WOMEN QUOTES VI
quotations about women
No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness. When we allow ourselves to believe we are, we lost touch with parts of ourselves defined as unacceptable by that consciousness; with the vital toughness and visionary strength of the angry grandmothers, the shamanesses, the fierce market-women of the Ibo's Women's War, the marriage-resisting women silkworkers of prerevolutionary China, the millions of widows, midwives, and the women healers tortured and burned as witches for three centuries in Europe.
ADRIENNE RICH
Blood, Bread and Poetry
Love deceives the best of womankind.
HOMER
The Odyssey
Men are forever eager to press drink upon those they consider their superiors, hoping thereby to eliminate that distinction between them.... And women, when confronted by superiors, substitute for drink the crippling liquor of their sex.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Some women think they need to be overpowering in order to be powerful. This is so far from the truth. What is so great about being a women is how powerful we are quite naturally.
ROBI LUDWIG
interview, The Romance Files, February 16, 2011
The problem with life is, by the time you can read women like a book, your library card has expired.
MILTON BERLE
attributed, quotefancy
Difficult folk, these women!
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Master and Margarita
We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn't fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
The Virgin Suicides
Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder.
THORNTON WILDER
The Matchmaker
Only a numskull is pleased at being a so-called "success" with women, only a dunderhead is puffed up by it. A real man is much more likely to be dismayed at realizing that a woman has lost her heart to him when he can't reciprocate her feelings.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
My further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, love one."
HONORE DE BALZAC
The Lily of the Valley
Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow,
A herb most bruised is woman.
EURIPIDES
Medea
Destruction often lurks in women's eyes.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Take my advice. Make love to every pretty woman you meet. And remember, if you get 5 per cent on your outlay it's a good return.
ARNOLD BENNETT
diary, May 24, 1904
Let woman be a plaything, pure and fine, like a precious stone, illumined with the virtues of a world not yet come.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
People might not agree with me, but I think a woman should have a feminine shape, something you can get your hands on. You, on the other hand, look like you might be partial to the skinny type, a point of view I fully respect, don't misunderstand me.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
I don't think a woman should be in any government job whatever. I mean, I really don't. The reason why I do is mainly because they are erratic. And emotional.
RICHARD NIXON
conversation with John Mitchell, Slate, October 11, 2001
Under his forming hands a creature grew,
Man-like, but different sex; so lovely fair
That what seemed fair in all the world, seemed now
Mean, or in her summed up, in her contained,
And in her looks; which from that time infus'd
Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before,
And into all things from her air inspir'd
The spirit of love and amorous delight.
She disappear'd, and left me dark; I wak'd
To find her, or for her ever to deplore
Her loss, and other pleasures abjure:
When out of hope, behold her, not far off,
Such as I saw her in my dream, adorn'd
With what all Earth or Heaven could bestow
To make her amiable: On she came,
Led by her Heavenly Maker, though unseen,
And guided by his voice; nor uninform'd
Of nuptial sanctity, and marriage rites:
Grace was in her steps, heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
Nobody knows much about women, not even Freud, not even women themselves. But it's like electricity: you don't have to know how it works to get a shock on the fingers.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
It is easier to make a glass tube pliable than to convince an obstinate woman she is in fault.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Table Talk, July 23, 1827