Women

"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."

"Women who are (beyond all doubt) the mothers of all mischief, also nurse that babe to sleep, when he is too noisy."

"Why should I be my aunt, or me, or anyone? What similarities— boots, hands, the family voice I felt in my throat, or even the National Geographic and those awful hanging breasts— held us all together or made us all just one?"

"Oh, Woman! Woman! thou art formed to bless The heart of restless Man, to chase his care, And charm existence by thy loveliness; Bright as the sun-beam, as the morning fair, If but thy foot fall on a wilderness, Flowers spring, and shed their roseate blossoms there, Shrouding the thorns that on thy path-way rise, And scattering o'er it hues of Paradise! Thy voice of love is music to the ear, Soothing and soft, and gentle as the stream That strays 'mid summer flowers; thy glittering tear Is mutely eloquent; thy smile a beam Of light ineffable, so sweet, so dear, It wakes the heart from sorrow's darkest dream, Shedding a hallowed lustre o'er our fate, And when it beams we are not desolate!"

", n. An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication. It is credited by many of the elder zoologists with a certain vestigial docility acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of the postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion, deny the virtue and declare that such as creation's dawn beheld, it roareth now. ... The popular name (wolfman) is incorrect, for the creature is of the cat kind. The woman is lithe and graceful in its movement, especially the American variety (felis pugnans), is omnivorous and can be taught not to talk. —Balthasar Pober"

", 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."

", n. The guilt of woman."

", 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."