"Oh! why did God, Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven With Spirits masculine, create at last This novelty on Earth, this fair defect Of Nature, and not fill the World at once With men as Angels, without feminine."

"O fairest of creation! last and best Of all God’s works! creature in whom excell’d Whatever can to sight or thought be form’d Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet!"

"Nothing lovelier can be found In woman, than to study household good, And good works in her husband to promote."

"Yet when I approach Her loveliness, so absolute she seems, And in herself complete; so well to know Her own, that what she wills to do or say, Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best."

"Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, In every gesture dignity and love."

"Neither her outside, form'd so fair, nor aught So much delights me, as those graceful acts, Those thousand decencies that daily flow From all her words and actions, mix'd with love And sweet compliance, which declare unfeign'd Union of mind, or in us both one soul."

"My latest found, Heaven's last best gift, my ever new delight!"

"I always thought a tinge of blue Improved a charming woman's stocking."

"Too fair to worship, too divine to love."

"The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves."

"O woman, born first to believe us; Yea, also born first to forget; Born first to betray and deceive us, Yet first to repent and regret."

"Dames. Sometimes all they got to do is let it out and a few buckets later there's no way you'd ever know."

"She is neither pink nor pale, And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine."

"What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing—the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others."

"The social subordination of women ... stands out an isolated fact in modern social institutions; a solitary breach of what has become their fundamental law; a single relic of an old world of thought and practice exploded in everything else, but retained in the one thing of most universal interest; as if a gigantic dolmen, or a vast temple of Jupiter Olympius, occupied the site of St. Paul's and received daily worship, while the surrounding Christian churches were only resorted to on fasts and festivals."

"All men, except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely, but a favourite. They have therefore put everything in practice to enslave their minds. The masters of all other slaves rely, for maintaining obedience, on fear; either fear of themselves, or religious fears. The masters of women wanted more than simple obedience, and they turned the whole force of education to effect their purpose."

"From the very earliest twilight of human society, every woman (owing to the value attached to her by men, combined with her inferiority in muscular strength) was found in a state of bondage to some man."

"Comment se fait-il qu'il y ait sur la terre une femme seule?"

"A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power."

"God's rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman!"

"I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man."

"On one issue, at least, men and women agree: they both distrust women."

"Γυναικὶ κόσμος ὁ τρόπος, οὐ τὰ χρυσία."

"Of all wild beasts on earth or in sea, the greatest is a woman."

"A woman's place is in the House and the Senate."

"Coming to terms with the rhythms of women's lives means coming to terms with life itself, accepting the imperatives of the body rather than the imperatives of an artificial, man-made, perhaps transcendentally beautiful civilization. Emphasis on the male work-rhythm is an emphasis on infinite possibilities; emphasis on the female rhythms is an emphasis on a defined pattern, on limitation."

"This lass so neat, with smiles so sweet, Has won my right good-will, I'd crowns resign to call thee mine, Sweet lass of Richmond Hill."

"Some women love only what they can hold in their arms; others, only what they can't."

"Any woman can talk herself into being in love with any man, for a while anyway."

"A woman asks little of love: only that she be able to feel like a heroine."

"Women usually love what they buy, yet hate two-thirds of what is in their closets."

"Men who don't like girls with brains don't like girls."

"Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man."

"A woman telling her true age is like a buyer confiding his final price to an Armenian rug dealer."

"Good-looking girls break hearts, and good-hearted girls mend them."

"All women are basically in competition with each other for a handful of eligible men."

"A young woman can live off the folly of men; a man of any age can live off the folly of women."

"Women are the right age for just a few years; men, for most of their lives."

"It upsets women to be, or not to be, stared at hungrily."

"Most women would like to dress imaginatively, but they glare at any woman who does."

"Many beautiful women have been made happy by their own beauty, but no intelligent woman has ever been made happy by her own intelligence."

"Women are good listeners, but it’s a waste of time telling your troubles to a man unless there’s something specific you want him to do."

"An attractive woman likes feminine company until she's twenty, and after she's twenty-five."

"Women are never landlocked: they’re always mere minutes away from the briny deep of tears."

"Few women care what a man looks like, and a good thing, too."

"When a woman reaches forty, she must wait twenty years for her husband to catch up."

"When a man comes to love a woman exactly as she had dreamed, she decides he is a weakling."

"On stage and off, we care what happens to a beautiful woman, whether she can act well or not."