A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, attributed, Woman's Day, Aug. 2011
Women don't want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think -- in a deeper voice.
BILL COSBY, attributed, The Best Book of Useless Information Ever
It would take a hell of a wife to beat no wife at all.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Crossing
Seen through the glow of a building orgasm, a woman seems to blaze with angelic glory.
When my son said, "I can't stop thinking about girls," I said, "That's not gonna stop. Congratulations. You're in the club. From now until the day you die, one way or another you'll be thinking about girls."
PAUL REISER, Good Housekeeping, June 2011
- As Unto the bow the the cord is,
- So unto the man is woman;
- Though she bends him, she obeys him,
- Though she draws him, yet she follows:
- Useless each without the other!
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, The Song of Hiawatha
A woman in such an emotional tempest is as perilous as a blind cobra to any about her.
ROBERT E. HOWARD, "The People of the Black Circle," Weird Tales (1934)
The societies to which I have been exposed seemed to me largely machines for the suppression of women.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, All the Pretty Horses
Great ladies ... are like the best sauces -- it is better not to know how they are made.
OCTAVE MIRBEAU, The Diary of a Chambermaid
Man can never know the kind of loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in a woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. The woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which he has bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love is a taking of man within her, and act of birth and rebirth, of child bearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to BE. But for a woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment when man rests inside of her.
ANAIS NIN, diary, May 25, 1932
Most women, I think, though they may complain a little about this, would agree that meeting the needs of others is not a real burden; it is what makes life worth living. It is probably the deepest satisfaction a woman has.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, You Learn by Living
A goodlookin horse is like a goodlookin woman.... They're always more trouble than what they're worth. What a man needs is just one that will get the job done.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, All the Pretty Horses
When a woman weeps, it is a man's shame.
LEONID ANDREYEV, The Life of Man
Women believe -- or at least often pretend to believe -- that all our tenderness for them springs from desire; that we love them when we have not for a time enjoyed them, and dismiss them when we are sated, or to express it more precisely, exhausted. There is no truth in this idea, though it may be made to appear true. When we are rigid with desire, we are apt to pretend a great tenderness in the hope of satisfying that desire; but at no other time are we in fact so liable to treat women brutally, and so unlikely to feel any deep emotion but one.
GENE WOLFE, The Claw of the Conciliator
If you tell anything to a woman ... it's like putting it in the papers.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
Any but the most brutish of men must be touched with a certain awe or wonder at the baring of a woman's naked soul.
ROBERT E. HOWARD, The Hour of the Dragon
A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.
U2, "Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World"
That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.
J. D. SALINGER, The Catcher in the Rye
- Woman, thou art a river, deep and wide,
- Of waters soft and sweet:
- Alas! I've never reached the other side;
- Though oft I've wet my feet!
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE, "Epigram," Imogen and Other Poems
Women in London are like the rich silks; they are out of fashion a great while before they wear out.
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!
No one but a women can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart.
- God bless them pretty women,
- I wish they was mine,
- Their breath is as sweet,
- The dew on the vine.
I think it's time we women stopped carrying supplies for the entire family. If children don't have room to carry their own toys, if men don't have pockets in their pants, tougho.
ERMA BOMBECK, Forever, Erma
A man, at least, is free; he can explore every passion, every land, overcome obstacles, taste the most distant pleasures. But a woman is continually thwarted. Inert and pliant at the same time, she must struggle against both the softness of her flesh and subjection to the law. Her will, like the veil tied to her hat by a string, flutters with every breeze; there is always some desire luring her on, some convention holding her back.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, Madame Bovary
Back to Women Quotes
