quotations about women
Men do foolish things thoughtlessly, knowing not why; but no woman doeth aught without a reason.
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"
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
No man ever reaches manhood
till a woman's tenderness
is a part of his possession.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Conquerors"
Women in London are like the rich silks; they are out of fashion a great while before they wear out.
APHRA BEHN
Oroonoko
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
But like all the other women I have referred to, she expressed herself with passionate and disarming effrontery.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
Great ladies ... are like the best sauces -- it is better not to know how they are made.
OCTAVE MIRBEAU
The Diary of a Chambermaid
If I could remake the world, I'd banish women, send them away with all their trouble. Then children would come from a purer source.
EURIPIDES
Medea
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"
At some point in their career, it becomes obvious that women are more under-promoted than men are in the same field. There are many reasons as to why it happens and unfortunately, the result of this phenomenon actually perpetuates the problem. It's a cycle that's hard to break.
KAREN FRATTI
"Women Are More Under-Promoted Than Men & That's A Problem For Several Reasons", Romper, April 3, 2017
To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men.
JOHN BERGER
Ways of Seeing
Be delicate, little wife-woman. Never be without your veil, without many veils. Veil yourself in a thousand veils, all shimmering and glittering with costly textures and precious jewels. Never let the last veil be drawn. Against the morrow array yourself with more veils, ever more veils, veils without end. Yet the many veils must not seem many. Each veil must seem the only one between you and your hungry lover who will have nothing less than all of you. Each time he must seem to get all, to tear aside the last veil that hides you. He must think so. It must not be so. Then there will be no satiety, for on the morrow he will find another last veil that has escaped him.
JACK LONDON
The Valley of the Moon
Men are often like that. They grow bored with simple goodness and want a woman who is dangerous, a challenge.
SUSANNE ALLEYN
Game of Patience
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
What man can pretend to know the riddle of a woman's mind?
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
I am not one of those who believe -- broadly speaking -- that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislatures, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance.
JANE ADDAMS
address before the Chicago Political Equality League, 1897
I have often wondered that learning is not thought a proper ingredient in the education of a woman of quality or fortune. Since they have the same improvable minds as the male part of their species.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, September 8, 1713
These women are always the same; they will, and they will not; their Yes so often merely a cowardly sort of a No; and their No, a coy sort of a Yes. One should be a diplomatist to understand them.
JOHN STUART BLACKIE
Altavona: Fact and Fiction From My Life in the Highlands
The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
Lessons in Life