Women are like elephants to me. I like to look at them, but I wouldn’t want to own one.
—W. C. Fields (1880–1946) American Actor, Comedian, Writer
Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Observe this, that tho a woman swear, forswear, lie, dissemble, back-bite, be proud, vain, malicious, anything, if she secures the main chance, she’s still virtuous; that’s a maxim.
—George Farquhar (1677–1707) Irish Dramatist
Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Give back my book and take my kiss instead.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,
What a big book for such a little head!
Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink!
Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.
I never again shall tell you what I think.
I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;
You will not catch me reading any more:
I shall be called a wife to pattern by;
And some day when you knock and push the door,
Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,
I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American Poet, Playwright, Feminist
I didn’t fight to get women out from behind vacuum cleaners to get them onto the board of Hoover.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
A woman is sometimes fugitive, irrational, indeterminable, illogical and contradictory. A great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her, and a good deal of prudence exercised with regard to her, for she may bring about innumerable evils without knowing it. Capable of all kinds of devotion, and of all kinds of treason, monster incomprehensible, raised to the second power, she is at once the delight and the terror of man.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (1821–81) Swiss Moral Philosopher, Poet, Critic
In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other’s affairs, who “come out” together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude.
—Cyril Connolly
Women hate everything which strips off the tinsel of sentiment, and they are right, or it would rob them of their weapons.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
I like intelligent women. When you go out, it shouldn’t be a staring contest.
—Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) American Singer
Men will always delight in a woman whose voice is lined with velvet.
—Brendan Behan (1923–64) Irish Poet, Novelist, Playwright
The fundamental impulse of the movement is neither masturbatory nor concretely lesbian — although it of course offers warm house to both these possibilities; it is an impulse to maidenhood — to that condition in which a woman might pretend to a false fear or loathing of the penis in order to escape from any responsibility for the pleasure and well-being of the man who possesses it.
—Midge Decter (b.1927) American Journalist, Activist, Author
Men who don’t like girls with brains don’t like girls.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
There is a growing strength in women, but it’s in the forehead, not in the forearm.
—Beverly Sills (1929–2007) American Singer, Musician
Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-born British Novelist
Our bodies are shaped to bear children, and our lives are a working out of the processes of creation. All our ambitions and intelligence are beside that great elemental point.
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–78) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer of Children’s Books
A husband only worries about a particular Other Man; a wife distrusts her whole species.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man.
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) English Writer, Feminist
Nature has not placed us in an inferior rank to men, no more than the females of other animals, where we see no distinction of capacity, though I am persuaded if there was a commonwealth of rational horses… it would be an established maxim amongst them that a mare could not be taught to pace.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, Writer
While farmers generally allow one rooster for ten hens, ten men are scarcely sufficient to service one woman.
—Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) Italian Writer, Poet
Be to her virtues very kind,
Be to her faults a little blind.
—Matthew Prior (1664–1721) English Poet, Diplomat
Men enjoy being thought of as hunters, but are generally too lazy to hunt. Women, on the other hand, love to hunt, but would rather nobody knew it.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.
—Jane Austen (1775–1817) English Novelist
Older women can afford to agree that femininity is a charade, a matter of colored hair, ecru lace and whalebones, the kind of slap and tat that transvestites are in love with, and no more.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
Women are never stronger than when they arm themselves with their weakness.
—Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand (1697–1780) French Socialite, Patron of the Arts
People in the States used to think that if girls were good at sports their sexuality would be affected. Being feminine meant being a cheerleader, not being an athlete. The image of women is changing now. You don’t have to be pretty for people to come and see you play. At the same time, if you’re a good athlete, it doesn’t mean you’re not a woman.
—Martina Navratilova (b.1956) Czech-born American Sportsperson
When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.
—Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) French Philosopher, Writer, Feminist
If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.
—J. D. Salinger (1919–2010) American Actor
Women still remember the first kiss after men have forgotten the last.
—Remy de Gourmont (1858–1915) French Poet, Novelist, Critic
I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.
—Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) (1885–1962) Danish Novelist, Short-story Writer
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
—Timothy Leary (1920–96) American Psychologist, Author
Man made one grave mistake: in answer to vaguely reformist and humanitarian agitation he admitted women to politics and the professions. The conservatives who saw this as the undermining of our civilization and the end of the state and marriage were right after all; it is time for the demolition to begin.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
Women are afraid of mice and of murder, and of very little in between.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
The most popular image of the female despite the exigencies of the clothing trade is all boobs and buttocks, a hallucinating sequence of parabolae and bulges.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
Women go to beauty parlors for the unmussed look men hate.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
Impenetrable in their dissimulation, cruel in their vengeance, tenacious in their purposes, unscrupulous as to their methods, animated by profound and hidden hatred for the tyranny of man — it is as though there exists among them an ever-present conspiracy toward domination, a sort of alliance like that subsisting among the priests of every country.
—Denis Diderot (1713–84) French Philosopher, Writer
Women are the fulfilled sex. Through our children we are able to produce our own immortality, so we lack that divine restlessness which sends men charging off in pursuit of fortune or fame or an imagined Utopia. That is why we number so few geniuses among us. The wholesome oyster wears no pearl, the healthy whale no ambergris, and as long as we can keep on adding to the race, we harbor a sort of health within ourselves.
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–78) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer of Children’s Books
If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
There is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women.
—Kofi Annan (1938–2018) Ghanaian Statesman, International Diplomat
I’m supposed to have a Ph.D. on the subject of women. But the truth is I’ve flunked more often than not. I’m very fond of women; I admire them. But, like all men, I don’t understand them.
—Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) American Singer
Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.
—John Berger (1926–2017) English Art Critic, Novelist
I really think that American gentlemen are the best after all, because kissing your hand may make you feel very good but a diamond and a sapphire bracelet lasts forever.
—Anita Loos (1888–1981) American Actor, Novelist, Screenwriter
We are educated in the grossest ignorance, and no art omitted to stifle our natural reason; if some few get above their nurses instructions, our knowledge must rest concealed and be as useless to the world as gold in the mine.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, Writer
Sure men were born to lie, and women to believe them!
—John Gay (1685–1732) English Poet, Dramatist
No woman wants to see herself too clearly.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
The individual woman is required a thousand times a day to choose either to accept her appointed role and thereby rescue her good disposition out of the wreckage of her self-respect, or else follow an independent line of behavior and rescue her self-respect out of the wreckage of her good disposition.
—Jeannette Rankin (1880–1973) American Social Activist, Pacifist, Elected Representative
There are certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are of pretty woman to deserve them.
—Jane Austen (1775–1817) English Novelist
Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run.
—Edward Hoagland (b.1932) American Essayist, Novelist
If there hadn’t been women we’d still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girl friends. And they tolerated it and let us go ahead and play with our toys.
—Orson Welles (1915–85) American Film Director, Actor
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
—Gloria Steinem (b.1934) American Feminist, Journalist, Social Activist, Political Activist
Beauty is the first present nature gives to women and the first it takes away.
—George Brossin Mere (c.1610–85) French Intellectual, Author
The cruelest thing a man can do to a woman is to portray her as perfection.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
The true Republic: men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American Civil Rights Leader
Women polish the silver and water the plants and wait to be really needed.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
Men really prefer reasonably attractive women; they go after the sensational ones to impress other men.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
A woman who is convinced that she deserves to accept only the best, challenges herself to give the best. Then she is living phenomenally.
—Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American Poet
Women of quality are so civil, you can hardly distinguish love from good breeding.
—William Wycherley (1640–1715) English Dramatist
We may convince others by our arguments, but we can only persuade them by their own.
—Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Essayist
Perhaps women have always been in closer contact with reality than men: it would seem to be the just recompense for being deprived of idealism.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
Very often when I am introduced to women, I think, What is she really like behind the disguise which she wears? And very often I discover that she is pleasant enough, and probably would expand and glow if she received enough affection.
—Robertson Davies (1913–95) Canada Journalist, Playwright, Academic, Critic, Novelist
Women keep a special corner of their hearts for sins they have never committed.
—Cornelia Otis Skinner (1899–1979) American Dramatist, Actor, Screenwriter, Humorist
A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.
—Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Novelist
All women are basically in competition with each other for a handful of eligible men.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
It upsets women to be, or not to be, stared at hungrily.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
Maybe I couldn
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
A lady is smarter than a gentleman, maybe, she can sew a fine seam, she can have a baby, she can use her intuition instead of her brain, but she can’t fold a paper in a crowded train.
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–78) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer of Children’s Books
I must have women — there is nothing unbends the mind like them.
—John Gay (1685–1732) English Poet, Dramatist
Women’s liberation, if it abolishes the patriarchal family, will abolish a necessary substructure of the authoritarian state, and once that withers away Marx will have come true willy-nilly, so let’s get on with it.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
A women knows how to keep quiet when she is in the right, whereas a man, when he is in the right, will keep on talking.
—Malcolm de Chazal (1902–81) Mauritian Writer, Painter, Visionary
A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of “Woman’s Rights” with all its attendant horrors on which her poor, feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety.
—Queen Victoria (1819–1901) British Royal
Women who feel naked without their lipstick are well over thirty.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
What a woman says to her lover should be written on air or swift water.
—Catullus (84–54 BCE) Roman Latin Poet
If man knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they’d never marry.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) (1862–1910) American Writer of Short Stories
Women who make men talk better than they are accustomed to are always popular.
—E. V. Lucas (1868–1938) English Author, Historian
A woman asks little of love: only that she be able to feel like a heroine.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.
—Abigail Adams (1744–1818) American First Lady
If your husband expects you to laugh, do so; if he expects you to cry, don’t; if you don’t know what he expects, what are you doing married?
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
If you can intervene early in the lives of girls here and in other parts of the world, you can begin to change the prospects for the future.
—Jane Fonda (b.1937) American Actress, Political Activist
Man dreams of fame while woman wakes to love.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92) British Poet
One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell that would tell anything.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet
There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women.
—Madeleine Albright (1937–97) Czech-born American Diplomat
If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test: though a different opinion prevails in this country.
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) English Writer, Feminist
Woman cannot be content with health and agility: she must make exorbitant efforts to appear something that never could exist without a diligent perversion of nature. Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it to the caresses of a subhumanly ugly mate?
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men.
—Colette (1873–1954) French Novelist, Performer
The sight of women talking together has always made men uneasy; nowadays it means rank subversion.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Anceient Greek Philosopher
For a man to strike any women is most brutal, and I, as well as everyone else, think this far worse than any attempt to shoot, which, wicked as it is, is at least more comprehensible and more courageous.
—Queen Victoria (1819–1901) British Royal
Women are never landlocked: they’re always mere minutes away from the briny deep of tears.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
Sometimes I think that the biggest difference between men and women is that more men need to seek out some terrible lurking thing in existence and hurl themselves upon it. Women know where it lives but they can let it alone.
—Russell Hoban (b.1925) American Children’s Books Writer, Novelist, Writer
Women serve but to keep a man from better company.
—William Wycherley (1640–1715) English Dramatist
Ah, I fancy it is just the same with most of what you call your “emancipation.” You have read yourself into a number of new ideas and opinions. You have got a sort of smattering of recent discoveries in various fields — discoveries that seem to overthrow certain principles which have hitherto been held impregnable and unassailable. But all this has only been a matter of intellect, Miss West — superficial acquisition. It has not passed into your blood.
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) Norwegian Playwright
I have an idea that the phrase ‘weaker sex’ was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm.
—Ogden Nash (1902–71) American Writer of Sophisticated Light Verse
I do not know who first invented the myth of sexual equality. But it is a myth willfully fostered and nourished by certain semi-scientists and other fiction writers. And it has done more, I suspect, to unsettle marital happiness than any other false doctrine of this myth-ridden age.
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–78) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer of Children’s Books
Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.
—Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) American Actor, TV Personality
The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot ail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all.
—Aung San Suu Kyi (b.1945) Burmese Politician, Human Rights Activist
A woman should be an illusion.
—Ian L. Fleming (1908–64) English Novelist, Journalist, Naval Intelligence Officer
The fact is, you have fallen lately, Cecily, into a bad habit of thinking for yourself. You should give it up. It is not quite womanly… men don’t like it.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet
I’d rather have two girls at seventeen than one at thirty-four.
—Fred Allen (1894–1956) American Humorist, Radio Personality
A lady is nothing very specific. One man’s lady is another man’s woman; sometimes, one man’s lady is another man’s wife. Definitions overlap but they almost never coincide.
—Russell Lynes (1910–91) American Art Historian, Photographer, Author, Editor
Nature makes woman to be won and men to win.
—George William Curtis (1824–92) American Essayist, Public Speaker, Editor, Author
The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the shadow of cosmic boredom.
—Guy de Maupassant (1850-93) French Novelist, Short-story Writer
I am blackly bored when they are at large and at work; but somehow I am still more blackly bored when they are shut up in Holloway and we are deprived of them.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
I don’t know why women want any of the things men have when one the things that women have is men.
—Coco Chanel (1883–1971) French Fashion Designer
I do not wish them to have power over men, but over themselves.
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) English Writer, Feminist
With men, as with women, the main struggle is between vanity and comfort; but with men, comfort often wins.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
Good-looking girls break hearts, and goodhearted girls mend them.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
There has come into existence, chiefly in America, a breed of men who claim to be feminists. They imagine that they have understood what women want and that they are capable of giving it to them. They help with the dishes at home and make their own coffee in the office, basking the while in the refulgent consciousness of virtue. Such men are apt to think of the true male feminists as utterly chauvinistic.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
When women hold off from marrying men, we call it independence. When men hold off from marrying women, we call it fear of commitment.
—Warren Farrell (b.1943) American Educator, Activist
Woman’s virtue is man’s greatest invention.
—Cornelia Otis Skinner (1899–1979) American Dramatist, Actor, Screenwriter, Humorist
A woman might claim to retain some of the child’s faculties, although very limited and defused, simply because she has not been encouraged to learn methods of thought and develop a disciplined mind. As long as education remains largely induction ignorance will retain these advantages over learning and it is time that women impudently put them to work.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.
—Gloria Steinem (b.1934) American Feminist, Journalist, Social Activist, Political Activist
Coming to terms with the rhythms of women’s lives means coming to terms with life itself, accepting the imperatives of the body rather than the imperatives of an artificial, man-made, perhaps transcendentally beautiful civilization. Emphasis on the male work-rhythm is an emphasis on infinite possibilities; emphasis on the female rhythms is an emphasis on a defined pattern, on limitation.
—Margaret Mead (1901–78) American Anthropologist, Social Psychologist
Maybe I couldn’t make it. Maybe I don’t have a pretty smile, good teeth, nice tits, long legs, a cheeky ass, a sexy voice. Maybe I don’t know how to handle men and increase my market value, so that the rewards due to the feminine will accrue to me. Then again, maybe I’m sick of the masquerade. I’m sick of pretending eternal youth. I’m sick of belying my own intelligence, my own will, my own sex. I’m sick of peering at the world through false eyelashes, so everything I see is mixed with a shadow of bought hairs; I’m sick of weighting my head with a dead mane, unable to move my neck freely, terrified of rain, of wind, of dancing too vigorously in case I sweat into my lacquered curls. I’m sick of the Powder Room. I’m sick of pretending that some fatuous male’s self-important pronouncements are the objects of my undivided attention, I’m sick of going to films and plays when someone else wants to, and sick of having no opinions of my own about either. I’m sick of being a transvestite. I refuse to be a female impersonator. I am a woman, not a castrate.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
I don’t mind living in a man’s world as long as I can be a woman in it.
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–62) American Actor, Model, Singer
Woman — for example, look at her case! She turns tantalizing inviting glances on you. You seize her. No sooner does she feel herself in your grasp than she closes her eyes. It is a sign of her mission, the sign by which she says to man: “Blind yourself, for I am blind.”
—Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) Italian Dramatist, Novelist, Short Story Writer, Author
Whether women are better than men I cannot say – but I can say they are certainly no worse.
—Golda Meir (1898–1978) Israeli Head of State
If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.
—Harriet Martineau (1802–76) English Sociologist, Economist, Essayist, Philosopher
The real thinking of woman is pre-eminently practical and applied. It is something we describe as sound common sense, and is usually directed to what is close at hand and personal. In general, it can be said that feminine mentality manifests an undeveloped, childlike, or primitive character; instead of the thirst for knowledge, curiosity; instead of judgment, prejudice; instead of thinking, imagination or dreaming; instead of will, wishing. Where a man takes up objective problems, a woman contents herself with solving riddles; where he battles for knowledge and understanding, she contents herself with faith or superstition, or else she makes assumptions.
—Emma Jung (1882–1955) Swiss Psychoanalyst, Author
I was just looking at the jukebox. Just playing records. She said, You want to play with me?.
I said, Sure. How much?.
She says, Five bucks, two dollars for the room.
Was it nice, Jack?.
All women are nice.
—Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American Novelist, Poet
Women are the real architects of society.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96) American Abolitionist, Author
I think the key is for women not to set any limits.
—Martina Navratilova (b.1956) Czech-born American Sportsperson