Women

"Housework is what a woman does that nobody notices unless she hasn't done it."

"Σοφὴν δὲ μισῶ· μὴ γὰρ ἔν γ' ἐμοῖς δόμοις Εἴη φρονοῦσα πλεῖον ἢ γυναῖκα χρή."

"Γυνὴ δὲ θῆλυ κἀπὶ δακρύοις ἔφυ."

"There is no worse evil than a bad woman; and nothing has ever been produced better than a good one."

"When a woman behaves like a man, why doesn't she behave like a nice man?"

"We cannot ask ourselves whether ‘woman’ is superior or inferior to ‘man’ any more than we can ask ourselves whether water is superior or inferior to fire. There can be no doubt that a woman who is perfectly woman is superior to a man who is imperfectly man, just as a farmer who is faithful to his land and performs his work perfectly is superior to a king who cannot do his own work."

"I’m the luckiest of females! For I’ve danced with a man Who’s danced with a girl Who’s danced with the Prince of Wales!"

"Our sex still strikes an awe upon the brave, And only cowards dare affront a woman."

"Charming women can true converts make, We love the precepts for the teacher’s sake."

"It takes a brave, courageous, determined woman to make tea biscuit for no one but herself."

"A woman can look both moral and exciting—if she also looks as if it was quite a struggle."

"Oh, woman, perfect woman! what distraction Was meant to mankind when thou wast made a devil! What an inviting hell invented."

"A woman friend! He that believes that weakness, Steers in a stormy night without a compass."

"Did I my lines intend for public view, How many censures would their faults persue; ... True judges might condemn their want of wit, And all might say, they’re by a woman writ."

"Alas! a woman that attempts the pen, Such an intruder on the rights of men, Such a presumptuous creature, is esteem'd, The fault, can by no virtue be redeem'd."

"Women and love are underpinnings. Examine them and you threaten the very structure of culture."

"Mrs Browning's death is rather a relief to me, I must say: no more Aurora Leighs, thank God! A woman of real genius, I know; but what is the upshot of it all? She and her sex had better mind the kitchen and their children; and perhaps the poor: except in such things as little novels, they only devote themselves to what men do much better, leaving that which men do worse or not at all."

"The [ten] properties of a woman. The fyrst is, to be mery of chere; the seconde, to be well paced; the thyrde, to have a brode foreheed; the fourth, to have brode buttockes; the fyfthe, to be harde of warde; the syxte, to be easye to lepe uppon; the [seventh], to be good at a longe journeye; the [eighth], to be well sturrynge under a man; the [ninth], to be alwaye besye with the mouthe; the tenth, ever to be chowynge on the brydell."

"Un homme au moins est libre; il peut parcourir les passions et les pays, traverser les obstacles, mordre aux bonheurs les plus lointains. Mais une femme est empêchée continuellement. Inerte et flexible à la fois, elle a contre elle les mollesses de la chair avec les dépendances de la loi. Sa volonté, comme le voile de son chapeau retenu par un cordon, palpite à tous les vents; il y a toujours quelque désir qui entraîne, quelque convenance qui retient."

"Mulier intra pectus omnis celat virus pestilens; dulce de labris loquuntur, corde vivunt noxio."

"Woman, I tell you, is a microcosm; and rightly to rule her, requires as great talents as to govern a state."

"Women have almost a genius for anticlimaxes."

"I grudged her nothing except my company. But it has gone further, like the degradation of rural England: this afternoon (Sunday in Aprril) all the young men had women with them in far-flung cameradeie. If women ever wanted to be by themselves all would be well. But I don't believe they ever want to be, except for reasons of advertisement, and their instinct is never to let men be by themselves. This, I begin to see, is sex-war, and D.H.L. has seen it, in spite of a durable marriage, and is far more on the facts than Bernard Shaw and his Life Force."

"One can run away from women, turn them out, or give in to them. No fourth course."

"You ask me, my friend, whether I am in pursuit of truth, or a lady? I answer, both. I hope and trust they are united; and really expect to find truth and the virtues and graces besides in a fair form."

"The extension of women's rights is the basic principle of all social progress."

"(Que) en mujeres y empanadas Del figon, hay mucho hueso."

"Toute femme varie Bien fol est qui s'y fie."

"Are women books? says Hodge, then would mine were An Almanack, to change her every year."

"I am about courting a girl I have had but little acquaintance with. How shall I come to a knowledge of her faults, and whether she has the virtues I imagine she has? Answer. Commend her among her female acquaintance."

"All of the women I know feel a little like outlaws."

"The great question ... which I have not been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'"

"The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban housewife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night, she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — "Is this all?""

"The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive."

"The problem that has no name—which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities."

"Dignity and self-assurance are everything to a woman, especially a naked one."

"How sad it is to be a woman! Nothing on earth is held so cheap."

"A cat has nine lives and a woman has nine cats' lives."

"I'm glad I’m a woman. As Grandpa used to say, "Always be satisfied with your own sex, or you'll never be satisfied with anyone else's.""

"Veteres ... voluerunt feminas, etsi perfectae aetatis sint, propter animi levitatem in tutela esse."

"To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?"

"I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die."

"Thanks to our cinctures and corsets we have succeeded in making an artificial being out of woman. She is an anomaly, and Nature herself, obedient to the laws of heredity, aids us in complicating and enervating her. We carefully keep her in a state of nervous weakness and muscular inferiority, and in guarding her from fatigue, we take away from her possibilities of development. Thus modeled on a bizarre ideal of slenderness to which, strangely enough, we continue to adhere, our women have nothing in common with us, and this, perhaps, may not be without grave moral and social disadvantages."

"It takes very little to bring about a woman’s fall, but you have to lift a whole world in order to lift her."

"And when a lady's in the case, You know all other things give place."

"'Tis a woman that seduces all mankind; By her we first were taught the wheedling arts."

"Fill ev’ry glass, for wine inspires us, And fires us With courage, love and joy. Women and wine should life employ. Is there ought else on earth desirous?"

"How happy could I be with either, Were t'other dear charmer away! But, while ye thus tease me together, To neither a word will I say."

"I must have women. There is nothing unbends the mind like them."

"To cheat a man is nothing; but the woman must have fine parts indeed who cheats a woman!"