WOMEN QUOTES VII
quotations about women
Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Nobody knows much about women, not even Freud, not even women themselves. But it's like electricity: you don't have to know how it works to get a shock on the fingers.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
When one sees one of the romantic creatures before him he imagines he is looking at some holy being, so wonderful that its one breath could dissolve him in a sea of a thousand charms and delights; but if one looks into the soul -- it's nothing but a common crocodile.
ANTON CHEKHOV
The Boor
The opinion I have of the generality of women--who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time, forms a barrier against matrimony which I rejoice in.
JOHN KEATS
letter to George and Georgiana Keats, October 14, 1818
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Second Sex
It is easier to make a glass tube pliable than to convince an obstinate woman she is in fault.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Woman is prone by nature to jealousy, and brooks not a rival in the nuptial bed.
EURIPIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Women are beautiful when they're young, and not after. Men can still preserve their sex appeal well into old age.... Some men can maintain, if they embrace it ... cragginess, weary masculinity. Women just get old and fat and wrinkly.
TRACY LETTS
August: Osage Country
Nothing pleases a woman quite so well as to look so sweet that a man wants to kiss her, and then abuse him for his impudence.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
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; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Table Talk, July 23, 1827
All is possible to woman, for woman alone may make herself impossible.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke
Son, heed my instruction, and apply thyself to know women; let thine eyes observe her when she is with another, for what she doeth with him, she will do with thee, also.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
Women are raised to be "Type A's"; they are perfectionists who make all their roles priorities. And then we further stress ourselves by overscheduling and refusing to drop old roles simply because we've picked up new ones. If you work outside the house, you still come home and are in charge of dinner and the children and the social life and the laundry.... Typically, a woman won't rest until the whole world can see that she is exhausted, until everyone else gives her permission to stop. What a woman has to do is give herself that permission.
GEORGIA WITKIN-LANOIL
The Courier, September 16, 1984
It is a strange feeling for a girl when first she finds the power put into her hand of influencing the destiny of another to happiness or misery. She is like a magician holding for the first time a fairy wand, not having yet had experience of its potency.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Lodore
If a woman is successful, she'd better duck, because they'll be out to get her.
LEONA HELMSLEY
Playboy, November 1990
Another writer asserts that the tyranny of man over woman has its roots, after all, in his nobler feelings; his love, his chivalry, and his desire to protect woman in the barbarous periods of pillage, lust, and war. But wherever the roots may be traced, the results at this hour are equally disastrous to woman. Her best interests and happiness do not seem to have been consulted in the arrangements made for her protection. She has been bought and sold, caressed and crucified at the will and pleasure of her master.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
introduction, History of Woman Suffrage
As to the pretty girls who went past, from the day on which I had first known that their cheeks could be kissed, I had become curious about their souls. And the Universe had appeared to me more interesting.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
Seek one woman whom thou canst trust, and to her who lovest thee best, tell thy secrets. She will deliver thee from the hands of strange women, she will expose their craft; and of her who flattereth thee, will she make known the reason.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
The domestic career is no more natural to all women than the military career is natural to all men.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
The Quintessence of Ibsenism