"O constancy! be strong upon my side; Set a huge mountain ’tween my heart and tongue; I have a man’s mind, but a woman’s might. How hard it is for women to keep counsel!"

"I grant I am a woman, but withal, A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife: I grant I am a woman; but withal A woman well-reputed; Cato's daughter."

"Two women plac'd together makes cold weather."

"Her sighs will make a battery in his breast; Her tears will pierce into a marble heart; The tiger will be mild whiles she doth mourn; And Nero will be tainted with remorse, To hear and see her plaints."

"Women are soft, mild, pitiful and flexible; Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless."

"'Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud; But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small: 'Tis virtue that doth make them most admired; The contrary doth make thee wondered at: 'Tis government that makes them seem divine."

"—And is not my hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench? —As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle."

"Frailty, thy name is woman!— A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she follow'd my poor father's body, Like Niobe, all tears;—why she, even she, * * * married with my uncle."

"O most delicate fiend! Who is't can read a woman?"

"Is there no way for men to be, but women Must be half-workers?"

"I thank God I am not a woman, to be touched with so many giddy offences as He hath generally taxed their whole sex withal."

"Run, run, Orlando: carve on every tree The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she."

"If ladies be but young and fair, They have the gift to know it."

"Now boast thee, death, in thy possession lies A lass unparalleled."

"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety."

"I have gone out, a possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night; dreaming evil, ... A woman like that is not a woman, quite. I have been her kind."

"Women had prerogative in deliberative sessions touching either peace-government, or martial affairs."

"A woman's notes will not signify much truly, no more than her tongue."

"O Woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!"

"Widowed wife and wedded maid."

"Woman's faith, and woman's trust— Write the characters in dust; Stamp them on the running stream, Print them on the moon's pale beam, And each evanescent letter Shall be clearer, firmer, better, And more permanent, I ween, Than the thing those letters mean."

"The fundamental fault of the female character is that it has no sense of justice. This is mainly due to the fact...that women are defective in the powers of reasoning and deliberation; but it is also traceable to the position which Nature has assigned to them as the weaker sex. They are dependent, not upon strength, but upon craft; and hence their instinctive capacity for cunning, and their ineradicable tendency to say what is not true. For as lions are provided with claws and teeth, and elephants and boars with tusks, bulls with horns, and cuttle fish with its clouds of inky fluid, so Nature has equipped woman, for her defense and protection, with the arts of dissimulation."

"The weakness of their reasoning faculty...explains why women show more sympathy for the unfortunate than men do, and so treat them with more kindness and interest; and why it is that, on the contrary, they are inferior to men in point of justice, and less honorable and conscientious."

"Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. If they’re feminine, they’re not ideal, and if ideal, not feminine."

"Ehret die Frauen! sie flechten und weben Himmlische Rosen in's irdische Leben."

"Ita uotum omne foemineum fortune uarietas abripit, temporum mutatio dissoluit, et muliebris animi fidem lubrico nixam uestigio fortuiti rerum casus extenuant, que sicut ad pollicendum facilis, ita ad persoluendum segnis uariis uoluptatis irritamentis astringitur atque ad recentia semper auidius expetenda ueterum immemor anhela preceps cupiditate dissultat."

"Such, Polly, are your sex—part truth, part fiction; Some thought, much whim, and all a contradiction."

"Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough, A-top on the topmost twig,—which the pluckers forgot, somehow,— Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now. * * * Like the wild hyacinth flower, which on the hills is found, Which the passing feet of the shepherds for ever tear and wound, Until the purple blossom is trodden into the ground."

"Ne l'onde solca, e ne l'arena semina, E'l vago vento spera in rete accogliere Chi sue speranze fonda in cor di femina."

"Where love is absent there can be no woman."

"How shall I free myself from this marble envelope which grips me round the knees, and holds me as totally imprisoned as a corpse by its tomb?"

"Women and elephants never forget an injury."

"Eve, smiling, plucked the apple, then Laughed, sighed—and tasted it again: "Strange such a pleasant, juicy thing On a forbidden tree should spring!"But had she seen with clearer eyes, Or had the serpent been less wise, She'd scarce have shown such little wit As to let Adam taste of it!"

"That woman, as nature has created her and as man is at present educating her, is his enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. This she can become only when she has the same rights as he, and is his equal in education and work."

"The Romans and the Sabines renewed their battle in the valley that lies between the two hills. But the advantage rested with the Romans. Then the Sabine women, whose wrong had given rise to the war, with loosened hair and torn garments, their woman's timidity lost in a sense of their misfortune, dared to go amongst the flying missiles, and rushing in from the side, to part the hostile forces and disarm them of their anger, beseeching their fathers on this side, on that their husbands, that fathers-in-law and sons-in-law should not stain themselves with impious bloodshed, nor pollute with parricide the suppliants' children, grandsons to one party and sons to the other. "If you regret the relationship that unites you, if you regret the marriage-tie, turn your anger against us; we are the cause of war, the cause of wounds, and even death to both our husbands and our parents. It will be better for us to perish than to live, lacking either of you, as widows or as orphans." It was a touching plea, not only to the rank and file, but to their leaders as well. A stillness fell on them, and a sudden hush. Then the leaders came forward to make a truce, and not only did they agree on peace, but they made one people out of the two."

"Romulus went amongst them and explained that the pride of their parents had caused this deed...nevertheless the daughters should be wedded and become co-partners in all the possessions of the Romans, in their citizenship and, dearest privilege of all to the human race, in their children; only let them moderate their anger, and give their hearts to those to whom fortune had given their persons. A sense of injury had often given place to affection, and they would find their husbands the kinder for this reason, that every man would earnestly endeavour not only to be a good husband, but also to console his wife for the home and parents she had lost. His arguments were seconded by the wooing of the men, who excused their act on the score of passion and love, the most moving of all pleas to a woman's heart. The resentment of the brides was already much diminished at the very moment when their parents, in mourning garb and with tears and lamentations, were attempting to arouse their states to action."

"Rome was strong enough to hold her own in war with any of the adjacent states; but owing to the want of women a single generation was likely to see the end of her greatness...So, on the advice of the senate, Romulus sent envoys round among all the neighbouring nations to solicit for the new people an alliance and the privilege of intermarrying. Nowhere did the embassy obtain a friendly hearing...and the envoys were frequently asked, on being dismissed, if they had opened a sanctuary for women as well as for men, for in that way only would they obtain suitable wives. This was a bitter insult to the young Romans, and the matter seemed certain to end in violence. Expressly to afford a fitting time and place for this, Romulus, concealing his resentment, made ready solemn games in honour of the equestrian Neptune, which he called Consualia...The Sabines came with all their people, including their children and wives...When the time came for the show, and people's thoughts and eyes were busy with it, the preconcerted attack began. At a given signal the young Romans darted this way and that, to seize and carry off the maidens. In most cases these were taken by the men in whose path they chanced to be. Some, of exceptional beauty, had been marked out for the chief senators, and were carried off to their houses by plebeians to whom the office had been entrusted. One, who far excelled the rest in mien and loveliness, was seized, the story relates, by the gang of a certain Thalassius. Being repeatedly asked for whom they were bearing her off, they kept shouting that no one should touch her, for they were taking her to Thalassius, and this was the origin of the wedding-cry."

"O, saw ye the lass wi' the bonnie blue een? Her smile is the sweetest that ever was seen, Her cheek like the rose is, but fresher, I ween, She's the loveliest lassie that trips on the green."

"Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted."

"The superior virtue of women was made a reason for keeping them out of politics, where, it was held, a lofty virtue is impossible. But the early feminists turned the argument round, and contended that the participation of women would ennoble politics. Since this has turned out to be an illusion, there has been less talk of women's superior virtue, but there are still a number of men who adhere to the monkish view of woman as the temptress. Women themselves, for the most part, think of themselves as the sensible sex, whose business it is to undo the harm that comes of men's impetuous follies. For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favourable and unfavourable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern; all alike, I should say, result from paucity of experience."

"Queens you must always be: queens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and your sons, queens of higher mystery to the world beyond. ... But, alas! you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest."

"Woman is a ray of God, not a mere mistress, The Creator's self, as it were, not a mere creature!"

"Do son todas mugeres, nunca mengua renzilla."

"And behind every man who's a failure there's a woman, too!"

"Εἰ τοίην χάριν εἶχε γυνὴ μετὰ Κύπριδος εὐνήν, οὐκ ἄν τοι κόρον ἔσχεν ἀνὴρ ἀλόχοισιν ὁμιλῶν. πᾶσαι γὰρ μετὰ κύπριν ἀτερπέες εἰσὶ γυναῖκες."

"Μισῶ τὴν ἀφελῆ͵ μισῶ τὴν σώφρονα λίαν· ἡ μὲν γὰρ βραδέως͵ ἡ δὲ θέλει ταχέως."

"I was no better than some geek with a foam-rubber woman's torso like they advertise in Hustler. What a pathetic, twisted version of womanhood: all the "inessential" parts lopped off, nothing left behind but tits and ass and holes. Lifelike washable plastic skin. Greek and French features. But yet, in a way, wasn't the sex sphere always what I'd wanted in a woman? An ugly truth there. "Shut up and spread!" How many times had I told Sybil that, if not in so many words?"

"Not only am I scared of big, strong men, I'm scared of mean little women. It's just little skinny men and nice big women that I get along with."