Women Quotes

• If tomorrow, women woke up and decided they really liked their bodies, just think how many industries would go out of business.

  Gail Dines

  Beauty, Business, Acceptance

  94 Copy quote

• A faithful woman looks to the spring, a good book, perfume, earthquakes, and divine revelation for the experience others find in a lover. They deceive their husbands, so to speak, with the entire world, men excepted.

  Jean Giraudoux

  Husband, Spring, Book

  Jean Giraudoux (1964). “Three plays”

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• Woman is a miracle of divine contradictions.

  Jules Michelet

  Miracle, Cute Girl, Contradicting

  53 Copy quote

• Women are hard and proud and stubborn-hearted,
  Their heads being turned with praise and flattery;
  And that is why their lovers are afraid
  To tell them a plain story.

  William Butler Yeats

  Stories, Stubborn, Proud

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol II: The Plays”, p.270, Simon and Schuster

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• I want in all cases to do right.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Want, Cases

  Abraham Lincoln (2012). “The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln”, p.269, Modern Library

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• one pale woman all alone,
  The daylight kissing her wan hair,
  Loitered beneath the gas lamps' flare,
  With lips of flame and heart of stone.

  Oscar Wilde

  Heart, Kissing, Hair

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Poems and poems in prose”, p.153, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Ladies are like creeds; if you cannot speak well of them, say nothing.

  Herman Melville

  Religion, Speak, Creeds

  Herman Melville (2016). “Redburn.His First Voyage”, p.296, Herman Melville

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• I find it profoundly symbolic that I am appearing before a committee of fifteen men who will report to a legislative body of one hundred men because of a decision handed down by a court comprised of nine men--on an issue that affects millions of women.... I have the feeling that if men could get pregnant, we wouldn't be struggling for this legislation. If men could get pregnant, maternity benefits would be as sacrosanct as the G.I. Bill.

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Struggle, Issues, Decision

  8 Copy quote

• Work-family conflicts - the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child - would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Jobs, Children, Work

  "Family Politics: Love and Power on an Intimate Frontier". Book by Letty Cottin Pogrebin, 1983.

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• Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Accusing Me, Compass, Splendid

  Khaled Hosseini (2009). “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, p.230, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Nobody around here had ever seen a lady beekeeper till her. She liked to tell everybody that women made the best beekeepers, 'cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting. It comes from years of loving children and husbands.

  Sue Monk Kidd

  Children, Husband, Years

  Sue Monk Kidd (2003). “The Secret Life of Bees”, p.143, Penguin

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• Every woman dreams of love. When she is young she prays she will find it. When she is middle aged she hopes for it and when she is old she remembers it.

  Barbara Cartland

  Dream, Remember, Praying

  15 Copy quote

• Married and unmarried women waste a great deal of time in feeling sorry for each other.

  Myrtle Reed

  Sorry, Feelings, Waste

  Myrtle Reed (2012). “The Spinster Book”, p.32, tredition

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• There are only two periods in a woman's life when she hopes to be taken for older than she is, under sixteen and over ninety.

  Ruth Rendell

  Taken, Two, Age

  Ruth Rendell (2010). “A Sleeping Life: (A Wexford Case)”, p.25, Random House

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• Woman naturally seeks to embrace that which is living, personal, and whole. To cherish, guard, protect, nourish and advance growth is her natural, maternal yearning.

  Edith Stein

  Growth, Cherish, Natural

  Edith Stein (2012). “Edith Stein Essays on Woman”, p.8, ICS Publications

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• All one's life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to being noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous.

  Doris Lessing

  People, Focus, Attention

  "An Uncommon Scold". Book by Abby Adams, 1989.

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• All women, from the countess to the cook-maid, are put into high good humor with themselves when a man is taken with them at firstsight. And be they ever so plain, they will find twenty good reasons to defend the judgment of such a man.

  Samuel Richardson

  Taken, Maids, Twenties

  5 Copy quote

• The eye is the casement at which the heart generally looks out. Many a woman who will not show herself at the door, has tipt the sly, the intelligible wink from the window.

  Samuel Richardson

  Eye, Heart, Doors

  Samuel Richardson (2014). “Clarissa Harlowe, or The History of a Young Lady - Complete”, p.1584, Simon and Schuster

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• Thank God I'm over the hill. The only heat I have left comes from hot flashes, my promiscuity is confined to the words "one size fits all," and I buy my white cotton unmentionables at Boadicea's Retreat, not Victoria's Secret. None of the things men do to women could possibly happen to me now unless the U.S. is invaded by one of those new Russian republics whose soldiers aren't fussy.

  Florence King

  White, Hot Flashes, Soldier

  7 Copy quote

• You know, in ten years you're gonna be playing soccer with your tits, what do you think of that?

  Bernardo Bertolucci

  Soccer, Thinking, Years

  4 Copy quote

• I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost. My wife, however, will unerringly point out that the cheese or the leftover roast is hiding right in front of my eyes. Hundreds of such experiences convince me that men and women often inhabit quite different visual worlds. These are differences which cannot be attributed to variations in visual acuity. Man and women simply have learned to use their eyes in very different ways.

  Edward T. Hall

  Eye, Differences, Wife

  17 Copy quote

• Women are taught that their main goal in life is to serve others--first men, and later, children. This prescription leads to enormous problems, for it is supposed to be carried out as if women did not have needs of their own, as if one could serve others without simultaneously attending to one's own interests and desires. Carried to its "perfection," it produces the martyr syndrome or the smothering wife and mother.

  Jean Baker Miller

  Mother, Children, Goal

  Jean Baker Miller (2012). “Toward a New Psychology of Women”, p.62, Beacon Press

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• As children, women are encouraged to be "little ladies." Little ladies don't scream as vociferously as little boys, and they are chastised more severely for throwing tantrums or showing temper: "high spirits" are expected and therefore tolerated in little boys; docility and resignation are the corresponding traits expected of little girls. Now, we tend to excuse a show of temper by a man where we would not excuse an identical tirade from a woman: women are allowed to fuss and complain, but only a man can bellow in rage.

  Robin Lakoff

  Girl, Children, Boys

  36 Copy quote

• Yes, life is a woman!

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Life Is, Yeah, Life And Living

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2010). “The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs”, p.272, Vintage

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• I think one of the greatest losses to humanity was the domination of women. I think every religious system has found ways to be kind to them in a kind of subordinate way. Very patronizing, very colonial. But if you start looking at the fabric of society, even religious systems, they would fall apart if it wasn't for the embedded ability of the women who are involved.

  William P. Young

  Religious, Fall, Loss

  6 Copy quote