quotations about women
The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
Lessons in Life
Woo her not till thou hast seen her mother, for a score of years worketh wonders.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
No woman who wants something is a lady. If she is, she doesn't get it.
LAUREN BACALL
Bright Leaf
Content with one woman?... That is impossible. If you could, then any man can, and any man can't.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
It is observable that the ladies frequent tragedies more than comedies; the reason may be, that in tragedy their sex is deified and adored, in comedy exposed and ridiculed.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry whom she likes. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field, and don't know their own power. They would overcome us entirely if they did.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Vanity Fair
The affected modesty of most women is a decoy for the generous, the delicate, and unsuspecting; while the artful, the bold, and unfeeling either see or break through its slender disguises.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
If a woman shows too often the Medusa's head, she must not be astonished if her lover is turned into stone.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
Miracle woman ...
Your mouth is wine, and all your tender flesh
An easeful meadow for my weariness.
DONALD EVANS
"For the Haunting of Mauna"
God bless them pretty women,
I wish they was mine,
Their breath is as sweet,
The dew on the vine.
BOB DYLAN
"Moonshiner"
Women, as they are like riddles in being unintelligible, so generally resemble them in this, that they please us no longer when once we know them.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
It seems to me as a woman's face doesna want flowers; it's almost like a flower itself.... It's like when a man's singing a good tune, you don't want t' hear bells tinkling and interfering wi' the sound.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Pygmalion
Women still have an uneasy relationship with power and the traits necessary to be a leader. There is this internalized fear that if we are really powerful, we are going to be considered ruthless or pushy or strident--al those epithets that strike right at our femininity. We are still working at trying to overcome the fear that power and womanliness are mutually exclusive.
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON
Newsweek, October 15, 2007
A complete woman is probably not a very admirable creature. She is manipulative, uses other people to get her own way, and works within whatever system she is in.
ANITA BROOKNER
Writers at Work
I do not regard the rise of woman as a bad sign. Rather do I fancy that her traditional subordination was itself an artificial and undesirable condition based on Oriental influences. Our virile Teutonic ancestors did not think their wives unworthy to follow them into battle, or scorn to dream of winged Valkyries bearing them to Valhalla.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
letter to Clark Ashton Smith, October 28, 1934
Gone are the days when women were solely viewed as damsels in distress. Beyond the feminine exterior lies a modern and empowered hero. While in the past, society largely viewed a woman as a princess waiting to be swept off her feet by a prince, we now know that our strength lies, not in our gender, but in our bravery to step up and act on things we believe in.
CHRISTINE BERNADETTE F. ALMOITE
"Women are heroes, too", Inquirer, March 26, 2017
That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.
J. D. SALINGER
The Catcher in the Rye
It is the plain women who know about love; the beautiful women are too busy being fascinating.
KATHARINE HEPBURN
attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes
Man can never know the kind of loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in a woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. The woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which he has bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love is a taking of man within her, and act of birth and rebirth, of child bearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to BE. But for a woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment when man rests inside of her.
ANAÏS NIN
diary, May 25, 1932