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Women

female adult human
(Redirected from Ladies)

Women are adult human females. Before adulthood, a female child or adolescent is referred to as a girl.

Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears
Her noblest work she classes, O:
Her 'prentice hand she tried on man,
An' then she made the lasses, O.
—Robert Burns

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations · See also · External links

A

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  • Muliebre ingenium, prolubium, occasio.
    • A woman's nature, lust, and opportunity.
    • Lucius Accius, fragment of the lost Andromeda, quoted by Nonius, 64, 5
  • If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.
    • Abigail Adams, letter to John Adams, 31 March 1776, in L. H. Butterfield (ed.) Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 1 (1963), p. 370
  • Women have, commonly, a very positive moral sense; that which they will, is right; that which they reject, is wrong; and their will, in most cases, ends by settling the moral.
  • Loveliest of women! heaven is in thy soul,
    Beauty and virtue shine forever round thee,
    Bright'ning each other! thou art all divine!
  • Women’s movements have a special significance for the immediate future. These movements should be understood not as an assertion of supremacy, but as the establishment of justice.
  • To all these insanities will be added the most shameful—the intensified competition between male and female. ... It is hard to imagine how disastrous this will be, for it is a struggle against evolution itself! What a high price humanity pays for every such opposition to evolution! In these convulsions the young generations are corrupted. ... Now is the time to think about equal and full rights, but darkness invades the tensed realms.
  • We must find the right use for every ability. The era of the Mother of the World is not a return of the age of Amazons.
  • Divination seems heightened and raised to its highest power in woman.
  • Oh the gladness of their gladness when they're glad,
    And the sadness of their sadness when they're sad;
    But the gladness of their gladness, and the sadness of their sadness,
    Are as nothing to their badness when they're bad.
    • Anonymous, "Epigram on Women", in Notes and Queries, 9th s., no. 9 (April 12, 1902), p. 288
  • Oh, the shrewdness of their shrewdness when they are shrewd,
    And the rudeness of their rudeness when they're rude;
    But the shrewdness of their shrewdness and the rudeness of their rudeness,
    Are as nothing to their goodness when they're good.
    • Anonymous; answer to preceding
  • The world is full of care, much like unto a bubble,
    Women and care, and care and women, and women and care and trouble.
    • Anonymous epigram (attributed by Nathaniel Ward to a lady at the court of the Queen of Bohemia), Simple Cobler's Boy (1648), p. 25
  • Geologist is the only person who can talk to a woman and use the words 'dike', 'thrust', 'bed', 'orogeny', 'cleavage', and 'subduction' in the same sentence without facing a civil suit.
    • Anonymous, in Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2007), p. 863
  • Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum: Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.
    • Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
    • Anonymous, Ave Maria ("Hail Mary")
  • "I open my east chamber door,
    And sit on my west chamber bed.
    I take off my battle cloak,
    And put on my old-time clothes.
    I adjust my wispy hair at the window sill,
    And apply my bisque makeup by the mirror.
    I step out to see my comrades-in-arms,
    They are all surprised and astounded:
    "We travelled twelve years together,
    Yet didn't realise Mulan was a lady!"
    The buck bounds here and there,
    Whilst the doe has narrow eyes.
    But when the two rabbits run side by side,
    How can you tell the female from the male?
  • I think Nature hath lost the mould
    Where she her shape did take;
    Or else I doubt if Nature could
    So fair a creature make.
  • The virtue of her lively looks
    Excels the precious stone;
    I wish to have none other books
    To read or look upon.
  • She was not made out of his head, Sir,
    To rule and to govern the man;
    Nor was she made out of his feet, Sir,
    By man to be trampled upon.
    * * * * *
    But she did come forth from his side, Sir,
    His equal and partner to be;
    And now they are coupled together,
    She oft proves the top of the tree.
  • Vente quid levius? fulgur. Quid fulgure? flamma
    Flamma quid? mulier. Quid mulier? nihil.
    • What is lighter than the wind? A feather.
      What is lighter than a feather? fire.
      What lighter than fire? a woman.
      What lighter than a woman? Nothing.
    • Anonymous, Harleian Manuscript, no. 3362, fol. 47. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 890
  • There is a Lady sweet and kind,
    Was never face so pleased my mind;
    I did but see her passing by,
    And yet I love her till I die.
  • Where is the man who has the power and skill
    To stem the torrent of a woman's will?
    For if she will, she will, you may depend on't;
    And if she won't, she won't; so there's an end on't.
    • From the Pillar Erected on the Mount in the Dane John Field, Canterbury. The Examiner (31 May 1829)
  • Where women are honoured, there the gods are pleased.
  • In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independent.
  • I do not demand equal pay for any women save those who do equal work in value. Scorn to be coddled by your employers; make them understand that you are in their service as workers, not as women.
  • Of all the girls that e'er was seen,
    There's none so fine as Nelly.
  • Lysistrata: I am hot all over with blushes for our sex.
    Men say we're slippery rogues—
    Calonice: And aren't they right?
  • On one she smiled, and he was blest;
    She smiles elsewhere—we make a din!
    But 'twas not love which heaved her breast,
    Fair child!—it was the bliss within.
  • In his adolescence, he had discussed it with his father while they were weeding a field.
    “About girls,” he had said.
    “What about them?” his father asked.
    “You know.”
    His father sat back on his heels. “Treat her right and she’ll treat you right.”
  •      Their sophistry I can control
    Who falsely say that women have no soul.
 
Everything we see in the world is the creative work of women. —Atatürk
  • Everything we see in the world is the creative work of women.
    • Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, as quoted in The Macmillan Dictionary of Political Quotations (1993) by Lewis D. Eigen and Jonathan Paul Siegel, p. 424; also in Ataturk: First President and Founder of the Turkish Republic (2002) by Yüksel Atillasoy, p. 15.
  • But women aren’t like, like...computers or suh’m. You can’t just get an access code and then programme em to do what you want em to. Trust me. About three billion guys’ve had to learn the same lesson.

B

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  • Women—one half the human race at least—care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry.
  • But woman's grief is like a summer storm,
    Short as it violent is.
    • Joanna Baillie, Count Basil (1798), act 5, sc. 3; in A Series of Plays (1821)
  • Charm...it’s a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don’t need to have anything else; and if you don’t have it, it doesn’t much matter what else you have. Some women, the few, have charm for all; and most have charm for one. But some have charm for none.
    • Sir J. M. Barrie, What Every Woman Knows (debuted 1908; pub. 1918), act 1
  • You see, dear, it is not true that woman was made from man's rib; she was really made from his funny bone.
    • Sir J. M. Barrie, What Every Woman Knows (debuted 1908; pub. 1918)
  • Then, my good girls, be more than women, wise:
    At least be more than I was; and be sure
    You credit anything the light gives life to
    Before a man.
  • It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.
  • Women who love the same man have a kind of bitter freemasonry.
  • Most women are not so young as they are painted.
  • Phidias made the statue of Venus at Elis with one foot upon the shell of a tortoise, to signify two great duties of a virtuous woman, which are to keep home and be silent.
    • William De Britaine, Human Prudence (ed. 1726), p. 134. Referred to by Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. 3, sec. 3, mem. 4, subs. 2
  • Adamant, n. A mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in solicitate of gold.
  • Female, n. One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.
  • Garther, n. An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and desolating the country.
  • Indiscretion, n. The guilt of woman.
  • Weaknesses, n.pl. Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies.
  • Witch, n. (1) Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil.
  • Woman, n. An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication. It is credited by many of the elder zoologists with a certain vestigial docility acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of the postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion, deny the virtue and declare that such as creation's dawn beheld, it roareth now. ... The popular name (wolfman) is incorrect, for the creature is of the cat kind. The woman is lithe and graceful in its movement, especially the American variety (felis pugnans), is omnivorous and can be taught not to talk. —Balthasar Pober
    • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
  • Woman... She it was who first took man to the Tree of Knowledge, and made him know Good and Evil; and, if she had been let alone and allowed to do what she wished, she would have led him to the Tree of Life and thus rendered him immortal.
  • Women have no wilderness in them,
    They are provident instead,
    Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts
    To eat dusty bread.
  • Next to God, we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth having.
 
There's not a place in Earth or Heaven,
There's not a task to mankind given...
That has a feather's weight or worth—
Without a woman in it.
—C. E. Bowman
  • They talk about a woman's sphere as though it had a limit;
    There's not a place in Earth or Heaven,
    There's not a task to mankind given,
    There's not a blessing or a woe,
    There's not a whispered yes or no,
    There's not a life, or death, or birth,
    That has a feather's weight or worth—
    Without a woman in it.
    • C. E. Bowman, "The Sphere of Woman" in Joseph M. Chapple, Heart Throbs in Prose and Verse (1905), p. 343. A similar version, author unknown, in Jennie Day Haines, Sovereign Woman Versus Mere Man (1905), p. 50:
      They talk about 'a woman's sphere'
      As though it has a limit;
      There's not a spot on sea or shore,
      In sanctum, office, shop or store,
      Without a woman in it.
  • I am obnoxious to each carping tongue,
    Who sayes my hand a needle better fits,
    A poet’s pen, all scorne, I should thus wrong;
    For such despight they cast on female wits:
    If what I doe prove well, it won’t advance,
    They’ll say it’s stolne, or else, it was by chance.
  • Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer...it is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.
  • Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.
  • The works of women are symbolical.
    We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
    Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
    To put on when you’re weary.
  • You forget too much
    That every creature, female as the male,
    Stands single in responsible act and thought,
    As also in birth and death.
  • A worthless woman! mere cold clay
    As all false things are! but so fair,
    She takes the breath of men away
    Who gaze upon her unaware:
    I would not play her larcenous tricks
    To have her looks!
  • Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold
    Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.
  • He gazed and gazed and gazed and gazed,
    Amazed, amazed, amazed, amazed.
    • Robert Browning, "Rhyme for a Child Viewing a Naked Venus in a Painting of 'The Judgement of Paris'" (wr. c. 1872; pub. 1925)
  • Of all cant in this most canting country, no species is at once more paltry and more dangerous than that which has been made the instrument of decrying female accomplishment. All that execrable twaddle about feminine retirement, and feminine ignorance, which we are doomed so often to hear, has done more towards making women scolds, and flirts, and scandal mongers, than people are well aware of....The soul of a woman is as fine an emanation from the Great Fountain of Spirit as that of a man.
 
Women are more powerful than they think. —Louise Burfitt-Dons
  • Women are more powerful than they think. A mother's warmth is the essence of motivation. If we could liquefy the encouragement, care and compassion we deliver to our children it would surely fill an expanse greater than the Pacific.
  • There is equality in the office but not on the street.
  • Thy daughters bright thy walks adorn,
    Gay as the gilded summer sky,
    Sweet as the dewy milk-white thorn,
    Dear as the raptured thrill of joy.
  • Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears
    Her noblest work she classes, O:
    Her 'prentice hand she tried on man,
    An' then she made the lasses, O.
  • Their tricks and craft hae put me daft,
    They've ta'en me in, and a' that,
    But clear your decks, and—Here's the sex!
    I like the jads for a' that.
  • It is a woman's reason to say I will do such a thing because I will.
  • Women wear the breeches.
    • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621–51), "Democritus to the Reader"
  • I may not here omit those two main plagues, and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people. They go commonly together.
    • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621–51), pt. 1, sect. 2, member 3, subsect. 13
  • The souls of women are so small,
    That some believe they've none at all;
    Or if they have, like cripples, still
    They've but one faculty, the will.
    • Samuel Butler, "Miscellaneous Thoughts", Genuine Remains in Prose and Verse (1759), vol. 1, p. 246
  • Believe a woman or an epitaph,
    Or any other thing that's false.
    • Lord Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809)
  • Soft as the memory of buried love,
    Pure as the prayer which childhood wafts above.
    • Lord Byron, Bride of Abydos (1813), canto 1, st. 6
  • She was his life,
    The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
    Which terminated all.
    • Lord Byron, The Dream (1816), st. 2. "River of his Thought" from Dante—Purgatorio, XIII. 88.
  • Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes,
    Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies.
  • Sweet is revenge—especially to women.
  • Alas! the love of women! it is known
    To be a lovely and a fearful thing!
    • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819–24), canto 2, st. 199
  • In her first passion woman loves her lover,
    In all the others all she loves is love.
  • A lady with her daughters or her nieces
    Shine like a guinea and seven-shilling pieces.
  • There is a tide in the affairs of women,
    Which, taken at the flood, leads—God knows where.
  • I love the sex, and sometimes would reverse
    The tyrant's wish, "that mankind only had
    One neck, which he with one fell stroke might pierce;"
    My wish is quite as wide, but not so bad,
    And much more tender on the whole than fierce;
    It being (not now, but only while a lad)
    That womankind had but one rosy mouth,
    To kiss them all at once, from North to South.
  • I've seen your stormy seas and stormy women,
    And pity lovers rather more than seamen.
  • But she was a soft landscape of mild earth,
    Where all was harmony, and calm, and quiet,
    Luxuriant, budding; cheerful without mirth.
  • A lady of a 'certain age', which means
    Certainly aged.
  • What a strange thing is man! and what a stranger
    Is woman! What a whirlwind is her head,
    And what a whirlpool full of depth and danger
    Is all the rest about her.
  • And whether coldness, pride, or virtue dignify
    A woman, so she's good, what does it signify?
  • Still I can’t contradict, what so oft has been said,
    'Though women are angels, yet wedlock's the devil.'

C

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  • The world was sad; the garden was a wild;
    And man, the hermit, sigh'd—till woman smiled.
  • Las mujeres son el impuesto que pagamos por el placer.
  • But for the most part, women are not educated as they should be, I mean those of quality; oft their education is only to dance, sing, and fiddle, to write complimental letters, to read romances, to speak some languages that is not their native...their parents take more care of their feet than their head, more of their words than their reason.
  • La muger que se determina á ser honrada entre un ejército de soldados lo puede ser.
    • The woman who is resolved to be respected can make herself so even amidst an army of soldiers.
    • Miguel de Cervantes, La Gitanilla (c. 1590–1612; pub. 1613)
  • Let no man value at a little price
    A virtuous woman's counsel; her wing'd spirit
    Is feather'd oftentimes with heavenly words.
  • And she was fayr as is the rose in May.
  • But love a womman that she woot it nought,
    And she wol quyte it that show shalt nat fele;
    Unknowe, unkist, and lost, that is unsought.
  • We shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury of a disappointed woman,—scorn'd! slighted! dismiss'd without a parting pang.
  • [Woman is] the promise that cannot be kept; but it is precisely in this that [her] grace consists.
    • Paul Claudel, The City (La Ville, 1893, revised version 1901), end of act 3
    • Translation from Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love (1986). San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997, p. 251
  • Women who want to work deserve to work. And whenever they are denied that opportunity, it’s not fair to them – and we all lose out. In a competitive 21st century global economy, we cannot afford to leave talent on the sidelines. When we leave people out or write them off, we not only shortchange them and their dreams, we shortchange our country and our own futures.
  • The greatest heroes that the world can know,
    To women their original must owe.
    • Mary Collier, The Three Wise Sentences, from the First Book of Esdras (1740), l. 132
  • Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
    Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.
  • Women are like tricks by slight of hand,
    Which, to admire, we should not understand.
  • It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.
  • It’s nice to meet serious people
    And hear them explain their views:
    Your concern for the rights of women
    Is especially welcome news.
    I’m sure you’d never exploit one;
    I expect you’d rather be dead;
    I’m thoroughly convinced of it—
    Now can we go to bed?
  • Certum est enim: longos esse crines omnibus sed breves sensus mulieribus.
    • One thing is certain: women have long hair, but short wits.
    • Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ch. 4
  • Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.
  • Her air, her manners, all who saw admired;
    Courteous though coy, and gentle, though retired:
    The joy of youth and health her eyes display'd,
    And ease of heart her every look convey'd.
  • Whoe'er she be,
    That not impossible she,
    That shall command my heart and me.
    • Richard Crashaw, "Wishes to his (Supposed) Mistress", in Wit’s Recreations (1641); The Delights of the Muses (1646)

D

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  • [Women's Liberation] ... is an ontological, spiritual revolution, pointing beyond the idolatries of sexist society and sparking creative action in and toward transcendence. The becoming of women implies universal human becoming. It has everything to do with the search for ultimate meaning and reality which some would call God.
    • Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation (1973), p. 6
  • It requires a kick in the imagination, a wrenching of tired words, to realize that feminism is the final and therefore the first cause, and that this movement is movement. Realization of this is already the beginning of a qualitative leap in being. For the philosophers of senescence 'the final cause' is in technical reason; it is the Father's plan, an endless flow of Xerox copies of the past. But the final cause that is movement is in our imaginative-cerebral-emotional-active-creative being.
    • Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation (1973), p. 190
  • Why then should women be denied the benefits of instruction? If knowledge and understanding had been useless additions to the sex, God almighty would never have given them capacities.
    • Daniel Defoe, An Essay Upon Projects (1697), "Proposal for an Academy for Women"
  • Were there no women, men might live like gods.
  • There's no music when a woman is in the concert.
 
Women never have young minds. They are born three thousand years old. —Shelagh Delaney
  • Women never have young minds. They are born three thousand years old.
  • Les femmes ont toujours quelque arrière pensée.
  • But in some odd nook in Mrs. Todgers's breast, up a great many steps, and in a corner easy to be overlooked, there was a secret door, with "Woman" written on the spring, which, at a touch from Mercy's hand, had flown wide open, and admitted her for shelter.
  • A good uniform must work its way with the women, sooner or later.
  • What Soft — Cherubic Creatures —
    These Gentlewomen are —
    One would as soon assault a Plush —
    Or violate a Star —
    Such Dimity Convictions —
    A Horror so refined
    Of freckled Human Nature —
    Of Deity — ashamed.
  • But were it to my fancy given
    To rate her charms, I'd call them heaven;
    For though a mortal made of clay,
    Angels must love Ann Hathaway;
    She hath a way so to control,
    To rapture the imprisoned soul,
    And sweetest heaven on earth display,
    That to be heaven Ann hath a way;
    She hath a way,
    Ann Hathaway,—
    To be heaven's self Ann hath a way.
  • Be then thine own home, and in thyself dwell;
    Inn anywhere;
    And seeing the snail, which everywhere doth roam,
    Carrying his own home still, still is at home,
    Follow (for he is easy-paced) this snail:
    Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.
    • John Donne, "To Sir Henry Wootton"; Henry Alford (ed.) Works, vol. 6 (1839), p. 455
  • In an experience of women that extends over many nations and three separate continents, I have never looked upon a face which gave a clearer promise of a refined and sensitive nature.
  • Cherchez la femme.
    • Find the woman.
    • Alexandre Dumas, Les Mohicans de Paris (1854), vol. 3, ch. 10, and elsewhere in the novel, act 3, sc. 7, of the 1864 play. Probably from the Spanish. A common question of Charpes. See Revue des Deux Mondes, XI, 822
  • And, like another Helen, fir'd another Troy.
  • For women with a mischief to their kind,
    Pervert with bad advice our better mind.
  • A woman's counsel brought us first to woe,
    And made her man his paradise forego,
    Where at heart's ease he liv'd; and might have been
    As free from sorrow as he was from sin.
  • And that one hunting, which the devil design'd
    For one fair female, lost him half the kind.
  • She hugg'd the offender, and forgave the offence;
    Sex to the last.
  • What all your sex desire is Sovereignty.
    • John Dryden, Wife of Bath
    • Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700)
  • I am resolved to grow fat and look young till forty, and then slip out of the world with the first wrinkle and the reputation of five and twenty.

E

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  • And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands: who so pleaseth God shall escape from her; but the sinner shall be taken by her. Behold, this have I found, saith the preacher, counting one by one, to find out the account Which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not: one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found.
  • Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless; nay, the speech they have resolved not to make.
  • Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.
    • George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Middlemarch (1871–2), bk. 1, ch. 11
  • The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
    • George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), The Mill on the Floss (1860), bk. 6, ch. 3
  • I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.
    • George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), The Mill on the Floss (1860), bk. 6, ch. 6
  • In the room the women come and go
    Talking of Michelangelo.
    • T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1917)
  • I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.
  • When greater perils men environ,
    Then women show a front of iron;
    And, gentle in their manner, they
    Do bold things in a quiet way.
  • There is no worse evil than a bad woman; and nothing has ever been produced better than a good one.
    • Euripides, fragment of the lost Melanippe. Translation reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 889

F

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What does a woman want?
—Sigmund Freud
  • Charming women can true converts make,
    We love the precepts for the teacher’s sake.
  • Oh, woman, perfect woman! what distraction
    Was meant to mankind when thou wast made a devil!
    What an inviting hell invented.
    • John Fletcher, The Comedy of Monsieur Thomas (c. 1610–16; pub. 1639), act 3, sc. 1
  • A woman friend! He that believes that weakness,
    Steers in a stormy night without a compass.
  • Women and love are underpinnings. Examine them and you threaten the very structure of culture.
  • Woman, I tell you, is a microcosm; and rightly to rule her, requires as great talents as to govern a state.
  • I grudged her nothing except my company. But it has gone further, like the degradation of rural England: this afternoon (Sunday in Aprril) all the young men had women with them in far-flung cameradeie. If women ever wanted to be by themselves all would be well. But I don't believe they ever want to be, except for reasons of advertisement, and their instinct is never to let men be by themselves. This, I begin to see, is sex-war, and D.H.L. has seen it, in spite of a durable marriage, and is far more on the facts than Bernard Shaw and his Life Force.
    • E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book, ed. Philip Gardner (Stanford UP, 1985), p. 59
  • One can run away from women, turn them out, or give in to them. No fourth course.
  • The extension of women's rights is the basic principle of all social progress.
    • Charles Fourier, The Theory of the Four Movements and of the General Destinies (1808)
  • Toute femme varie
    Bien fol est qui s'y fie.
    • Woman is always fickle—foolish is he who trusts her.
    • François I; scratched with his ring on a window of Chambord Castle. (Quoted also "souvent femme.") See Brantome—Œuvres, vol. 7, p. 395. Also Le Roux de Lincy, Le Livre des Proverbes François, vol. 1 (ed. 1859), pt. 5, p. 231
  • The great question ... which I have not been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'
    • Sigmund Freud, letter to Marie Bonaparte, quoted in Sigmund Freud, Life and Work, ed. Ernest Jones (Hogarth Press, 1953)
  • The problem that has no name—which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities.
  • A cat has nine lives and a woman has nine cats' lives.

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To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman.
—Mahatma Gandhi
  • To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?
  • And when a lady's in the case,
    You know all other things give place.
    • John Gay, Fables (1727), "The Hare and Many Friends", l. 41
  • 'Tis a woman that seduces all mankind;
    By her we first were taught the wheedling arts.
    • John Gay, The Beggar's Opera (1728), act 1, sc. 1
  • Fill ev’ry glass, for wine inspires us,
    And fires us
    With courage, love and joy.
    Women and wine should life employ.
    Is there ought else on earth desirous?
    • John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (1728), act 2, sc. 1, air 19
  • How happy could I be with either,
    Were t'other dear charmer away!
    But, while ye thus tease me together,
    To neither a word will I say.
    • John Gay, The Beggar's Opera (1728), act 2, sc. 2
  • I must have women. There is nothing unbends the mind like them.
    • John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (1728), act 2, sc. 3
  • To cheat a man is nothing; but the woman must have fine parts indeed who cheats a woman!
    • John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (1728), act 2, sc. 4
  • If the heart of a man is depressed with cares,
    The mist is dispell'd when a woman appears.
    • John Gay, The Beggar's Opera (1728), act 2
  • And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
  • And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
  • And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
  • Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
  • Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.
  • Es ist doch den Mädchen wie angeboren, dass sie allem gefallen wollen, was nur Augen hat.
    • The desire to please everything having eyes seems inborn in maidens.
    • Salomon Gessner, Evander und Alcima, act 3, sc. 1. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 889
  • A true reckoning with structural disparities in the entertainment industry will demand... acknowledging that women’s voices and women’s stories are not only worth believing, but also worth hearing. At every level.
  • I am a woman—therefore I may not
    Call to him, cry to him,
    Fly to him,
    Bid him delay not!
 
The eternal feminine doth draw us upward. —Goethe
  • Denn geht es zu des Bösen Haus
    Das Weib hat tausend Schritt voraus.
  • Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.
    • The eternal feminine doth draw us upward.
    • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, II. 5. "La Féminine Eternel / Nous attire au ciel." French translation of Goethe by H. Blaze de Bury (1842), p. 504 [1]
  • 'Tis Lilith.
    Who?
    Adam's first wife is she.
    Beware the lure within her lovely tresses,
    The splendid sole adornment of her hair;
    When she succeeds therewith a youth to snare,
    Not soon again she frees him from her jesses.
  • Ein edler Mann wird durch ein gutes Wort
    Der Frauen weit geführt.
  • Der Umgang mit Frauen ist das Element guter Sitten.
    • The society of women is the foundation of good manners.
    • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Wahlverwandtschaften, II, 5. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 889
  • When lovely woman stoops to folly,
      And finds too late that men betray,
    What charm can soothe her melancholy?
      What art can wash her guilt away?
    The only art her guilt to cover,
      To hide her shame from every eye,
    To give repentance to her lover,
      And wring his bosom—is to die.
  • The stereotype is the Eternal Feminine. She is the sexual object sought by all men, and all women. She is of neither sex for she herself has no sex at all. Her value is solely attested by the demand she excites in others. All she must contribute is her existence. She need achieve nothing, for she is the reward of achievement. She need never give positive evidence of her moral character because virtue is assumed from her loveliness, and her passivity.
  • Women have been charged with deviousness and duplicity since the dawn of civilization so they have never been able to pretend that their masks were anything but masks. It is a slender case but perhaps it does mean that women have always been in closer contact with reality than men: it would seem to be the just recompense for being deprived of idealism.
  • Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.

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She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen. —Homer
  • De wimmin, dey does de talkin' en de flyin', en de mens, dey does de walkin en de pryin', en betwixt en betweenst um, dey ain't much dat don't come out.
  • That the woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be loved.
    • Matthew Henry, Note on Genesis 2:21,22. An Exposition of the Five Books of Moses, 3rd ed., vol. 1 (1725), p. 11, with the variant reading "beloved" for "loved". Also in Chaucer, "Persones Tale"
  • If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.
  • First, then, a woman will, or won't,—depend on't;
    If she will do't, she will; and there's an end on't.
    But, if she won't, since safe and sound your trust is,
    Fear is affront: and jealousy injustice.
  • A woman cannot be a pastor by the law of God. I say more, it is against the law of the realm.
  • Women may be whole oceans deeper than we are, but they are also a whole paradise better. She may have got us out of Eden, but as a compensation she makes the earth very pleasant.
  • She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen.
    • Homer, The Iliad, bk. 3, l. 208. Pope's translation (1715–20)
  • O woman, woman, when to ill thy mind
    Is bent, all hell contains no fouler fiend.
    • Homer, The Odyssey, bk. 11, l. 531. Pope's translation (1725–6)
  •    What mighty woes
    To thy imperial race from woman rose.
    • Homer, The Odyssey, bk. 11, l. 541. Pope's translation (1725–6)
  • But, alas! alas! for the woman's fate,
    Who has from a mob to choose a mate!
    'Tis a strange and painful mystery!
    But the more the eggs the worse the hatch;
    The more the fish, the worse the catch;
    The more the sparks the worse the match;
    Is a fact in woman's history.
    • Thomas Hood, "Miss Killmansegg and Her Precious Leg", Poems, 5th ed. (1852), p. 145
  • A woman without mettle is like a scabbard without a sword.
  • Women are the carriers of society’s values ... men are deviant in the sense that many of the qualities admired in them are also one’s that society has to regard with disapproval ... Women’s Lib portrays society and morality as a male invention to coerce and punish women ... [yet] women are a virtuous group seeking to impose their moral standards on men.
  • God in his harmony has equal ends
    For cedar that resists and reed that bends;
    For good it is a woman sometimes rules,
    Holds in her hand the power, and manners, schools
    And laws, and mind; succeeding master proud.
    With gentle voice and smiles she leads the crowd,
    The somber human troop.

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  • Men may rule the world, but women rule the men who rule the world.
  • O woman! thou wert fashioned to beguile:
    So have all sages said, all poets sung.
    • Jean Ingelow, "The Four Bridges", st. 68, Poems (1863), p. 272
  • A female mind like a rude fallow lies;
    No seed is sown, but weeds spontaneous rise.
    As well might we expect, in winter, spring,
    As land untilled a fruitful crop should bring.
  • In that day seven women shall take hold of one man.

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  • To make women learned, and foxes tame, hath the same operation, which teacheth them to steale more cuningly, but the possibility is not equall, for when it doth one good, it doth twenty harme.
    • Attributed to James I of England; reported in Thomas Overbury, Edward Francis Rimbault, The Miscellaneous Works in Prose and Verse of Sir Thomas Overbury (1856), p. 261
  • In every disadvantage that a woman suffers at the hands of a man, there is inevitably, in what concerns the man, an element of cowardice. When I say "inevitably," I mean that this is what the woman sees in it.
  • Women strangely hug the knife that stabs them.
  • I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.
  • Ladies, stock and tend your hive,
    Trifle not at thirty-five;
    For, howe'er we boast and strive,
    Life declines from thirty-five;
    He that ever hopes to thrive
    Must begin by thirty-five.
  • One woman reads another's character
    Without the tedious trouble of deciphering.
  • A skein of silk without a knot!
    A fair march made without a halt!
    A curious form without a fault!
    A printed book without a blot!
    All beauty!—and without a spot.
  • And where she went, the flowers took thickest root,
    As she had sow'd them with her odorous foot.
  • Follow a shadow, it still flies you;
    Seem to fly it, it will pursue:
    So court a mistress, she denies you;
    Let her alone, she will court you.
    Say, are not women truly then
    Styled but the shadows of us men.
  • Nulla fere causa est in qua non femina litem moverit.
    • There's scarce a case comes on but you shall find
      A woman's at the bottom.
    • Juvenal, Satires, no. 6, l. 242. Translation reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 890
  •       Vindicta
    Nemo magis gaudet, quam femina.

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  • I met a lady in the meads
      Full beautiful—a faery's child,
    Her hair was long, her foot was light,
      And her eyes were wild.
  • I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a poem and to be given away by a novel.
    • John Keats, Letter to Fanny Brawne (8 July 1819), in H. E. Rollins (ed.) The Letters of John Keats (1958), vol. 2, p. 127
  • But king Solomon loved many strange women.
  • A Nation spoke to a Nation,
    A Queen sent word to a Throne:
    'Daughter am I in my mother's house,
    But mistress in my own.
    The gates are mine to open,
    As the gates are mine to close,
    And I set my house in order,'
    Said our Lady of the Snows.
    • Rudyard Kipling, "Our Lady of the Snows", st. 1, in Collected Works, vol. 26 (1941, reprinted 1970), p. 227. The poem is about the Canadian preferential tariff of 1897.
  • But I consort with long-haired things
    In velvet collar-rolls,
    Who talk about the Aims of Art,
    And ‘theories’ and ‘goals’,
    And moo and coo with women-folk
    About their blessed souls.
  • What is a woman that you forsake her,
    And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
    To go with the old grey Widow-maker?
    • Rudyard Kipling, "Harp Song of the Dane Women", Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906)
  • ’Tisn’t beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just It. Some women’ll stay in a man’s memory if they once walked down a street.
  • For men must work and women must weep,
    And the sooner it's over the sooner to sleep,
    And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.
  • When the Hymalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
    He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
    But the she-bear thus accosted, rends the peasant tooth and nail,
    For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
    * * * * * *
    So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
    With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
    Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
    To some God of Abstract justice—which no woman understands.
    And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
    Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.
    And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
    That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.
    • Rudyard Kipling, "The Female of the Species: A Study in Natural History", in The Morning Post (20 October 1911)
  • I think girls tend to like RPGs, like Final Fantasy. Girls who play games like that seem to get more of a desire to work in this field. I usually don't think to make games strictly for a female audience, myself, but I think my RPGs attract a larger female audience. Violent, war-themed titles seem to attract an overwhelmingly male audience. I think if companies want to get more girls to play their games, they should keep this in mind.

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  • What! still retaining your Utopian visions of female felicity? To talk of our happiness!—ours, the ill-used and oppressed! You remind me of the ancient tyrant, who, seeing his slaves sink under the weight of their chains, said, 'Do look at the indolent repose of those people!'
  • Every phase of our life belongs to us. The moon does not, except in appearance, lose her first thin, luminous curve, nor her silvery crescent, in rounding to her full. The woman is still both child and girl, in the completeness of womanly character. We have a right to our entire selves, through all the changes of this mortal state, a claim which we shall doubtless carry along with us into the unfolding mysteries of our eternal being. Perhaps in this thought lies hidden the secret of immortal youth: for a seer has said that "to grow old in heaven is to grow young."
    • Lucy Larcom, A New England Girlhood: Outlined from Memory (1889)
  • Woman, a pleasing but a short-lived flow'r,
    Too soft for business and too weak for pow'r:
    A wife in bondage, or neglected maid;
    Despised, if ugly; if she's fair, betrayed.
  • Are simple women only fit
    To dress, to darn, to flower, or knit,
    To mind the distaff, or the spit?
    Why are the needle and the pen
    Thought incompatible by men?
    • Esther Lewis (later Clark), A Mirror for Detractors (1754), l. 146
  • There's three things in a Woman's life that should never be empty, her heart, bed and glass.
  • The life of woman is full of woe,
    Toiling on and on and on,
    With breaking heart, and tearful eyes,
    The secret longings that arise,
    Which this world never satisfies!
    Some more, some less, but of the whole
    Not one quite happy, no, not one!
 
A little, tiny, pretty, witty, charming darling she. —Lucretius
  • A Lady with a lamp shall stand
    In the great history of the land,
       A noble type of good,
       Heroic womanhood.
  • I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
    • Audre Lorde, "The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism, in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Crossing Press, 1984)
  • A woman’s dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view.
    • Sophia Loren, as quoted in Brandon Gaille, "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings", BrandonGaille.com (July 23, 2013; retrieved 15 November 2013)
  • 'Twas kin' o' kingdom-come to look
    On sech a blessed cretur.
 
Earth's noblest thing, a Woman perfected. —James Russell Lowell
  • Earth's noblest thing, a Woman perfected.
  • Parvula, pumilio, chariton mia tota merum sal.
  • Hail, thou art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
  • My soul doth magnify the Lord: and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
    For he hath regarded: the lowliness of his handmaiden.
    For, behold, from henceforth: all generations shall call me blessed.
    For he that is mighty hath magnified me: and holy is his Name.
  • A crudele genus nec fidum femina nomen!
       a pereat, didicit fallere si qua virum.
  • Campaspe: Were women never so fair, men would be false.
    Apelles: Were women never so false, men would be fond.

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  • Women do not find it difficult nowadays to behave like men, but they often find it extremely difficult to behave like gentlemen.
  • A woman can only be superior as a woman; as soon as she wants to emulate man, she is nothing but an ape.
  • No thyng ys to man so dere
    As wommanys love yn gode manere.
    A gode womman ys mannys blys
    There her love ryght and stedfast ys;
    There ys no solas undyr hevene
    Of al that a man may nevene,
    That shuld a man so mochë glew
    As a gode womman that loveth trew.
    Ne derer ys none yn goddys hurde
    Than a chaste womman with lovely worde.
  • When all the medical officers have retired for the night, and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she [Florence Nightingale] may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.
    • Mr. MacDonald, on the staff of the London Times, in a letter to that paper when leaving Scutari. See Pictorial History of the Russian War (1854–5–6), p. 310
  • Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
    And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
    Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!
    Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!
    Come Helen, come give me my soul again.
    Here will I dwell, for heaven be in these lips,
    And all is dross that is not Helena.
  • Believe me Delmar, woman is the most fiendish instrument of torture ever devised to bedevil the days of man.
 
A woman's place is in the House and the Senate. —Carrie Meek
  • Of all wild beasts on earth or in sea, the greatest is a woman.
    • Menander, E Supposititio, P. 182. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 891
  • On one issue, at least, men and women agree: they both distrust women.
  • I expect that woman will be the last thing civilized by man.
  • O woman, born first to believe us;
    Yea, also born first to forget;
    Born first to betray and deceive us,
    Yet first to repent and regret.
  • The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.
    • John Stuart Mill, Letter to Alexander Bain, 14 July 1869, in Hugh S. R. Elliot (ed.) Letters of John Stuart Mill, vol. 2 (1910)
  •    My latest found,
    Heaven's last best gift, my ever new delight!
  • Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
    In every gesture dignity and love.
  •    For nothing lovelier can be found
    In woman, than to study household good.
  • Oh! why did God,
    Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven
    With Spirits masculine, create at last
    This novelty on Earth, this fair defect
    Of Nature, and not fill the World at once
    With men as Angels, without feminine.
  •      Wisest men
    Have erred, and by bad women been deceived;
    And shall again, pretend they ne’er so wise.
  • She was a sharp-jawed, pout-lipped maiden and her eyes were green as scum.
  • Disguise our bondage as we will,
    'Tis woman, woman rules us still.
  • My only books
    Were woman's looks,
    And folly's all they've taught me.
  • For if a young lady has that discretion and modesty, without which all knowledge is little worth, she will never make an ostentatious parade of it, because she will rather be intent on acquiring more, than on displaying what she has.
    • Hannah More, "Thoughts on Conversation", Essays on Various Subjects (1777)
  • The prevailing manners of an age depend more than we are aware, or are willing to allow, on the conduct of the women: this is one of the principal hinges on which the great machine of human society turns.
    • Hannah More, Essays on Various Subjects Principally Designed for Young Ladies (1777)
  • Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them.

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  • Desubito famam tollunt si quam solam videre in via.
    • If men have seen some woman in the street
      Alone, straightway they raise a scandal.
    • Gnaeus Naevius, fragment of the lost Danae, quoted by Nonius, 305, 23
  • Quasi pila
    in choro ludens datatim dat se et communem facit.
    Alii adnutat, alii adnictat, alium amat alium tenet.
    Alibi manus est occupata, alii pervellit pedem;
    anulum dat alii spectandum, a labris alium invoeat,
    cum alio cantat, at tamen alii suo dat digito litteras.
    • As though she were playing at ball, give-and-take in a ring, she makes herself common property to all men. To one she nods, at another she winks; one she caresses, another embraces. Now elsewhere a hand is kept busy; now she jerks another's foot. To one she gives her ring to look at, to another her lips blow a kiss that invites. She sings a song with one; but waves a message for another with her finger.
    • Gnaeus Naevius, fragment of the lost Tarentilla, quoted by Isidore, who goes on to quote in Latin Proverbs 6:13
    • E. H. Warmington, Remains of Old Latin, vol. 2 (1936), p. 115
  • So I wonder a woman, the Mistress of Hearts,
    Should ascend to aspire to be Master of Arts;
    A Ministering Angel in Woman we see,
    And an Angel need cover no other Degree.
    —O why should a Woman not get a Degree?
  • The happiness of man is: I will. The happiness of woman is: he wills.
    • Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883) (tr. Thomas Common, 1909) — loq. Zarathustra
  • Man is for woman, a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is woman for man? Two different things wanteth the true man: danger and diversion. Therefore wanteth he woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
    • Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883) (tr. Thomas Common, 1909) — loq. Zarathustra
  • Du gehst zu Frauen? Vergiss die Peitsche nicht!
    • You are going to women? Do not forget the whip!
    • Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883) (tr. Walter Kaufmann, 1954) — loq. Old Woman
  • Supposing truth is a woman—what then? Are there not grounds for the suspicion that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have been very inexpert about women? That the gruesome seriousness, the clumsy obtrusiveness with which they have usually approached truth so far have been awkward and very improper methods for winning a woman's heart? What is certain is that she has not allowed herself to be won.
  • Women want to become independent. To this end they are beginning to enlighten men about "women as such." This is one of the worst aspects of progress in the general uglification of Europe.
  • In no age has the weaker sex been treated with as much respect by men as in ours: that belongs to the democratic inclination and basic taste, just like disrespectfulness for old age.
  • Wherever the industrial spirit has triumphed over the military and aristocratic spirit, woman now aspires to the economic and legal self-reliance of a clerk.
  • On aime plus âprement que l'on ne hait.
    • Translation: We women love more bitterly than we hate.
    • Anna de Noailles, Poème de l'amour (1924), sect. 102
    • In context the "on" refers to "woman"

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  • You know, today, women make up about half our workforce, but they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment. Women deserve equal pay for equal work.
    • Barack Obama on Tuesday, January 28th, 2014 in the State of the Union address
  • What mighty ills have not been done by woman!
    Who was't betray'd the Capitol? A woman;
    Who lost Mark Antony the world? A woman;
    Who was the cause of a long ten years' war,
    And laid at last old Troy in ashes? Woman;
    Destructive, damnable, deceitful woman!
  •      Who can describe
    Women's hypocrisies! their subtle wiles,
    Betraying smiles, feign'd tears, inconstancies!
    Their painted outsides, and corrupted minds,
    The sum of all their follies, and their falsehoods.
  • O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee
    To temper man: we had been brutes without you;
    Angels are painted fair, to look like you:
    There's in you all that we believe of Heaven,
    Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,
    Eternal joy, and everlasting love.
 
They come to see; they come that they themselves may be seen. —Ovid
  • Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsae.
    • They come to see; they come that they themselves may be seen.
    • Ovid, Ars Amatoria, bk. 1, l. 99 (tr. Henry T. Riley, 1852)
  • Nocte latent mendae, vitioque ignoscitur omni,
    Horaque formosam quamlibet illa facit.
    • By night are blemishes hid, and every fault is forgiven: that hour makes any woman fair.
    • Ovid, Ars Amatoria, bk. 1, ll. 249–50 (tr. J. H. Mozley, 1929)
  • Procul hinc, procul este, severae!
    • Away from me, far away, ye austere fair!
    • Ovid, Amores, bk. 2, no. 1, l. 3 (tr. Grant Showerman, 1914)

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  • Feminism has exceeded its proper mission of seeking political equality for women and has ended by rejecting contingency, that is, human limitation by nature or fate.
  • Male mastery in marriage is a social illusion, nurtured by women exhorting their creations to play and walk. At the emotional heart of every marriage is a pietà of mother and son.
  • Women have been discouraged from genres such as sculpture that require studio training or expensive materials. But in philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, the only materials are pen and paper. Male conspiracy cannot explain all female failures. I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant. Genius is not checked by social obstacles: it will overcome. Men's egotism, so disgusting in the talentless, is the source of their greatness as a sex. [...] Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species.
  • The ladies men admire, I’ve heard,
    Would shudder at a wicked word.
    Their candle gives a single light;
    They’d rather stay at home at night.
    They do not keep awake till three,
    Nor read erotic poetry.
    They never sanction the impure,
    Nor recognize an overture.
    They shrink from powders and from paints...
    So far, I’ve had no complaints.
  • Ah, wasteful woman! she who may
    On her sweet self set her own price,
    Knowing man cannot choose but pay,
    How has she cheapen'd Paradise!
    How given for nought her priceless gift,
    How spoil'd the bread and spill'd the wine,
    Which, spent with due respective thrift,
    Had made brutes men and men divine.
  • Patience makes a woman beautiful in middle age.
    • Attributed to Elliot Paul. Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
  • Man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. And man was not created for the cause of the woman, but the woman for the cause of man; and therefore ought the woman to have a power upon her head.
  • Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak. If they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
  • To chase the clouds of life's tempestuous hours,
    To strew its short but weary way with flow'rs,
    New hopes to raise, new feelings to impart,
    And pour celestial balsam on the heart;
    For this to man was lovely woman giv'n,
    The last, best work, the noblest gift of Heav'n.
  • When a man is gone, all are wont to praise him, and should your merit be ever so transcendent, you will still find it difficult not merely to overtake, but even to approach their renown. The living have envy to contend with, while those who are no longer in our path are honoured with a goodwill into which rivalry does not enter. On the other hand, if I must say anything on the subject of female excellence to those of you who will now be in widowhood, it will be all comprised in this brief exhortation. Great will be your glory in not falling short of your natural character; and greatest will be hers who is least talked of among the men, whether for good or for bad.
  • Women's liberation could have not succeeded if science had not provided them with contraception and household technology.
    • Max Ferdinand Perutz, "The Impact of Science on Society: The Challenge for Education", in J. L. Lewis and P. J. Kelly (eds.), Science and Technology and Future Human Needs (1987), p. 18
  • Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.
  • In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant.
  • Every woman adores a Fascist,
    The boot in the face, the brute
    Brute heart of a brute like you.
  • Out of the ash
    I rise with my red hair
    And I eat men like air.
  • In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
    Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
    • Sylvia Plath, "Mirror" (wr. 1961); Crossing the Water (1971)
  • Nam multum loquaces merito omnes habemus,
    Nec mutam profecto repertam ullam esse
    Hodie dicunt mulierem ullo in seculo.
    • I know that we women are all justly accounted praters; they say in the present day that there never was in any age such a wonder to be found as a dumb woman.
    • Plautus, Aulularia, act 2. sc. 1, l. 5
  • Multa sunt mulierum vitia, sed hoc e multis maximum,
    Cum sibi nimis placent, nimisque operam dant ut placeant viris.
    • Women have many faults, but of the many this is the greatest, that they please themselves too much, and give too little attention to pleasing the men.
    • Plautus, Pœnulus, act 5, sc. 4, l. 33
  • Mulieri nimio male facere melius est onus, quam bene.
    • A woman finds it much easier to do ill than well.
    • Plautus, Truculentus, act 2, sc. 5, l. 17
    • Translations from Plautus reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 892
  • Oh! say not woman's heart is bought
    With vain and empty treasure.
    * * * * *
    Deep in her heart the passion glows;
    She loves and loves forever.
  • Most women have no characters at all.
  • Ladies, like variegated tulips, show
    'Tis to their changes half their charms we owe.
  • Offend her, and she knows not to forgive;
    Oblige her, and she'll hate you while you live.
  • Men some to business, some to pleasure take;
    But every woman is at heart a rake;
    Men some to quiet, some to public strife;
    But every lady would be queen for life.
  • O! bless'd with temper, whose unclouded ray
    Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day;
    She who can own a sister's charms, or hear
    Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear;
    She who ne'er answers till a husband cools,
    Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules.
    Charms by accepting, by submitting sways,
    Yet has her humour most when she obeys.
  • And mistress of herself, though china fall.
  • Woman's at best a contradiction still.
  • Our grandsire, Adam, ere of Eve possesst,
    Alone, and e'en in Paradise unblest,
    With mournful looks the blissful scenes survey'd,
    And wander'd in the solitary shade.
    The Maker saw, took pity, and bestow'd
    Woman, the last, the best reserv'd of God.
  • Be to her virtues very kind;
    Be to her faults a little blind.
    Let all her ways be unconfin'd;
    And clap your padlock—on her mind.
  • The gray mare will prove the better horse.
    • Matthew Prior, Epilogue to Lucius. Last line. Butler, Hudibras, pt. 2, canto 50, l. 698. Fielding—The Grub Street Opera, act 2, sc. 4. Pryde and Abuse of Women (1550). The Marriage of True Wit and Science. Macaulay—History of England, vol. 1, ch. 3. Footnote suggests it arose from the preference generally given to the gray mares of Flanders over the finest coach horses of England. Proverb traced to Holland (1546). Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 893
 
As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion. —Proverbs
  • As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion.
  • It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman.
    • Proverbs 21:19 (ESV)
    • It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house. (KJV)
  • Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.
  • Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised.
  • Kings’ daughters were among thy honourable women: upon thy right hand did stand the queen in a vesture of gold, wrought about with divers colours.
    • Psalm 45:10 (KJV)
  • The King’s daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold. She shall be brought unto the King in raiment of needlework: the virgins that be her fellows shall bear her company, and shall be brought unto thee.
    • Psalm 45:14 (KJV)
  • Instead of thy fathers thou shalt have children: whom thou mayest make princes in all lands.
    • Psalm 45:17 (KJV)

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  • Like to the falling of a star,
    * * * *
    Like to the damask rose you see,
    Or like the blossom on the tree.
    • Francis Quarles, Argalus and Parthenia (1629). Claimed by him but attributed to John Phillipot (Philpott) in Harleian Manuscript, 3917, fol. 88 b., a fragment written about the time of James I. Credited to Simon Wastell (1629) by Mackay, as it is appended to his Microbiblion. Said to be an imitation of an earlier poem by Bishop Henry King. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 893

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I am woman, hear me roar.
—Helen Reddy
 
A woman clothed with the sun.
  • And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
  • And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.
  • That, let us rail at women, scorn and flout 'em,
    We may live with, but cannot live without 'em.
  • Such a plot must have a woman in it.
  • A woman is the most inconsistent compound of obstinacy and self-sacrifice that I am acquainted with.
  • There exists a most ancient saying, "Where women are revered and safeguarded, prosperity reigns and the gods rejoice."
    • Helena Roerich, Letter (5 April 1938), in Letters of Helena Roerich, vol. 2
  • I remember when OB tampons came out and you could hold them in your hand, and I'd walk down the hall holding my little OB tampon and I thought, "If I open my hand and show this to anybody, the whole building is going to explode."
  • C'est chose qui moult me deplaist,
    Quand poule parle et coq se taist.
    • It is a thing very displeasing to me when the hen speaks and the cock is silent.
    • Roman de la Rose (14th century). Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 893
  • ... there will be a woman President some day, but that day is not yet here. We women still have to prove ourselves, and at the present moment I do not think the country as a whole would have enough confidence in a woman, and without that confidence and cooperation she could not do a good job. Before we have a woman President we will have to have more women Governors of the States, more women in the Senate, and in Congress. The women who have served in those capacities have done good jobs, but they are far too few to create the confidence necessary
  • Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
    (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve)
    That ere the snakes, her sweet tongue could deceive
    And her enchanted hair was the first gold—
    And still she sits, young while the earth is old
    And, subtly of herself contemplative,
    Draws men to watch the bright net she can weave,
    Till heart and body and life are in its hold.
  • Toute fille lettrée restera fille toute sa vie, quand il n'y aura que des hommes sensés sur la terre.
    • Every blue-stocking will remain a spinster as long as there are sensible men on the earth.
    • Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile: or, On Education (1762), bk. 5
  • Une femme bel-esprit est le fléau de son mari, de ses enfants, de ses amis, de ses valets, de tout le monde.
    • A blue-stocking is the scourge of her husband, children, friends, servants, and every one.
    • Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile: or, On Education (1762), bk. 5
  • Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.
  • And one false step entirely damns her fame.
    In vain with tears the loss she may deplore,
    In vain look back on what she was before;
    She sets like stars that fall, to rise no more.
  • We're living through the most misogynistic period I've experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls. Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world's long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of grabbing them by the pussy, to the incel ("involuntarily celibate") movement that rages against women who won't give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.
  • Not only am I scared of big, strong men, I'm scared of mean little women. It's just little skinny men and nice big women that I get along with.
  • This brought back the sick, ashamed feeling I'd woken up with. I was no better than some geek with a foam-rubber woman's torso like they advertise in Hustler. What a pathetic, twisted version of womanhood: all the "inessential" parts lopped off, nothing left behind but tits and ass and holes. Lifelike washable plastic skin. Greek and French features. But yet, in a way, wasn't the sex sphere always what I'd wanted in a woman? An ugly truth there. "Shut up and spread!" How many times had I told Sybil that, if not in so many words?
  • And behind every man who's a failure there's a woman, too!
    • John Ruge, cartoon caption, Playboy (March 1967), p. 138

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Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety.
—Shakespeare
 
We are... infinitely superior to men, and if we were free and developed, healthy in body and mind, as we should be under natural conditions, our motherhood would be our glory.
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton
  • That woman, as nature has created her, and man at present is educating her, is man's enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. This she can become only when she has the same rights as he and is his equal in education and work.
  • Ne l'onde solca, e ne l'arena semina,
    E'l vago vento spera in rete accogliere
    Chi sue speranze fonda in cor di femina.
    • He ploughs the waves, sows the sand, and hopes to gather the wind in a net, who places his hopes on the heart of woman.
    • Jacopo Sannazaro, Ecloga Octava; "Plough the sands" found in Juvenal, Satires, no. 7. Jeremy Taylor, Discourse on Liberty of Prophesying (1647), introduction
  • Such, Polly, are your sex—part truth, part fiction;
    Some thought, much whim, and all a contradiction.
  • ... the fundamental fault of the female character is that it has no sense of justice. This is mainly due to the fact... that women are defective in the powers of reasoning and deliberation; but it is also traceable to the position which Nature has assigned to them as the weaker sex. They are dependent, not upon strength, but upon craft; and hence their instinctive capacity for cunning, and their ineradicable tendency to say what is not true. For as lions are provided with claws and teeth, and elephants and boars with tusks, bulls with horns, and cuttle fish with its clouds of inky fluid, so Nature has equipped woman, for her defense and protection, with the arts of dissimulation.
  • Woman's faith, and woman's trust,
    Write the characters in dust.
  • Widowed wife and wedded maid.
  • O Woman! in our hours of ease,
    Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
    And variable as the shade
    By the light quivering aspen made;
    When pain and anguish wring the brow,
    A ministering angel thou!
  • A woman's notes will not signify much truly, no more than her tongue.
  • Women had prerogative in deliberative sessions touching either peace-government, or martial affairs.
    • On the custom of the ancient Britons; Selden's Works, vol. 3, p. 10, cited in Chorlton v. Lings (1868), L.R. 4 C.P. 389
  • I thank God I am not a woman, to be touched with so many giddy offences as He hath generally taxed their whole sex withal.
  • Frailty, thy name is woman!—
    A little month, or ere those shoes were old
    With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
    Like Niobe, all tears;—why she, even she,
    * * * married with my uncle.
  • 'Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud;
    But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small:
    'Tis virtue that doth make them most admired;
    The contrary doth make thee wondered at:
    'Tis government that makes them seem divine.
  • Her sighs will make a battery in his breast;
    Her tears will pierce into a marble heart;
    The tiger will be mild whiles she doth mourn;
    And Nero will be tainted with remorse,
    To hear and see her plaints.
  • O constancy! be strong upon my side;
    Set a huge mountain ’tween my heart and tongue;
    I have a man’s mind, but a woman’s might.
    How hard it is for women to keep counsel!
 
But to the girdle do the Gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiends’.
—Shakespeare
  • The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to’t
    With a more riotous appetite.
    Down from the waist they are Centaurs,
    Though women all above:
    But to the girdle do the Gods inherit,
    Beneath is all the fiends’.
  • From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:
    They are the ground, the books, the academes,
    From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.
  • From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:
    They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
    They are the books, the arts, the academes,
    That show, contain, and nourish all the world.
  • Fair ladies mask'd are roses in their bud:
    Dismask'd, their damask sweet commixture shown,
    Are angels veiling clouds, or roses blown.
  • You should be women,
    And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
    That you are so.
  • Come, you spirits
    That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here...
    Come to my woman’s breasts,
    And take my milk for gall.
  • Would it not grieve a woman to be overmaster'd with a piece of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a cloud of wayward marl?
  • She speaks poniards, and every word stabs: if her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near her; she would infect to the north star.
  • One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am well: another virtuous, yet I am well; but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace.
  • A maid
    That paragons description and wild fame;
    One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens,
    And in the essential vesture of creation
    Does tire the ingener.
  • You are pictures out of doors,
    Bells in your parlours, wild-cats in your kitchens,
    Saints in your injuries, devils being offended,
    Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds.
  • And have not we affections,
    Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?
    Then let them use us well: else let them know,
    The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.
  • Have you not heard it said full oft,
    A woman's nay doth stand for nought?
  • Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?
    Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
    * * * * * *
    Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
    And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
    * * * * * *
    And do you tell me of a woman's tongue,
    That gives not half so great a blow to hear
    As will a chestnut in a farmer's fire?
  • Say that she rail, why then I'll tell her plain
    She sings as sweetly as a nightingale;
    Say that she frown; I'll say she looks as clear
    As morning roses newly wash'd with dew;
    Say she be mute and will not speak a word;
    Then I'll commend her volubility,
    And say she uttereth piercing eloquence.
  • Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,
    Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
    But that our soft conditions and our hearts
    Should well agree with our external parts?
  •    Women are angels, wooing:
    Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing;
    That she beloved knows nought that knows not this:
    Men prize the thing ungained more than it is.
  • Woman's dearest delight is to wound Man's self-conceit, though Man's dearest delight is to gratify hers.
    • Bernard Shaw, Unsocial Socialist (wr. 1883; pub. 1887), ch. 5
  • You sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanishness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly.
    • Bernard Shaw, Unsocial Socialist (wr. 1883; pub. 1887), ch. 18
  • Women, for the sake of their children and parents, submit to slaveries and prostitutions that no unattached woman would endure.
  • The fickleness of the woman I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
  • One moral's plain, * * * without more fuss;
    Man's social happiness all rests on us:
    Through all the drama—whether damn'd! or not—
    Love gilds the scene, and women guide the plot.
  • Lor', but women's rum cattle to deal with, the first man found that to his cost,
    And I reckon it's just through a woman the last man on earth'll be lost.
  • She is the vyolet,
    The daysy delectable,
    The columbine commendable,
    The jelofer amyable;
    For this most goodly floure,
    This blossom of fressh colour,
    So Jupiter me succour,
    She florysheth new and new
    In beaute and vertew.
  • With solace and gladnes,
    Moche mirthe and no madnes,
    All good and no badnes,
    So joyously,
    So maydenly,
    So womanly
    Her demenying
    In every thynge.
  • Far may be sought
    Erst that ye can fynde
    So corteise, so kynde
    As mirry Margarete,
    This midsomer flowre,
    Jentyll as fawcoun
    Or hawke of the towre.
  • By saynt Mary, my lady,
    Your mammy and your dady
    Brought forth a godely babi!
    • John Skelton, "To maystres Isabell Pennell"
    • Alexander Dyce (ed.) The Poetical Works of John Skelton, 2 vols. (1843)
  • If we are to use women for the same things as the men, we must also teach them the same things.
  • What wilt not woman, gentle woman, dare
    When strong affection stirs her spirit up?
  • Νῦν δ' οὐδέν εἰμι χωρίς.
  • The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her... He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective to the franchise. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she has no voice... Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise , thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, her has oppressed her on all sides. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
  • We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.
  • Men think that self-sacrifice is the most charming of all the cardinal virtues for women, and in order to keep it in healthy working order, they make opportunities for its illustration as often as possible. I would fain teach women that self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.
  • The only points in which I differ from all ecclesiastical teaching is that I do not believe that any man ever saw or talked with God, I do not believe that God inspired the Mosaic code, or told the historians what they say he did about woman, for all the religions on the face of the earth degrade her, and so long as woman accepts the position that they assign her, her emancipation is impossible.
  • Accepting the view that man was prior in the creation, some Scriptural writers say that as the woman was of the man, therefore, her position should be one of subjection. Grant it, then as the historical fact is reversed in our day, and the man is now of the woman, shall his place be one of subjection?
  • In the criminal code we find no feminine pronouns, as "He," "His," "Him," we are arrested, tried and hung, but singularly enough, we are denied the highest privileges of citizens, because the pronouns "She," "Hers" and "Her," are not found in the constitutions. It is a pertinent question, if women can pay the penalties of their crimes as "He," why may they not enjoy the privileges of citizens as "He"?
  • He beheld his own rougher make softened into sweetness, and tempered with smiles; he saw a creature who had, as it were, Heaven's second thought in her formation.
    • Richard Steele, The Christian Hero (1701), of Adam awaking, and first seeing Eve
  • She is pretty to walk with,
    And witty to talk with,
    And pleasant too, to think on.
  • If of herself she will not love,
    Nothing can make her:
    The devil take her!
    • Sir John Suckling, "Song", in Aglaura (1638); Fragmenta Aurea (1646)
  • Women never look so well as when one comes in wet and dirty from hunting.
  • Daphne knows, with equal ease,
    How to vex and how to please;
    But the folly of her sex
    Makes her sole delight to vex.
  • Lose no time to contradict her,
    Nor endeavour to convict her;
    Only take this rule along,
    Always to advise her wrong,
    And reprove her when she's right;
    She may then crow wise for spite.

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  • O Woman, you are not merely the handiwork of God, but also of men; these are ever endowing you with beauty from their own hearts. ... You are one-half woman and one-half dream.
  • Femmina è cosa garrula e fallace:
    Vuole e disvuole, è folle uom chi sen fida,
    Si tra se volge.
    • Women have tongues of craft, and hearts of guile,
      They will, they will not; fools that on them trust;
      For in their speech is death, hell in their smile.
    • Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme (1581), bk. 19, st. 84. Tr. Edward Fairfax (1600)
  • All virtuous women, like tortoises, carry their house on their heads, and their chappel in their heart, and their danger in their eye, and their souls in their hands, and God in all their actions.
    • Jeremy Taylor, Life of Christ (1649), pt. 1, sec. 2, par. 4
    • The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor, vol. 2 (London: Ogle, Duncan, and Co., 1822), p. 13
 
A woman's honor rests on manly love. —Esaias Tegnér
  • A woman's honor rests on manly love.
  • With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,
    And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.
  • A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,
    And sweet as English air could make her, she.
  • The woman is so hard
    Upon the woman.
  • For woman is not undeveloped man
    But diverse; could we make her as the man
    Sweet love were slain; his dearest bond is this
    Not like to like but like in difference.
  • Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls.
  • For men at most differ as Heaven and Earth,
    But women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell.
  • She with all the charm of woman,
    She with all the breadth of man.
  • Novi ingenium mulierum;
    Nolunt ubi velis, ubi nolis cupiunt ultro.
    • I know the nature of women. When you will, they will not; when you will not, they come of their own accord.
    • Terence, Eunuchus, act 4, sc. 7. l. 42. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 896
  • When I say that I know women, I mean that I know that I don't know them. Every single woman I ever knew is a puzzle to me, as I have no doubt she is to herself.
  • In describing this syren, singing and smiling, coaxing and cajoling, the author, with modest pride, asks his readers all around, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tale above water? No! Those who like may peep down under waves that are pretty transparent, and see it writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or curling round corpses; but above the water-line, I ask, has not everything been proper, agreeable, and decorous...?
 
I tell you, it's a whole different sex!
 
Oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know. —Tolkien
  • Do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know.
  • Regard the society of women as a necessary unpleasantness of social life, and avoid it as much as possible.
  • Woman is more impressionable than man. Therefore in the Golden Age they were better than men. Now they are worse.
    • Leo Tolstoy, Diary entry
    • Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 896
  • With many women I doubt whether there be any more effectual way of touching their hearts than ill-using them and then confessing it. If you wish to get the sweetest fragrance from the herb at your feet, tread on it and bruise it.

V

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The husband enhances the beauty of a woman more than her ornaments. —Valmiki
  • She was lovely like an indistinct lunar disc, like a streak of gold covered with dust, like a golden reed broken by the wind, like a scar left by an arrow!
  • The husband enhances the beauty of a woman more than her ornaments.
  • "Shariputra, who is not a woman, appears in a woman's body. And the same is true of all women-though they appear in women's bodies, they are not women. Therefore the Buddha teaches that all phenomena are neither male nor female."
  • A slighted woman knows no bounds.
  • Let our weakness be what it will, mankind will still be weaker; and whilst there is a world, 'tis woman that will govern it.
 
A woman is always changeable and capricious. —Virgil
  • Dux femina facti.
    • A woman was leader in the deed.
    • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), bk. 1, l. 364
  •    Varium et mutabile semper,
    Femina.
    • A woman is always changeable and capricious.
    • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), bk. 4, l. 569
  • Furens quid fœmina possit.
    • That which an enraged woman can accomplish.
    • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), bk. 5, l. 6
  • Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.
    • Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique portatif (1764), "Women"
  • All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.
    • Voltaire. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 897

W

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  • My wife is one of the best wimin on this Continent, altho' she isn't always gentle as a lamb with mint sauce.
  • She is not old, she is not young,
    The Woman with the Serpent's Tongue.
    The haggard cheek, the hungering eye,
    The poisoned words that wildly fly,
    The famished face, the fevered hand—
    Who slights the worthiest in the land,
    Sneers at the just, contemns the brave,
    And blackens goodness in its grave.
  • Ferdinand: And women like that part which, like the lamprey,
    Hath never a bone in’t.
    Duchess: Fie, sir!
    Ferdinand: Nay,
    I mean the tongue; variety of courtship:
    What cannot a neat knave with a smooth tale
    Make a woman believe?
  • There’s nothing sooner dry than women’s tears.
  • Natalie had left the wives and joined the women.
    • Fay Weldon, The Heart of the Country (1987), p. 51
  • Not from his head was woman took,
    As made her husband to o'erlook;
    Not from his feet, as one designed
    The footstool of the stronger kind;
    But fashioned for himself, a bride;
    An equal, taken from his side.
    • Charles Wesley, Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures (1762)
  • All fiefs were originally masculine, and women were excluded from the succession of them because they cannot keep secrets.
    • Richard West, An Inquiry into the Manner of Creating Peers, 44
  • Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the men,
    Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men;
    Where the city of the faithfullest friends stands,
    Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands,
    Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands,
    Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,
    There the great city stands.
    • Walt Whitman, "Song of the Broad-Axe"; entitled "Broad-Axe Poem" in Leaves of Grass (1856); retitled (1867)
  • Oh! no one. No one in particular. A woman of no importance.
  • One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.
    • Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893), act 1, in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, vol. 7 (1923), p. 197. Lord Illingworth is speaking.
  • Angels listen when she speaks;
    She's my delight, all mankind's wonder;
    But my jealous heart would break
    Should we live one day asunder.
    • John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, "Song: My Dear Mistress has a Heart", st. 2
    • Vivian de Sola Pinto (ed.) Poems by John Wilmot Earl of Rochester, 2nd ed. (Harvard UP, 1964), p. 35
  • Our government should not be run like a business; it should be run like a family... Our system was designed before women had a voice in the public realm, and raising children was deemed to just be "women's work." But we certainly have a voice now, and we need to raise it on behalf of every mother's child... In any advanced mammalian species that survives and thrives, a common characteristic is the fierce behavior of the adult female of the species when she senses a threat to her cubs. Ours are threatened now, and we need to get fierce.
    • Marianne Williamson, If We Want a Prosperous America Tomorrow, Take Care of Our Children Today, Newsweek (23 July 2020)
  • Too many people have taken the incels’ explanation of their own virulent misogyny at face value, and repeated the comfortable line that these men stand apart from all others. Along with influential columnists, even economists have endorsed the idea of “sexual marketplace”, wherein women are figured as a commodity, and some men have inadequate buying power to procure. (Most have been too polite to mention many incels’ accompanying belief that the world, and women, are so corrupted that sex is beneath them.)
  • Shall I, wasting in despair,
    Die because a woman's fair?
    Or make pale my cheeks with care
    'Cause another's rosy are?
    Be she fairer than the day,
    Or the flow'ry meads in May;
    If she be not so to me,
    What care I how fair she be?
  • Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
  • A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
  • Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size.
  • A Creature not too bright or good
    For human nature's daily food;
    For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
    Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.
  • And now I see with eye serene,
    The very pulse of the machine;
    A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
    A Traveller betwixt life and death;
    The reason firm, the temperate will,
    Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill.
  • A perfect Woman, nobly planned
    To warn, to comfort, and command.
  • She was a Phantom of delight
    When first she gleamed upon my sight;
    A lovely Apparition, sent
    To be a moment's ornament.
  • Thou, while thy babes around thee cling,
    Shalt show us how divine a thing
    A Woman may be made.

X

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Y

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  •    And beautiful as sweet!
    And young as beautiful! and soft as young!
    And gay as soft! and innocent as gay.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations

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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 886-97.
  • Ich hab' es immer gesagt: das Weib wollte die Natur zu ihrem Meisterstücke machen.
  • Was hätt ein Weiberkopf erdacht, das er
    Nicht zu beschönen wüsste?
    • What could a woman's head contrive
      Which it would not know how to excuse?
    • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan der Weise, III
  • Queens you must always be: queens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and your sons, queens of higher mystery to the world beyond…. But, alas, you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest.
    • D. M. Mulock. Quoted from Ruskin on the title page of The Woman's Kingdom
  • Wit and woman are two frail things, and both the frailer by concurring.
  • Those who always speak well of women do not know them sufficiently; those who always speak ill of them do not know them at all.
  • If she seem not chaste to me,
    What care I how chaste she be?
  • Ehret die Frauen! sie flechten und weben
    Himmlische Rosen in's irdische Leben.
    • Honor women! they entwine and weave heavenly roses in our earthly life.
    • Friedrich Schiller, Würde der Frauen
  • The weakness of their reasoning faculty also explains why women show more sympathy for the unfortunate than men;… and why, on the contrary, they are inferior to men as regards justice, and less honourable and conscientious.
  • In the beginning, said a Persian poet—Allah took a rose, a lily, a dove, a serpent, a little honey, a Dead Sea apple, and a handful of clay. When he looked at the amalgam—it was a woman.

See also

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Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:
 
Wiktionary
Look up women in Wiktionary, the free dictionary
 
Wikisource
Wikisource has original works on the topic:
  • W. F. H. King (ed.) Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), woman, 492, 606, 673, 1440a, 1839; a bad w., 138, 1670, 2448, 2488; a learned, 2596; a rich, 1126; woman’s best ornament, 863; w., either loves or hates, 190, 3022; 'a woman in every case', 317; women, 374, 438, 1440, 1586, 2607, 2824, 3068; are all-powerful, 3072; are the comfort, 3101, and fragrance, 627, of life; and make the manners, 483, and morals, 1363, of society; are always in extremes, 190, 1360; a mystery, 742; are dilatory, 1584, fickle, 1232, 1583, 2758, 3099, perverse, 1806, sharp-tongued, 1248, and always speak with reservation, 1359; w. and men, 1363, 1364; success with w., 89, 696, 1839
  • James William Norton-Kyshe (ed.) The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), pp. 249–50
  • Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922), pp. 886–97
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