Quotes about woman (4135 quotes, page 34)

“I speak as briefly as possible because too much harm has already been done with irresponsible words of bitterness and selfish political opportunism. I speak as simply as possible because the issue is too great to be obscured by eloquence. I speak simply and briefly in the hope that my words will be taken to heart.
I speak as a Republican. I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States Senator. I speak as an American.”

Margaret Chase Smith (1897–1995) Member of the United States Senate from Maine

Declaration of Conscience (1950)

Hope , Heart , Selfishness

“A great party is not to be brought down because of a scandal by a woman of easy virtue and a proved liar.”

Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone (1907–2001) British judge, politician, life peer and Cabinet minister

"Lord Hailsham speaks out", The Times, 14 June 1963, p. 9.
On the Profumo affair. Interview with Robert McKenzie on "Gallery" for BBC television.

“(Man in bar) I like an older woman. (Sylvia) I'll pass that along.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p.145

“The intrinsic value of woman consists essentially in exceptional receptivity for God's work in the soul, and this value comes to unalloyed development if we abandon ourselves confidently and unresistingly to this work.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), The Significance of Woman's Intrinsic Value in National Life (1928)

God , Soul , Confidence

“The basic freedom of the world is woman's freedom. A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. A woman enchained cannot choose but give a measure of that bondage to her sons and daughters. No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”

Margaret Sanger book Woman and the New Race

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 8, "Birth Control; A Parents' Problem or Woman's?"

World , Freedom , Daughters

“I am forced to conclude that being right has little to do with holding a woman’s affections.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Number of the Beast

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XXVI : The Keys to the City, p. 243

“If I had married a woman intelligent enough to guide me, to rule me without my feeling that I was ruled, I should have taken good care of my money, I should have had children, and I should not be, as now I am, alone in the world and possessing nothing.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, v. 8, chapter 4, p. 94
Referenced

Money , Children , World , Feeling

“If children will read comics […] isn't it advisable to give them some constructive comics to read? […] The wish to be super strong is a healthy wish, a vital compelling, power-producing desire. The more the Superman-Wonder Woman picture stories build this innner compulsion by stimulating the child's natural longing to battle and overcome obstacles, particularly evil ones, the better the better chance your child has for self-advancement in the world. Certainly there can be no arguement about the advisability of strengthening the fundamental human desire, too often buried beneath stultifying divertissments and disguises, to see god overcome evil.”

William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) American psychologist, lawyer, inventor and comic book writer

"Why 100,000,000 Americans Read Comics", The American Scholar, 13.1 (1943): p 40, as quoted in The Ages of Wonder Woman: Essays on the Amazon Princess in Changing Times, edited by Joeph J Darowski, pp. 9-10; in the essay "William Marston's Feminist Agenda" by Michelle R. Finn, as quoted in The Ages of Wonder Woman: Essays on the Amazon Princess in Changing Times, edited by Joeph J Darowski, p.9; in the essay "William Marston's Feminist Agenda" by Michelle R. Finn,

God , Children , World , Nature

“I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian farm women… no woman has excited passions among women more than I have.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

As quoted in Parted Lips : Lesbian Love Quotes Through the Ages (2002) by Simone Rich

Women , Passion

“Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede I have ever seen? "And here is my good big centipede!" If such a man exists, I say kill him without more ado. He is a traitor to the human race.”

William S. Burroughs book The Western Lands

Source: The Western Lands (1987), ch. 4

“You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?"
And I was looking down writing, and I said yes. And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, you drown in your own blood — that's the end of you.
It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what the letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply, "Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the Whites Plains High School." She said, "While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn't sneeze.
1960s, I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968)

Books , World , School , Girl

“One way to hold a woman is not to hold her.”

Gay Talese (1932) American writer

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (Esquire, April 1966)

Way

“No marriage is solid. There are always ups and downs. But we have learnt through those times and I was touched when celebrating my birthday recently, my husband stood up to make a speech and he said that I was a woman of substance.”

Sangeeta Niranjan Fijian businesswoman

Interview with the Fiji Times, 18 September 2005

Marriage , Birthday , Time

“It's like going out and saying, "That tree is a car." Well, the tree's not a car. A tree's a tree. Marriage is marriage. You can say that tree is something other than it is. It can redefine it. But it doesn't change the essential nature of what marriage is. Marriage is a union between a man and a woman for the purposes of the benefit of both the man and the woman, a natural unitive according to nature, unitive, that is for the purposes of having and rearing children and for the benefit of both the man and the woman involved in that relationship. And for the benefit of society because we need to have stable families of men and woman bonded together to raise children. That's what marriage is.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

Men , Marriage , Children , Family

“Remember when I told you, for the first time? You nearly threw me off the roof—”
“I thought you deserved it. You know, it’s an opinion I return to from time to time, whether or not a roof is available.”
“You’re a difficult woman, Sabetha. But then, difficult women are the only ones worth falling in love with.”
“How would you know? It’s not like you’ve ever been after anyone else—”
“That part’s easy. I started with the most difficult woman possible, so there was never any need to look any further.”
“You’re trying to be charming.” She squeezed his hand once, then pulled away. “I choose not to be entirely charmed, Locke Lamora.”
“Not entirely?”

Scott Lynch book The Republic of Thieves

“Not entirely. Not yet.”
Source: The Republic of Thieves (2013), Chapter 8 “The Five-Year Game: Infinite Variation” section 11 (p. 483)

Love , Women , Time , Parting

“It becomes bars! The outside pattern, I mean, and the women behind it is as plain as can be. I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman. By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman book The Yellow Wall Paper

The Yellow Wallpaper (1891)

Women , Time

“The entire world has been upset. The entire world, it's a different place. During Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's term, she's done a horrible job.
She has caused death. She has caused tremendous death with incompetent decisions. I was against the war in Iraq. I wasn't a politician, but I was against the war in Iraq. She voted for the war in Iraq.
Look at Libya. That was her baby. Look. I mean, I'm not even talking about the ambassador and the people with the ambassador. Young, wonderful people. With messages coming in by the hundreds, and she's not even responding. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about all of the death that's been caused and not only our side.
There was nothing saved. If we would have never done anything in the Middle East, we would have a much safer world right now. … All of this has led to the migration. All of this has led to tremendous death and destruction. And she for the most part was in charge of it along with Obama.
She's constantly playing the woman card. It's the only way she may get elected. I mean frankly… Personally, I'm not sure that anybody else other than me is going to beat her. And I think she's a flawed candidate. And you see what's happened recently. And it hasn't been a very pretty picture for her or for Bill. Because I'm the only one that's willing to talk about his problems. I mean, what he did and what he has gone through I think is frankly terrible, especially if she wants to play the woman card.
I have more respect for women by far than Hillary Clinton has. And I will do more for women than Hillary Clinton will. I will do far more including the protection of our country. She caused a lot of the problems that we have right now.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

CBS interview with John Dickerson (taped 1 January 2016) for Face the Nation — as quoted in "Trump: Clinton has ruined the world" http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/trump-hillary-clinton-donald-217294 by Nick Gass, Politico (3 January 2016)
2010s, 2016, January

Death , Women , War , People

“When a woman reaches forty, she must wait twenty years for her husband to catch up.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Marriage

Waiting

“They draw back into themselves, and are thrown back on their own bodies for gratification. The men become narcissistic and uncertain of the power of any woman, no matter how strange and beautiful, to arouse their desire, but the women remain continually receptive to male advances.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Balinese Character (1942), p. 26

Women , Men , Beauty , Drawing

“I saw an aged woman turn
To her wretched home again —
All day she had asked charity,
And all day asked in vain....”

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

The London Literary Gazette, 1832

Age , Home

“A woman cannot be a pastor by the law of God. I say more, it is against the law of the realm.”

Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Baronet (1554–1625) English politician

Colt and another v. Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (1612), Hob. Rep. 148.

God , Law

“[On how she goes about trying to live authentically] Well really listening to my point of view and if I am on a set, say, that doesn't really value a woman's point of view, regardless of how they feel, continuing to give my point of view and try to find a way to be heard and not diminishing myself because other people are diminishing me. Because that, I think, is the worst temptation — that, you know, you judge yourself by how others are judging you, and to fall into that trap is to walk into the realm of self-annihilation.”

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

Interview on matthewsplace.com (October 2009) http://www.matthewsplace.com/2009/10/interview-with-jennifer-beals/.

People , Way , Feeling , Thinking

“I sketched a young mother with her child at her breast, sitting in a smoky hut. If only I could someday paint what I felt then. A sweet woman, an image of charity. She was nursing her big, year-old bambino... And the woman gave her life and her youth and her power tot the child in utter simplicity, unaware that she was a heroine.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

excerpt of her Journal, Worpswede 1897; as quoted in: Witzling (1991, p. 193) and Delia Gaze (2001) Concise Dictionary of Women Artists, p. 489
1897

Life , Youth , Painting

“I don’t believe in road rage; I prefer the gentle rebuke. If I don’t like the way someone is driving, I pull up alongside the other car and say, “I hope your children turn out poorly.” Only once have I lost my cool. That was the time I said to a woman, “I hope you get a blister on your cunt.’ But I said it with a smile.”

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

Books, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004)

Children , Smile , Hope , Cars

“I was making very aggressive provocative paintings. Whether the Rachel paintings, or the Diana paintings, I've sensed over the three or four years that I've been in getting press attention, I've sensed that it has not been that long since the woman painter was not allowed in the Royal Academy, and not allowed to paint nude men, and thee is such a huge body of work that men have made, versus the small body of work made by women, that I am not surprised to get this response.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Honigman, Ana Finel. "Stella Vine in conversation with Ana Finel Honigman" http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/2007/07/stella_vine_in_conversation_wi.php, Saatchi Gallery (2007-07-25).
On being a female artist.

Women , Men , Sense , Painting

“Remember, [in the Bible] it's adultery only if the woman is already married. It doesn't matter if the man is married. If he is, she may just become another one of his wives, and a man can have sex with other women who aren't his wives, and that's not cheating either, as long as they live with him, because a man is also allowed to have concubines, and a concubine is a sort of sexual servant who serves no other purpose and has no claim to your estate. Your wife may not have a claim to your estate either, because when you die your wife may become your brother's sexual property. That's how the Bible defines marriage! The Bible does not prohibit multiple wives or incest either. In fact, both are promoted. However, when your father dies, your mother does not become your wife, and you can't inherit any of his other wives either, and the reason that the Bible gives for that is because that would be like looking up your father's skirt… So, a man can have multiple wives and a collection of personal harlots, but he can also have sex with his slaves, and that's not cheating either. You've heard of friends with benefits? You can call this your property rights. That's the only way that makes sense, because according to the Bible all women are property, and property doesn't have rights. Now, some people equate having sex with slaves to rape, because the slave doesn't have any choice. But, according to the Bible, women don't have any choice anyway, and rape can be a prelude to matrimony; if you're a Bronze Age Israelite and you see some young cutie walking unescorted, if you like her, you want her, you can have her, even if she doesn't want you. Now, if you rape a married woman, that's a death sentence for both of you (because the Bible is stupid like that). But if she's not promised to someone else, and you rape her and you get caught, you have to pay her father fifty shekels of silver and she's yours. He may not want her back after that, even his own child, because an unmarried woman who wasn't a virgin was considered damaged goods back then, so they had this rule that "if you pop it, you buy it." So your victim becomes your bride and you're stuck together forever, and can never get divorced (so be careful who you rape). There's actually a cheaper [and] easier way to get a bride; if a man takes a wife and decides he doesn't like her, if he can prove she wasn't a virgin (or if he can convince other people that was probably not a virgin), she she will be murdered on her father's doorstep because, according to the god of infinite mercy, that's the moral thing to do. But if she can prove that she was a virgin, then she must remain married forever to the man who hates her, because that's divine wisdom too. That unpleasant arrangement for both of you will also cost you a hundred shekels, whereas you can marry your rape victim for half the price. So, if you're a complete loser, and you can't get any woman who appeals to you by the normal way, just rape whoever you like and she's yours forever.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Biblical Family Values https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bldw8X5apnY (July 11, 2015)

Death , Wisdom , Women , God

“Ought not every woman, like every man, to follow the bent of her own talents?”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël book Corinne

Bk. 14, ch. 1
Corinne (1807)

“Women have ironically enjoyed a greater symbolic, if not practical freedom. Thus it is that male and not female homosexuality has been harshly punished by law. A debater in Lucian declares, “Far better that a women, in the madness of her lust, should usurp the nature of man, than that man’s noble nature should be so degraded as to play the woman.” Similarly today, lesbian interludes are a staple of heterosexual pornography. Ever since man emerged from the dominance of nature, masculinity has been the most fragile and problematic of psychic states.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 125

Women , Law , Nature , Freedom

“I tell you, Mr. Hunsden, you are a more unpractical man than I am an unpractical woman, for you don't acknowledge what really exists; you want to annihilate individual patriotism and national greatness as an atheist would annihilate God and his own soul, by denying their existence.”

Charlotte Brontë book The Professor

Source: The Professor (1857), Ch. XXIV

God , Soul

“To me, women's lib was mainly a white, upper-middle class affair of little use to a reservation Indian woman.”

Mary Crow Dog book Lakota Woman

Source: Lakota Woman (1990), p. 244

Women

“There was a sharp break in my life after 1953. I came to realize that I couldn't have the same relationships with my friends. Friendship involves the exchange of confidence between two people, but a king can take no one into his confidence. I have even had to put some distance between myself and my old friend Hossein Fardoust whom I trust implicitly. I even observe certain distances with members of my family. I had to tell my mother- who is a very dictatorial woman- that it would be better if she didn't ask me for favours for I might have to refuse her.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

As quoted in Gérard de Villiers (1975), The Imperial Shah: An Informal Biography, page 273-274
Attributed

Life , Friendship , People , Family

“Every profession in which woman's soul comes into its own and which can be formed by woman's soul is an authentic woman's profession.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), The Ethos of Woman's Professions (1930)

Soul

“If the statistics of any of our cities could be taken on this subject you would find that a vast multitude of women not only support themselves, but masculines also. A great legion of men amount to nothing, and a woman by marriage manacled to one of these nonentities needs condolence. A woman standing outside the marriage relation is several hundred thousand times better off than a woman badly married.”

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832–1902) American Presbyterian preacher, clergyman and reformer during the mid-to late 19th century.

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832-1902), The Pathway of Life, New York: The Christian Herald, 1894 p 102.
The Pathway of Life, New York: The Christian Herald, 1894

Women , Men , Marriage , Support

“I will not stand for being called a woman in my own house…”

Evelyn Waugh book Scoop

Scoop (1938)

Housing

“A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"Don Juan", p. 403
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Friendship

“Feminists often tried to be men: they cut their hair, did not use makeup, walked like men, hid their breasts, used men's clothing… they became men and we thought that was a dangerous path for feminism. … We are not ashamed of our bodies. We are proud that we are women, that we are different from men. This is the greatest thing we have achieved with Femen, we have put the woman in the centre of feminism.”

Oksana Shachko (1987–2018) Ukrainian artist and activist with FEMEN

Interview with Luxemburger Wort (2015)

Women , Men , Clothes

“I'm trying to find a man to share my life with, but it's not been easy. I'm a 35-year-old woman with two small children!”

Nicole Kidman (1967) Australian-American actress and film producer

In an interview in early 2004
Dame Magazine http://www.damemagazine.com/entertainment/f384/TheWitandWisdomofNicoleKidman.php

Life , Children

“Against God can nothing be more manifest than that a woman shall be exalted to reign above man; for the contrary sentence he has pronounced in these words: "Thy will shall be subject to thy husband, and he shall bear dominion over thee" (Gen. 3:16). As [though] God should say, "Forasmuch as you have abused your former condition, and because your free will has brought yourself and mankind into the bondage of Satan, I therefore will bring you in bondage to man. For where before your obedience should have been voluntary, now it shall be by constraint and by necessity; and that because you have deceived your man, you shall therefore be no longer mistress over your own appetites, over your own will or desires. For in you there is neither reason nor discretion which are able to moderate your affections, and therefore they shall be subject to the desire of your man. He shall be lord and governor, not only over your body, but even over your appetites and will." This sentence, I say, did God pronounce against Eve and her daughters, as the rest of the scriptures do evidently witness. So that no woman can ever presume to reign above man, but the same she must needs do in despite of God, and in contempt of his punishment and malediction.”

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

God , Daughters

“The most serious flaw of Foucault's system is in the area of sex. I view his hurried, compulsive writing as a massive rationalist defense-formation to avoid thinking about (a) woman, (b) nature, (c) emotion, and (d) the sexual body. His attempt to make the body passive property of male society is an evasion of the universal fact so intolerable to him: that we are all born of human mothers. By turning women into ciphers, he miniaturizes and contains them.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 230

Women , Sex , Nature , Thinking

“…I wanna know about the commercial I saw on TV: An Irish guy walking through a field of green, whistling one of those Irish jigs, and a woman walks up and says, "Manly, yes, but I like it too." Then the guy pulls out a huge knife and cuts off his first two fingers and somehow catches them in what's left of his left hand and hands them to the woman. Did I mention they're both dressed in green? They they both sing this song together: "Are ya icky? Are ya sticky? Are ya hot as anything? Hey! Cut off two of your fingers, and stab yourself in the eye!"”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

Then he stabs himself in the eye and hands her the knife, and she stabs herself in the eye, okay? Okay? So what about that?
"The Commercial"
Lyrics, King Missile (1994)

Guy , Singing

“Accepting the view that man was prior in the creation, some Scriptural writers say that as the woman was of the man, therefore, her position should be one of subjection. Grant it, then as the historical fact is reversed in our day, and the man is now of the woman, shall his place be one of subjection?”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton book The Woman's Bible

The Woman's Bible (1898)

“And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back
at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

The just man followed then his angel guide
Where he strode on the black highway, hulking and bright;
But a wild grief in his wife's bosom cried,
Look back, it is not too late for a last sight
Of the red towers of your native Sodom, the square
Where once you sang, the gardens you shall mourn,
And the tall house with empty windows where
You loved your husband and your babes were born.
Translator unknown
Lot's Wife

God , Marriage , Mountain , Housing

“Virtue is the same for a man and for a woman.”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 5
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

“An audience member: Question is for GG. Sir, if a woman is at your concert and chooses to leave through an exit door because she didn't realize she may be getting raped are you gonna let her leave or are you gonna rape her?”

GG Allin (1956–1993) American singer-songwriter

On The Jerry Springer Show

Question

“A happy woman is one who has no cares at all; a cheerful woman is one who has cares but doesn't let them get her down.”

Beverly Sills (1929–2007) opera soprano

As quoted in The Quotable Woman (1978) by Elaine Partnow, p. 399

Happiness

“A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 475 (4 September 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Wedding , Clothes

“I don't want a fat mexican woman beating the crap out of my son.”

Tommy Lee (1962) American drummer

(When asked about getting a baby-sitter for his kids) http://www.marksfriggin.com/news00/12-18-00.htm.

“What a man is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 5

Future

“All marriage is such a lottery -- the happiness is always an exchange -- though it may be a very happy one -- still the poor woman is bodily and morally the husband's slave. That always sticks in my throat. When I think of a merry, happy, and free young girl -- and look at the ailing aching state a young wife is generally doomed to -- which you can't deny is the penalty of marriage.”

Victoria of the United Kingdom (1819–1901) British monarch who reigned 1837–1901

Source: Letter (16 May 1860), published in Dearest Child: Letters Between Queen Victoria and the Princess Royal Previously Unpublished edited by Roger Fulfold (1964), p. 254. Also quoted in the article "Queen Victoria's Not So Victorian Writings" http://www.victoriana.com/doors/queenvictoria.htm by Heather Palmer (1997).

Marriage , Penalty , Girl , Thinking

“If a man ignoring a woman’s verbal “no” is committing date rape, then a woman who says “no” with her verbal language but “yes” with her body language is committing date fraud. And a woman who continues to be sexual even after she says “no” is committing date lying.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

p 314.
The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband

Lying , Fraud

“The soul of woman must therefore be expansive and open to all human beings; it must be quiet so that no small weak flame will be extinguished by stormy winds; warm so as not to benumb fragile buds; clear, so that no vermin will settle in dark corners and recesses; self-contained, so that no invasions from without can imperil the inner life; empty of self, in order that extraneous life may have room in it; finally, mistress of itself and also of its body, so that the entire person is readily at the disposal of every call.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), Fundamental Principles of Women's Education (1931)

Life , Soul , Personality

“By now I assume you know my attitude to this type of conduct. I have stated categorically, many times, that the Army has to be a inclusive organisation, in which every soldier, man and woman, is able to reach their full potential and is encouraged to do so. Those who think that it is okay to behave in a way that demeans or exploits their colleagues, have no place in this army. Our service has been engaged in continuous operations since 1999, and in it’s longest war ever in Afghanistan.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Message regarding unacceptable behaviour (2013)

War , Way , Thinking , Time

“An Ambitious woman shewes her selfe to bee a troublesome disturber of the world, powerfull to make smale things great, and great monstrous”

Thomas Overbury (1581–1613) (1581–1613) English poet and essayist

The Just Downfall of Ambition, Adultery and Murder.

World , Bee

“If in later life she has mastered her hunger drive by ego control, she may assume that she can control her fate herself. But that ego may in fact be very weak, because it has been built by cutting herself off from the mainstream of life through severe dieting. It is built on negative rather than positive need. In a real life crisis, such an ego may fail to operate because she does not know consciously what her own needs are. […] An ego which sets itself up against Fate is attempting to usurp the power of the Self; it swings from light to dark, from inflation to depression. Only when her ego is firmly rooted in her own feminine feeling can a woman be released from her compulsive behavior.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter (1980), p. 33

Life , Hunger , Fate , Behavior

“People can be lovers and enemies at the same time, you know. We were… A man and woman draw apart from that long embrace, and see what they have done to each other… In age we lose everything; even the power to love.”

Willa Cather book My Mortal Enemy

Part II, Ch. 4
My Mortal Enemy (1926)

Love , People , Age , Lovers

“Before he can devote himself to God or a woman, a boy will devote himself to his father, even foolishly, even beyond explanation.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)

God , Boy

“Nearby, where the main road forked, stood an iron cross on a stone base. As the English couple watched, a mason was cutting in half a dozen fresh names. On the far side of the street, in the deep shadow of a doorway, a youngish woman in black was also watching. She was so pale they assumed at first she had some sort of wasting disease. She remained perfectly still, with one hand holding an edge of her headscarf so that it obscured her mouth. The mason seemed embarrassed and kept his back to her while he worked. After a quarter of an hour an old man in blue workman's clothes came shuffling along in carpet slippers and took her hand without a word and led her away. When the propriétaire came out he nodded at the other side of the street, at the empty space and murmured, 'Trois. Mari et deux frères,' as he set down their salads.This sombre incident remained with them as they struggled up the hill in the heat, heavy with lunch, towards the Bergerie de Tédenat. They stopped half way up in the shade of a stand of pines before a long stretch of open ground. Bernard was to remember this moment for the rest of his life. As they drank from their water bottles he was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust, like spores whose separate identities would remain unknown, and whose totality showed more sadness than anyone could ever begin to comprehend; a weight borne in silence by hundreds of thousands, millions, like the woman in black for a husband and two brothers, each grief a particular, intricate, keening love story that might have been otherwise. It seemed as though he had never thought about the war before, not about its cost. He had been so busy with the details of his work, of doing it well, and his widest view had been of war aims, of winning, of statistical deaths, statistical destruction, and of post-war reconstruction. For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories. This came upon Bernard by a pine tree in the Languedoc in 1946 not as an observation he could share with June but as a deep apprehension, a recognition of a truth that dismayed him into silence and, later, a question: what possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?”

Ian McEwan book Black Dogs

Page 164-165.
Black Dogs (1992)

Love , Life , Death , War

“I cannot say that I have been hindered all my life by the permutation of genes that resulted in me being born a woman.”

Judy LaMarsh (1924–1980) Canadian politician, writer, broadcaster and barrister.

Source: Memoirs Of A Bird In A Gilded Cage (1969), CHAPTER 10, Twenty-five to one, p. 278

Life

“…He was with the woman and daughters he loved, and who could ever need or want anything more than that?…It was just a normal day, a day like any other. But most of all, it was a day in which everything was exactly the way it should be.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Travis Parker, Epilogue, p. 272
2000s, The Choice (2007)

Love , Way , Daughters

“"I'm not sure I ever 'got it' when it comes to how to live my life in a way that was original and free," reflected Steven Salt, a retired businessman. "Of course, like most men, I always believed I had the answers and that I was not going to live my life the stupid way other men do. I was going to be unique and avoid their mistakes, but instead I'm just another male stereotype. I started off thinking that being an achiever and a 'winner' would be the key to real freedom. So all my energy went that way and I faked everything else when it came to caring about other people. Then I thought I'd marry the 'perfect' woman and be the 'perfect' dad and husband, not like the other married men. I'd be different. But no matter how I tried I was forcing it and probably fooling no one but myself. My wife finally left and I barely know who my kids really are. When we talk it's mainly 'business.' I fell into all the traps. Now that I'm in my seventies, I'm becoming just like all those guys I felt sorry for when I was younger— guys with no real friends and with no patience for anyone else's ideas or opinions. I can barely stand to talk to anyone and yet I'm still looking to fulfill myself by meeting the 'perfect' woman. I've become a macho cliché. It's taken me this long to realize that even if she existed I really wouldn't know how to be with her and make it feel good anyway."”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

The Personal Journey of Masculinity: From Externalization to Disconnection to Oblivion, p. 9
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Life , Men , People , Stupidity

“A woman always has her revenge ready.”

Molière book Tartuffe

Une femme a toujours une vengeance prête.
Act II, sc. ii
Tartuffe (1664)

Revenge

“Stop, you idiot!" I bawled at her. Her face laughed over her shoulder at me. She walked without haste to the door, her short skirt of gray flannel shaping itself to the calf of each gray wool-stockinged leg as its mate stepped forward. Sweat greased the gun in my hand. When her right foot was on the doorsill, a little chuckling sound came from her throat. "Adieu!" she said softly.
And I put a bullet in the calf of her leg. She sat down--plump! Utter surprise stretched her white face. It was too soon for pain. I had never shot a woman before. I felt queer about it.
"You ought to have known I'd do it!”

Dashiell Hammett book The Gutting of Couffignal

My voice sounded harsh and savage and like a stranger's in my ears. "Didn't I steal a crutch from a cripple?"
final lines, The Gutting of Couffignal (published in Black Mask, December 1925)
Short Stories

Pain

“Without the heroic, man has no meaning; without the economic, he has no sense. Economic man is most likely to be economic woman — a good wife, pulling the coat tails of her heroic husband, checking his extravagances of speech and action with words of caution and good sense. But without the heroic coat tails to pull, life for both of them would be dull and savorless indeed.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Skills of the Economist, 1958, p. 183

Life , Sense

“As a human rights defender, like millions of Iranians, I hate the death penalty; I despise discrimination and injustice against women; I protest against the imprisonment and torture of political and civil rights activists in solitary confinement; and I will not be silent in the face of human rights violations. In order to institutionalize human rights and achieve peace between the people and the state, I shall endure my deprivation of freedom and rights, even though separation from my children is nothing less than death for me. I am a woman and a mother, and with all my feminine and maternal sensibilities, I seek a world free from violence and injustice, even if I have suffered injustice and violence tens of times.”

Narges Mohammadi (1972) Iranian human rights activist

Letter Accepting 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prizefrom (2018)

Death , Women , Hate , Children

“But these things are often unknown to the world; for there is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer – committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed in no human ear.”

George Eliot book Felix Holt, the Radical

Introductory chapter (at page 11-12 – page numbers per the 'Wordsworth Classics' edition 1997.)
Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)

Life , Pain , Secret , World

“In my career I met so many movie stars, but starting a life together and building a home goes beyond all other relationships," he explains. "I found in her a human being and a woman who would take care of my family. I found in my wife both compassion and understanding.”

Sunil Dutt (1929–2005) Hindi film actor

Quoted in Nargis-Sunil Dutt: A real life romance.
We all are one, whichever religion we belong to

Life , Family , Home , Star

“Only by being a man or woman for others does one become fully human.”

Pedro Arrupe (1907–1991) Twenty-eighth Superior General of the Society of Jesus

'Men for Others' http://www.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/men-for-others.html, 1973, Valencia, Spain

“Do you suppose a woman knows why she loves? Does she select? Does she say to herself, 'Go to! here is a distinguished statesman with presidential possibilities; I shall proceed to fall in love with him.' or, 'I shall set my heart upon this musician, whose fame is on every tongue?”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

or 'this financier, who controls the world's money markets?'"
The Awakening (1899)

Love , Money , World , Heart

“The dress of a woman of Lhassa,
in its place
is an invisible element of that place
made visible.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Anecdote of Men by the Thousand"

“Fair, gentle friend, I’ve found so dear a home
I wish that dawn might never come again;
The loveliest lady ever born of woman
Lies in my arms, and I care not a straw
For jealous fool or dawn!”

Giraut de Bornelh (1138–1220) French writer

Bel dous companh, tan sui en ric sojorn
Qu'eu no volgra mais fos l'alba ni jorn,
Car la gensor que anc nasques de maire
Tenc et abras, per qu'eu non prezi gaire
Lo fol gilos ni l'alba.
"Reis glorios", line 31; translation from Peter Dronke The Medieval Lyric (1996) p. 176.

Fools , Home

“Sometimes you need a cigarette. Like after you have sex with a beautiful woman or a confused young man.”

Dave Attell (1965) comedian

Comedy Central Presents: Dave Attell

Beauty , Sex

“He was… a womanizer, he wanted to be in the sack with everybody.”

Lauren Bacall (1924–2014) American actress, model

On former fiancé Frank Sinatra
Private Screenings interview (2005)

“Musicians are seldom unemotional; a woman who could sing like that must know how to love indeed.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Les musiciennes sont presque toujours amoureuses. Celle qui chantait ainsi devait savoir bien aimer.
The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), Part II: A Woman Without a Heart

Love , Singing

“When a young woman tells me that she wants to become and actor, I say, 'No, be a writer. Or go to business school and learn how to run a studio.' The only real change will come from behind the scenes.”

Halle Berry (1966) American actress

On gender issues in the entertainment industry — reported in Geoff Pevere (April 13, 2007) "Berry almost chose bylines over marquees", The Toronto Star, p. D06.

School , Business , Learning , Change

“In my time and neighborhood (and in my soul) there was only one standard by which a woman measured success: did some man want her?”

Jessamyn West (1902–1984) American author

The Life I Really Lived, part 7 (1979)

Soul , Time , Success

“Interviewer: what do you think about polygamy? Is this Egypt's method of family planning?
Ali Gum'a: This is a storm in a teacup. Our statistics show that cases of polygamy do not exceed two percent. That's one thing. Mistresses and adultery have become widespread throughout the world, beginning with the heads of state here and there – and I don't want to mention specific Western countries – and culminating with illegitimate children, who are recognized, due to the constraints of reality. I'd like to know if this is preferable to having a rate of two percent [polygamy] among marriages, according to the reliable official statistics? What is this? Are we supposed to allow adultery and ban marriages? In my opinion, this is preposterous.
[…]
Interviewer: In Judaism, a man is permitted to have four wives?
Ali Gum'a: Of course! Moses has four wives, and so did Abraham…
Interviewer: But today, it is not permitted.
Ali Gum'a: Today, yesterday…what's the difference? To this day, Judaism permits polygamy. The Hindus permit polygamy. The Buddhists permit polygamy. There is not a single religion on the face of the earth that bans polygamy, but all religions agree that women are not allowed to have more than one husband.
[…]
Ali Guma: …in Islam, Allah permits us – just like in all religions – to marry several wives, and have things done out in the open. For whose benefit is all this? For the benefit of the woman, because a woman who is taken as a mistress remains in the shadows, and loses all her rights. The man does not owe her anything. But since [Allah] permits marrying another wife, she gains respect, status, and rights.”

Ali Gomaa (1951) Egyptian imam

citation needed

Women , Marriage , Children , World

“We are alike in many ways, you and I. There is a darkness in us. Darkness, pain, death. They radiate from us. If ever you love a woman, Rand, leave her and let her find another. It will be the best gift you can give her.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

al'Lan Mandragoran to Rand al'Thor
(15 October 1993)

Love , Death , Pain , Way

“Daisy was a consciously happy young woman without any of the usual endowments that make for conscious happiness, money apart. She was not pretty, she was not clever, she had no friends, no talents, nor even an imagination to make her think she was happy when she was really miserable. As she was never miserable, she had no need of an imagination.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

"Daisy and Venison" from Progress of Stories (Deya, Majorca: Seizin Press; London, Constable, 1935)

Money , Imagination , Thinking , Happiness

“When I was writing songs or performing or producing or dabbling in movies or even putting my career on hold to go to art school, I was just following my muse. A woman who did that then was criticized for having no direction. Today they call it versatility.”

Jackie DeShannon (1941) American singer-songwriter

Biography magazine (April 2002)

School , Art

“It is senseless to proclaim that it’s evil to make generalizations about groups. Generalization is a natural human mental process, and many generalizations are true—in average. What often does promote evil behavior is the lazy, nasty habit of believing that generalizations have anything at all to do with individuals. We have no right to pre-judge that a specific man can’t nurture, or a particular woman cannot fight.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Afterword (p. 562)
Glory Season (1993)

Behavior , Nature , Evil , Fight

“It is really mortifying, sir, when a woman possessed of a common share of understanding considers the difference of education between the male and female sex, even in those families where education is attended to… Nay why should your sex wish for such a disparity in those whom they one day intend for companions and associates. Pardon me, sir, if I cannot help sometimes suspecting that this neglect arises in some measure from an ungenerous jealousy of rivals near the throne.”

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)

Letter to John Thaxter (15 February 1778)

Education , Jealousy , Family , Sex

“A successful marriage puts an end to feminine friendships; but if marriage is a failure, the young woman must have others to confide in.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

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

Friendship , Marriage , Confidence , Failure

“No matter how love-sick a woman is, she shouldn't take the first pill that comes along.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

As quoted in On Being Blonde: Wit and Wisdom from the World's Most Infamous Blondes (2004) by Paula Munier, p. 70

Love

“Balzac has often provided us with the tragic spectacle of an old man in love. Obliged now to obtain with gifts and favors what his personal charm won for him in his earlier days, the aged lover will ruin himself for every young woman clever enough to waken a crazy hope in his breast. Chateaubriand, who knew only too well what such suffering was like, left a terrible manuscript entitle Amour et Vieillesse; it is the long and grievous lament of a lover who does not know hot to grow old. "Those who have loved women a great deal will always love them; that is their punishment." And women who have loved many men are punished by hearing the younger among them say with genuine surprise: "I'm told she was once very beautiful."”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Love , Women , Men , Age

“My head-dress was a bugle-band like the border to my gown, and a flower of Mrs Tilson’s. I depended upon hearing something of the evening from Mr. W. K., and am very well satisfied with his notice of me — "A pleasing looking young woman" — that must do; one cannot pretend to anything better now; thankful to have it continued a few years longer!”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter (1811-04-30) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Flowers , Dependency

“No young woman should be placed in circumstances such as to make marriage an only refuge from poverty or dependence upon her friends or a life of ennui”

Benjamin Fish Austin (1850–1933) Nineteenth-century Canadian educator/Methodist Minister/Spiritualist

On Women (1890)

Life , Marriage , Dependency

“No man ever enters into the feelings of a woman, let his kindness be what it may; they are too subtle and too delicate for a hand whose grasp is on "life's rougher things." They require that sorrow should find a voice; now the most soothing sympathy is that which guesses the suffering without a question.”

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

No.7. Rob Roy — DIANA VERNON.
Literary Remains

Life , Feeling , Question , Suffering

“Much of this he strove to express to Ruth, and shocked her and made it clear that more remodelling was necessary. Hers was that common insularity of mind that makes human creatures believe that their color, creed, and politics are best and right and that other human creatures scattered over the world are less fortunately placed than they. It was the same insularity of mind that made the ancient Jew thank God he was not born a woman, and sent the modern missionary god-substituting to the ends of the earth; and it made Ruth desire to shape this man from other crannies of life into the likeness of the men who lived in her particular cranny of life.”

Jack London Martin Eden

Source: Martin Eden (1909), Ch. VIII

Life , Men , God , World

“As a gineral thing, when a woman wares the britches, she has a good rite tew them.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

“But would she do it differently if she could? She doubted it. Her experiences growing up ad formed her into the woman that she'd become, just as his experiences had formed him, and she didn't regret them. And yet…she knew that wasn't the question that mattered. …she realized the choice before her was this: Where do I go from here?
It is never too late to change things.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Gabby Holland, Chapter 13, p. 168
2000s, The Choice (2007)

Question , Change

“Somehow the inclination to write about my private life in public is related to the ability to do so. It is not enough to say that my mother and father do not want to write their autobiographies. It needs also to be said that they are unable to write to a public reader. They lack the skill. Though both of them can write in Spanish and English, they write in a hesitant manner. Their syntax is uncertain. Their vocabulary limited. The man who sits in his chair so many hours, and the woman at the ironing board—‘keeping busy because I don’t want to get old’—will never be able to believe that any description of their personal lives could be understood by a stranger far from home.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Life , Home , Business , Personality

“What I have against religion is that they start you when you are so defenseless. I mean, I was three when they started pumping this bullshit into my head. I believed in Santa Claus and the Fairy Godmother, of course I believed in a virgin birth, and a guy lived in a whale, and a woman came from a rib. But then something happened that made me doubt all of it: I graduated sixth grade!”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Victory Begins at Home (20 January 2004)

Religion , Guy , Birth

“When women take their education and their abilities seriously and put them to use, ultimately they have to compete with men. It is better for a woman to compete impersonally in society, as men do, than to compete for dominance in her own home with her husband, compete with her neighbors for empty status, and so smother her son that he cannot compete at all.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique (1963), Ch. 14 "A New Life Plan for Women".

Women , Men , Education , Home

“The responsibility for progress rests not only on the Government, but on every man and woman in the country. The Government can go no faster in progress than the people will allow them to do. Willing co-operation in new methods is essential, and without the will to work progress is not possible, and with constant stoppages of industry progress is not possible.”

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

Speech at the Albert Hall (4 December 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 70.
1924

People , Country

“Anyone will be glad to admit that he knows nothing about beagling, or the Chinese stock market, or ballistics, but there is not a man or woman alive who does not claim to know how to cure hiccoughs.”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

"Stop Those Hiccoughs!", My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew (1936)

“Woman occupies an exceedingly important place in the world. In view of her capabilities, the nature has assigned vast duties to her. If you failed in them, you will not only harm your individual-self but also severely hurt your collective life.”

Fatima Jinnah (1893–1967) Pakistani dental surgeon, biographer, stateswoman and one of the leading founders of Pakistan

Speech at Meeting of the Anjuman Tahaffuz Haquq-e-Nisvan, Lahore, April 1949, quoted in Speech of Mrs. Jinnah, p.10
Source: Speeches, Messages and Statements of Mohtarama Fatima Jinnah, Lahore, 1976, p. 10

Life , World , Nature , Hurt

“I like to have curves and feel like a woman. I hope that people see that in my photos and know that healthy is better than skinny.”

Marisa Miller (1978) American model

[Marisa Miller Profile, New York Magazine, http://nymag.com/fashion/models/mmiller/marisamiller/, 2009-10-14]

People , Hope , Feeling , Photo

“We can trace the woman as reward trope all the way back the beginning of the medium itself as […] upon successful completion of many arcade games players were rewarded with a related smooch of victory trope, so named for the kiss the hero received as a reward for rescuing a kidnapped princess. Sometimes the prize is blatant as with the standard hero reward in which the king will give his daughter to the hero. On other occasions it's taken a step further by employing the parallel of sex for victory or rescue sex trope.”

Anita Sarkeesian (1983) American blogger

<i>Women as Reward (Aug 31, 2015)</i>
Tropes vs. Women in Video Games (Feminist Frequency, 2013 - 2015)

Sex , Way , Game , Kiss

“In the new science of the twenty-first century, not physical force but spiritual force will lead the way. Mental and spiritual gifts will be more in demand than gifts of a physical nature. Extrasensory perception will take precedence over sensory perception. And in this sphere woman will again predominate. She who was revered and worshiped by early man because of her power to see the unseen will once again be the pivot—not as sex but as divine woman—about whom the next civilization will, as of old, revolve.”

Elizabeth Gould Davis book The First Sex

The First Sex (G.P. Putnam's Sons), op. cit., p. 339 (paragraph in full), in ch. 22 - Woman in the Aquarian Age (1971). This is the last paragraph in her book, which explicated the thesis that women were originally the superior and dominant sex.

Sex , Way , Nature , Science

“It is not acceptable for people to completely cover themselves on the street. It [the Islamic veil] threatens public order and security. Plus it is a terrifying sight. Get rid of that woman-humiliating Islamic symbol.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

BBC News - In quotes: Geert Wilders (2010) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11469579
2010s

People

Quotes about woman page 34

Quotes about woman
page 34