Women

"La Femme, enfant malade et douze fois impur!"

"Please, come take my hand Girl, you'll be a woman soon Soon, you'll need a man."

"But were it to my fancy given To rate her charms, I'd call them heaven; For though a mortal made of clay, Angels must love Ann Hathaway;She hath a way so to control, To rapture the imprisoned soul, And sweetest heaven on earth display, That to be heaven Ann hath a way;She hath a way, Ann Hathaway,— To be heaven's self Ann hath a way."

"But in some odd nook in Mrs. Todgers's breast, up a great many steps, and in a corner easy to be overlooked, there was a secret door, with "Woman" written on the spring, which, at a touch from Mercy's hand, had flown wide open, and admitted her for shelter."

"A good uniform must work its way with the women, sooner or later."

"A solemn thing - it was - I said - A Woman - white - to be - And wear - if God should count me fit - Her blameless mystery -"

"What Soft - Cherubic Creatures - These Gentlewomen are - One would as soon assault a Plush - Or violate a Star - Such Dimity Convictions - A Horror so refined Of freckled Human Nature - Of Deity - ashamed -"

"Ἡ τὰ ῥόδα, ῥοδόεσσαν ἔχεις χάριν ἀλλὰ τί πωλεῖς; σαυτήν, ἢ τὰ ῥόδα; ἠὲ συναμφότερα."

"A woman's perfume tells more about her than her handwriting."

"It is only the women whose eyes have been washed clear with tears who get the broad vision that makes them little sisters to all the world."

"The ladies of St. James's! They're painted to the eyes; Their white it stays forever Their red it never dies: But Phillida, my Phillida! Her colour comes and goes; It trembles to a lily,— It wavers to a rose."

"Be then thine own home, and in thyself dwell; Inn anywhere; And seeing the snail, which everywhere doth roam, Carrying his own home still, still is at home, Follow (for he is easy-paced) this snail: Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail."

"Licence my roving hands, and let them go, Behind, before, above, between, below. O, my America, my New-found-land, My kingdom, safeliest when with one man mann'd."

"A woman would deceive the all-seeing eye itself."

"A woman is incapable of complete remorse."

"A woman is always a woman even if she is a nun."

"Man, the infatuated idealist, always on the look-out for something to adore, created, in one of his moments of mediæval vapours, the Madonna-woman. It was a benignantly grinning idol, inanely oracular, to be approached on bended knees. In those days, women had to acquiesce in all his unhealthy whimsies, and many of them began to take the thing seriously and to play his game. Now, they mean to have no more of it; they are sick, utterly sick, of the Madonna business. They mean to laugh again and to enjoy life like other beasts of the earth: like men, in fact. Whenever, therefore, you catch yourself thinking that women are saints and angels, be sure you take a blue pill."

"In an experience of women that extends over many nations and three separate continents, I have never looked upon a face which gave a clearer promise of a refined and sensitive nature."

"To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex."

"Cherchez la femme."

"La femme est, selon la Bible, la dernière chose que Dieu a faite. Il a dû la faire le samedi soir. On sent la fatigue."

"And, like another Helen, fir'd another Troy."

"For women with a mischief to their kind, Pervert with bad advice our better mind."

"A woman's counsel brought us first to woe, And made her man his paradise forego, Where at heart's ease he liv'd; and might have been As free from sorrow as he was from sin."

"And that one hunting, which the devil design'd For one fair female, lost him half the kind."

"She hugg'd the offender, and forgave the offence; Sex to the last."

"What all your sex desire is Sovereignty."

"I am resolved to grow fat and look young till forty, and then slip out of the world with the first wrinkle and the reputation of five and twenty."

"Six hours like this for a few francs. Belly nipple arse in the window light, he drains the colour from me. Further to the right, Madame. And do try to be still. I shall be represented analytically and hung in great museums. The bourgeoisie will coo at such an image of a river-whore. They call it Art."

"There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature."

"And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands: who so pleaseth God shall escape from her; but the sinner shall be taken by her. Behold, this have I found, saith the preacher, counting one by one, to find out the account Which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not: one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found."

"Art thou so deeply read in nature and her large philosophy, and I am yet to teach thee that deadliest hellebore or the vomit of a toad are qualified poison to the malice of a woman?"

"From the first dawn of life unto the grave, Poor Womankind's in every state a slave."

"We will our rights in learning's world maintain; Wit's Empire now shall know a female reign."

"Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless; nay, the speech they have resolved not to make."

"Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science."

"The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history."

"I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out."

"Her lot is made for her by the love she accepts."

"In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo."

"The sleek Brazilian jaguar Does not in its arboreal gloom Distil so rank a feline smell As Grishkin in a drawing-room."

"When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone."

"I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm."

"We women were allowed to stand at the Cross. We saw His wounds bleed and His eyes grow dim. As He was dying Jesus put His faith in us, we were to carry His love through the whole world and here we sit and have forgotten Him."

"I hear today's college women are 'prodigious.'" "Prodigious? Is that what you heard?" "Well, I read it in a magazine. It was something I wanted to believe." "The Jayster. Always a dreamer."

"A woman is like a tea bag. You don't know its strength until it's in hot water."

"When greater perils men environ, Then women show a front of iron; And, gentle in their manner, they Do bold things in a quiet way."

"What greater thing do they wish in their whole lives than that they may please the man? For to what other purpose are all those dresses, washes, baths, slops, perfumes, and those several little tricks of setting their faces, painting their eyebrows, and smoothing their skins? And now tell me, what higher letters of recommendation have they to men than this folly?"

"Books destroy women's brains, who have little enough of themselves. ... I have often heard it said that a wise woman is twice a fool."

"Παυρολόγοι πολιαί, ταὶ γήραος ἄνθεα θνατοῖς."