woman's bits, I just had a cheeky glance at the fellas' bits, just checkin' it out, checking everything's normal down there. Believe me, I had a look at the ladies' bits but I didn't know how long that pants were going to left off for.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 1 Episode 2
On Nudity

Women , People , Music , Time

“There are problems connected with infidelity and problems connected with being faithful at any cost, and I am for letting those concerned choose the problems they'd prefer. There need not be one rule for all. Infidelity is enlarging and fragmenting and very very dangerous, but it has been known to retrieve people as well as marriages, so it can't be only bad. And while a lot of women would probably consider it better to have the man they care about rip-off other women if he must but hurry home again, I think I'd rather he be concerned about the survival of the people he sleeps with, even those who are not me. Men who take advantage of one woman take advantage of them all, and if he's going to have an experience in which I can't share, then I'd rather it be a good one, so if there are any benefits to trickle down the spout they'll be the kind I'd want.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Women , Men , Marriage , People

“I have often thought that i am the most clever woman that ever lived, and others cannot compare with me…. Although I have heard much about Queen Victoria…I don't think her life was half so interesting and eventful as mine…. she had… really nothing to say about the policy of the country. Now look at me. I have 400,000,000 people dependent on my judgement.”

Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) Chinese empress

As attributed in The last empress: Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and the birth of modern China, Hannah Pakula, 2009, Simon and Schuster, 391, 1439148937, 2010-06-28 http://books.google.com/books?id=4ZpVntUTZfkC&pg=PA39,
This is redacted from the account of Princess Der Ling, Two Years in the Forbidden City (1911), p. 356 http://books.google.com/books?id=KdUMAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA356

Life , People , Thinking , Dependency

“Yesterday’s woman was expected to have individual interests, caring for the brightness of the hearth fire and the comforts of the family group. Today she has inherited the community and the community’s welfare. Civics, religion and education have become her field of activity. She is homemaker and citizen.”

Aurelia Henry Reinhardt (1877–1948) American educator and social activist

Writing in Mills Quarterly in 1917, as quoted in Unitarian Universalist Women's Heritage Society Archives, 3 July 2018, Aurelia Isabel Henry Reinhardt (1877-1948) http://www.uuwhs.org/womenwest.php,

Education , Family , Religion , Communication

“The next thing you can learn from the woman who was a sinner, something she herself understood, is that with regard to finding forgiveness she is able to do nothing at all. P. 155”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1850s, An Upbuilding Discourse December 20, 1850

Forgiveness , Learning

“My mother, whom I loved very much, had trouble with me. I had very good school certificates. But I tormented her with horribly stinky collections. It was not enough for me at home to have a dog, a cat, a canary, a fish, and even a white mouse, which loved to walk around the apartment, although it lived in a cage. I added the protozoa to this menagerie. Traditional definitions regarded these small organisms – such as, for example, amoebae, flagellates, sponges, algae – as single-celled. What in these asexually reproducing animals or plants could intrigue the little boy so much that he permanently endured this abomination (as the mother would say) home?! After all, neither the request nor the threat of this exceptionally tolerant woman, who carried out her home diligently on a daily basis, did not help. A trip to the ponds, or actually to the stagnant at Bonarka – where today is Mateczny Roundabout – were exciting for the little boy. And even more he enjoyed moments when he could watch for hours what was happening in aquariums, jars or cages.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Bętkowska, Teresa (August–September 2010). "Mistrz niszowej dyscypliny" http://www2.almamater.uj.edu.pl/126/17.pdf (PDF). Alma Mater (in Polish). Kraków: Jagiellonian University (126–127): pp. 41–46.

Love , School , Dogs , Home

“When a woman behaves like a man, why doesn't she behave like a nice man?”

Edith Evans (1888–1976) British actress

Observer (London, Sept. 30, 1956)

“I don't think there will be a woman Prime Minister in my lifetime.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

On Val meets the V.I.P.s, BBC Television (5 March 1973) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=101992
Education Secretary

Thinking

“Some think that He does not call her 'mother' but only 'woman' so as not to inflict a deeper wound of sorrow on her heart. I do not reject this; but another conjecture is no less probable, that Christ wanted to show that now that He has completed the course of human life, He puts off the condition in which He has lived and enters into the heavenly kingdom where He will rule over angels and men. For we know that Christ's custom always was to recall believers from looking at the flesh. This was especially necessary at His death.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Commentary on John 19:26
St John

Life , Death , Men , Angels

“The theatre was full — crammed to its roof: royal and noble were there; palace and hotel had emptied their inmates into those tiers so thronged and so hushed. Deeply did I feel myself privileged in having a place before that stage; I longed to see a being of whose powers I had heard reports which made me conceive peculiar anticipations. I wondered if she would justify her renown: with strange curiosity, with feelings severe and austere, yet of riveted interest, I waited. She was a study of such nature as had not encountered my eyes yet: a great and new planet she was: but in what shape? I waited her rising.She rose at nine that December night: above the horizon I saw her come. She could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might; but that star verged already on its judgment-day. Seen near, it was a chaos — hollow, half-consumed: an orb perished or perishing — half lava, half glow.I had heard this woman termed "plain," and I expected bony harshness and grimness — something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the shadow of a royal Vashti: a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale now like twilight, and wasted like wax in flame.For awhile — a long while — I thought it was only a woman, though an unique woman, who moved in might and grace before this multitude. By-and-by I recognized my mistake. Behold! I found upon her something neither of woman nor of man: in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces bore her through the tragedy, kept up her feeble strength — for she was but a frail creature; and as the action rose and the stir deepened, how wildly they shook her with their passions of the pit! They wrote HELL on her straight, haughty brow. They tuned her voice to the note of torment. They writhed her regal face to a demoniac mask. Hate and Murder and Madness incarnate she stood.It was a marvellous sight: a mighty revelation.It was a spectacle low, horrible, immoral.Swordsmen thrust through, and dying in their blood on the arena sand; bulls goring horses disembowelled, made a meeker vision for the public — a milder condiment for a people's palate — than Vashti torn by seven devils: devils which cried sore and rent the tenement they haunted, but still refused to be exorcised.Suffering had struck that stage empress; and she stood before her audience neither yielding to, nor enduring, nor in finite measure, resenting it: she stood locked in struggle, rigid in resistance. She stood, not dressed, but draped in pale antique folds, long and regular like sculpture. A background and entourage and flooring of deepest crimson threw her out, white like alabaster — like silver: rather, be it said, like Death.”

Charlotte Brontë book Villette

Source: Villette (1853), Ch. XXIII: Vashi

Death , Hate , People , Feeling

“I'm a short woman with a pretty good body and large breasts — that's not what I think of as sexy.”

Adrienne Barbeau (1945) actress from the United States

[ISBN 0786716371, There Are Worse Things I Could Do, Barbeau, Adrienne, 118, 2006, Carroll & Graf]

Thinking

“Mayor Macbeth, of Charleston, told General Howard that he did not believe that a bureau at Washington could manage the social relations of the people from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. But the answer to Mayor Macbeth is that he and his companions have managed those relations at a cost to the country of four years of civil war, three thousand millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of lives. The Freedmen's Bureau will hardly be as expensive as that. And while such a bureau merely defends the rights of a certain class under the laws, the aid societies give them that education which in the present state of local feeling would be inevitably withheld. The mighty arch of Sherman, wasting and taming the land, is followed by the noiseless steps of the band of unnamed heroes and heroines who are teaching the people. The soldier drew the furrow, the teacher drops the seed. There is many and many a devoted woman, hidden at this moment in the lowliest cabins of the South, whose name poets will not sing nor historians record, but whose patient toil the eye that marks the sparrow's fall beholds and approves. Not more noble, not more essential, was the work of the bravest and most famous of the heroes who fell in the wild storm of battle, than that of many a woman to us unknown, faithful through privation and exposure and disease, and perishing at the lonely outpost of duty in the act of helping the nation keep its word.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

War , People , Education , Disease

“Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice. And what a practice. The violation of an individual woman is the metaphor for man's forcing himself on whole nations […], on nonhuman creatures […], and on the planet itself […].”

Robin Morgan (1941) American feminist writer

reflected even in our language—carving up "virgin territory," with strip mining often referred to as a "rape of the land" "Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape" (1974) in Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist.

“We read in Rabelais of how the Devil took flight when the woman showed him her vulva.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

The Medusa’s Head (1922, p. 274).
1920s

Reading

“The three towering geniuses of European culture, Shakespeare, Mozart and Leonardo da Vinci were not allowed to appear on the euro note as they might, in their separate ways, cause offense: Mozart because he was a "womanizer," Shakespeare because he wrote The Merchant of Venice, a play judged to be anti-Semitic, and Leonardo because he was reported to fancy boys. Now the euro note carries a picture of a rather dull bridge.”

John Mortimer (1923–2009) English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author

Source: Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life (2003), Ch. 13 : Causing Offence

Way , Boy , Appearance

“[T]he honour of a woman,— a true woman in China, is not only to love and be true to her husband, but to live absolutely, selflessly for him, In fact, this Religion of Selflessness is the religion of the woman, especially, the gentlewoman or lady in China, as the Religion of Loyalty which I have tried elsewhere to explain, is the religion of the man, — the gentleman in China.”

Gu Hongming book The Spirit of the Chinese People

page 82
The Spirit of the Chinese People (1915), Chinese Woman

Love , Religion , Loyalty

“"Women don't survive here,"
a woman of eighty said.”

Anatoly Kudryavitsky (1954) a Russian/Irish novelist, poet, literary translator and magazine editor

Poems, Shadow of Time (2005)

Women

“A man is entitled to only one great passion in a lifetime. Whether it’s music or a profession or a woman, everything else pales in its afterglow. The searing shock so changes one’s chemistry that if the object is lost, the experience can never be repeated. Only anticlimax remains.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 14 (p. 209)

Music , Passion , Change

“…for other women, it is totally unacceptable in 2017 to say that women should have to answer that question in the workplace. That is unacceptable in 2017. It is the woman's decision about when they choose to have children.”

Jacinda Ardern (1980) Prime Minister of New Zealand

As quoted in "Jacinda Ardern: It is 'totally unacceptable' to ask women about baby plans" by Anna Bracewell-Worrall, Newshub (2 August 2017) http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/election/2017/08/jacinda-ardern-it-is-totally-unacceptable-to-ask-women-about-baby-plans.html
2017

Women , Children , Question , Decision

“Several decisions of this Court make clear that freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.... That right necessarily includes the right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

Potter Stewart (1915–1985) American judge

Concurring, Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 169-170 (1973).

Life , Marriage , Family , Decision

“They say women are more constant than men : it is the constancy of circumstance; the enterprise, the exertion required of men continually force them out of themselves, and that which was at first necessity soon becomes habit — whereas the constant round of employments in which a woman is engaged requires no fatigue of mind or body; the needle is, generally speaking, both her occupation and amusement, and this kind of work leaves the ideas full play; hence the imagination is left at liberty to dwell upon one subject, and hence habit, which is an advantage on the one side, becomes to her an additional rivet.”

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

Other Gift Books

Women , Men , Imagination , Idea

“The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. The negro's skin and the woman's sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Speech before the New York Legislature (1860-02-18).

Sex , Color , Way

“As neither of us is Politically Correct, "man" here means man + woman, and "mankind" means humankind.”

Gilles Dauvé (1947) French writer

"Letter on Animal Liberation" (1999)

“One of the abiding mysteries of my life is the fact that lipstick disappears from my mouth five minutes after I put it on. I’m in awe of women who are always––always––lipstick intact, even during and after meals. I guess I’m a chronic lip-biter, lip-licker and mouth-wiper. But since I found out that the average woman eats nine pounds of lipstick in her lifetime, I can’t bring myself to reapply that often. Whatever chemicals they’ve added to make a lipstick long-wearing, I’d just swallow those too.”

Andrea Lewis (writer) Microsoft employee

“ Fire and Ice,” Cadillac Cicatrix (2009)
2000-09

Life , Women

“Yeah. I just wanna say RIP to Juanita Beauregard; that’s our mother and she just passed February 2nd and I want the world to know about her. She was a good woman.”

Lord Infamous (1975–2013) American rapper

Interview whit Lord Infamous - RIP - March 2009 https://medium.com/@daveyboysmith/interview-with-lord-infamous-rip-march-30th-2009-94dbfc2f0d9b

World

“To begin, I am a citizen of the world. The Earth is my country, and humanity is my nation. This is my motto: What everyone has longed for and will be achieved when all of the people shall also celebrate this prize that every Yemeni, and every Arab, and every human being and every woman has also won beside me.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Nobel Prize winner highlights women’s role in Arab Spring (2011)

People , World , Country

“There was a pretty prince of Troy named Paris. He and a Greek queen ran off together. Her husband called the other kings of Greece together, and they went to Troy, a great army in a thousand beaked ships, to get the woman back. Helen was her name."
"What did they want her back for?"
"Her husband's honor demanded it."
"I should think his honor demanded that he divorce her and find himself a decent wife.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book Lavinia

"Lavinia, these people were Greeks."
(The spirit of Virgil explains the Trojan war to Lavinia.) p. 44
Lavinia (2008)

People , Thinking

“Still not satisfied that a qualified prince had been born to the dynasty, Satyavati prevailed upon her son to try a third time. It was again the turn of the first princess, but she aghast at the prospect of another encounter with Vyasa, sent to him as her substitute, a servant woman. Vyasa and this servant woman both substitutes, conceived Vidura, who became the wise counselor to the Kaurava court, said to be incarnation of the god Dharma.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

In p. 58
Sources, Seer of the Fifth Veda: Kr̥ṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa in the Mahābhārata

God , Time , Princess

“It is true that in thus giving his love to fragile beings man becomes more vulnerable. He who passionately loves a woman, children, or his country gives hostages to fortune. He will be tortured from then on, though he be in good health, put down though he be powerful, forced to ask for mercy though he be courageous and hardened to suffering. Fortune has him in her grasp. He is forced to watch with burning anxiety the sickness of those he love tenderly - a suffering far worse than that caused by any malady of his own, because his physical powers are intact. He wants to help, but feels utterly useless. He would like to surrender himself instead of his precious hostages, and sickness - arrogant and tyrannical - chooses its victims relentlessly. In spite of himself he feels like a coward and a traitor, because he has escaped. This is the cruellest of all human torments.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

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

Love , Children , Health , Feeling

“Because I was stupid, I said, To hell with it, and I joined a drama school. [It was a ridiculously little school, which was first run by a very clever woman, but she soon was replaced by] "a nitwit, who had read a few books on the Actor's Studio and was very much into analysis, instead of teaching us how to walk and talk!"”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Books , Stupidity , School , Hell

“I have frequently had men describe the following scenario to me: "If at the beginning of a relationship, I keep the woman at a distance and don't want to get too close, she feels that I am pushing her away and that I am not making a commitment—that I am afraid to be intimate. When I finally let down my guard and try to be intimate and close, when I really make myself vulnerable and give up control, which is uncomfortable for me, then I feel really inadequate. She blames me for things that she never blamed me for when I kept my distance. When I start to get close, that's when I am accused of saying the wrong thing or trying to control her. So I am better off staying at a distance and letting her complain about a lack of intimacy."Stewart, age thirty-six, described it this way: "Maryann was liberated on the surface, but the undertow was very different. I would find out a couple of evenings after I had been with her that she was very angry and I wouldn't even know that I had done something wrong. She would be angry because she said I wasn't really involved enough. I didn't care enough about her. The irony is that the women in my life whom I've made the greatest effort to get close to are the ones who always wind up saying they are angry because I wasn't getting close. When I made no effort to get close and really kept my distance, I never got any complaints. The moment I felt I was really opening myself up to be intimate, that was when I was found to be failing. That is the double bind for me."Another such truth was experienced by Alex. He said, "If you keep the control, the distance, then the woman is kept insecure; and so long as she is insecure about the relationship, she will be less inclined to attack. If she's interested in you, but you keep her at a distance, she will be careful about attacking you. She won't criticize you because she's afraid of you. The moment you cross the barrier and actually start to get committed, you find that she begins to feel that you are inadequate as a partner. You know then and there that you are never going to be able to satisfy her."I found this to be true sexually. At the times when I personally thought I was the most sensitive and the most involved and caring as a lover, I would find out often that I was a failure. At the times when I allowed myself to be totally selfish, without apology and didn't give one thought to what the woman experienced, I never got any complaints. I was never told I was selfish as a lover. In fact, I was often told that I was wonderful."”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

Why men and women can't talk to each other: the hidden unconscious messages of gender, pp. 39–40
The Inner Male (1987)

Life , Women , Men , Truth

“The landlady had white hair. Around her neck was a high net collar fitting tightly like a corset. She was in her seventies, a tall woman who increased her height by rising on tiptoe and peering at me over her glasses…She smiled with a smile that seemed to hurt her face, cracking it open with old lines that broke up the dry flesh around her mouth and cheeks…She was lonely, and so lost and still proud. One afternoon she took me to her apartment on the top floor. It was like walking into a well-dusted tomb…For two hours she talked of Bert, and Lord! how she loved that man, even in death, but he was not dead at all; he was in that apartment, watching over her, protecting her, daring me to hurt her…The tea was old. The sugar was old and lumpish. The tea cups were dusty, and somehow the tea tasted old and the little dried up cookies tasted of death. When I got up to leave, Bert followed me through the door and down the hall, daring me to think cynically of him.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Love , Death , Smile , Thinking

“The embodiment of the unconscious of a woman as a figure of the opposite sex, the animus, also has positive and negative features. The animus, however, does not express itself so often in women as an erotic fantasy or mood, but rather as "sacred" convictions. When these latter are expressed loudly and energetically in a masculine style, this masculine side of a woman is easily recognizable. However, it can also manifest in a woman who appears very feminine externally as a quiet but relentless power that is hard as iron. Suddenly one comes up against something in her that is cold, stubborn, and completely inaccessible.”

Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) Swiss psychologist and scholar

Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche (1994), The Animus, a Woman's Inner Man

Women , Sex , Mood , Appearance

“No, I'm not a feminist… I think they've become too strident. I think they have done great damage to the cause of women by making us out to be something we are not. Each person is different. Each has their own talents and abilities, and these are the things you want to draw and bring out. You don't say: “I must get on because I'm a woman, or that I must get on because I'm a man”. You should say that you should get on because you have the combination of talents which are right for the job. The moment you exaggerate the question, you defeat your case.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Interview for Hornsey Journal (21 April 1978) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=103662
Leader of the Opposition

Women , Question , Thinking , Drawing

“I will try to explain what I mean by metamorphosis. For me no object can be tied down to any sort of reality. A stone may be part of a wall, a piece of sculpture, a lethal weapon, a pebble on a beach or anything else you like.... when you ask me whether a particular in one of my paintings depicts a woman's head, a fish, a vase, a bird, or all four at once, I can't give you a categorical answer, for this 'metamorphosic' confusion is fundamental to the poetry.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

1946 - 1963, interview with John Richardson' (1957)

Bird , Reality , Fish , Parting

“Nobody can influence me, nobody. Still less a woman. Women are important in a man's life only if they're beautiful and charming and keep their femininity.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Oriana Fallaci (December 30, 1973), The Mystically Divine Shah of Iran (interview), Chicago Tribune
Interviews

Life , Women , Beauty

“By turns the woman and the queen,
And each as the other had never been.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

“Even in the greatest Westerns, the woman is imposed on the action, as a star, and is generally destined to be “had” by the male lead. But she does not exist as a woman. If you cut her out of the film, in a version which you can imagine, the film becomes much better. In the desert, the essential problem was to survive. Women were an obstacle to survival! Usually, the woman not only holds up the story, but she has no real character, no reality. She is a symbol. She is there without having any reason to be there, simply because one must have a woman, and because the hero must prove, in some way or another, that he has "sex-appeal."”

Sergio Leone (1929–1989) Italian film director, screenwriter and producer

Christopher Frayling, Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone (1981), p. 129. Quoted in The Worlding Project: Doing Cultural Studies in the Era of Globalization (2007), ed. R. Wilson, ‎C. L. Connery, Ch. 6: "'But I Did Not Shoot the Deputy': Dubbing the Yankee Frontier" by Louis Chude-Sokei, pp. 158–159, as well as in The A to Z of Westerns in Cinema (2009) by Paul Varner, p. 198, and in The Quick, the Dead and the Revived: The Many Lives of the Western Film (2016) by Joseph Maddrey, p. 104.

Women , Sex , Way , Imagination

“a good woman will pick you apart
a box full of suggestions for your possible heart
and you may be offended. and you may be afraid
but don't walk away, don't walk away”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

landlocked blues
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

Heart , Box

“I think I made essentially a mistake in staying in movies but it’s a mistake I can’t regret because it’s like saying I shouldn't have stayed married to that woman but I did because I love her. I would have been more successful if I hadn't been married to her, you know. I would have been more successful if I'd left movies immediately, stayed in the theatre, gone into politics, written, anything. I've wasted a greater part of my life looking for money and trying to get along, trying to make my work from this terribly expensive paintbox which is a movie. And I've spent too much energy on things that have nothing to do with making a movie. I'ts about two percent movie-making and ninety-eight percent hustling. It's no way to spend a life.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Interview with Leslie Megahey for The Orson Welles Story (1982); transcribed in Mark Estrin's Orson Welles: Interviews. Jackson. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2002, page 209.

Love , Life , Money , Way

““Why don’t you leave?” the woman in the poem asked herself. We need to stop asking that question and begin to understand why she is staying. From understanding comes the ability to reach, to touch and to change. And if we help even just one woman to take that courageous first step out of violence, we have achieved a lot.”

Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark (1972) Crown Princess of Denmark

Conference on domestic violence, http://www.maryfonden.dk/en/washington-world-conference-speech (27 February 2012)

Courage , Understanding , Question , Change

“Many Abolitionists have yet to learn the ABC of woman's rights.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Journal (June 1860)

Learning

“[The Settlement House] must be grounded in a philosophy whose foundation is on the solidarity of the human race, a philosophy which will not waver when the race happens to be represented by a drunken woman or an idiot boy.”

Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker

Source: Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910), Ch. 6

Boy , Housing

“This is very simple in the world of chicks: some are hoochies, some are not, and some should never try to be. It's no different from the idea of sports. Now, I can go on my little rowing machine for four times a week, twenty-two minutes a time, and I can feel as if I flirt with the sporting world. Similar to the idea that a woman can put on something cuter for her man, for those moments, and flirt with garments that a hoochie woman might be pushing. But never for one moment should you get confused. My little rowing machine and I cannot consider ourselves athletes. Wearing the same garment does not a hoochie woman make. So if you are a true hoochie woman, may garments below the navel always be in your future. If you are not, then please don't throw away your cotton zippy jacket.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

From her book Piece by Piece.

World , Feeling , Idea , Sport

“[Stendhal] was small, ugly and obsessed by physical beauty in others, and he spent most of his time in salons and opera houses, pursuing aristocratic hostesses and singers. After the fall of Napoleon, he retired to Italy, adopted his pseudonym and began to write. He was a sexual freebooter who “found a notion of obtaining happiness from a virtuous woman wholly inconceivable.””

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

At 59, unmarried, syphilitic and obscure, he dropped dead in a Paris street.
"Homage to QWERT YUIOP".
Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Beauty , Time , Housing , Dead

“There are battered husbands. Apparently this happens when the woman is real big, the man is very small, and they each drink a quart of whiskey a day.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Playing With Your Head (1986)

Drink

“Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon — rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything — any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

" The Atlanta Declaration http://www.lneilsmith.org/AtlantaDeclaration.swf," http://www.lneilsmith.org/atlanta.html presented at WeaponsCon I, Atlanta, Georgia, September 1987.

Time

“Miss Follett was not a “business woman,” in the sense of having actually managed any sort of business. But her lucid and illuminating ideas about organization were of priceless interest and value to the many industrial leaders and students of human relations problems, organization and politics with whom she came in contact. Her conceptions were in advance of her time. They are still in advance of current thinking. But they are a gold-mine of suggestion for anyone who is interested in the problems of establishing and maintaining human co-operation in the conduct of an enterprise. They have the added advantage of being presented with remarkable simplicity and clarity.”

Henry C. Metcalf (1867–1942) American business theorist

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xi

Idea , Business , Problem , Thinking

“A woman simply is, but a man must become. Masculinity is risky and elusive. It is achieved by a revolt from woman, and is confirmed only by other men. Feminist fantasies about the ideal “sensitive” male have failed. Manhood coerced into sensitivity is no manhood at all.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), p. 82

Men

“And here at length is somewhat of revenge:
For man's most golden dreams of pride and power
Are vain as any woman-dreams of love;
Both end in weary brow and wither'd heart,
And the grave closes over those whose hopes
Have lain there long before.”

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

Love’s Last Lesson
The Golden Violet (1827)

Love , Dreams , Hope , Revenge

“The difference between a good golf shot and a bad one is the same difference between a beautiful and a plain woman — a matter of millimetres.”

Ian Fleming book Goldfinger

Source: Goldfinger (1959), Ch. 8 : All To Play For

Beauty

“A woman you've endured such a gnawing of desire for, you can't help bearing a little grudge against, when the ache is gone.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Help

“Karna inclined his beautiful head and listened. She told him of a young woman who had been granted a boon. A secret mantra that she could use to choose a lover from among the gods. Of how, with the imprudence of youth, the woman decided to test it to see if it really worked. How she stood alone in an empty field, turned her face to the heavens and recited the mantra. The words had scarcely left her foolish lips, when Surya, the God of Day, appeared before her. The young woman, bewitched by the beauty of the shimmering young god, gave herself to him. Nine months later she bore him a son. The baby was born sheathed in light, with gold earrings in his ears and a gold breastplate on his chest, engraved with the emblem of the sun. The young mother loved her first-born son deeply, but she was unmarried and couldn't keep him. She put him in a reed basket and cast him away in a river. The child was found downriver by Adhiratha, a charioteer. And named Karna.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Kunti in p. 232.
The God of Small Things

Love , God , Secret , Youth

“No one but a woman in love ever sees the maximum of men's greatness.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

June 18, 1934
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Love , Men

““Therefore, as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.”— Eph. V. Even the Savior did not put man and woman upon an equality. A man could divorce his wife, but the wife could not divorce her husband. Every noble woman should hold such apostles and such ideas in contempt. According to the Old Testament, woman had to ask pardon and had to be purified from the crime of having born sons and daughters. To make love and maternity crimes is infamous.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

Love , Making love , Idea , Christ

“The world was sad, the garden was a wild,
And man the hermit sigh'd — till woman smiled.”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

Part II, line 37
Pleasures of Hope (1799)

World , Sadness , Smile

“The right to vote, or equal civil rights, may be good demands, but true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in courts. It begins in woman's soul.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

p. 219 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2162/2162-h/2162-h.htm#emancipation
The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation (1906)

Soul

“(Man in suit to Indian woman) Oh guru, ancient mother of the world, we men have been crippled. We have never learned how to feel; we don't even know how to cry. Oh my wise guru, can you teach me to cry? (Guru) Sure. No problem. Tomorrow I'll start you at a dead-end job, pay you at women's wages and then I'll throw in sole support of a pre-school child.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, pp. 198-199

Women , Men , World , School

“Oh! never should a woman's words be more
Than sighs which have found utterance.”

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

(5th June 1825) Portraits I
The London Literary Gazette, 1825

“I think cooking completes you as a woman. … I woke up one morning and said, I can't do this [eating meat] to myself anymore. I didn't feel good. I was constipated all the time. … I used to live to eat. Now I eat to live.”

Brandy Norwood (1979) American singer and actress

About her vegan lifestyle. “ Brandy: Baby Baby Baby Baby Talks About Growing Up, Becoming A Vegan And Keeping Her Marriage A Big Secret https://books.google.se/books?id=1SUEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA0,” in Vibe (April 2002), p. 104.

Feeling , Thinking , Time , Cooking

“How often is it a phantom woman who draws the man from the way he meant to go? So was man created, to hunger for the ideal that is above himself, until one day there is magic in the air, and the eyes of a girl rest upon him. He does not know that it is he himself who crowned her, and if the girl is as pure as he, their love is the one form of idolatry that is not quite ignoble. It is the joining of two souls on their way to God. But if the woman be bad, the test of the man is when he wakens from his dream. The nobler his ideal, the further will he have been hurried down the wrong way, for those who only run after little things will not go far. His love may now sink into passion, perhaps only to stain its wings and rise again, perhaps to drown.”

J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) Scottish writer

Source: The Little Minister (1891), Ch. 1 : The Love-Light

Love , Hunger , God , Dreams

“If a woman has her PhD in physics, has mastered quantum theory, plays flawless Chopin, was once a cheerleader, and is now married to a man who plays baseball, she will forever be "former cheerleader married to star athlete."”

Maryanne Ellison Simmons (1949) American printmaker

The Waiting Room http://books.google.com/books?id=rhzwAAAAMAAJ&q=%22If+a+woman+has+her+Ph+D+in+physics+has+mastered+quantum+theory+plays+flawless+Chopin+was+once+a+cheerleader+and+is+now+married+to+a+man+who+plays+baseball+she+will+forever+be+former+cheerleader+married+to+star+athlete%22&pg=PA24#v=onepage magazine (May 1982)

Star

Quotes about woman page 23

Quotes about woman
page 23