Women

"And she is dying piece-meal of a sort of emotional anæmia. * * * * * In her is the end of breeding. Her boredom is exquisite and excessive. She would like some one to speak to her, And is almost afraid that I will commit that indiscretion."

"Ὦ διὰ τῶν θυρίδων καλὸν ἐμβλέποισα, παρθένε τὰν κεφαλάν, τὰ δ᾽ἔνερθε νύμφα."

"Give God thy broken heart, He whole will make it: Give woman thy whole heart, and she will break it."

"That if weak women went astray, Their stars were more in fault than they."

"It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house."

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

"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.""

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper."

"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."

"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."

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

"If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts."

"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."

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

"Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsae."

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

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

"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."

"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!"

"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."

"Procul hinc, procul este, severae!"

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

"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."

"Woman Is the Nigger of the World"

"(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?"

"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."

"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."

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

"Et amârunt me quoque Nymphæ."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"The happiness of man is: I will. The happiness of woman is: he wills."

"One way to a girl's mind is through her cunt."

"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."

"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."