quotations about women
A woman has but eight roles open to her: ingénue, mother, witch, detective, nun, whore, queen, and corpse.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
A woman you've endured such a gnawing desire for, you can't help bearing a little grudge against, when the ache is gone.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit at Rest
Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do, and I gave the commonsensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.
GLORIA STEINEM
attributed, Quote Unquote
It is often asserted that as woman has always been man's slave--subject--inferior--dependent, under all forms of government and religion, slavery must be her normal condition. This might have some weight had not the vast majority of men also been enslaved for centuries to kings and popes, and orders of nobility, who, in the progress of civilization, have reached complete equality.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
introduction, History of Woman Suffrage
It's like there is a section of society that thinks single women are a bit odd. If you've found someone who agrees to live with you and spend time with you then you get "stamped" with approval -- you've met the requirements of life. If you haven't been "validated" -- and are single -- there can be a suspicion about you, that there's something a bit wrong with you.
MEERA DATTANI
"Are You A Victim Of Singlism?", Grazia Daily, February 10, 2016
What man can pretend to know the riddle of a woman's mind?
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.
GEORGE MEREDITH
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
You gotta respect a girl who realizes that romantic relationships are built on lies and goes to town with it!
PETE ABRAMS
"That Which Redeems", Sluggy Freelance, August 26, 2004
I call 'em complaining machines. Things are never right with a guy to them. And man, when you throw that hysteria in there ... forget it. I gotta get out, get in the car, and go. Anywhere. Get a cup of coffee somewhere. Anywhere. Anything but another woman. I guess they're just built different, right?
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Interview Magazine, September 1987
No one but a women can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
No man ever reaches manhood
till a woman's tenderness
is a part of his possession.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Conquerors"
The most important thing in knowing that women are necessary is knowing that men are necessary too.
TAMARA ANGELA GRANT
"Women Are Necessary...", Huffington Post, March 9, 2017
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
In the choice of a wife, sundry men are of sundry minds. One looketh high as one that feareth no chips, saying that the oil that swimmeth on the top is the wholesomest. Another poreth in the ground, as dreading all dangers that happen in great stocks, alleging that the honey that lieth in the bottom is the sweetest.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit
Love is wont to visit Man in the company of Desire; but Woman by himself.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
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
Men may weary by their constancy, but women never.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
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
The really clever thing, in affairs of this sort, is not to win a woman already desired by everyone, but to discover such a prize while she is still unknown.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, October 7, 1940
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