quotations about women
Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
REX STOUT
Three Doors to Death
A bride at her second marriage does not wear a veil. She wants to see what she is getting.
HELEN ROWLAND
A Guide to Men
Women age early, and their mistake is not knowing where to hide all the time that lies behind them so that no one sees it. What are they to do, devour it like the umbilical cords of their children? Hell and damnation!
ELFRIEDE JELINEK
Lust
I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do it at all. We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that.
TONI MORRISON
Newsweek, March 30, 1981
If family and society tell you its unfeminine, not really womanly, to be aggressive, to speak up, to have strong opinions, to take up space, then women won't trust their own voice, because to be heard and to be influential, you've got to have a way to sing out with passion and love and self-trust--to sing out your song for everyone to hear.
ELIZABETH LESSER
"What's Possible: An Interview With Elizabeth Lesser", Omega, May 8, 2012
It is not extraordinary that the extraterrestrial origin of women was a recurrent theme of science fiction.
KINGSLEY AMIS
The King's English: A Guide to Modern English Usage
The fear of women is the beginning of knowledge.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
Brother, do you know a nicer occupation,
Matter of fact, neither do I,
Than standing on the corner
Watching all the girls go by?
FRANK LOESSER
"Standing on the Corner"
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
I'm a failure as a woman. My men expect so much of me, because of the image they've made of me -- and that I've made of myself -- as a sex symbol. They expect bells to ring and whistles to whistle, but my anatomy is the same as any other woman's and I can't live up to it.
MARILYN MONROE
attributed, Marilyn, 1962
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
When women express darker emotions, they are told to calm down, that their emotions are simply the result of "their time of the month," or that the emotional frustration they feel is not based in a rational (i.e., masculine) worldview. While men's emotional expression is marginalized as feminine, women's emotional expression is infantilized. It is in this repressed emotional space that the alarming sense of being gaslighted can emerge for women.
MARK GREENE
"Women Are Better At Expressing Emotions, Right? Why It's Not That Simple", Yes Magazine, January 27, 2016
A good woman's arms round a man's neck is a lifebelt thrown out to him from heaven.
JEROME K. JEROME
"A Charming Woman"
All of a sudden, in the good-natured child, the woman stood revealed, a disturbing woman with all the impulsive madness of her sex, opening the gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was still smiling, but with the deadly smile of a man-eater.
EMILE ZOLA
Nana
The Madonna-Whore complex refers to the tendency to make a distinction between good, pure girls or the "Madonnas," and bad, desirable girls or the "Whores." This idea, however, requires there be a distinction between women you respect and women you desire while insisting they can't be both. Somehow, people still can't shake the idea women's respectability is contingent on their adherence to puritan values that equate "goodness" with being quiet, submissive, virginally pure and modest.
JULIA O'DONNELL
"Women are so much more than just sisters, mothers, wives", The Badger Herald, March 14, 2017
Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The Scarlet Letter
Woman is the only creature in nature that hunts down its hunters and devours the prey alive.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
attributed, Great Hollywood Wit
If you want to stay single, look for a perfect woman.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
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