Women are like tricks by sleight of hand,
Which, to admire, we should not understand.
WILLIAM CONGREVE, Love for Love
I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence.
LORD BYRON, Don Juan
It is the plain women who know about love; the beautiful women are too busy being fascinating.
KATHARINE HEPBURN, Evan Esar's 20,000 Quips & Quotes
The plainest man who pays attention to women, will sometimes succeed as well as the handsomest man who does not.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does a woman want?”
SIGMUND FREUD, Ernest Jones' Sigmund Freud: Life and Work
A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.
HENRIK IBSEN, From Ibsen's Workshop
"Woman" is my slave name; feminism will give me freedom to seek some other identity altogether.
ANN SNITOW, "A Gender Diary," Conflicts in Feminism
There is in every true woman's heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.
WASHINGTON IRVING, The Sketch Book
Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work ... a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work.
BARBRA STREISAND, People Magazine, May 31, 1993
Every woman should have four pets in her life. A mink in her closet, a jaguar in her garage, a tiger in her bed, and a jackass who pays for everything.
PARIS HILTON
If young women were not deceived into a belief that affectation pleases, they would scarcely trouble themselves to practise it so much.
MARIA EDGEWORTH, Mademoiselle Panache
Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has a single solution: that is, pregnancy.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Thus Spake Zarathustra
For I cannot think that GOD Almighty ever made them [women] so delicate, so glorious creatures; and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind; with souls capable of the same accomplishments with men: and all, to be only Stewards of our Houses, Cooks, and Slaves.
DANIEL DEFOE, The Education of Women
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.
OSCAR WILDE, The Importance of Being Earnest
A woman's whole life is a history of the affections.
WASHINGTON IRVING, The Sketch Book
Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Scarlet Letter
When women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. If it fails, they generously give her the whole.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, Little Women
What happens is that, as with drugs, he needs a stronger shot each time, and women are just women. The consumption of one woman is the consumption of all. You can’t double the dose.
IAN FLEMING, John Pearson's The Life of Ian Fleming
Every world has faults
This one has too many
Unattainable Female Objects.
DAVID JONATHAN NEWMAN, "U.F.O.," The Light Looks Another Way
Don't wait for the good woman. She doesn't exist.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI, letter to Steve Richmond, Nov. 1971
Woman was God's second mistake.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, The Antichrist
I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do it at all. We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that.
TONI MORRISON, Newsweek, Mar. 30, 1981
You won't regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.
BERNARD CORNWELL, The Winter King
Lone women, like to empty houses, perish.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Hero and Leander
Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man’s equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation.
MARGARET SANGER, "Morality and Birth Control," Birth Control Review, Feb-Mar., 1918
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; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE, Jane Eyre
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
GEORGE ELIOT, The Mill on the Floss
In revenge and in love woman is more barbaric than man is.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Beyond Good and Evil
No matter what a woman looks like, if she's confident, she's sexy.
PARIS HILTON
I, Woman, am that wonder-breathing rose
That blossoms in the garden of the King.
ELSA BARKER, The Mystic Rose
I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men.
GEORGE ELIOT, Adam Bede
I know little of women. But I've heard dread tales.
HAROLD PINTER, Moonlight
O woman, perfect woman! what distraction
Was meant to mankind when thou wast made a devil!
JOHN FLETCHER, Monsieur Thomas
In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, Gene Shalit's Great Hollywood Wit
It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status.
HOWARD ZINN, A People's History of the United States
Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow,
A herb most bruised is woman.
EURIPIDES, Medea
The sexual life of adult women is a “dark continent” for psychology.
SIGMUND FREUD, The Question of Lay Analysis
Woman's mind
Oft' shifts her passions, like th'inconstant wind;
Sudden she rages, like the troubled main,
Now sinks the storm, and all is calm again.
JOHN GAY, Dione
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
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
JOHN GRAY, Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus
I'm supposed to have a Ph.D. on the subject of women. But the truth is I've flunked more often than not. I'm very fond of women; I admire them. But, like all men, I don't understand them.
FRANK SINATRA, quoted in The Way You Wear Your Hat
Woman ... is the divine object, violated, endlessly sacrificed yet always reborn, whose only joy, achieved through a subtle interplay of images, lies in contemplation of herself.
PAULINE RÉAGE, introduction, The Image
From birth to eighteen, a girl needs good parents, from eighteen to thirty-five she needs good looks, from thirty-five to fifty-five she needs a good personality, and from fifty-five on she needs cash.
SOPHIE TUCKER, Women Who Date Too Much
The best judge of whether or not a country is going to develop is how it treats its women. If it's educating its girls, if women have equal rights, that country is going to move forward. But if women are oppressed and abused and illiterate, then they're going to fall behind.
BARACK OBAMA, Ladies' Home Journal, Sep. 2008
As all-consuming as a young girl's fancies were ... a woman's desires could be twice as dangerous.
TERESA MEDEIROS, The Vampire Who Loved Me
This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries. At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.... The truth is that male religious leaders have had -- and still have -- an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.
JIMMY CARTER, "Losing My Religion for Equality"
A woman calls it giving you a piece of her mind, but our experience has been that she generally winds up by giving you the whole dad-burned thing.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES, Poems and Paragraphs
The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed, women ... merely adored.
OSCAR WILDE, The Ideal Husband
There are some women that don't do it for some men. That's why they turn out so many models.
JOHN UPDIKE, Rabbit is Rich
It seems to me as a woman's face doesna want flowers; it's almost like a flower itself.... It's like when a man's singing a good tune, you don't want t' hear bells tinkling and interfering wi' the sound.
GEORGE ELIOT, Adam Bede
Miracle woman ...
Your mouth is wine, and all your tender flesh
An easeful meadow for my weariness.
DONALD EVANS, "For the Haunting of Mauna"
If a woman shows too often the Medusa's head, she must not be astonished if her lover is turned into stone.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, Table-Talk
Wretched
Women!
When you are wholly lovely
Man cannot forget either of his two afflictions,
Soul, or body!
MARJORIE ALLEN SEIFFERT, "Ode in the New Mode"
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
Modern women are just bombarded. There's nothing but media telling us we're all supposed to be great cooks, have great style, be great in bed, be the best mothers, speak seven languages, and be able to understand derivatives. And we don't really have women we're modeling after, so we're all looking for how to do this.
JAMIE LEE CURTIS, Good Housekeeping, Oct. 2010
Though women appear to belong to the same species as man, they are actually quite different creatures, and these incomprehensible, insidious beings have, fantastic as it seems, always looked after me. In my case such an expression as "to be fallen for" or even "to be loved" is not in the least appropriate; perhaps it describes the situation more accurately to say that I was "looked after."
OSAMU DAZAI, No Longer Human
Never mix your women.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM, The Maxims of Marmaduke
Women's eyes have pierced more hearts than ever did the bullets of war.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY, Proverbs
Woman is the only creature in nature that hunts down its hunters and devours the prey alive.
ABRAHAM MILLER, Unmoral Maxims
The fear of women is the beginning of knowledge.
GELETT BURGESS, The Maxims of Methuselah