quotations about women
My son, beware of a plain damsel who charmeth thee, for she needeth much wile, and useth diverse weapons.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
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 spirit of Eve is strong in all her daughters.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Rose in Bloom
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
Women ... have long been discouraged from the awareness and forthright expression of anger. Sugar and spice are the ingredients from which we are made. We are the nurturers, the soothers, the peacemakers, and the steadiers of rocked boats.
HARRIET LERNER
The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships
A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.
COCO CHANEL
The Gospel According to Coco Chanel
A lovely woman rolls up
The delicate bamboo blind.
She sits deep within,
Twitching her moth eyebrows.
Who may it be
That grieves her heart?
On her face one sees
Only the wet traces of tears.
LI BAI
"The Night of Sorrow"
Certainly, it is more reasonable to devote one's life to women than to postage stamps or old snuff-boxes, even to pictures or statues. But the example of other collections should be a warning to us to diversify, to have not one woman only but several.
MARCEL PROUST
The Guermantes Way
Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.
MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
The Neurotic's Notebook
The average woman was firmly convinced, it seemed, that she could not make a man recognize her worth unless every time she opened her legs she did so as if it were a scene in a soap opera.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
There are two kinds of spiritual law, two kinds of conscience, one in man and another, altogether different, in woman. They do not understand each other; but in practical life the woman is judged by man's law, as though she were not a woman but a man.
HENRIK IBSEN
From Ibsen's Workshop
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
Women's emotions are still fitted for a kind of society that no longer exists. My deep emotions, my real ones, are to do with my relationship with a man. One man. But I don't live that kind of life, and I know few women who do. So what I feel is irrelevant and silly.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
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
A campaign is using a new hashtag called #WomenNotObjects to promote the need to stop objectifying women when it comes to advertising products and companies. The YouTube post, "We Are #WomenNotObjects" has received approximately 1,075,821 views and demonstrates to its viewers that you can find many advertisements that objectify women just by googling it.
TISHA LENON
"Women are not objects for your brand", Talon Marks, February 9, 2016
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
Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The Scarlet Letter
Some women destroy all your sensibility towards them by their coldness, others by their heat.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
The imaginative estimate or ideal conception of Woman by the Poets has always been deemed exceptionally interesting, especially by women themselves, for, as a rule, it is agreeable; and, even if the presentation be sometimes a little overcharged with glowing colour, all of us, men and women alike, are not otherwise than pleased with descriptions that portray us, not exactly as we are, but as we should like to be. Withal, a portrait, to obtain recognition, must have in it some resemblance to the original; and, speaking in the most prosaic manner, one need not hesitate to affirm that any representation of women, at least of womanly women, that was not attractive would be a travesty of the fact.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
There are few virtuous women who are not tired of their part.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims