quotations about women
While a woman is losing confidence in a man she is usually reposing it in another.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
REX STOUT
Three Doors to Death
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
TIMOTHY LEARY
attributed, Was It Good for You Too?
In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
attributed, Great Hollywood Wit
I'm a failure as a woman. My men expect so much of me, because of the image they've made of me -- and that I've made of myself -- as a sex symbol. They expect bells to ring and whistles to whistle, but my anatomy is the same as any other woman's and I can't live up to it.
MARILYN MONROE
attributed, Marilyn, 1962
Some women destroy all your sensibility towards them by their coldness, others by their heat.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
There are few virtuous women who are not tired of their part.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
It took him a moment to respond to the unguarded sweetness of her smile, her body calculated to a millimeter to suggest a bud yet guarantee a flower.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Tender Is the Night
Oh! too convincing -- dangerously dear --
In woman's eye the unanswerable tear!
LORD BYRON
The Corsair
A woman's passion is like the tide, it stays for no man when the hour is come.
APHRA BEHN
The Lucky Chance
It has been our experience that women usually prefer thin, undernourished, flatchested females, dressed to the teeth, as a concept of "feminine beauty" -- and that men prefer exactly the opposite: voluptuous, well-rounded and undressed. The women's idealization of woman is actually a male counterpart, competing with man in society; man's view of women is far more truly feminine.
HUGH HEFNER
The Realist, May, 1961
As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Three Guineas
Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being.... Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"The Tragedy of Women's Emancipation", Anarchism and Other Essays
Any woman may act the part of a coquette successfully who has the reputation without the scruples of modesty. If a woman passes the bounds of propriety for our sakes, and throws herself unblushingly at our heads, we conclude it is either from a sudden and violent liking, or from extraordinary merit on our parts, either of which is enough to turn any man's head who has a single spark of gallantry or vanity in his composition.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
The imaginative estimate or ideal conception of Woman by the Poets has always been deemed exceptionally interesting, especially by women themselves, for, as a rule, it is agreeable; and, even if the presentation be sometimes a little overcharged with glowing colour, all of us, men and women alike, are not otherwise than pleased with descriptions that portray us, not exactly as we are, but as we should like to be. Withal, a portrait, to obtain recognition, must have in it some resemblance to the original; and, speaking in the most prosaic manner, one need not hesitate to affirm that any representation of women, at least of womanly women, that was not attractive would be a travesty of the fact.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
Women are like that they don't acquire knowledge of people we are for that they are just born with a practical fertility of suspicion that makes a crop every so often and usually right they have an affinity for evil for supplying whatever the evil lacks in itself for drawing it about them instinctively as you do bed-clothing in slumber fertilizing the mind for it until the evil has served its purpose whether it ever existed or no.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
The Sound and the Fury
A woman who can threaten your life before breakfast is the only sort of woman worth having.
NORA ROBERTS
Black Hills
This is woman's great benevolence, that she will become a martyr for beauty, so that the world may have pleasure.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
Irish & English: Portraits and Impressions
Hurry not a woman's favor; neither forcer her hastily to surrender to thee. For she goeth into love as she goeth into the waters at the seashore; first a hand and then a lip goeth she in by littles. She diveth not, she leapeth not from the pier; but by gentle shocks and cries of protest she entereth slowly; yet when the waters of love encompass her, then she is supported. She swimmeth in her joy; she floateth on the tide of happiness.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
These little women are very important, and those that appear to be the humblest, often assume great authority in their homes.
GASTON BACHELARD
The Poetics of Space