WOMEN QUOTES VI

JOHN KEATS, "Woman! When I Behold Thee"

In the choice of a wife, we ought to make use of our ears, and not our eyes.

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.

I have often felt that I would find it more complicated, troublesome and unpleasant to ascertain the feelings by which a woman lives than to plumb the innermost thoughts of an earthworm.

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.

It took him a moment to respond to the unguarded sweetness of her smile, her body calculated to a millimeter to suggest a bud yet guarantee a flower.

Men are often like that. They grow bored with simple goodness and want a woman who is dangerous, a challenge.

Difficult folk, these women!

Men are forever eager to press drink upon those they consider their superiors, hoping thereby to eliminate that distinction between them.... And women, when confronted by superiors, substitute for drink the crippling liquor of their sex.

Men can sleep with a different woman every night and indulge in the most revolting practices--but let an unmarried woman make one mistake, be led astray when she's young and silly and knows nothing of the world, and she's tainted for life and called a harlot!

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

A woman's heart is much like the moon, always changing but always has a man in it.

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

EDWIN CURRAN, "The Eternal Quest"

The successful woman has a secret. She's learned that she owes it to herself, her children, and the world to make the contribution she was born to make. She's learned to ask for advice and help, to insist on getting paid what she's worth, and to set boundaries at work and at home so that her needs get met, not trampled. She puts her dreams at the top of her priorities list, not at the bottom. She feels great about being recognized for her accomplishments, and she's totally OK with the fact that not everyone is going to like her when she stands up to those who would discount her or put her down.

DEBRA CONDREN, Good Housekeeping, Aug. 2010

A woman needn't be dragged down by her functions.

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.

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.

I have always found the female of the human species many times more difficult to understand than the male.

A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry whom she likes. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field, and don't know their own power. They would overcome us entirely if they did.

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