quotations about women
He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of it.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Maxims for Revolutionists
Because a woman brought death
a bright Maiden overcame it,
and so the highest blessing
in all of creation
lies in the form of a woman,
since God has become man
in a sweet and blessed Virgin.
HILDEGARD OF BINGEN
"Quia ergo femina"
Whatever may be thought of "woman's sphere," it is certain that its boundaries have been steadily enlarged; that an increased liberty, not only of secular employments and civil rights, but also of social intercourse, has been accorded to her with increasing civilization; and that, so far from losing, either in the delicacy and refinement of her own character, or in the chivalric homage paid to her by man, she has gained in both respects in the same ratio in which she has been freed from the trammels of an unnatural conventionalism, and elevated to a position of real equality with the dominant sex.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths
There is no beast, no rush of fire, like woman so untamed. She calmly goes her way where even panthers would be shamed.
ARISTOPHANES
Lysistrata
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
Any but the most brutish of men must be touched with a certain awe or wonder at the baring of a woman's naked soul.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
The Hour of the Dragon
All the world's a stage, and it's a dead easy guess which sex has all the speaking parts.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, November 13, 1938
Or light or dark, or short or tall, she sets a spring to snare them all; all's one to her--above her fan, she'd make sweet eyes at Caliban.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Coquette"
Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they'll spit on you.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Women
Man makes one journey all his living days,
Down through the realms of music and of art;
Down through the halls of fame and glorious praise;
Down through the tears and triumphs of the heart
To some sweet woman waiting some place there.
For her he builds his cities and makes war,
Seeks gold and glorious wealth to store.
EDWIN CURRAN
"The Eternal Quest"
It is indeed a misfortune for a woman to be without beauty, as with men the eye is the chief arbiter of qualities in the sex. Her beauty is her capital--her worth in the market matrimonial depends upon it. With her the Virtues are less reverenced when unaccompanied by the Graces. The sex understand this very well; and hence they seek mainly to make captive the eye, knowing the mind and heart will follow as a matter of course.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
PLATO
The Republic
I think it's time we women stopped carrying supplies for the entire family. If children don't have room to carry their own toys, if men don't have pockets in their pants, tougho.
ERMA BOMBECK
Forever, Erma
I have often felt that I would find it more complicated, troublesome and unpleasant to ascertain the feelings by which a woman lives than to plumb the innermost thoughts of an earthworm.
OSAMU DAZAI
No Longer Human
Frailty, thy name is woman.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!
HONORE DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
A woman without a man cannot meet a man, any man, of any age, without thinking, even if it's for a half-second, "Perhaps this is THE man."
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult.
MELINDA GATES
Woman's Day Magazine, October 2, 2007