Women

"She has laugh'd as softly as if she sigh'd, She has counted six, and over, Of a purse well fill'd, and a heart well tried,— Oh, each a worthy lover! They "give her time;" for her soul must slip Where the world has set the grooving; She will lie to none with her fair red lip,— But love seeks truer loving."

"True genius, but true woman! dost deny Thy woman's nature with a manly scorn, And break away the gauds and armlets worn By weaker women in captivity? Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry Is sobb'd in by a woman's voice forlorn! Thy woman's hair, my sister, all unshorn, Floats back dishevell'd strength in agony, Disproving thy man's name! and while before The world thou burnest in a poet-fire, We see thy woman-heart beat evermore Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, and higher, Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore, Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire."

"A worthless woman! mere cold clay As all false things are! but so fair, She takes the breath of men away Who gaze upon her unaware: I would not play her larcenous tricks To have her looks!"

"Never was lady on earth more true as woman and wife, Larger in judgment and instinct, prouder in manners and life."

"Women cannot judge for men."

"But I love you, sir: And when a woman says she loves a man, The man must hear her, though he love her not."

"If the day's work is scant, Why, call it scant; affect no compromise; And, in that we have nobly striven at least, Deal with us nobly, women though we be, And honour us with truth if not with praise."

"Most illogical Irrational nature of our womanhood, That blushes one way, feels another way, And prays, perhaps, another!"

"You forget too much That every creature, female as the male, Stands single in responsible act and thought, As also in birth and death."

"The works of women are symbolical. We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight, Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir, To put on when you’re weary."

"Ah, call not perfidy her fickle choice! Ah, find not falsehood in an angel's voice! True to one word, and constant to one aim, Let man's hard soul be stubborn as his frame; But leave sweet woman's form and mind at will To bend and vary and be graceful still."

"Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love. My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls, Are gone from the house. My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite And night is night."

"Maud went to college. Sadie stayed at home. Sadie scraped life With a fine-tooth comb."

"Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything."

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you."

"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...it is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."

"Nor is it proper or safe that all the keys of the kingdom should hang at the girdle of a woman."

"All women born are so perverse No man need boast their love possessing. If nought seem better, nothing's worse: All women born are so perverse."

"O, what makes woman lovely! Virtue, faith, And gentleness in suffering—an endurance Through scorn or trial. These call beauty forth, Give it the stamp celestial, and admit it To sisterhood with angels."

"It is proverbial that from a hungry tiger and an affectionate woman there is no escape."

"If women I with women may compare, Your works are solid, others light as air: Some books of women I have heard of late, Perused some, so witless, intricate, So void of sense and truth, as if to err Were only wish'd (acting above their sphere): And all to get what (silly souls) they lack, Esteem'd to be the wisest of the pack: Though (for your sake) to some this be permitted To print, yet wish I may be better wilted."

"Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are."

"I am obnoxious to each carping tongue, Who sayes my hand a needle better fits, A poet’s pen, all scorne, I should thus wrong; For such despight they cast on female wits: If what I doe prove well, it won’t advance, They’ll say it’s stolne, or else, it was by chance."

"The Eastern potentate who declared that women were at the bottom of all mischief, should have gone a little further and seen why it is so. It is because women are never lazy. They don't know what it is to be quiet. They are Semiramides, and Cleopatras, and Joan of Arcs, Queen Elizabeths, and Catharines the Second, and they riot in battle, and murder, and clamour and desperation. If they can't agitate the universe and play at ball with hemispheres, they'll make mountains of warfare and vexation out of domestic molehills, and social storms in household teacups. Forbid them to hold forth upon the freedom of nations and the wrongs of mankind, and they'll quarrel with Mrs. Jones about the shape of a mantle or the character of a small maid-servant. To call them the weaker sex is to utter a hideous mockery. They are the stronger sex, the noisier, the more persevering, the most self-assertive sex. They want freedom of opinion, variety of occupation, do they? Let them have it. Let them be lawyers, doctors, preachers, teachers, soldiers, legislators—anything they like—but let them be quiet—if they can."

"They talk about a woman's sphere as though it had a limit; There's not a place in Earth or Heaven, There's not a task to mankind given, There's not a blessing or a woe, There's not a whispered yes or no, There's not a life, or death, or birth, That has a feather's weight or worth— Without a woman in it."

"Next to God, we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth having."

"Women are most adorable when they are afraid; that's why they frighten so easily."

"Women have no wilderness in them, They are provident instead, Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts To eat dusty bread."

"Phidias made the statue of Venus at Elis with one foot upon the shell of a tortoise, to signify two great duties of a virtuous woman, which are to keep home and be silent."

"Women are not a hobby—they're a calamity."

"Man is, or should be, woman’s protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. The constitution of the family organization, which is founded in the divine ordinance, as well as in the nature of things, indicates the domestic sphere as that which properly belongs to the domain and functions of womanhood. The harmony, not to say identity, of interests and views which belong, or should belong, to the family institution is repugnant to the idea of a woman adopting a distinct and independent career from that of her husband. ... The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfil the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator."

"It is not strange to me, that persons of the fairer sex should like, in all things about them, that handsomeness for which they find themselves most liked."

"Belinda and her bird! 'tis rare To meet with such a well-match'd pair,— The language and the tone, Each character in every part Sustain'd with so much grace and art, And both in unison. When children first begin to spell, And stammer out a syllable, We think them tedious creatures; But difficulties soon abate, When birds are to be taught to prate, And women are the teachers."

"On the one hand, then, in the reproductive functions proper—menstruation, defloration, pregnancy, and parturition—woman is biologically doomed to suffer. Nature seems to have no hesitation in administering to her strong doses of pain, and she can do nothing but submit passively to the regimen prescribed. On the other hand, as regards sexual attraction, which is necessary for the act of impregnation, and as regards the erotic pleasure experienced during the act itself, the woman may be on equal footing with the man."

"It is annoying and impossible to suffer proud women, because in general Nature has given men proud and high spirits, while it has made women humble in character and submissive, more apt for delicate things than for ruling."

"Ci cacciano in cucina a dir delle favole colla gatta."

"Io ho inteso che un gallo basta assai bene a diece galline, ma che diece uomini posson male o con fatica una femina sodisfare."

"The entire being of a woman is a secret, which should be kept. And one more deep secret to her becomes part of it, one charm more, a hidden treasure. It is said that the tree under which a murderer buries his victim will die, but the apple tree under which a girl buries her murdered child does blossom more richly and does give more perfect fruit than others—the tree transforms the hidden crime into white and rosy, and into delicious flavor."

"Where two women meet, there a market springs; where three congregate, a bazaar is opened; and where seven talk, there begins a fair."

"She it was who first took man to the Tree of Knowledge, and made him know Good and Evil; and, if she had been let alone and allowed to do what she wished, she would have led him to the Tree of Life and thus rendered him immortal."

"She was an Amazon. Her whole life was spent riding at breakneck speed towards the wilder shores of love."

"A woman is a funny animal."

"Ulixem stolatum."

"A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets."

"The cruel girls we loved Are over forty. Their subtle daughters Have stolen their beauty; And with a blue stare Of cool surprise, They mock their anxious mothers With their mothers' eyes."

"The world was sad; the garden was a wild; And man, the hermit, sigh'd—till woman smiled."

"I care not for these ladies, That must be wooed and prayed; Give me kind Amaryllis, The wanton country maid."

"Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow! Though thou be black as night, And she made all of light, Yet follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow!"

"Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet! Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet!"

"White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest."