Women Quotes

The younger man stepped away from the table and came toward me, his whole posture radiating menace. Every Darre woman is taught to deal with such behavior from men. It is an animal trick that they use, like dogs ruffling their fur and growling. Only rarely is there an actual threat behind it, and a woman's strength lies in discerning when the threat is real and when it is just hair and noise.

~ N.k. Jemisin

The women of the South have brought into American literature a unique mixture of domesticity and grotesquerie.

~ James Dickey

In its various forms, so far as we know them, Love seems always to have a deep significance and a most practical importance to us little mortals. In one form, as the mere semi-conscious Sex-love, which runs through creation and is common to the lowest animals and plants, it appears as a kind of organic basis for the unity of all creatures; in another, as the love of the mother for her offspring—which may also be termed a passion—it seems to pledge itself to the care and guardianship of the future race; in another, as the marriage of man and woman, it becomes the very foundation of human society. And so we can hardly believe that in its homogenic form, with which we are here concerned, it has not also a deep significance, and social uses and functions which will become clearer to us, the more we study it.

~ Edward Carpenter

She was one of those women of good family who no longer exist, elegant, distinguished, and haughty, whose pallor and thinness seem to say, 'I am conquered by the era, like all my breed. I am dying, but I despise you,' and - devil take me! - plebeian as I am, and though it is not very philosophical , I cannot help finding that beautiful.

~ Jules Barbey D'aurevilly

Anyhow, with their extraordinary gift for, and experience in, affairs of the heart from the double point of view, both of the man and of the woman it is not difficult to see that these people have a special work to do as reconcilers and interpreters of the two sexes to each other.

~ Edward Carpenter

The girl's life had been squandered in the streets, and among the most noisome of the stews and dens of London, but there was something of the woman's original nature left in her still; and when she heard a light step approaching the door opposite to that by which she had entered, and thought of the wide contrast which the small room would in another moment contain, she felt burdened with the sense of her own deep shame: and shrunk as though she could scarcely bear the presence of her with whom she had sought this interview.

~ Charles Dickens

Perhaps grown women are beings of a good deal more complexity than cats

~ Jude Morgan

America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash--and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumberable editions of The Lamplighter (by Maria Susanna Cummins), and other books neither better nor worse? Worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the hundred thousand.

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Always the way! muttered the Jew to himself as he turned homewards. The worst of these women is, that a very little thing serves to call up some long-forgotten feeling; and the best of them is, that it never lasts. Ha! ha!

~ Charles Dickens

Teachers were not allowed to beat children as they did in the past, although, Mma Ramotswe reflected, there were some boys-and indeed some young men-who might have been greatly improved by moderate physical correction. The apprentices, for example: would it help if Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni resorted to physical chastisement-nothing severe, of course-but just an occasional kick in the seat of the pants while they were bending over to change a tyre or something like that? The thought made her smile. She would even offer to administer the kick herself, which she imagined might be oddly satisfying, as one of the apprentices, the one who still kept on about girls, had a largeish bottom which she thought would be quite comfortable to kick. How enjoyable it would be to creep up behind him and kick him when he was least expecting it, and then to say: Let that be a lesson! That was all one would have to say, but it would be a blow for women everywhere.

~ Alexander Mccall Smith

...the state of Virginia had turned down twenty-one thousand women for admission to state colleges in 1970 while not turning away a single man...

~ Meg Waite Clayton

Even for women without children, trading hours that produce income for hours that produce “only” art seems like a foolish decision. What a loss for the world, though, to have women's voices silenced because art is our last priority.

~ Holly Robinson

That was what stuck in the craws of all the good women of Deptford: Mrs Dempster had not been raped, as a decent woman would have been—no, she had yielded because a man wanted her. The subject was not one that could be freely discussed even among intimates, but it was understood without saying that if women began to yield for such reasons as that, marriage and society would not last long. Any man who spoke up for Mrs Dempster probably believed in Free Love. Certainly he associated sex with pleasure, and that put him in a class with filthy thinkers like Cece Athelstan.

~ Robertson Davies

Miss West is never idle. Below, in the big after-room, she does her own laundering. Nor will she let the steward touch her father's fine linen. In the main cabin she has installed a sewing-machine. All hand-stitching, and embroidering, and fancy work she does in the deck-chair beside me. She avers that she loves the sea and the atmosphere of sea-life, yet, verily, she has brought her home-things and land-things along with her--even to her pretty china for afternoon tea.

~ Jack London

Now,' Elias said, 'if only I didn't have to go home to my lousy wife. I married her in 1929. A lot of things've changed since 1929.' He sighed. 'What's a woman?' he asked. 'A Woman is a trap.

~ Irwin Shaw

I think both Protestants and Catholics have killed the woman for the sake of the mother. (Rubem Alves, p. 201)

~ Mev Puleo

Ida was a natural historian who knew how to throw in enough fiction to keep up dramtic tension. And she was replete with details, like a big fat colorful nineteenth-century historical novel, inching forward slowly....Ida's narrative line, like her waistline, was ample.

~ Marissa Piesman

Life with Ilona was invariably lived on two levels, or rather in two simultaneous and parallel directions. On the one hand, your feet were always on the ground, you were always intelligently but not obsessively alert to what each day offered in response to the routine question of surviving. On the other hand, imagination and unbounded fantasy suggested a spontaneous and unexpected sequence of scenarios that were always aimed at the radical subversion of every law ever written or established. This was a permanent, organic, rigorous subversion that never permitted travel on the beaten path, the road preferred by most people, the traditional patterns that offer protection to those whom Ilona, without emphasis or pride but without any concessions either, would call the others.

~ Álvaro Mutis

The feminist challenge was sweeping: it embraced education andoccupation, together with legal, political, and social status. It evendared broach the subject of equality in personal, and especiallymatrimonial, relationships. Such assertiveness was more unsettlingthan the racial threat because it was more intimate and immediate:few white men lived with blacks, but most lived with women.

~ Cynthia Russett

What a storyteller does is *see* more than most of us. We say he's making up his stories, but he—or better yet, *she*—watches more carefully, and then tells us what we would have seen ourselves if we'd just stopped to look.-Leah said—to Nadine, although she was looking at Marjorie (pg 138)

~ Dean Hughes

Men - gifts that we love to open, women - gifts that we love to keep.

~ Fuad Alakbarov

They radiated that orgasm-free lifestyle so unique and universal among Seabrook women.

~ Holly Peterson

A man once said of women, Women are like roads, the more curves, the more fun, exciting and dangerous they are. While the evolved man smiles with class and confidence and says, women with more curves, twists and turns in her mind are the most beautiful, exciting, dangerous creatures alive. And the evolved woman, well, she will accept no less than the evolved man; a man with honor, dignity and depth.

~ Melody Lee

Still trying to figure out the dynamics of rights and responsibilities as a woman? How about striking out the word Woman and making it Human.

~ Haritha Velpureddy

Her stories were made of badass women teasing monsters and running wild with dragons.

~ Melody Lee

You are good enough to make whatever you want to achieve possible. You just need to find your talent and passion, then put a heck a lot of work into it.

~ Ashley Graham

A lot of performers, if they go to bed with a woman on the road, they think of her as a slut. As a person and a man, what does that make them then? Lowlife or high living, you give as good as you get, and I don't think women's sex lives have a thing to do with the kinds of human beings they are.

~ Waylon Jennings

I think if you had been born a boy, perhaps you would have been satisfied with what the world offered you. That is how we are alike. We saw everything that was not ours, and we hungered. Do not lose that hunger. You will always have to fight for everything. Even when you already have it, you will have to keep fighting to maintain it. You will have to be more ruthless, more brutal, more everything. Any weakness will undo everything you have accomplished. They will see any crack as evidence that they were right that a woman cannot do what you do.

~ Kiersten White

Trusting women means also trusting them to find their way. This isn’t to say, of course, that I think women’s sexual choices are intrinsically “empowered” or “feminist.” I just believe that in a world that values women so little, and so specifically for their sexuality, we should be giving them the benefit of the doubt. Because in this kind of hostile culture, trusting womenis a radical act.

~ Jessica Valenti

Women were very queer. Unexpectedly cruel and unexpectedly kind.

~ Agatha Christie

Trusting women means also trusting them to find their way. This isn’t to say, of course, that I think women’s sexual choices are intrinsically 'empowered' or 'feminist.' I just believe that in a world that values women so little, and so specifically for their sexuality, we should be giving them the benefit of the doubt. Because in this kind of hostile culture, trusting womenis a radical act.

~ Jessica Valenti

. . since [no] women whose acquaintance I had made in fiction had much to do with the life I led or wanted to lead, I was not female. . . . if Molly Bloom was a woman. what was I? A mutant or a dinosaur.

~ Lee R. Edwards

What it is about Islam, I thought, that can make a woman so strong that she no longer strives to be noticed by men, no longer needs the admiring gaze to feel attractive, no longer puts herself on display when the rest of the world is doing just that?

~ Na'ima B. Robert

I do not take orders from women.”“My men do not have a similar problem.” Lada lifted a hand. The man fell, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest.

~ Kiersten White

The cause of every anomaly can be found in woman.

~ G.i. Gurdjieff

Female monsters take things as personally as they really are. They study facts. Even if rejection makes them feel like the girl who's not invited to the party, they have to understand the reasons why.... Every question, once it's formulated, is a paradigm, contains its own internal truth. We have to stop diverting ourselves with false questions. And I told Warren: I aim to be a female monster too.

~ Chris Kraus

The moment a woman was born determined so much of who she was allowed to become.

~ J. Courtney Sullivan

When I was a child, my mother would try to convince me of a woman's need for a secret stash. It can be anything: land, property, even a couple hundred dollars. You know, in case anything goes wrong and you have to get the hell out of there. Her mother had told her this, as her mother before had told her.

~ Zinzi Clemmons

I was painter staring at a canvas waiting for the forgotten visions of my new abstract piece to come to me. But I am the abstract piece and my mind cannot comprehend the work my heart has created.

~ Rediet Worku

Some women who married and also had lesbian relationships were genuinely bisexual. Many others married because they could see no other viable choice in the day.

~ Lillian Faderman