quotations about women
The affected modesty of most women is a decoy for the generous, the delicate, and unsuspecting; while the artful, the bold, and unfeeling either see or break through its slender disguises.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
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 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
Miracle woman ...
Your mouth is wine, and all your tender flesh
An easeful meadow for my weariness.
DONALD EVANS
"For the Haunting of Mauna"
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
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
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
Woo her not till thou hast seen her mother, for a score of years worketh wonders.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
As Unto the bow the the cord is,
So unto the man is woman;
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows:
Useless each without the other!
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
The Song of Hiawatha
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"
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"
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
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
Affection with some women amounts almost to disease.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
No woman is all good or all bad, entirely "pure" or entirely sexual, or just a mother or daughter or student or teacher or business woman or sex worker. Newsflash: It's 2017, and women can be lots of things at once. Refusing to understand this fact contributes to our culture's insistence on defining women in terms of their relationships with other people.
JULIA O'DONNELL
"Women are so much more than just sisters, mothers, wives", The Badger Herald, March 14, 2017
Content with one woman?... That is impossible. If you could, then any man can, and any man can't.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
Women still have an uneasy relationship with power and the traits necessary to be a leader. There is this internalized fear that if we are really powerful, we are going to be considered ruthless or pushy or strident--al those epithets that strike right at our femininity. We are still working at trying to overcome the fear that power and womanliness are mutually exclusive.
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON
Newsweek, October 15, 2007
That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.
J. D. SALINGER
The Catcher in the Rye
Why couldn't I be more like other girls my age? Take Mrs. Brown's niece. She spent every waking hour sizing up this beau or that, stitching tea towels and petticoats and putting aside a little each month for a set of Spode Buttercup dishes.
KIRBY LARSON
Hattie Ever After
Over a lifetime of dealing with difficult women, I have learned it is often better to give into their demands immediately.
PATRICIA BRIGGS
When Demons Walk