quotations about women
Women age early, and their mistake is not knowing where to hide all the time that lies behind them so that no one sees it. What are they to do, devour it like the umbilical cords of their children? Hell and damnation!
ELFRIEDE JELINEK
Lust
All of a sudden, in the good-natured child, the woman stood revealed, a disturbing woman with all the impulsive madness of her sex, opening the gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was still smiling, but with the deadly smile of a man-eater.
EMILE ZOLA
Nana
Women have traditionally been either put on pedestals or damned as the source of all sexual temptation and sin. These are two sides of the same coin, since both place women in a nonhuman role. Playboy has opposed these warped sexual values and, in so doing, helped women step down from their pedestals and enjoy their natural sexuality as much as men.
HUGH HEFNER
Playboy, January 1974
When a hen cackles, she's either layin' or lyin'.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
It would take a hell of a wife to beat no wife at all.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
The Crossing
The wings of high-flying women are still being clipped by sexist stereotypes.
CAROLINE CRIADO-PEREZ
The Guardian, February 10, 2016
Prejudice, in which there is truth, does cast, throughout the world but especially in France, a great stigma on the woman with whom no man has been willing to share the blessings or endure the ills of life. Now, there comes to all unmarried women a period when the world, be it right or wrong, condemns them on the fact of this contempt, this rejection. If they are ugly, the goodness of their characters ought to have compensated for their natural imperfections; if, on the contrary, they are handsome, that fact argues that their misfortune has some serious cause. It is impossible to say which of the two classes is most deserving of rejection. If, on the other hand, their celibacy is deliberate, if it proceeds from a desire for independence, neither men nor mothers will forgive their disloyalty to womanly devotion, evidenced in their refusal to feed those passions which render their sex so affecting. To renounce the pangs of womanhood is to abjure its poetry and cease to merit the consolations to which mothers have inalienable rights.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
The average woman was firmly convinced, it seemed, that she could not make a man recognize her worth unless every time she opened her legs she did so as if it were a scene in a soap opera.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
Woman is the only creature in nature that hunts down its hunters and devours the prey alive.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
As a woman, I have an inherent need to be all things to all people, to make certain everybody's taken care of. I know I can't sustain that level all the time, so I'm finding the proper balance and it's made me infinitely happier.
SARAH JESSICA PARKER
Woman's Day Magazine, September 12, 2007
A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.
U2
"Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World"
Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
A Room of One's Own
Woman's great strength lies in being late or absent. Presence immediately reveals the weak points of our beloved; when she is absent she become one of the sylph-like figures of our adolescence whom we endowed with perfection.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living
Women are not waiting around for lovers, they're living their lives. And believe it or not, having the morning to yourself is very zen.
KAITLYN WILDE
"Comic Artist Depicts Single Women They Way They Really Are -- Quite Content, Thank You Very Much", Bustle, February 9, 2016
I've always felt there are two things a woman should never do after the age of thirty-five: stand in natural light and have a baby.
ERMA BOMBECK
Family: The Ties that Bind ... and Gag!
If family and society tell you its unfeminine, not really womanly, to be aggressive, to speak up, to have strong opinions, to take up space, then women won't trust their own voice, because to be heard and to be influential, you've got to have a way to sing out with passion and love and self-trust--to sing out your song for everyone to hear.
ELIZABETH LESSER
"What's Possible: An Interview With Elizabeth Lesser", Omega, May 8, 2012
In a society that is becoming desensitized, robotic and in some cases debilitatingly prescriptive. Women are faking orgasms more -- maybe to just get it all over with.
PAMELA ANDERSON
blog post, Pamela Anderson Foundation, March 30, 2017
People may talk about the equality of the sexes! They are not equal. The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman will vanquish ten men.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The spirit of Eve is strong in all her daughters.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Rose in Bloom
Women have more fun because there's more things forbidden to them.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's