quotations about women
Women use lovers as they do cards; they play with them a while, and when they have got all they can by them, throw them away, call for new ones, and then perhaps lose by the new all they got by the old ones.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
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
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
The prolonged slavery of woman is the darkest page in human history.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
introduction, History of Woman Suffrage
Women can sometimes be unpredictable. Even as a woman, I regularly don't understand the choices of my female friends, mother (love you) and sisters (love you lots!).
VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
"Why Women Are So Complicated", Huffington Post, February 9, 2016
To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue none the less to exist for him also: mutually recognising each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other. The reciprocity of their relations will not do away with the miracles -- desire, possession, love, dream, adventure -- worked by the division of human beings into two separate categories; and the words that move us -- giving, conquering, uniting -- will not lose their meaning. On the contrary, when we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the 'division' of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Second Sex
They often say woman cannot keep a secret, but every woman in the world, like every man, has a hundred secrets in her own soul which she hides from even herself. The more respectable she is, the more certain it is the secrets exist.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
People may talk about the equality of the sexes! They are not equal. The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman will vanquish ten men.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A woman in Deep Sleep is one who goes about in an unconscious state. She seems unaware or unfazed by the truth of her own female life, the truth about women in general, the way women and the feminine have been wounded, devalued, and limited within culture, churches, and families. She cannot see the wound or feel the pain. She has never acknowledged, much less confronted, sexism within the church, biblical interpretations, or Christian doctrine. Okay, so women have been largely missing from positions of church power, we've been silenced and relegated to positions of subordination by biblical interpretations and doctrine, and God has been represented to us as exclusively male. So what? The woman in Deep Sleep is oblivious to the psychological and spiritual impact this has had on her. Or maybe she has some awareness of it all but keeps it sequestered nicely in her head, rarely allowing it to move down into her heart or into the politics of her spirituality.
SUE MONK KIDD
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
Men do foolish things thoughtlessly, knowing not why; but no woman doeth aught without a reason.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
There is no moment that exceeds in beauty that moment when one looks at a woman and finds that she is looking at you in the same way that you are looking at her. The moment in which she bestows that look that says, "Proceed with your evil plan, sumbitch."
DONALD BARTHELME
"The Sea of Hesitation"
Every physical quality admired by men in women is in direct connection with the manifold functions of women for the propagation of the species.
JAMES JOYCE
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
I've always felt there are two things a woman should never do after the age of thirty-five: stand in natural light and have a baby.
ERMA BOMBECK
Family: The Ties that Bind ... and Gag!
Men can sleep with a different woman every night and indulge in the most revolting practices--but let an unmarried woman make one mistake, be led astray when she's young and silly and knows nothing of the world, and she's tainted for life and called a harlot!
SUSANNE ALLEYN
Game of Patience
If I have sometimes seemed to make fun of Woman, I assure you it has only been for the purpose of egging her on.
JAMES THURBER
"The Duchess and the Bugs", Lanterns & Lances
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
If thou makest a statement concerning women, lo, she shall immediately try to disprove it straightway. She goeth by contraries.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
REX STOUT
Three Doors to Death
The burning gaze of a young woman, such as hath tasted man, shall not escape me; for I have a spirit keen to mark these things.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Toxotides
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"