Accepting the theory that the monkey is man's ancestor, one is inclined to infer that woman, judging by the number and length of her hatpins, is a lineal descendant of the porcupine.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES, Poems and Paragraphs
Women themselves condition their daughters to serve the system of male primacy. If a daughter challenges it, the mother will generally defend the system rather than her daughter. These mothers, victims themselves, have unwittingly become wounded wounders. Women need to attack culture's oppression of women, for there truly is a godlike socializing power that induces women to "buy in" or collude, but we also need to confront our own part in accepting male dominance and take responsibility where appropriate.
SUE MONK KIDD, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
- Because a woman brought death
- a bright Maiden overcame it,
- and so the highest blessing
- in all of creation
- lies in the form of a woman,
- since God has become man
- in a sweet and blessed Virgin.
HILDEGARD OF BINGEN, "Quia ergo femina"
- I know the woman has no soul, I know
- The woman has no possibilities
- Of soul or mind or heart, but merely is
- The masterpiece of flesh: well, be it so.
- It is her flesh that I adore; I go
- Thirsting afresh to drain her empty kiss.
- I know she cannot love: it is not this
- My vanquished heart implores in overthrow.
- Tyrannously I crave, I crave alone,
- Her splendid body, Earth's most eloquent
- Music, divinest human harmony;
- Her body now a silent instrument,
- That 'neath my touch shall wake and make for me
- The strains I have but dreamed of, never known.
ARTHUR SYMONS, "Idealism"
When a woman gets over 35 she is generally willing to embark on the sea of matrimony with almost any life-buoy.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES, Poems and Paragraphs
A woman in Deep Sleep is one who goes about in an unconscious state. She seems unaware or unfazed by the truth of her own female life, the truth about women in general, the way women and the feminine have been wounded, devalued, and limited within culture, churches, and families. She cannot see the wound or feel the pain. She has never acknowledged, much less confronted, sexism within the church, biblical interpretations, or Christian doctrine. Okay, so women have been largely missing from positions of church power, we've been silenced and relegated to positions of subordination by biblical interpretations and doctrine, and God has been represented to us as exclusively male. So what? The woman in Deep Sleep is oblivious to the psychological and spiritual impact this has had on her. Or maybe she has some awareness of it all but keeps it sequestered nicely in her head, rarely allowing it to move down into her heart or into the politics of her spirituality.
SUE MONK KIDD, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
- For men have marble, women waxen, minds,
- And therefore are they form'd as marble will;
- The weak oppress'd, the impression of strange kinds
- Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill:
- Then call them not the authors of their ill,
- No more than wax shall be accounted evil
- Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, The Rape of Lucrece
It does seem paradoxical. But when a woman has curves we always want her 'round.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES, Poems and Paragraphs
A good woman’s arms round a man’s neck is a lifebelt thrown out to him from heaven.
JEROME K. JEROME, "A Charming Woman"
- Horns to bulls wise Nature lends;
- Horses she with hoofs defends;
- Hares with nimble feet relieves;
- Dreadful teeth to lions gives;
- Fishes learn through streams to slide;
- Birds through yielding air to glide;
- Men with courage she supplies;
- But to women these denies.
- What then gives she? Beauty, this
- Both their arms and armour is:
- She, that can this weapon use,
- Fire and sword with ease subdues.
How do those who contend that woman is the intellectual inferior of man account for the fact that she can give a man a piece of her mind 365 days in the year and still have a huge reserve supply?
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES, Poems and Paragraphs
Two women can't share a house comfortably, no matter how fond they might be of each other. It's got to be one woman's kitchen.
NORA ROBERTS, Blue Smoke
As God is my witness, the more I deal with women, the more I like my cat.
P. N. ELROD, The Dark Sleep
A woman is rarely up to date on the subject of her age.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES, Poems and Paragraphs
Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin, but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building.
OSCAR WILDE, A Woman of No Importance
Before marriage a woman may procure some éclat by pretending to believe in the fiction of her ascendancy; but after marriage, the worshipped beauty becomes a very plain every-day sort of person, and the poetry of the sex's power is at an end for ever!
ROBERT BELL, Marriage: A Comedy in Five Acts
Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder.
THORNTON WILDER, The Matchmaker
A bride at her second marriage does not wear a veil. She wants to see what she is getting.
HELEN ROWLAND, A Guide to Men
Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences.
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