quotations about women
Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
REX STOUT
Three Doors to Death
Women have traditionally been either put on pedestals or damned as the source of all sexual temptation and sin. These are two sides of the same coin, since both place women in a nonhuman role. Playboy has opposed these warped sexual values and, in so doing, helped women step down from their pedestals and enjoy their natural sexuality as much as men.
HUGH HEFNER
Playboy, January 1974
A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.
U2
"Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World"
Oh! too convincing -- dangerously dear --
In woman's eye the unanswerable tear!
LORD BYRON
The Corsair
Woman is the only creature in nature that hunts down its hunters and devours the prey alive.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
A woman's passion is like the tide, it stays for no man when the hour is come.
APHRA BEHN
The Lucky Chance
The imaginative estimate or ideal conception of Woman by the Poets has always been deemed exceptionally interesting, especially by women themselves, for, as a rule, it is agreeable; and, even if the presentation be sometimes a little overcharged with glowing colour, all of us, men and women alike, are not otherwise than pleased with descriptions that portray us, not exactly as we are, but as we should like to be. Withal, a portrait, to obtain recognition, must have in it some resemblance to the original; and, speaking in the most prosaic manner, one need not hesitate to affirm that any representation of women, at least of womanly women, that was not attractive would be a travesty of the fact.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
When [Mike] Pence says he will not eat alone with a woman who is not his wife, he is perpetuating the patriarchal notion that women are either Mary, Jesus' pure virgin Mother, or Eve, a temptress, a liability. It perhaps is no coincidence that Pence reportedly refers to his Mary -- wife Karen Pence -- as "Mother." For Pence and many evangelical men, all women who are not Marys are Eves, placed peripherally in their lives as temptations to resist. Every Eve is one alone-meeting away from destroying a godly man. In order to protect their honor and reputation, these men cut us off completely. This reduces all women to a monolithic sexual identity. To men like Pence, we are not complex, complete, sacred vessels full of intellect and divinity and grit. We are not fully formed spiritual beings; we are not fully formed citizens. We are exclusively sexual creatures. This mistrust of women is pumped through the veins of the Christian church and, apparently, the executive branch of the United States of America.
GLENNON DOYLE MELTON
"Mike Pence's Marriage Rule Holds Women Back", Time, April 3, 2017
We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Advertiser, September 9, 2004
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
Women are slaves to their beauty.
DORIS LESSING
Shikasta
If a woman's got nothing but her fair fame to feed on, why, it's thin tack, and a donkey would die of it!
D. H. LAWRENCE
Sons and Lovers
It has been our experience that women usually prefer thin, undernourished, flatchested females, dressed to the teeth, as a concept of "feminine beauty" -- and that men prefer exactly the opposite: voluptuous, well-rounded and undressed. The women's idealization of woman is actually a male counterpart, competing with man in society; man's view of women is far more truly feminine.
HUGH HEFNER
The Realist, May, 1961
It took him a moment to respond to the unguarded sweetness of her smile, her body calculated to a millimeter to suggest a bud yet guarantee a flower.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Tender Is the Night
If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself;--all that runs over will be yours.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
A woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.
J. M. COETZEE
Disgrace
For one to admire a woman merely for her beauty, is to love the building for its exterior; but to love one for the greatness of her soul, is to appreciate the tenement for its intrinsic value.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
speech in San Francisco, July 1871
Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being.... Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"The Tragedy of Women's Emancipation", Anarchism and Other Essays
As such portraits as we have are almost invariably of the male sex, who strut more prominently across the stage, it seems worthwhile to take as a model one of those many women who cluster in the shade. For a study of history and biography convinces any right minded person that these obscure figures occupy a place not unlike that of the showman's hand in the dance of the marionettes; and the finger is laid upon the heart.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
"Phyllis and Rosamond", The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf