quotations about women
No man with any sense assumes that a woman's words mean to her exactly what they mean to him.
REX STOUT
The Mother Hunt
A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.
U2
"Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World"
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
A woman's love, like lichens upon a rock, will still grow where even charity can find no soil to nurture itself.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
We never see the mass of women en costume, without being reminded of the artificial flies used in angling--tricked out, also, with much the same object, only that, like St. Peter, women are "fishers of men."
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
attributed, Great Hollywood Wit
Women are not waiting around for lovers, they're living their lives. And believe it or not, having the morning to yourself is very zen.
KAITLYN WILDE
"Comic Artist Depicts Single Women They Way They Really Are -- Quite Content, Thank You Very Much", Bustle, February 9, 2016
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
I had long since given up trying to extract from a woman as it were the square root of her unknown quantity, the mystery of which a mere introduction was generally enough to dispel.
MARCEL PROUST
Sodom and Gomorrah
Women use lovers as they do cards; they play with them a while, and when they have got all they can by them, throw them away, call for new ones, and then perhaps lose by the new all they got by the old ones.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
A woman who can threaten your life before breakfast is the only sort of woman worth having.
NORA ROBERTS
Black Hills
Woman loves or hates: she knows no middle course.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus
Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.
MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
The Neurotic's Notebook
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
Great ladies ... are like the best sauces -- it is better not to know how they are made.
OCTAVE MIRBEAU
The Diary of a Chambermaid
Men do foolish things thoughtlessly, knowing not why; but no woman doeth aught without a reason.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
Man dreams of fame while woman wakes to love.
ALFRED TENNYSON
Idylls of the King
A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.
HENRIK IBSEN
From Ibsen's Workshop
When [Mike] Pence says he will not eat alone with a woman who is not his wife, he is perpetuating the patriarchal notion that women are either Mary, Jesus' pure virgin Mother, or Eve, a temptress, a liability. It perhaps is no coincidence that Pence reportedly refers to his Mary -- wife Karen Pence -- as "Mother." For Pence and many evangelical men, all women who are not Marys are Eves, placed peripherally in their lives as temptations to resist. Every Eve is one alone-meeting away from destroying a godly man. In order to protect their honor and reputation, these men cut us off completely. This reduces all women to a monolithic sexual identity. To men like Pence, we are not complex, complete, sacred vessels full of intellect and divinity and grit. We are not fully formed spiritual beings; we are not fully formed citizens. We are exclusively sexual creatures. This mistrust of women is pumped through the veins of the Christian church and, apparently, the executive branch of the United States of America.
GLENNON DOYLE MELTON
"Mike Pence's Marriage Rule Holds Women Back", Time, April 3, 2017
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