WOMEN QUOTES XIV

quotations about women

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


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

Tags: John Berger


A woman's lot is made for her by the love she accepts.

GEORGE ELIOT

Felix Holt


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

Tags: Jane Addams


I tell you the women who make fervent wives
And sweet tender mothers, had Fate been less fair,
Are the women who might have abandoned their lives
To the madness that springs from and ends in despair.
As the fire on the hearth which sheds brightness around,
Neglected, may level the walls to the ground.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

"Angel or Demon"

Tags: Ella Wheeler Wilcox


I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do it at all. We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that.

TONI MORRISON

Newsweek, March 30, 1981

Tags: Toni Morrison


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!

Tags: Erma Bombeck


The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

The Philanderer

Tags: George Bernard Shaw


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


The world is full of women, and the women full of wile; so that a man, if he goeth not warily withal, shall surely fall a prey thereunto.

GELETT BURGESS

The Maxims of Methuselah


A woman has but eight roles open to her: ingénue, mother, witch, detective, nun, whore, queen, and corpse.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

Radiance


Sure, we can be heartless and refuse to express any sort of emotion. We can be stubborn as hell and scarily temperamental. We often refuse to admit when we're wrong, and we won't acknowledge it when we realize we are. We can be way too aggressive and abrupt. We feel the need to come off as tough, despite the fact that our hearts are made of gold. Aquarius women are a rare breed.

ELIZABETH CABALLERO

"8 Reasons Aquarius Women Are The Most Confident Partners In The Zodiac", Elite Daily, February 9, 2016


The faces of most American women over thirty are relief maps of petulant and bewildered unhappiness.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

letter to "Scottie" Fitzgerald, October 5, 1940


The Madonna-Whore complex refers to the tendency to make a distinction between good, pure girls or the "Madonnas," and bad, desirable girls or the "Whores." This idea, however, requires there be a distinction between women you respect and women you desire while insisting they can't be both. Somehow, people still can't shake the idea women's respectability is contingent on their adherence to puritan values that equate "goodness" with being quiet, submissive, virginally pure and modest.

JULIA O'DONNELL

"Women are so much more than just sisters, mothers, wives", The Badger Herald, March 14, 2017


The wings of high-flying women are still being clipped by sexist stereotypes.

CAROLINE CRIADO-PEREZ

The Guardian, February 10, 2016


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

Tags: Austin O'Malley


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

Tags: Simone de Beauvoir


When a hen cackles, she's either layin' or lyin'.

KEN ALSTAD

Savvy Sayin's

Tags: Ken Alstad


Almost all women will give a sympathizing hearing to men who are in love. Be they ever so old, they grow young again with that conversation, and renew their own early times.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

Philip

Tags: William Makepeace Thackeray


I'm a failure as a woman. My men expect so much of me, because of the image they've made of me -- and that I've made of myself -- as a sex symbol. They expect bells to ring and whistles to whistle, but my anatomy is the same as any other woman's and I can't live up to it.

MARILYN MONROE

attributed, Marilyn, 1962

Tags: Marilyn Monroe