quotations about women
We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Advertiser, September 9, 2004
The woman born to physical subjection and degradation can never seek or use knowledge as her birthright. Never till she holds her sex in honor, as man holds his, can she be his equal, even in her own realm.
MARY CLEMMER AMES
Outlines of Men, Women, and Things
Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The Scarlet Letter
Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
REX STOUT
Three Doors to Death
The wings of high-flying women are still being clipped by sexist stereotypes.
CAROLINE CRIADO-PEREZ
The Guardian, February 10, 2016
If thou makest a statement concerning women, lo, she shall immediately try to disprove it straightway. She goeth by contraries.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
Don't tell me about God having made such creatures to be companions for us! I don't say but He might make Eve to be a companion for Adam in Paradise--there was no cooking to be spoilt there, and no other woman to cackle with and make mischief; though you see what mischief she did as soon as she'd an opportunity.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
A woman in Deep Sleep is one who goes about in an unconscious state. She seems unaware or unfazed by the truth of her own female life, the truth about women in general, the way women and the feminine have been wounded, devalued, and limited within culture, churches, and families. She cannot see the wound or feel the pain. She has never acknowledged, much less confronted, sexism within the church, biblical interpretations, or Christian doctrine. Okay, so women have been largely missing from positions of church power, we've been silenced and relegated to positions of subordination by biblical interpretations and doctrine, and God has been represented to us as exclusively male. So what? The woman in Deep Sleep is oblivious to the psychological and spiritual impact this has had on her. Or maybe she has some awareness of it all but keeps it sequestered nicely in her head, rarely allowing it to move down into her heart or into the politics of her spirituality.
SUE MONK KIDD
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
Men can sleep with a different woman every night and indulge in the most revolting practices--but let an unmarried woman make one mistake, be led astray when she's young and silly and knows nothing of the world, and she's tainted for life and called a harlot!
SUSANNE ALLEYN
Game of Patience
I've always felt there are two things a woman should never do after the age of thirty-five: stand in natural light and have a baby.
ERMA BOMBECK
Family: The Ties that Bind ... and Gag!
The spirit of Eve is strong in all her daughters.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Rose in Bloom
Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.
MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
The Neurotic's Notebook
Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
speech in San Francisco, July 1871
In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
attributed, Great Hollywood Wit
The burning gaze of a young woman, such as hath tasted man, shall not escape me; for I have a spirit keen to mark these things.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Toxotides
To know a mature woman is to know more than her body. It is to know her dreams and her secrets. It is to know that a dance is a fight, and a fight is a dance, and that passion and compassion beat in the same breast.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
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
Every physical quality admired by men in women is in direct connection with the manifold functions of women for the propagation of the species.
JAMES JOYCE
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Woman loves or hates: she knows no middle course.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus
There are two races of people -- men and women -- no matter what women's libbers would have you pretend. The male is motivated by toys and science because men are born with no purpose in the universe except to procreate. There is lots of time to kill beyond that. They've got to find work. Men have no inherent center to themselves beyond procreating. Women, however, are born with a center. They can create the universe, mother it, teach it, nurture it. Men read science fiction to build the future. Women don't need to read it. They are the future.
RAY BRADBURY
Playboy, 1996