Women

", n. (1) Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil."

", n.pl. Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies."

", n. A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king, and through whom it is ruled when there is not."

"The female's defects—greed, hate, and delusion and other defilements—are greater than the male's."

", n. An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and desolating the country."

", n. One of the opposing, or unfair, sex."

", n. A mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in solicitate of gold."

", adj. To men a man is but a mind. Who cares What face he carries or what form he wears? But woman’s body is the woman. O, Stay thou, my sweetheart, and do never go, But heed the warning words the sage hath said: A woman absent is a woman dead. —Jogo Tyree"

"One gender to walk the wide world in Is the feminine, A plight that — softly to a friend — I can recommend."

"For centuries the leaders of Christian thought spoke of women as a necessary evil, and the greatest saints of the Church are those who despise women the most."

"Cows in India occupy the same position in society as women did in England before they got the vote. Woman was revered but not encouraged. Her life was one long obstacle race owing to the anxiety of man to put pedestals at her feet. While she was falling over the pedestals she was soothingly told that she must occupy a Place Apart—and indeed, so far Apart did her place prove to be that it was practically out of earshot. The cow in India finds her position equally lofty and tiresome. You practically never see a happy cow in India."

"Forward and backward all in one; that is the way she loves to be wooed. She is a woman, remember that."

"And now, Madam," I addressed her, "we shall try who shall get the breeches."

"When the men of Israel bowed in helplessness before Pharaoh, two women spurned his edicts and refused his behests. A father made no effort to save the infant Moses, but a mother's care hid him while concealment was possible, and a sister watched over his preservation when exposed on the river's brink. To woman was intrusted the charge of providing for the perils and the wants of the wilderness; and in the hour of triumph, woman's voice was loudest in the acclaim of joy that ascended to Heaven from an emancipated nation."

"The soft, unhappy sex."

"All soft and sweet the maid appears, With looks that know no art, And though she yields with trembling fears, She yields with all her heart."

"She’s as inconstant as the seas and winds, Which ne’er are calm but to betray adventurers."

"Most women are not so young as they are painted."

"Women who love the same man have a kind of bitter freemasonry."

"It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills."

"On ne naît pas femme: on le devient."

"Woman, they say, was only made of man: Methinks ’tis strange they should be so unlike! It may be all the best was cut away, To make the woman, and the naught was left Behind with him."

"There is a vile, dishonest trick in man, More than in women: all the men I meet Appear thus to me,—are harsh and rude, And have a subtilty in everything, Which love could never know; but we, fond women, Harbour the easiest and smoothest thoughts, And think all shall go so."

"Then, my good girls, be more than women, wise: At least be more than I was; and be sure You credit anything the light gives life to Before a man."

"As the fairest, daintiest natural thing will not brook rough handling or too close and continued examination, the iridescence of the butterfly’s wing, the velvet of the rose petal, so the rare and exquisite essence of womanliness will not bear the heat, the mud, the profanation of the public arena."

"Elle éblouit comme l'Aurore Et console comme la Nuit."

"Expliquera, morbleu! les femmes qui pourra!"

"Got myself a cryin', talkin', sleepin', walkin', livin' doll."

"The way to fight a woman is with your hat. Grab it and run."

"You see, dear, it is not true that woman was made from man's rib; she was really made from his funny bone."

"Mes avis sur vos relations avec les femmes sont aussi dans ce mot de chevalerie: Les servir toutes, n'en aimer qu'une."

"Peut-être veulent-elles [les femmes] un peu d'hypocrisie?"

"La femme est un délicieux instrument de plaisir, mais il faut en connaitre les frémissantes cordes, en étudier la pose, le clavier timide, le doigté changeant et capricieux."

"Les femmes les plus vertueuses ont en elles quelque chose qui n'est jamais chaste."

"La vertu des femmes est peut-être une question de tempérament."

"Lorsque les femmes nous aiment, elles nous pardonnent tout, même nos crimes; lorsqu'elles ne nous aiment pas, elles ne nous pardonnent rien, pas même nos vertus!"

"Les hivers sont pour les femmes à la mode ce que fut jadis une campagne pour les militaires de l’empire."

"Les femmes sont toujours vraies, même au milieu de leurs plus grandes faussetés, parce qu’elles cèdent à quelque sentiment naturel."

"My ideal of womanhood has always been the pioneer woman who fought and worked at her husband's side. She bore the children, kept the home fires burning; she was the hub of the family, the planner and the dreamer."

"He took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot’s bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldness of snow, and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the kókila, and the hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the chakrawáka; and compounding all these together he made woman, and gave her to man."

"But woman's grief is like a summer storm, Short as it violent is."

"Her step is music, and her voice is song."

"Women—one half the human race at least—care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry."

"But women aren’t like, like...computers or suh'm. You can't just get an access code and then programme 'em to do what you want 'em to. Trust me. About three billion guys've had to learn the same lesson."

"Woman's love is writ in water, Woman's faith is traced in sand."

""Nam quae praeda, rogas, quae spes contingere posset, iurgia nutricis cum mihi verba darent?"Haec sibi dicta putet seque hac sciat arte notari, femineam quisquis credidit esse fidem."

"... 'tis ordained, In death, as sooth in every pinch of life, That women, lest they cry too loud, must hug Their agony in silence."

"Women love all whom grief and death attaint."

"No one can think more highly of the understanding of women than I do. In my opinion, nature has given them so much, that they never find it necessary to use more than half."

"A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable, old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else."