quotations about women
A complete woman is probably not a very admirable creature. She is manipulative, uses other people to get her own way, and works within whatever system she is in.
ANITA BROOKNER
Writers at Work
The menfolk, they die, all right. And it's us women who walk around, like the Bible says, and mourn. The menfolk, they die, and it's over for them, but we women, we have to keep on living and try to forget what they done to us.
JAMES BALDWIN
Go Tell It on the Mountain
No woman who wants something is a lady. If she is, she doesn't get it.
LAUREN BACALL
Bright Leaf
It is observable that the ladies frequent tragedies more than comedies; the reason may be, that in tragedy their sex is deified and adored, in comedy exposed and ridiculed.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
Wretched
Women!
When you are wholly lovely
Man cannot forget either of his two afflictions,
Soul, or body!
MARJORIE ALLEN SEIFFERT
"Ode in the New Mode"
It is the plain women who know about love; the beautiful women are too busy being fascinating.
KATHARINE HEPBURN
attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes
If a woman shows too often the Medusa's head, she must not be astonished if her lover is turned into stone.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry whom she likes. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field, and don't know their own power. They would overcome us entirely if they did.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Vanity Fair
Woo her not till thou hast seen her mother, for a score of years worketh wonders.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
Women, as they are like riddles in being unintelligible, so generally resemble them in this, that they please us no longer when once we know them.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
Lessons in Life
Women in London are like the rich silks; they are out of fashion a great while before they wear out.
APHRA BEHN
Oroonoko
I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access; while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for man must battle for his fortress at every door and window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero.
WASHINGTON IRVING
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
It seems to me as a woman's face doesna want flowers; it's almost like a flower itself.... It's like when a man's singing a good tune, you don't want t' hear bells tinkling and interfering wi' the sound.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
I do not regard the rise of woman as a bad sign. Rather do I fancy that her traditional subordination was itself an artificial and undesirable condition based on Oriental influences. Our virile Teutonic ancestors did not think their wives unworthy to follow them into battle, or scorn to dream of winged Valkyries bearing them to Valhalla.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
letter to Clark Ashton Smith, October 28, 1934
God bless them pretty women,
I wish they was mine,
Their breath is as sweet,
The dew on the vine.
BOB DYLAN
"Moonshiner"
In the choice of a wife, sundry men are of sundry minds. One looketh high as one that feareth no chips, saying that the oil that swimmeth on the top is the wholesomest. Another poreth in the ground, as dreading all dangers that happen in great stocks, alleging that the honey that lieth in the bottom is the sweetest.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit
No one but a women can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
For men have marble, women waxen, minds,
And therefore are they form'd as marble will;
The weak oppress'd, the impression of strange kinds
Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill:
Then call them not the authors of their ill,
No more than wax shall be accounted evil
Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Rape of Lucrece
Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Pygmalion