quotations about women
I have often felt that I would find it more complicated, troublesome and unpleasant to ascertain the feelings by which a woman lives than to plumb the innermost thoughts of an earthworm.
OSAMU DAZAI
No Longer Human
A man who admires a fine woman, has yet not more reason to wish himself her husband, than one who admired the Hesperian fruit, would have had to wish himself the dragon that kept it.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
Women, you overheated dipsomaniacs, never passing up a chance to wangle a drink, a great boon to bartenders but a bane to us--not to mention our crockery and our woolens!
ARISTOPHANES
Women at the Thesmophoria
The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China, August 31, 1995
Women are allowed to enter the spaces of the senses, the space of the body, the spaces opened by sensations, all kinds of feelings, but women are not allowed to enter the spaces of reason to the same extent, that is to say the space of ideas, political ideas.
CARMEN BOULLOSA
Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1995
Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.
JANE AUSTEN
Mansfield Park
Man ... heats up like a lightbulb: red hot in the twinkling of an eye and cold again in a flash. The female, on the other hand ... heats up like an iron. Slowly, over a low heat, like tasty stew. But then, once she has heated up, there's no stopping her.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
Your anatomy is a mystery that nobody bothers explaining to us. Even when we think we have mastered one woman's body, every body is different.
CHRIS ABANI
"What Men Aren't Telling Us", O Magazine, July 2008
It had always bothered Tom that women thought they could win an argument with a man simply by appealing to his baser instincts, by holding out the mere possibility of award-winning carnal knowledge. It was the gender equivalent of a preemptive nuclear strike. He thought it unfair and, quite frankly, disrespectful of the entire male population. And yet he heard himself saying, "Look, baby doll, I don't want to argue either."
DAVID BALDACCI
The Christmas Train
He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of it.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Maxims for Revolutionists
Women have been called queens for a long time, but the kingdom given them isn't worth ruling.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
An Old-Fashioned Girl
A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult.
MELINDA GATES
Woman's Day Magazine, October 2, 2007
Women and music should never be dated.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
She Stoops to Conquer
In oranges and women courage is often mistaken for insanity.
SALLY ROBINSON
Iron Jawed Angels
To awake a woman's curiosity is to make her pliable.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Women don't want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think -- in a deeper voice.
BILL COSBY
attributed, The Best Book of Useless Information Ever
Man makes one journey all his living days,
Down through the realms of music and of art;
Down through the halls of fame and glorious praise;
Down through the tears and triumphs of the heart
To some sweet woman waiting some place there.
For her he builds his cities and makes war,
Seeks gold and glorious wealth to store.
EDWIN CURRAN
"The Eternal Quest"
A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
letter to "Scottie", November 18, 1938
I have always found the female of the human species many times more difficult to understand than the male.
OSAMU DAZAI
No Longer Human
With other women he had not been able to touch their flesh without experiencing the desire to devour it, as though ravenous with an abominable hunger to butcher them. But this one, could he then love her, and not kill her?
ÉMILE ZOLA
La Bête Humaine