WOMEN QUOTES XIX

quotations about women

The original oppression of Woman was based on crude denigration. She caused Man to fall, so she became a scapegoat. No, not a scapegoat which might be blameless but a culprit richly deserving of whatever suffering Man chose thereafter to heap on her. That is Woman in the Book of Genesis. Out here, our ancestors, without the benefit of hearing about the Old Testament, made the very same story differing only in local color. At first the Sky was very close to the Earth. But every evening Woman cut off a piece of the Sky to put in her soup pot, or in another version, she repeatedly banged the top end of her pestle carelessly against the Sky whenever she pounded millet or, as in yet another rendering -- so prodigious is Man's inventiveness, she wiped her kitchen hands in the Sky's face. Whatever the detail of Woman's provocation, the Sky moved away in anger, and God with it.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Anthills of the Savannah

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We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

MARGARET ATWOOD

The Advertiser, September 9, 2004

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Women are women and can't help themselves.

WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE

The Red Planet

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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"


Yesterday woman was a chattel. Now she is, in law, a minor. Tomorrow she will be free, or partially so--that is to say, as free as man.

ELBERT HUBBARD

The American Bible

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A woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.

J. M. COETZEE

Disgrace

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As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

Three Guineas


Hurry not a woman's favor; neither forcer her hastily to surrender to thee. For she goeth into love as she goeth into the waters at the seashore; first a hand and then a lip goeth she in by littles. She diveth not, she leapeth not from the pier; but by gentle shocks and cries of protest she entereth slowly; yet when the waters of love encompass her, then she is supported. She swimmeth in her joy; she floateth on the tide of happiness.

GELETT BURGESS

The Maxims of Methuselah


Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being.... Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.

EMMA GOLDMAN

"The Tragedy of Women's Emancipation", Anarchism and Other Essays


No man with any sense assumes that a woman's words mean to her exactly what they mean to him.

REX STOUT

The Mother Hunt


This is woman's great benevolence, that she will become a martyr for beauty, so that the world may have pleasure.

ROBERT WILSON LYND

Irish & English: Portraits and Impressions

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Women are slaves to their beauty.

DORIS LESSING

Shikasta

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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

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If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.

PLATO

The Republic

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Men look at women the way men look at cars. Everyone looks at Ferraris. Now and then we like a pickup truck, and we all end up with station wagons.

TIM ALLEN

Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man

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The change needed to restore good feeling cannot be reached by remanding women to the spinning wheel, and the contentment of her grandmother, but by conceding to her every right which the spirit of the age demands. Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY

introduction, History of Woman Suffrage


There is nothing in the female sex more graceful or becoming than Modesty. It adds charm to their beauty, and gives a new softness to their sex. Without it simplicity and innocence appear rude; reading and good sense, masculine; wit and humour, lascivious. This is so necessary a quality for pleasing, that the loose part of the sex, whose study it is to ensnare men's hearts, never fail to support the appearance of what they know is essential to that end.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine

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When women let their hair down, it means either sexiness or craziness or death, the three by Victorian times having become virtually synonymous.

MARGARET ATWOOD

"Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For"

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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

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A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments, her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly. She is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight. She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be thankful.

DANIEL DEFOE

The Education of Women

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