Women

"There is a garden in her face Where roses and white lilies blow; A heavenly paradise is that place, Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow: There cherries grow which none may buy Till "Cherry-ripe" themselves do cry."

"La mas fina Tiene una moneda rara Que cuando la dice, es oro, Que cuando la llora, es perlas Que cuando la escribe, es plata, Y es cobre cuando la trueca."

"Girls are made of water and boys are made of mud. When I am with girls I feel fresh and clean, but when I am with boys I feel stupid and nasty."

"En cosas, mayormente de mujeres, Jamas tuvo segura la balanza: Allí son mas inciertos los placeres, Y está mucho mas cierta la mudanza."

"Of all the girls that are so smart, There's none like pretty Sally."

"In danger, mind you, a woman behind you Can turn your blood to fire."

"Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid."

"La donna è come un libro che, buono o cattivo, deve piacere fin dalla copertina."

"Las mujeres son el impuesto que pagamos por el placer."

"Date frenos impotenti naturae et indomito animali et sperate ipsas modum licentiae facturas; nisi vos feceritis, minimum hoc eorum est, quae iniquo animo feminae sibi aut moribus aut legibus iniuncta patiuntur. Omnium rerum libertatem, immo licentiam, si vere dicere volumus, desiderant."

"Be assured, that when a woman once begins to be ashamed of what she ought not to be ashamed of, she will not be ashamed of what she ought."

"Chi non sa che senza le donne sentir non si po contento o satisfazione alcuna in tutta questa nostra vita, la quale senza esse saria rustica e priva d'ogni dolcezza e piú aspera che quella dell'alpestre fiere? Chi non sa che le donne sole levano de' nostri cori tutti li vili e bassi pensieri, gli affanni, le miserie e quelle turbide tristezze che cosí spesso loro sono compagne?"

"Nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle quam mihi, non si se Iuppiter ipse petat. Dicit: sed mulier cupido quod dicit amantī, in vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua."

"If Nature had not befriended us with beauty, and other good graces, to help us to insinuate our selves into men’s affections, we should have been more enslaved than any other of Nature’s creatures she hath made."

"But for the most part, women are not educated as they should be, I mean those of quality; oft their education is only to dance, sing, and fiddle, to write complimental letters, to read romances, to speak some languages that is not their native...their parents take more care of their feet than their head, more of their words than their reason."

"La muger que se determina á ser honrada entre un ejército de soldados lo puede ser."

"Esa es natural condición de mujeres, desdeñar á quien las quiere, y amar á quien las aborrece."

"An honest maid and a broken leg are best at home, a woman and a hen are soon lost by gadding, and the girl who’s anxious to see also longs to be seen."

"Gods! what a sight! What heavenly whiteness! breathing and alive, A swelling picture!"

"I like games of chance, including women."

"The girl slept on, motionless, in that curled-up looseness achieved by some women and all cats."

"It's so hard for women—even nice women—to realize that their bodies are not irresistible."

"You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women. Women made me sick."

"Her hand was small and had shape, not the usual bony garden tool you see on women nowadays."

"I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin."

"She sighed. "All men are the same." "So are all women—after the first nine.""

"Suddenly, without any real change in her, she ceased to be beautiful. She looked merely like a woman who would have been dangerous a hundred years ago, and twenty years ago daring, but who today was just Grade B Hollywood."

"A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins."

"A cigarette girl came down the gangway. She wore an egret plume in her hair, enough clothes to hide behind a toothpick, one of her long beautiful naked legs was silver, and one was gold. She had the utterly disdainful expression of a dame who makes her dates by long distance."

"Maybe you don't like tall girls with honey-colored hair and skin like the first strawberry peach the grocer sneaks out of the box for himself. If you don't, I'm sorry for you."

"When a woman is a really good driver she is just about perfect."

"Confusion has seized us, and all things go wrong: The women have leaped from "their spheres" And instead of fixed stars, shoot as comets along, And are setting the world by the ears!"

"Let no man value at a little price A virtuous woman's counsel; her wing'd spirit Is feather'd oftentimes with heavenly words."

"Woman is the crowning excellence of God's creation, the shadow of the gods. Man the god's creation only. Woman is light, man is shadow. Could the light do without the shadow?"

"And she was fayr as is the rose in May."

"But love a womman that she woot it nought, And she wol quyte it that thow shalt nat fele; Unknowe, unkist, and lost, that is unsought."

"Ther seyde ones a clerk in two vers: "what is bettre than gold? Iaspre. What is bettre than Iaspre? Wisdom. / And what is bettre than wisdom? Womman. And what is bettre than a good womman? No-thing.""

"My lige lady, generally," quod he, "Wommen desyren to have sovereyntee As wel over hir housbond as hir love."

"A woman can only become a man’s friend in three stages: first, she’s an agreeable acquaintance, then a mistress, and only after that a friend."

"Women, then, are only children of a larger growth."

"The world must keep one great amateur, lest we all become artists and perish. Somebody must renounce all specialist conquests, that she may conquer all the conquerors. That she may be a queen of life, she must not be a private soldier in it."

"If you convey to a woman that something ought to be done, there is always a dreadful danger that she will suddenly do it."

"There have been women I have loved ... A lot, as discreetly as possible."

"Of my two "handicaps," being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black."

"Les religieuses et les femmes mariées sont malheureuses de différente manière."

"What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inevitable penance, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a coveted calamity, a domestic peril, a pleasant harm, the nature of evil painted over with the colours of good: wherefore it is a sin to desert her, but a torment to keep her."

"We shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury of a disappointed woman,—scorn'd! slighted! dismiss'd without a parting pang."

"Men that had seen her Drank deep and were silent, The women were speaking Wherever she went, As a bell that is rung Or a wonder told shyly, And O she was the Sunday In every week."

"Woman is the promise that cannot be kept; but it is precisely in this that my mercy consists."

"If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, it is that human rights are women's rights — and women's rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely — and the right to be heard."