quotations about women
It's a strange thing to think of a man as can lift a chair with his teeth, and walk fifty mile on end, trembling and turning hot and cold at only a look from one woman out of all the rest i' the world. It's a mystery we can give no account of.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.
JANE AUSTEN
Mansfield Park
A woman is essentially a vessel made to be filled.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
I have always found the female of the human species many times more difficult to understand than the male.
OSAMU DAZAI
No Longer Human
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
You all know that even when women have full rights, they still remain fatally downtrodden because all housework is left to them. In most cases housework is the most unproductive, the most barbarous and the most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and does not include anything that would in any way promote the development of the woman.
VLADIMIR LENIN
"The Tasks of the Working Women's Movement in the Soviet Republic", Collected Works
Women have now marvelous means of winning their way in the world, and mind without muscle has far greater force than muscle without mind.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Women are books, and men the readers be,
Who sometimes in those books erratas see;
Yet oft the reader's raptured with each line,
Fair print and paper, fraught with sense divine;
Tho' some, neglectful, seldom care to read,
And faithful wives no more than bibles heed.
Are women books? says Hodge, then would mine were
An Almanack, to change her every year.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack
No woman marries for money: they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, April 14, 1941
Modesty is the richest ornament of a woman ... the want of it is her greatest deformity.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Very handsome women have usually far less sensibility to compliments than their less beautiful sisters.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The marginalization of women's voices in the news media under-values their potential contributions to society, and in the processes, diminishes democracy.
CYNTHIA CARTER
"On The Internet, Women Are Still Seen And Not Heard", Vocativ, February 8, 2016
Everywhere there is pleasure you will find a woman in disguise.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
Cool Memories
As God is my witness, the more I deal with women, the more I like my cat.
P. N. ELROD
The Dark Sleep
When my son said, "I can't stop thinking about girls," I said, "That's not gonna stop. Congratulations. You're in the club. From now until the day you die, one way or another you'll be thinking about girls."
PAUL REISER
Good Housekeeping, June 2011
Woman loves or hates: she knows no middle course.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus
With other women he had not been able to touch their flesh without experiencing the desire to devour it, as though ravenous with an abominable hunger to butcher them. But this one, could he then love her, and not kill her?
ÉMILE ZOLA
La Bête Humaine
Your anatomy is a mystery that nobody bothers explaining to us. Even when we think we have mastered one woman's body, every body is different.
CHRIS ABANI
"What Men Aren't Telling Us", O Magazine, July 2008
Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, "She doesn't have what it takes"; They will say, "Women don't have what it takes."
CLARE BOOTHE LUCE
attributed, On Being Blonde: Wit and Wisdom from the World's Most Infamous Blondes
The societies to which I have been exposed seemed to me largely machines for the suppression of women.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses