quotations about women
A woman is essentially a vessel made to be filled.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
What a woman thinks of women is the test of her nature.
GEORGE MEREDITH
Diana of the Crossways
A woman's passion is nothing less than the sea that tosses a man's ship, and to weather the storm he must use skill and humility to ride her waves, having given up his own course and dragged down his sails, letting the sea take him where it will. For a sailor who knows that there is nothing to fear, this is the greatest adventure of life, as he lashes himself to the mast, knowing that his surrender is his strength and the chance for his redemption.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
What, then, is feminine as contrasted with masculine? what is womanly as compared with manly, whether in literature or in life? Men and women have many qualities in common, and resemble more than they differ from each other. But while, speaking generally, the man's main occupations lie abroad, the woman's main occupation is at home. He has to deal with public and collective interests; she has to do with private and individual interests. We need not go so far as to say, with Kingsley, that man must work and woman must weep; but at least he has to fight and to struggle, she has to solace and to heal. Ambition, sometimes high, sometimes low, but still ambition--ambition and success are the main motives and purpose of his life. Her noblest ambition is to foster domestic happiness, to bring comfort to the afflicted, and to move with unostentatious but salutary step over the vast territory of human affection. While man busies himself with the world of politics, with the world of commerce, with the rise and fall of empires, with the fortunes and fate of humanity, woman tends the hearth, visits the sick, consoles the suffering--in a word, in all she does, fulfils the sacred offices of love.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.
HONORE DE BALZAC
A Woman of Thirty
Womanliness means only motherhood;
All love begins and ends there.
ROBERT BROWNING
The Inn Album
The woman who thinks meanly of herself is any man's purchase.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Pamela
In the choice of a wife, we ought to make use of our ears, and not our eyes.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
A man, at least, is free; he can explore every passion, every land, overcome obstacles, taste the most distant pleasures. But a woman is continually thwarted. Inert and pliant at the same time, she must struggle against both the softness of her flesh and subjection to the law. Her will, like the veil tied to her hat by a string, flutters with every breeze; there is always some desire luring her on, some convention holding her back.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Madame Bovary
According to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome, the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man. A man's presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies.... A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. His presence may be fabricated, in the sense that he pretends to b capable of what he is not. But the pretence is always towards a power which he exercises on others. By contrast, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her.
JOHN BERGER
Ways of Seeing
When my son said, "I can't stop thinking about girls," I said, "That's not gonna stop. Congratulations. You're in the club. From now until the day you die, one way or another you'll be thinking about girls."
PAUL REISER
Good Housekeeping, June 2011
Girls are so queer you never know what they mean. They say no when they mean yes, and drive a man out of his wits just for the fun of it.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
'Of womenkind such indeed is the love,
Or the word love abused,
Under which many childish desires
And conceits are excused.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
As Ye Came from the Holy Land
If you really want to possess a woman, you must think like her, and the first thing to do is win over her soul. The rest, that sweet, soft wrapping that steals away your senses and your virtue, is a bonus.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person; they make friendships as kings of old made leagues, who sacrificed some poor animal betwixt them, and commenced strict allies; so the ladies, after they have pulled some character to pieces, are from henceforth inviolable friends.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
Women ... I mean, they are the other half of the sky, and without them there is nothing. And without us there's nothing. There's only the two together creating children, creating society.
JOHN LENNON
interview, KFRC RKO Radio, December 8, 1980
The heart of a coquette, like the tail of a lizard, always grows again after she has lost it.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Too credulous a woman's longing flies
And spreading swiftly, swiftly dies.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
There are women who never had an intrigue; but there are scarce any who never had but one.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
A woman in power is hardly a routine matter. Historically, 63 of 142 nations studied by the World Economic Forum have had a female head of government or state at some point in the half-century preceding 2014. However, in nearly two-thirds of those nations a woman was in power for less than four of the 50 years. And in 11 countries (17%), a woman led for less than a year.
TARA SONENSHINE
"U.S. vs the World? Women as Top Political Leaders", The Globalist, February 10, 2016