Women

"For me, there are only two kinds of women — goddesses and doormats."

"Ah, wasteful woman! she who may On her sweet self set her own price, Knowing man cannot choose but pay, How has she cheapen'd Paradise! How given for nought her priceless gift, How spoil'd the bread and spill'd the wine, Which, spent with due respective thrift, Had made brutes men and men divine."

"The noblest study of mankind is man, but the most fascinating study of womankind is another woman's wardrobe."

"A woman is a foreign land."

"Kind Katherine to her husband kiss'd these words, "Mine own sweet Will, how dearly do I love thee!" "If true," quoth Will, "the world no such affords." And that it's true I durst his warrant be: For ne'er heard I of woman, good or ill, But always lovèd best her own sweet will."

"Still an angel appear to each lover beside, But still be a woman to you."

"She is older than the rocks among which she sits: like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands."

"Patience makes a woman beautiful in middle age."

"Men seldom make passes At girls who wear glasses."

"Yet this the need of woman, this her curse: To range her little gifts, and give, and give, Because the throb of giving’s sweet to bear."

"The ladies men admire, I’ve heard, Would shudder at a wicked word. Their candle gives a single light; They’d rather stay at home at night. They do not keep awake till three, Nor read erotic poetry. They never sanction the impure, Nor recognize an overture. They shrink from powders and from paints... So far, I’ve had no complaints."

"If we take a survey of ages and of countries, we shall find the women, almost—without exception—at all times and in all places, adored and oppressed. Man, who has never neglected an opportunity of exerting his power, in paying homage to their beauty, has always availed himself of their weakness. He has been at once their tyrant and their slave."

"Male conspiracy cannot explain all female failures. ... Genius is not checked by social obstacles: it will overcome. Men's egotism, so disgusting in the talentless, is the source of their greatness as a sex. ... Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species."

"Zeus, in place of fire, bestowed another fire, woman. Would that neither woman nor fire had come into being! Fire, it is true, is soon put out, but woman is a fire unquenchable, flaming, ever alight."

"He was as much an admirer of the fair sex, so that when once on a specially dashing woman appearing in the gallery of the New South Wales Assembly, and Parkes being asked who she was, replied in sardonic style: "Well I don't know myself. I've asked George Reid and Wise, and they don't know, from which I conclude that she must be a woman of good reputation.""

"Man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. And man was not created for the cause of the woman, but the woman for the cause of man; and therefore ought the woman to have a power upon her head."

"Doorways are sacred to women for we are the doorways of life and we must choose what comes in and what goes out."

"With varying vanities, from ev'ry part, They shift the moving toyshop of their heart."

"Beshrew my heart, but it is wond’rous strange; Sure there is something more than witchcraft in them, That masters ev’n the wisest of us all."

"Nocte latent mendae, vitioque ignoscitur omni, Horaque formosam quamlibet illa facit."

"Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsae."

"Procul hinc, procul este, severae!"

"O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee To temper man: we had been brutes without you; Angels are painted fair, to look like you: There's in you all that we believe of Heaven, Amazing brightness, purity, and truth, Eternal joy, and everlasting love."

"Who can describe Women's hypocrisies! their subtle wiles, Betraying smiles, feign'd tears, inconstancies! Their painted outsides, and corrupted minds, The sum of all their follies, and their falsehoods."

"Wit and woman are two frail things, and both the frailer by concurring."

"Et amârunt me quoque Nymphæ."

"Woman Is the Nigger of the World"

"Who trusts himself to women, or to waves, Should never hazard what he fears to lose."

"Everything takes a different flavour when a woman does it."

"Myriad are the phantasies That trouble the still dreams of maidenhood, And wonderful the radiant entities Shaped in the passion of her brain and blood. O Fancy! through the realm of guesses fly, Unlock the rich abstraction of her heart (Her soul is second in the mystery): Trail thy gold meshes through the summer sky; Question her tender breathings as they part, Tell me, Revealer, that she thinks of me."

"(Nam) corporea pulchritudo in pelle solummodo constat. Nam si viderent homines hoc quod subtus pellem est, sicut lynces in Boetia cernere interiora feruntur, mulieres videre nausearent. Iste decor in flegmate, et sanguine, et humore, ac felle, consistit. Si quis enim considerat quae intra nares, et quae intra fauces, et quae intra ventrem lateant, sordes utique reperiet. Et si nec extremis digitis flegma vel stercus tangere patimur, quomodo ipsum stercoris saccum amplecti desideramus?"

"Amo, amas, I love a lass, As a cedar tall and slender; Sweet cowslip's grace Is her nom'native case, And she's of the feminine gender."

"What mighty ills have not been done by woman! Who was't betray'd the Capitol? A woman; Who lost Mark Antony the world? A woman; Who was the cause of a long ten years' war, And laid at last old Troy in ashes? Woman; Destructive, damnable, deceitful woman!"

"Esse bonam facile est, ubi quod vetet esse remotum est."

"Today, women make up about half our workforce, but they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment. Women deserve equal pay for equal work."

"I am convinced that our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons. Our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity – men and women – to reach their full potential."

"She was a fine dashing woman, and without being either pretty or beautiful she gave the impression of being both, mostly from the splendid way she carried her head."

"On aime plus âprement que l'on ne hait."

"Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream out at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving any in return, for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so."

"A crowd of women around me doing the ocean of women’s work that never subsided and never changed and always swallowed whatever time you gave it and wanted more, another hungry body of water. I submerged into it like a ritual bath and let it close over my head gladly."

"Oh, God, who does not exist, you hate women, otherwise you'd have made them different. And Jesus, who snubbed your mother, you hate them more."

"Women want to become independent. To this end they are beginning to enlighten men about "women as such." This is one of the worst aspects of progress in the general uglification of Europe."

"Supposing truth is a woman—what then? Are there not grounds for the suspicion that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have been very inexpert about women? That the gruesome seriousness, the clumsy obtrusiveness with which they have usually approached truth so far have been awkward and very improper methods for winning a woman's heart? What is certain is that she has not allowed herself to be won."

"In no age has the weaker sex been treated with as much respect by men as in ours: that belongs to the democratic inclination and basic taste, just like disrespectfulness for old age."

"Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly."

"Man is for woman, a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is woman for man? Two different things wanteth the true man: danger and diversion. Therefore wanteth he woman, as the most dangerous plaything."

"Du gehst zu Frauen? Vergiss die Peitsche nicht!"

"Wherever the industrial spirit has triumphed over the military and aristocratic spirit, woman now aspires to the economic and legal self-reliance of a clerk."

"Pinge, precor, pictor, tali candore puellam, Qualem pinxit Amor, qualem meus ignis anhelat. Nil pingendo neges; tegat omnia Serica vestis, Quae totum prodat tenui velamine corpus. Te quoque pulset amor, crucient pigmenta medullas: Si bonus es pictor, miseri suspiria pinge."

"The femme fatale is one of the most mesmerizing of sexual personae. She is not a fiction but an extrapolation of biologic realities in women that remain constant."