Women

Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears
Her noblest work she classes, O:
Her 'prentice hand she tried on man,
An' then she made the lasses, O.
—Robert Burns

Women are adult human females. Before adulthood, a female child or adolescent is referred to as a girl.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

A

• Muliebre ingenium, prolubium, occasio.
  • A woman's nature, lust, and opportunity.
  • Lucius Accius, fragment of the lost Andromeda, quoted by Nonius, 64, 5

• If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.
  • Abigail Adams, letter to John Adams, 31 March 1776, in L. H. Butterfield (ed.) Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 1 (1963), p. 370

• Women have, commonly, a very positive moral sense; that which they will, is right; that which they reject, is wrong; and their will, in most cases, ends by settling the moral.
  • Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1918), ch. 6

• When a man becomes familiar with his goddess, she quickly sinks into a woman.
  • Joseph Addison, The Spectator (May 24, 1711).

• Loveliest of women! heaven is in thy soul,
  Beauty and virtue shine forever round thee,
  Bright'ning each other! thou art all divine!
  • Joseph Addison, Cato, a Tragedy (1713), act 3, sc. 2

• Women’s movements have a special significance for the immediate future. These movements should be understood not as an assertion of supremacy, but as the establishment of justice.
  • Agni Yoga, Supermundane (1938), 38

• To all these insanities will be added the most shameful—the intensified competition between male and female. ... It is hard to imagine how disastrous this will be, for it is a struggle against evolution itself! What a high price humanity pays for every such opposition to evolution! In these convulsions the young generations are corrupted. ... Now is the time to think about equal and full rights, but darkness invades the tensed realms.
  • Agni Yoga, Supermundane (1938), 286

• We must find the right use for every ability. The era of the Mother of the World is not a return of the age of Amazons.
  • Agni Yoga, Supermundane (1938), 458

• Divination seems heightened and raised to its highest power in woman.
  • Amos Bronson Alcott, Concord Days (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1872), "Woman", p. 253

• Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.
  • Henri Frederic Amiel, When a Woman Meets Jesus: Finding the Love Every Woman Longs For, Dorothy Valcarcel, p. 17.

• Women are really much nicer than men:
  No wonder we like them.
  • Sir Kingsley Amis, "Something Nasty in the Bookshop", A Case of Simples (1956), p. 55

• Λύχνου ἀρθέντος, γυνὴ πᾶσα ἡ αὐτή.
  • When the light is removed, every woman is the same.
  • Anonymous, quoted by Michael Apostolius, 10, 90. Cf. "Joan's as good as my lady in the dark" and Plutarch, Conjugalia Praecepta 1, 46. Reported in King (1904), p. 186, no. 1440a

• Trust not to a maiden's word;
  Trust not what a woman utters:
  Lightness in their bosom dwells;
  Like spinning-wheels, their hearts turn round.
  • Anonymous, Poetic Edda (Hávamál)
  • Tr. W. Taylor, in The Poets and Poetry of Europe, 2nd ed. (1870), p. 40

• Oh the gladness of their gladness when they're glad,
  And the sadness of their sadness when they're sad;
  But the gladness of their gladness, and the sadness of their sadness,
  Are as nothing to their badness when they're bad.
  • Anonymous, "Epigram on Women", in Notes and Queries, 9th s., no. 9 (April 12, 1902), p. 288

• Oh, the shrewdness of their shrewdness when they are shrewd,
  And the rudeness of their rudeness when they're rude;
  But the shrewdness of their shrewdness and the rudeness of their rudeness,
  Are as nothing to their goodness when they're good.
  • Anonymous; answer to preceding

• The world is full of care, much like unto a bubble,
  Women and care, and care and women, and women and care and trouble.
  • Anonymous epigram (attributed by Nathaniel Ward to a lady at the court of the Queen of Bohemia), Simple Cobler's Boy (1648), p. 25

• Geologist is the only person who can talk to a woman and use the words 'dike', 'thrust', 'bed', 'orogeny', 'cleavage', and 'subduction' in the same sentence without facing a civil suit.
  • Anonymous, in Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2007), p. 863

• Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum: Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.
  • Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
  • Anonymous, Ave Maria ("Hail Mary")

• "I open my east chamber door,
  And sit on my west chamber bed.
  I take off my battle cloak,
  And put on my old-time clothes.
  I adjust my wispy hair at the window sill,
  And apply my bisque makeup by the mirror.
  I step out to see my comrades-in-arms,
  They are all surprised and astounded:
  "We travelled twelve years together,
  Yet didn't realise Mulan was a lady!"
  The buck bounds here and there,
  Whilst the doe has narrow eyes.
  But when the two rabbits run side by side,
  How can you tell the female from the male?
  • Anonymous, "Ballad of Mulan" (c. 6th century; tr. Jack Yuan for Wikisource, 2006)

• I think Nature hath lost the mould
  Where she her shape did take;
  Or else I doubt if Nature could
  So fair a creature make.
  • Anonymous, "A Praise of his Lady", in Tottel's Miscellany (1557). The Earl of Surrey wrote similar lines, "A Praise of his Love" (before 1547)

• The virtue of her lively looks
  Excels the precious stone;
  I wish to have none other books
  To read or look upon.
  • Anonymous, in Tottel's Miscellany (1557)

• She was not made out of his head, Sir,
  To rule and to govern the man;
  Nor was she made out of his feet, Sir,
  By man to be trampled upon.
  * * * * *
  But she did come forth from his side, Sir,
  His equal and partner to be;
  And now they are coupled together,
  She oft proves the top of the tree.
  • Anonymous, in Notes and Queries, 3rd s., no. 11 (23 February 1867), p. 163

• Vente quid levius? fulgur. Quid fulgure? flamma
  Flamma quid? mulier. Quid mulier? nihil.
  • What is lighter than the wind? A feather.
    What is lighter than a feather? fire.
    What lighter than fire? a woman.
    What lighter than a woman? Nothing.
  • Anonymous, Harleian Manuscript, no. 3362, fol. 47. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 890

• There is a Lady sweet and kind,
  Was never face so pleased my mind;
  I did but see her passing by,
  And yet I love her till I die.
  • Anonymous, "There Is a Lady Sweet and Kind", st. 1, in Thomas Ford, Music of Sundry Kinds (1607); ll. 3–4 applied by Sir Robert Menzies to Queen Elizabeth II

• Where is the man who has the power and skill
  To stem the torrent of a woman's will?
  For if she will, she will, you may depend on't;
  And if she won't, she won't; so there's an end on't.
  • From the Pillar Erected on the Mount in the Dane John Field, Canterbury. The Examiner (31 May 1829)

• Where women are honoured, there the gods are pleased.
  • Anonymous, Manusmriti, ch. 3, sect. 56 (tr. Georg Bühler, 1886)

• In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independent.
  • Anonymous, Manusmriti, ch. 5, sect. 148 (tr. Georg Bühler, 1886)

• I do not demand equal pay for any women save those who do equal work in value. Scorn to be coddled by your employers; make them understand that you are in their service as workers, not as women.
  • Susan B. Anthony, The Revolution, Women's Suffrage Newspaper (Oct. 8, 1868)

• Senile illud facinus.
  • That wicked old thing.
  • Apuleius, Metamorphoses, 4, p. 148, 9. Said of an old woman. Cf. Terence, Adelphoe, 4, 7, 43: Senex delirans.—"A doting old man." and Cicero, De senectute, 11, 36: Senilis stultitia.—"The foolishness of old age." Reported in King (1904), p. 315, no. 2488

• Of all the girls that e'er was seen,
  There's none so fine as Nelly.
  • "Ballad on Miss Nelly Bennet", Miscellanies in Verse (1727 and 1747); ascribed to John Arbuthnot in G. C. Faber (ed.) The Poetical Works of John Gay (1926), p. 642

• Lysistrata: I am hot all over with blushes for our sex.
  Men say we're slippery rogues—
  Calonice: And aren't they right?
  • Aristophanes, Lysistrata (tr. Jack Lindsay, 1925)

• On one she smiled, and he was blest;
  She smiles elsewhere—we make a din!
  But 'twas not love which heaved her breast,
  Fair child!—it was the bliss within.
  • Matthew Arnold, "Euphrosyne", in Poems (1869), vol. 2, p. 105

• In his adolescence, he had discussed it with his father while they were weeding a field.
  “About girls,” he had said.
  “What about them?” his father asked.
  “You know.”
  His father sat back on his heels. “Treat her right and she’ll treat you right.”
  • Catherine Asaro, Aurora in Four Voices (1998), reprinted in David G. Hartwell (ed.), The Space Opera Renaissance (2006), pp. 504-5

•      Their sophistry I can control
  Who falsely say that women have no soul.
  • Mary Astell, "Ambition" (1684), l. 7, in Kissing the Rod (1988), p. 334

Everything we see in the world is the creative work of women. —Atatürk

• Everything we see in the world is the creative work of women.
  • Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, as quoted in The Macmillan Dictionary of Political Quotations (1993) by Lewis D. Eigen and Jonathan Paul Siegel, p. 424; also in Ataturk: First President and Founder of the Turkish Republic (2002) by Yüksel Atillasoy, p. 15.

• Woman's love is writ in water,
  Woman's faith is traced in sand.
  • William E. Aytoun, "Prince Edward at Versailles", Lays of Scottish Cavaliers (1849)

• 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.
  • Malcolm Azania, The Alchemists of Kush (2011), p. 114

B

• Women—one half the human race at least—care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry.
  • Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (1867), "The Monarchy"

• But woman's grief is like a summer storm,
  Short as it violent is.
  • Joanna Baillie, Count Basil (1798), act 5, sc. 3; in A Series of Plays (1821)

• Charm...it’s a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don’t need to have anything else; and if you don’t have it, it doesn’t much matter what else you have. Some women, the few, have charm for all; and most have charm for one. But some have charm for none.
  • Sir J. M. Barrie, What Every Woman Knows (debuted 1908; pub. 1918), act 1

• You see, dear, it is not true that woman was made from man's rib; she was really made from his funny bone.
  • Sir J. M. Barrie, What Every Woman Knows (debuted 1908; pub. 1918)

• 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.
  • Beaumont and Fletcher, The Maid's Tragedy (c. 1609; pub. 1619), act 2, sc. 2

• On ne naît pas femme: on le devient.
  • One is not born a woman: one becomes one.
  • Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxiéme sexe (1949), vol. 2, pt. 1, ch. 1

• 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.
  • Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxiéme sexe (1949), vol. 2, pt. 2, ch. 4
  • Tr. H. M. Parshley, The Second Sex (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), p. 64

• Women who love the same man have a kind of bitter freemasonry.
  • Sir Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson (1911), ch. 4

• Most women are not so young as they are painted.
  • Sir Max Beerbohm, The Yellow Book (1894), vol. 1, p. 67

• "And now, Madam," I addressed her, "we shall try who shall get the breeches."
  • William Beloe, Miscellanies (1795). Translation of a Latin story by Antonius Musa Brassavolus (1540)

• 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.
  • William De Britaine, Human Prudence (ed. 1726), p. 134. Referred to by Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. 3, sec. 3, mem. 4, subs. 2

• Adamant, n. A mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in solicitate of gold.
• Female, n. One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.
• Garther, n. An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and desolating the country.
• Indiscretion, n. The guilt of woman.
• Weaknesses, 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.
• Witch, 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.
• Woman, 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
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

• Woman... 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.
  • H. P. Blavatsky, Alchemy in the Nineteenth Century (1889)

• Where two women meet, there a market springs; where three congregate, a bazaar is opened; and where seven talk, there begins a fair.
  • H. P. Blavatsky, Gems from the East, a Birthday Book of Precepts and Axioms (1890)

• Women have no wilderness in them,
  They are provident instead,
  Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts
  To eat dusty bread.
  • Louise Bogan, "Women", Body of this Death (1923), p. 23

• Next to God, we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth having.
  • Christian Nestell Bovee, Thoughts, Feelings, and Fancies (1857), p. 308.

There's not a place in Earth or Heaven,
There's not a task to mankind given...
That has a feather's weight or worth—
Without a woman in it.
—C. E. Bowman

• 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.
  • C. E. Bowman, "The Sphere of Woman" in Joseph M. Chapple, Heart Throbs in Prose and Verse (1905), p. 343. A similar version, author unknown, in Jennie Day Haines, Sovereign Woman Versus Mere Man (1905), p. 50:

    They talk about 'a woman's sphere'
    As though it has a limit;
    There's not a spot on sea or shore,
    In sanctum, office, shop or store,
    Without a woman in it.
    

• 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.
  • Anne Bradstreet, The Prologue (1650)

• 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.
  • Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847), ch. 12

• Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.
  • Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac (1984), ch. 7

• The works of women are symbolical.
  We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
  Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
  To put on when you’re weary.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1857), bk. 1, l. 456

• You forget too much
  That every creature, female as the male,
  Stands single in responsible act and thought,
  As also in birth and death.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1856), bk. 2, l. 472

• A worthless woman! mere cold clay
  As all false things are! but so fair,
  She takes the breath of men away
  Who gaze upon her unaware:
  I would not play her larcenous tricks
  To have her looks!
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Bianca among the Nightingales", st. 12; Last Poems (1862), p. 21

• Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold
  Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.
  • Robert Browning, A Toccata of Galuppi's (1855), st. 15

• He gazed and gazed and gazed and gazed,
  Amazed, amazed, amazed, amazed.
  • Robert Browning, "Rhyme for a Child Viewing a Naked Venus in a Painting of 'The Judgement of Paris'" (wr. c. 1872; pub. 1925)

• Of all cant in this most canting country, no species is at once more paltry and more dangerous than that which has been made the instrument of decrying female accomplishment. All that execrable twaddle about feminine retirement, and feminine ignorance, which we are doomed so often to hear, has done more towards making women scolds, and flirts, and scandal mongers, than people are well aware of....The soul of a woman is as fine an emanation from the Great Fountain of Spirit as that of a man.
  • Edward Bulwer-Lytton, from his review of Romance and Reality in The New Monthly Magazine (1832)

Women are more powerful than they think. —Louise Burfitt-Dons

• Women are more powerful than they think. A mother's warmth is the essence of motivation. If we could liquefy the encouragement, care and compassion we deliver to our children it would surely fill an expanse greater than the Pacific.
  • Louise Burfitt-Dons, speech to the Women's Institute, 2007

• There is equality in the office but not on the street.
  • Louise Burfitt-Dons from a speech Wilson Room, Portcullis House, Westminster, 11 June 2013

• Thy daughters bright thy walks adorn,
  Gay as the gilded summer sky,
  Sweet as the dewy milk-white thorn,
  Dear as the raptured thrill of joy.
  • Robert Burns, "Address to Edinburgh" (wr. 1786; pub. 1787)

• Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears
  Her noblest work she classes, O:
  Her 'prentice hand she tried on man,
  An' then she made the lasses, O.
  • Robert Burns, "Green Grow the Rashes" (wr. 1783; pub. 1787)

• Their tricks and craft hae put me daft,
  They've ta'en me in, and a' that,
  But clear your decks, and—Here's the sex!
  I like the jads for a' that.
  • Robert Burns, "Jolly Beggars" (wr. 1785; pub. 1799)

• It is a woman's reason to say I will do such a thing because I will.
  • Jeremiah Burroughs, On Hosea, vol. 4 (1652)

• Women wear the breeches.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621–51), "Democritus to the Reader"

• I may not here omit those two main plagues, and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people. They go commonly together.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621–51), pt. 1, sect. 2, member 3, subsect. 13

• The souls of women are so small,
  That some believe they've none at all;
  Or if they have, like cripples, still
  They've but one faculty, the will.
  • Samuel Butler, "Miscellaneous Thoughts", Genuine Remains in Prose and Verse (1759), vol. 1, p. 246

• Believe a woman or an epitaph,
  Or any other thing that's false.
  • Lord Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809)

• Soft as the memory of buried love,
  Pure as the prayer which childhood wafts above.
  • Lord Byron, Bride of Abydos (1813), canto 1, st. 6

• She was his life,
  The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
  Which terminated all.
  • Lord Byron, The Dream (1816), st. 2. "River of his Thought" from Dante—Purgatorio, XIII. 88.

• Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes,
  Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies.
  • Lord Byron, Beppo (1818), st. 45

• The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
  Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe.
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 4 (1818), st. 79

• Her stature tall—I hate a dumpy woman.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819-24), canto 1, st. 61

• Sweet is revenge—especially to women.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819–24) canto 1, st. 124

• Alas! the love of women! it is known
  To be a lovely and a fearful thing!
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819–24), canto 2, st. 199

• In her first passion woman loves her lover,
  In all the others all she loves is love.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819–24), canto 3, st. 3

• A lady with her daughters or her nieces
  Shine like a guinea and seven-shilling pieces.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819-24), canto 3, st. 60

• There is a tide in the affairs of women,
  Which, taken at the flood, leads—God knows where.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819–24), canto 6, st. 2

• I love the sex, and sometimes would reverse
  The tyrant's wish, "that mankind only had
  One neck, which he with one fell stroke might pierce;"
  My wish is quite as wide, but not so bad,
  And much more tender on the whole than fierce;
  It being (not now, but only while a lad)
  That womankind had but one rosy mouth,
  To kiss them all at once, from North to South.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819-24), canto 6, st. 27

• I've seen your stormy seas and stormy women,
  And pity lovers rather more than seamen.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819-24), canto 6, st. 53

• But she was a soft landscape of mild earth,
  Where all was harmony, and calm, and quiet,
  Luxuriant, budding; cheerful without mirth.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819-24), canto 6, st. 53

• A lady of a 'certain age', which means
  Certainly aged.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819-24), canto 6, st. 69

• What a strange thing is man! and what a stranger
  Is woman! What a whirlwind is her head,
  And what a whirlpool full of depth and danger
  Is all the rest about her.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819-24), canto 9, st. 64

• And whether coldness, pride, or virtue dignify
  A woman, so she's good, what does it signify?
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819-24), canto 14, st. 57

• Still I can’t contradict, what so oft has been said,
  'Though women are angels, yet wedlock's the devil.'
  • Lord Byron, "To Eliza" (1806)

C

• A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets.
  • James Cameron, Titanic (1997 film); line spoken by Gloria Stuart, as Rose Dawson Calvert

• The world was sad; the garden was a wild;
  And man, the hermit, sigh'd—till woman smiled.
  • Thomas Campbell, Pleasures of Hope (1799), pt. 2, l. 37

• Of all the girls that are so smart,
  There's none like pretty Sally.
  • Henry Carey, "Sally in our Alley" (c. 1725)

• Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.
  • George Carlin When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004)

• Las mujeres son el impuesto que pagamos por el placer.
  • Women are the tax we pay on pleasure.
  • Adolfo Bioy Casares, Una muñeca rusa (1991)

• But for the most part, women are not educated as they should be, I mean those of quality; oft their education is only to dance, sing, and fiddle, to write complimental letters, to read romances, to speak some languages that is not their native...their parents take more care of their feet than their head, more of their words than their reason.
  • Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, Sociable Letters (1664), p. 50

• La muger que se determina á ser honrada entre un ejército de soldados lo puede ser.
  • The woman who is resolved to be respected can make herself so even amidst an army of soldiers.
  • Miguel de Cervantes, La Gitanilla (c. 1590–1612; pub. 1613)

• Let no man value at a little price
  A virtuous woman's counsel; her wing'd spirit
  Is feather'd oftentimes with heavenly words.
  • George Chapman, The Gentleman Usher (1606), act 4, sc. 1

• And she was fayr as is the rose in May.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women (c. 1387), "Cleopatra", l. 613

• But love a womman that she woot it nought,
  And she wol quyte it that show shalt nat fele;
  Unknowe, unkist, and lost, that is unsought.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde (mid-1380s), bk. 1, l. 807

• Ther seyde ones a clerk in two vers: "what is bettre than gold? Iaspre. What is bettre than Iaspre? Wisdom. / And what is bettre than wisdom? Womman. And what is bettre than a good womman? No-thing."
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, "Tale of Melibeus", sec. 52 (ed. Skeat)

• Women, then, are only children of a larger growth.
  • Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, Letter to his son (5 September 1748); Letters to His Son (1774)

• There have been women I have loved ... A lot, as discreetly as possible.
  • Jacques Chirac, undated, quoted in Christian Fraser, "'Affair' story will continue to rumble", BBC News (14 January 2014)

• We shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury of a disappointed woman,—scorn'd! slighted! dismiss'd without a parting pang.
  • Colley Cibber, Love's Last Shift (1696), act 4, sc. 1

• [Woman is] the promise that cannot be kept; but it is precisely in this that [her] grace consists.
  • Paul Claudel, The City (La Ville, 1893, revised version 1901), end of act 3
  • Translation from Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love (1986). San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997, p. 251

• Women who want to work deserve to work. And whenever they are denied that opportunity, it’s not fair to them – and we all lose out. In a competitive 21st century global economy, we cannot afford to leave talent on the sidelines. When we leave people out or write them off, we not only shortchange them and their dreams, we shortchange our country and our own futures.
  • Hillary Clinton, speech in Orlando, Florida. Transcript (September 21, 2016)

• The greatest heroes that the world can know,
  To women their original must owe.
  • Mary Collier, The Three Wise Sentences, from the First Book of Esdras (1740), l. 132

• Of all people, girls and servants are the most difficult...If you are familiar with them, they lose their humility. If you maintain a reserve towards them, they are discontented.
  • Confucius, as quoted in Bettany Hughes, "Feminism started with the Buddha and Confucius 25 centuries ago", The Telegraph (5 August 2015)

• Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
  Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.
  • William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697), act 3, sc. 2

• Women are like tricks by slight of hand,
  Which, to admire, we should not understand.
  • William Congreve, Love for Love (1695), act 4, sc. 21

• It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.
  • Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902)

• It’s nice to meet serious people
  And hear them explain their views:
  Your concern for the rights of women
  Is especially welcome news.
  I’m sure you’d never exploit one;
  I expect you’d rather be dead;
  I’m thoroughly convinced of it—
  Now can we go to bed?
  • Wendy Cope, "From June to December", Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986), p. 21

• The sweetest noise on earth, a woman's tongue;
  A string which hath no discord.
  • Barry Cornwall, Rafaelle and Fornarina, sc. 2
  • Dramatic Scenes, with Other Poems (1857), p. 211

• Certum est enim: longos esse crines omnibus sed breves sensus mulieribus.
  • One thing is certain: women have long hair, but short wits.
  • Cosmas of Prague, Chronica Boemorum, ch. 4

• Conservatives have a problem with women. For that matter, all men do.
  • Ann Coulter, in The Cornell Review (1984); reported in Time (April 2005) and in Joe Maguire, Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter (2006), p. 59

• Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.
  • Noël Coward, Private Lives (1930), act 3

• Her air, her manners, all who saw admired;
  Courteous though coy, and gentle, though retired:
  The joy of youth and health her eyes display'd,
  And ease of heart her every look convey'd.
  • George Crabbe, The Parish Register (1807), pt. 2

• Whoe'er she be,
  That not impossible she,
  That shall command my heart and me.
  • Richard Crashaw, "Wishes to his (Supposed) Mistress", in Wit’s Recreations (1641); The Delights of the Muses (1646)

D

• [Women's Liberation] ... is an ontological, spiritual revolution, pointing beyond the idolatries of sexist society and sparking creative action in and toward transcendence. The becoming of women implies universal human becoming. It has everything to do with the search for ultimate meaning and reality which some would call God.
  • Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation (1973), p. 6

• It requires a kick in the imagination, a wrenching of tired words, to realize that feminism is the final and therefore the first cause, and that this movement is movement. Realization of this is already the beginning of a qualitative leap in being. For the philosophers of senescence 'the final cause' is in technical reason; it is the Father's plan, an endless flow of Xerox copies of the past. But the final cause that is movement is in our imaginative-cerebral-emotional-active-creative being.
  • Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation (1973), p. 190

• Why then should women be denied the benefits of instruction? If knowledge and understanding had been useless additions to the sex, God almighty would never have given them capacities.
  • Daniel Defoe, An Essay Upon Projects (1697), "Proposal for an Academy for Women"

• Were there no women, men might live like gods.
  • Thomas Dekker, The Honest Whore (1604), pt. 1, act 3, sc. 1

• There's no music when a woman is in the concert.
  • Thomas Dekker, The Honest Whore (1604), pt. 2, act 4, sc. 3

Women never have young minds. They are born three thousand years old. —Shelagh Delaney

• Women never have young minds. They are born three thousand years old.
  • Shelagh Delaney, A Taste of Honey (1959), act 1, sc. 2

• Les femmes ont toujours quelque arrière pensée.
  • Women always have some mental reservation.
  • Philippe Néricault Destouches, Le Dissipateur (1753), act 5, sc. 9. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 888

• But in some odd nook in Mrs. Todgers's breast, up a great many steps, and in a corner easy to be overlooked, there was a secret door, with "Woman" written on the spring, which, at a touch from Mercy's hand, had flown wide open, and admitted her for shelter.
  • Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), vol. 2, ch. 12

• A good uniform must work its way with the women, sooner or later.
  • Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (1837) ch. 37 (The Gentleman in Blue)

• What Soft — Cherubic Creatures —
  These Gentlewomen are —
  One would as soon assault a Plush —
  Or violate a Star —
  Such Dimity Convictions —
  A Horror so refined
  Of freckled Human Nature —
  Of Deity — ashamed.
  • Emily Dickinson, "What Soft — Cherubic Creatures" (wr. c. 1862)

• But were it to my fancy given
  To rate her charms, I'd call them heaven;
  For though a mortal made of clay,
  Angels must love Ann Hathaway;
  She hath a way so to control,
  To rapture the imprisoned soul,
  And sweetest heaven on earth display,
  That to be heaven Ann hath a way;
  She hath a way,
  Ann Hathaway,—
  To be heaven's self Ann hath a way.
  • Charles Dibdin, "A Love Dittie", in his novel Hannah Hewitt (1795)

• Be then thine own home, and in thyself dwell;
  Inn anywhere;
  And seeing the snail, which everywhere doth roam,
  Carrying his own home still, still is at home,
  Follow (for he is easy-paced) this snail:
  Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.
  • John Donne, "To Sir Henry Wootton"; Henry Alford (ed.) Works, vol. 6 (1839), p. 455

• In an experience of women that extends over many nations and three separate continents, I have never looked upon a face which gave a clearer promise of a refined and sensitive nature.
  • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four (1890), ch. 2

• Cherchez la femme.
  • Find the woman.
  • Alexandre Dumas, Les Mohicans de Paris (1854), vol. 3, ch. 10, and elsewhere in the novel, act 3, sc. 7, of the 1864 play. Probably from the Spanish. A common question of Charpes. See Revue des Deux Mondes, XI, 822

• And, like another Helen, fir'd another Troy.
  • John Dryden, Alexander's Feast (1697), l. 154 (Thaïs)

• For women with a mischief to their kind,
  Pervert with bad advice our better mind.
  • John Dryden, The Cock and the Fox, l. 555

• A woman's counsel brought us first to woe,
  And made her man his paradise forego,
  Where at heart's ease he liv'd; and might have been
  As free from sorrow as he was from sin.
  • John Dryden, The Cock and the Fox, l. 557

• And that one hunting, which the devil design'd
  For one fair female, lost him half the kind.
  • John Dryden, Theodore and Honoria, l. 427

• She hugg'd the offender, and forgave the offence;
  Sex to the last.
  • John Dryden, Cymon and Iphigenia, l. 367

• What all your sex desire is Sovereignty.
  • John Dryden, Wife of Bath
  • Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700)

• I am resolved to grow fat and look young till forty, and then slip out of the world with the first wrinkle and the reputation of five and twenty.
  • John Dryden, The Maiden Queen (1668), act 3, sc. 1

E

• And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands: who so pleaseth God shall escape from her; but the sinner shall be taken by her. Behold, this have I found, saith the preacher, counting one by one, to find out the account Which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not: one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found.
  • Ecclesiastes 7:26-29 (KJV)

• Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless; nay, the speech they have resolved not to make.
  • George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Felix Holt (1866), ch. 2

• Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.
  • George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Middlemarch (1871–2), bk. 1, ch. 11

• The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
  • George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), The Mill on the Floss (1860), bk. 6, ch. 3

• I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.
  • George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), The Mill on the Floss (1860), bk. 6, ch. 6

• In the room the women come and go
  Talking of Michelangelo.
  • T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1917)

• The sleek Brazilian jaguar
  Does not in its arboreal gloom
  Distil so rank a feline smell
  As Grishkin in a drawing-room.
  • T. S. Eliot, "Whispers of Immortality" (1918; 1919)

• Her lot is made for her by the love she accepts.
  • George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), ch. 43

• I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.
  • Elizabeth I of England, Speech to the Troops at Tilbury (9 August 1588), printed in Cabala, Mysteries of State (1654)

• When greater perils men environ,
  Then women show a front of iron;
  And, gentle in their manner, they
  Do bold things in a quiet way.
  • Thomas Dunn English, "Betty Zane", in The Magazine of Poetry, vol. 3 (1891), p. 258

• There is no worse evil than a bad woman; and nothing has ever been produced better than a good one.
  • Euripides, fragment of the lost Melanippe. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 889

• Σοφὴν δὲ μισῶ· μὴ γὰρ ἔν γ' ἐμοῖς δόμοις
  Εἴη φρονοῦσα πλεῖον ἢ γυναῖκα χρή.
  • I hate a clever woman. I would have no woman in my house that knows more than a woman should.
  • Euripides, Hippolytus, l. 640. Reported in King (1904), p. 331, no. 2596

F

What does a woman want?
—Sigmund Freud

• Our sex still strikes an awe upon the brave,
  And only cowards dare affront a woman.
  • George Farquhar, The Constant Couple (1699), act 5, sc. 1

• Charming women can true converts make,
  We love the precepts for the teacher’s sake.
  • George Farquhar, The Constant Couple (1699) act 5, sc. 3

• Oh, woman, perfect woman! what distraction
  Was meant to mankind when thou wast made a devil!
  What an inviting hell invented.
  • John Fletcher, The Comedy of Monsieur Thomas (c. 1610–16; pub. 1639), act 3, sc. 1

• A woman friend! He that believes that weakness,
  Steers in a stormy night without a compass.
  • John Fletcher, Women Pleased (1647), act 2, sc. 1

• Women and love are underpinnings. Examine them and you threaten the very structure of culture.
  • Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970), p. 126

• Woman, I tell you, is a microcosm; and rightly to rule her, requires as great talents as to govern a state.
  • Samuel Foote, The Devil upon two Sticks (1778), act 1

• 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.
  • E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book, ed. Philip Gardner (Stanford UP, 1985), p. 59

• One can run away from women, turn them out, or give in to them. No fourth course.
  • E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book, p. 92

• The extension of women's rights is the basic principle of all social progress.
  • Charles Fourier, The Theory of the Four Movements and of the General Destinies (1808)

• Toute femme varie
  Bien fol est qui s'y fie.
  • Woman is always fickle—foolish is he who trusts her.
  • François I; scratched with his ring on a window of Chambord Castle. (Quoted also "souvent femme.") See Brantome—Œuvres, vol. 7, p. 395. Also Le Roux de Lincy, Le Livre des Proverbes François, vol. 1 (ed. 1859), pt. 5, p. 231

• Are women books? says Hodge, then would mine were
  An Almanack, to change her every year.
  • Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack (December 1737)

• 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?'
  • Sigmund Freud, letter to Marie Bonaparte, quoted in Sigmund Freud, Life and Work, ed. Ernest Jones (Hogarth Press, 1953)

• The problem that has no name—which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities.
  • Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963), ch. 14

• A cat has nine lives and a woman has nine cats' lives.
  • Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia (1732)

G

To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman.
—Mahatma Gandhi

• 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?
  • Mahatma Gandhi, in Young India (4 October 1930)

• And when a lady's in the case,
  You know all other things give place.
  • John Gay, Fables (1727), "The Hare and Many Friends", l. 41

• 'Tis a woman that seduces all mankind;
  By her we first were taught the wheedling arts.
  • John Gay, The Beggar's Opera (1728), act 1, sc. 1

• 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?
  • John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (1728), act 2, sc. 1, air 19

• 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.
  • John Gay, The Beggar's Opera (1728), act 2, sc. 2

• I must have women. There is nothing unbends the mind like them.
  • John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (1728), act 2, sc. 3

• To cheat a man is nothing; but the woman must have fine parts indeed who cheats a woman!
  • John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (1728), act 2, sc. 4

• If the heart of a man is depressed with cares,
  The mist is dispell'd when a woman appears.
  • John Gay, The Beggar's Opera (1728), act 2

• And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
  • Genesis 2:18 (KJV)

• And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
  • Genesis 2:21–23 (KJV)

• And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
  • Genesis 3:15 (KJV)

• Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
  • Genesis 3:16 (KJV)

• Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.
  • Genesis 18:11 (KJV)

• Es ist doch den Mädchen wie angeboren, dass sie allem gefallen wollen, was nur Augen hat.
  • The desire to please everything having eyes seems inborn in maidens.
  • Salomon Gessner, Evander und Alcima, act 3, sc. 1. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 889

• A true reckoning with structural disparities in the entertainment industry will demand... acknowledging that women’s voices and women’s stories are not only worth believing, but also worth hearing. At every level.
  • Sophie Gilbert, "The Men of #MeToo Go Back to Work", The Atlantic (12 October 2018)

• I am a woman—therefore I may not
  Call to him, cry to him,
  Fly to him,
  Bid him delay not!
  • Richard Watson Gilder, "A Woman's Thought", Lyrics and Other Poems (1885)

The eternal feminine doth draw us upward. —Goethe

• Denn geht es zu des Bösen Haus
  Das Weib hat tausend Schritt voraus.
  • When toward the Devil's House we tread,
    Woman's a thousand steps ahead.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, pt. 1 (Walpurgisnacht). Tr. Bayard Taylor (1870)

• 'Tis Lilith.
  Who?
  Adam's first wife is she.
  Beware the lure within her lovely tresses,
  The splendid sole adornment of her hair;
  When she succeeds therewith a youth to snare,
  Not soon again she frees him from her jesses.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, pt. 1 (Walpurgisnacht). Tr. Bayard Taylor (1870)

• Denn das Naturell der Frauen
  Ist so nah mit Kunst verwandt.
  • For the nature of women is closely allied to art.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, pt. 2, act 1. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 889

• Nur der verdient die Gunst der Frauen,
  Der kräftigst sie zu schützen weiss.
  • He only wins a woman's favour
    Who with strong arm in need can save her.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, pt. 2, act 3 (Vor dem Palaste). Reported in King (1904), p. 236, no. 1839

• Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.
  • The eternal feminine doth draw us upward.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, pt. 2 (Chorus Mysticus) "La Féminine Eternel / Nous attire au ciel." French translation of Goethe by H. Blaze de Bury (1842), p. 504. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 889

• Ein edler Mann wird durch ein gutes Wort
  Der Frauen weit geführt.
  • A noble man is led far by woman's gentle words.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Iphigenia auf Tauris, I, 2, 162. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 889

• Der Umgang mit Frauen ist das Element guter Sitten.
  • The society of women is the foundation of good manners.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Wahlverwandtschaften, II, 5. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 889

• I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been.
  • William Golding, discussing the origins and meaning of Lord of the Flies; "Did Author William Golding Say That 'Women Are Far Superior' to Men?", Snopes (25 May 2016)

• When lovely woman stoops to folly,
    And finds too late that men betray,
  What charm can soothe her melancholy?
    What art can wash her guilt away?
  The only art her guilt to cover,
    To hide her shame from every eye,
  To give repentance to her lover,
    And wring his bosom—is to die.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), ch. 24

• Mankind, from Adam, have been women's fools;
  Women, from Eve, have been the devil's tools:
  Heaven might have spar'd one torment when we fell;
  Not left us women, or not threatened hell.
  • George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne, The She-Gallants (1695)

• The stereotype is the Eternal Feminine. She is the sexual object sought by all men, and all women. She is of neither sex for she herself has no sex at all. Her value is solely attested by the demand she excites in others. All she must contribute is her existence. She need achieve nothing, for she is the reward of achievement. She need never give positive evidence of her moral character because virtue is assumed from her loveliness, and her passivity.
  • Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (1970), "The Stereotype"

• Women have been charged with deviousness and duplicity since the dawn of civilization so they have never been able to pretend that their masks were anything but masks. It is a slender case but perhaps it does mean that 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, The Female Eunuch (1970), "Womanpower"

• Women are not men’s belongings.
  • Uchiyama Gudō, Common Consciousness (1991), tr. Fabio Rambelli in Zen Anarchism: The Egalitarian Dharma of Uchiyama Gudō (Institute of Buddhist Studies, 2013)

• Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.
  • Guerilla Girls, "Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into the Met. Museum?" (1989); Katy Hessel and Allison Rudnick, "Museums Without Men: Guerrilla Girls", The Met (8 March 2024)

• The basic Buddhist stand on the question of equality between the genders is age-old. At the highest tantric levels, at the highest esoteric level, you must respect women: every woman.
  • Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, in The New York Times Magazine (1993), p. 54

H

She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen. —Homer

• She who must be obeyed.
  • H. Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure (1887); cf. Rumpole of the Bailey

• De wimmin, dey does de talkin' en de flyin', en de mens, dey does de walkin en de pryin', en betwixt en betweenst um, dey ain't much dat don't come out.
  • Joel Chandler Harris, "Brother Rabbit and His Famous Foot", Nights with Uncle Remus (1883), p. 172

• That the woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be loved.
  • Matthew Henry, Note on Genesis 2:21,22. An Exposition of the Five Books of Moses, 3rd ed., vol. 1 (1725), p. 11, with the variant reading "beloved" for "loved". Also in Chaucer, "Persones Tale"

• If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.
  • Taj El-Din Hilaly, "Ethnic leaders condemn Muslim cleric", the Melbourne Age (October 2006)

• First, then, a woman will, or won't,—depend on't;
  If she will do't, she will; and there's an end on't.
  But, if she won't, since safe and sound your trust is,
  Fear is affront: and jealousy injustice.
  • Aaron Hill, Zara (1736), epilogue

• A woman cannot be a pastor by the law of God. I say more, it is against the law of the realm.
  • Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Baronet, C.J., Colt and another v. Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (1612), Hob. Rep. 148

• Women may be whole oceans deeper than we are, but they are also a whole paradise better. She may have got us out of Eden, but as a compensation she makes the earth very pleasant.
  • John Oliver Hobbes, The Ambassador (1898), act 3

• Man has his will,—but woman has her way.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858), prologue

• She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen.
  • Homer, The Iliad, bk. 3, l. 208. Pope's translation (1715–20)

• O woman, woman, when to ill thy mind
  Is bent, all hell contains no fouler fiend.
  • Homer, The Odyssey, bk. 11, l. 531. Pope's translation (1725–6)

•    What mighty woes
  To thy imperial race from woman rose.
  • Homer, The Odyssey, bk. 11, l. 541. Pope's translation (1725–6)

• But, alas! alas! for the woman's fate,
  Who has from a mob to choose a mate!
  'Tis a strange and painful mystery!
  But the more the eggs the worse the hatch;
  The more the fish, the worse the catch;
  The more the sparks the worse the match;
  Is a fact in woman's history.
  • Thomas Hood, "Miss Killmansegg and Her Precious Leg", Poems, 5th ed. (1852), p. 145

• A woman without mettle is like a scabbard without a sword.
  • Robert E. Howard, Swords of the Northern Sea (wr. c. 1929; pub. 1974)

• Women are the carriers of society’s values ... men are deviant in the sense that many of the qualities admired in them are also one’s that society has to regard with disapproval ... Women’s Lib portrays society and morality as a male invention to coerce and punish women ... [yet] women are a virtuous group seeking to impose their moral standards on men.
  • Arianna Huffington, The Female Woman (London: Davis Poynter, 1973), pp. 134-35

• God in his harmony has equal ends
  For cedar that resists and reed that bends;
  For good it is a woman sometimes rules,
  Holds in her hand the power, and manners, schools
  And laws, and mind; succeeding master proud.
  With gentle voice and smiles she leads the crowd,
  The somber human troop.
  • Victor Hugo, Eviradnus, pt. 5; Henry Llewellyn Williams (ed.) Selections, Chiefly Lyrical, from the Poetical Works of Victor Hugo (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1888), p. 212

I

• Men may rule the world, but women rule the men who rule the world.
  • Chinweizu Ibekwe, The Anatomy of Female Power (1990)

• O woman! thou wert fashioned to beguile:
  So have all sages said, all poets sung.
  • Jean Ingelow, "The Four Bridges", st. 68, Poems (1863), p. 272

• A female mind like a rude fallow lies;
  No seed is sown, but weeds spontaneous rise.
  As well might we expect, in winter, spring,
  As land untilled a fruitful crop should bring.
  • Anne Ingram, Viscountess Irvine, "An Epistle to Mr Pope. Occasioned by his Characters of Women", in The Gentleman's Magazine (1736)

• In that day seven women shall take hold of one man.
  • Isaiah 4:1 (KJV)

J

• To make women learned, and foxes tame, hath the same operation, which teacheth them to steale more cuningly, but the possibility is not equall, for when it doth one good, it doth twenty harme.
  • Attributed to James I of England; reported in Thomas Overbury, Edward Francis Rimbault, The Miscellaneous Works in Prose and Verse of Sir Thomas Overbury (1856), p. 261

• In every disadvantage that a woman suffers at the hands of a man, there is inevitably, in what concerns the man, an element of cowardice. When I say "inevitably," I mean that this is what the woman sees in it.
  • Henry James, Confidence (1879), ch. 19

• Were Women all like those whom here I name,
  Woman to man I surely would prefer;
  The Sun is feminine, nor deems it shame;
  The Moon, though masculine, depends on her.
  • Jami, alluding to Rabia of Basra, Nafahat al-Uns, as quoted in E. G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia (1902), p. 299

• Women strangely hug the knife that stabs them.
  • Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) (1889)

• Wretched, un-idea'd girls.
  • Samuel Johnson, reported in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (1752)

• I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.
  • Samuel Johnson, reported in Johnsoniana (1836), p. 405

• Ladies, stock and tend your hive,
  Trifle not at thirty-five;
  For, howe'er we boast and strive,
  Life declines from thirty-five;
  He that ever hopes to thrive
  Must begin by thirty-five.
  • Samuel Johnson, "To Mrs. Thrale, when Thirty-five", l. 11
  • Hester Lynch Piozzi (ed.) Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson (1786), p. 164

• One woman reads another's character
  Without the tedious trouble of deciphering.
  • Ben Jonson, The New Inn (licensed 1629), act 4

• A skein of silk without a knot!
  A fair march made without a halt!
  A curious form without a fault!
  A printed book without a blot!
  All beauty!—and without a spot.
  • Ben Jonson, The New Inn (licensed 1629), act 4, sc. 4

• And where she went, the flowers took thickest root,
  As she had sow'd them with her odorous foot.
  • Ben Jonson, The Sad Shepherd (wr. c. 1635; pub. 1641), act 1, sc. 1

• Follow a shadow, it still flies you;
  Seem to fly it, it will pursue:
  So court a mistress, she denies you;
  Let her alone, she will court you.
  Say, are not women truly then
  Styled but the shadows of us men.
  • Ben Jonson, "That Women are but Men’s Shadows", Works (1616)

• Nulla fere causa est in qua non femina litem moverit.
  • There's scarce a case comes on but you shall find
    A woman's at the bottom.
  • Juvenal, Satires, no. 6, l. 242. Translation reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 890

• Intolerabilius nihil est quam fœmina dives.
  • Nothing so intolerable as a rich woman.
  • Juvenal, Satires, no. 6, l. 460. Reported in King (1904), p. 143, no. 1126

•       Vindicta
  Nemo magis gaudet, quam femina.
  • Revenge we find,
    The abject pleasure of an abject mind
    And hence so dear to poor weak woman-kind.
  • Juvenal, Satires, no. 13, l. 191
  • William Gifford, The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis, 2nd ed. (1806), p. 408

K

• I met a lady in the meads
    Full beautiful—a faery's child,
  Her hair was long, her foot was light,
    And her eyes were wild.
  • John Keats, "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (1819; rev. 1820)

• I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a poem and to be given away by a novel.
  • John Keats, Letter to Fanny Brawne (8 July 1819), in H. E. Rollins (ed.) The Letters of John Keats (1958), vol. 2, p. 127

• But king Solomon loved many strange women.
  • 1 Kings 11:1 (KJV)

• "Look at young Davies makin' an ass of himself over mutton-dressed-as-lamb old enough to be his mother!"
  • Rudyard Kipling, The Day's Work (1898), "The Brushwood Boy"

• A Nation spoke to a Nation,
  A Queen sent word to a Throne:
  'Daughter am I in my mother's house,
  But mistress in my own.
  The gates are mine to open,
  As the gates are mine to close,
  And I set my house in order,'
  Said our Lady of the Snows.
  • Rudyard Kipling, "Our Lady of the Snows", st. 1, in Collected Works, vol. 26 (1941, reprinted 1970), p. 227. The poem is about the Canadian preferential tariff of 1897.

• But I consort with long-haired things
  In velvet collar-rolls,
  Who talk about the Aims of Art,
  And ‘theories’ and ‘goals’,
  And moo and coo with women-folk
  About their blessed souls.
  • Rudyard Kipling, In Partibus (1909)

• What is a woman that you forsake her,
  And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
  To go with the old grey Widow-maker?
  • Rudyard Kipling, "Harp Song of the Dane Women", Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906)

• ’Tisn’t beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just It. Some women’ll stay in a man’s memory if they once walked down a street.
  • Rudyard Kipling, "Mrs Bathurst", Traffics and Discoveries (1904)

• For men must work and women must weep,
  And the sooner it's over the sooner to sleep,
  And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.
  • Charles Kingsley, "Three Fishers", in Walter Learned (ed.) A Treasury of Favorite Poems (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1891), p. 100

• When the Hymalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
  He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
  But the she-bear thus accosted, rends the peasant tooth and nail,
  For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
  * * * * * *
  So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
  With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
  Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
  To some God of Abstract justice—which no woman understands.
  And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
  Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.
  And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
  That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.
  • Rudyard Kipling, "The Female of the Species: A Study in Natural History", in The Morning Post (20 October 1911)

• Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man, not to rule and command him.
  • John Knox, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women (1558)

• I think girls tend to like RPGs, like Final Fantasy. Girls who play games like that seem to get more of a desire to work in this field. I usually don't think to make games strictly for a female audience, myself, but I think my RPGs attract a larger female audience. Violent, war-themed titles seem to attract an overwhelmingly male audience. I think if companies want to get more girls to play their games, they should keep this in mind.
  • Reiko Kodama, "Interview Reiko Kodama", The-nextlevel.com

L

• What! still retaining your Utopian visions of female felicity? To talk of our happiness!—ours, the ill-used and oppressed! You remind me of the ancient tyrant, who, seeing his slaves sink under the weight of their chains, said, 'Do look at the indolent repose of those people!'
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Romance and Reality (1831), vol 2, p. 174

• Whenever I hear a man talking of the advantages of our ill-used sex, I look upon it as the prelude to some new act of authority.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Romance and Reality (1831), vol I, p. 95

• A woman only can understand a woman; and it is pleasant to be understood sometimes.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Francesca Carrara (1834), vol. 3, ch. 26

• Every phase of our life belongs to us. The moon does not, except in appearance, lose her first thin, luminous curve, nor her silvery crescent, in rounding to her full. The woman is still both child and girl, in the completeness of womanly character. We have a right to our entire selves, through all the changes of this mortal state, a claim which we shall doubtless carry along with us into the unfolding mysteries of our eternal being. Perhaps in this thought lies hidden the secret of immortal youth: for a seer has said that "to grow old in heaven is to grow young."
  • Lucy Larcom, A New England Girlhood: Outlined from Memory (1889)

• Woman, a pleasing but a short-lived flow'r,
  Too soft for business and too weak for pow'r:
  A wife in bondage, or neglected maid;
  Despised, if ugly; if she's fair, betrayed.
  • Mary Leapor, An Essay on Woman (c. 1746)

• Philip fought men, but Alexander women.
  • Nathaniel Lee, The Rival Queens (1677), act 4, sc. 2

• It’s no accident that #Metoo started in the entertainment and television-news businesses, where women are required to look as much like Barbie and Bratz dolls as possible, with the help of personal trainers, makeup artists, hair stylists, personal shoppers, and surgeons.
  • Jill Lepore, "When Barbie Went to War with Bratz", The New Yorker (22 January 2018)

• Ich hab' es immer gesagt: das Weib wollte die Natur zu ihrem Meisterstücke machen.
  • I have always said it—Nature meant woman to be her masterpiece.
  • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Emilia Galotti (debuted 1772), act 5, sc. 7. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 891

• Was hätt ein Weiberkopf erdacht, das er
  Nicht zu beschönen wüsste?
  • What could a woman's head contrive
    Which it would not know how to excuse?
  • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan der Weise (wr. 1779; debuted 1783), act 3. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 891

• Are simple women only fit
  To dress, to darn, to flower, or knit,
  To mind the distaff, or the spit?
  Why are the needle and the pen
  Thought incompatible by men?
  • Esther Lewis (later Clark), A Mirror for Detractors (1754), l. 146

• There's three things in a Woman's life that should never be empty, her heart, bed and glass.
  • Michael Lieber, The War Hero (2018), ch. 3, p. 93 (Freddie)

• The life of woman is full of woe,
  Toiling on and on and on,
  With breaking heart, and tearful eyes,
  The secret longings that arise,
  Which this world never satisfies!
  Some more, some less, but of the whole
  Not one quite happy, no, not one!
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Christus", The Golden Legend (1872)

A little, tiny, pretty, witty, charming darling she. —Lucretius

• A Lady with a lamp shall stand
  In the great history of the land,
     A noble type of good,
     Heroic womanhood.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Santa Filomena (1858), st. 10

• Like a fair lily on a river floating
  She floats upon the river of his thoughts.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Spanish Student (1843), act 2, sc. 3. Idea taken from Dante, Purgatorio, canto 13, st. 88

• I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
  • Audre Lorde, "The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism, in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Crossing Press, 1984)

• A woman’s dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view.
  • Sophia Loren, as quoted in Brandon Gaille, "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings", BrandonGaille.com (July 23, 2013; retrieved 15 November 2013)

• 'Twas kin' o' kingdom-come to look
  On sech a blessed cretur.
  • James Russell Lowell, "The Courtin'", st. 7; The Biglow Papers, series 2 (1866), introduction

Earth's noblest thing, a Woman perfected. —James Russell Lowell

• Earth's noblest thing, a Woman perfected.
  • James Russell Lowell, "Irene", l. 62; A Year's Life (1841), p. 117

• Parvula, pumilio, chariton mia tota merum sal.
  • A little, tiny, pretty, witty, charming darling she.
  • Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, IV. 1158
  • Reported in H. T. Riley (ed.) Dictionary of Latin Quotations (1856), p. 322

• Hail, thou art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
  • Luke 1:28 (KJV)

• My soul doth magnify the Lord: and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
  For he hath regarded: the lowliness of his handmaiden.
  For, behold, from henceforth: all generations shall call me blessed.
  For he that is mighty hath magnified me: and holy is his Name.
  • Luke 1:46 (BCP)

• A crudele genus nec fidum femina nomen!
     a pereat, didicit fallere si qua virum.
  • O cruel sex! Woman a treacherous race! Away with her who has learned to play her husband false!
  • Lygdamus, elegy 1, l. 7
  • Tr. J. P. Postgate, in Catullus · Tibullus · Pervigilium Veneris (1912), p. 297

• Campaspe: Were women never so fair, men would be false.
  Apelles: Were women never so false, men would be fond.
  • John Lyly, Campaspe (1584), act 3, sc. 3

• A cunning woman is a knavish fool.
  • George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton, Advice to a Lady (1733), p. 5

M

• Women do not find it difficult nowadays to behave like men, but they often find it extremely difficult to behave like gentlemen.
  • Sir Compton Mackenzie, Literature in My Time (1933), ch. 22

• A woman can only be superior as a woman; as soon as she wants to emulate man, she is nothing but an ape.
  • Joseph de Maistre, letter to his daughter Constance de Maistre, Lettres, 146

• No thyng ys to man so dere
  As wommanys love yn gode manere.
  A gode womman ys mannys blys
  There her love ryght and stedfast ys;
  There ys no solas undyr hevene
  Of al that a man may nevene,
  That shuld a man so mochë glew
  As a gode womman that loveth trew.
  Ne derer ys none yn goddys hurde
  Than a chaste womman with lovely worde.
  • Robert Mannyng, Handlyng Synne (c. 1303), ed. F. J. Furnivall

• No woman, no cry.
  • Bob Marley, song "No Woman, No Cry", from the album Natty Dread (1974)

• When all the medical officers have retired for the night, and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she [Florence Nightingale] may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.
  • Mr. MacDonald, on the staff of the London Times, in a letter to that paper when leaving Scutari. See Pictorial History of the Russian War (1854–5–6), p. 310

• Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
  And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
  Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!
  Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!
  Come Helen, come give me my soul again.
  Here will I dwell, for heaven be in these lips,
  And all is dross that is not Helena.
  • Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1604), act 5, sc. 1

• A woman's life is nine parts mess to one part magic ... and the parts that look like magic often turn out to be the messiest of all.
  • George R. R. Martin, A Clash of Kings (1998), ch. 4 (Cersei Lannister)

• Believe me Delmar, woman is the most fiendish instrument of torture ever devised to bedevil the days of man.
  • Ulysses McGill (George Clooney) in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000 film)

A woman's place is in the House and the Senate. —Carrie Meek

• A woman's place is in the House and the Senate.
  • Although Florida Representative Carrie Meek may or may not have said it herself, one thing that is clear that she was photographed in the Florida House chamber with the slogan on her t-shirt around the year 1980 during her second year in the Florida House at the start of her career. Meek would later get elected in 1981 to the Florida Senate and became the first African American since the Reconstruction era to represent Florida in the United States Congress in 1992 when she was voted in as a member of the United States Senate Another politician, Tennessee's Anna Belle Clement O'Brien was elected to the Tennessee Senate in 1976 with the variant slogan "A woman's place is in the House ... and the Senate too!"

• Of all wild beasts on earth or in sea, the greatest is a woman.
  • Menander, E Supposititio, P. 182. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 891

• On one issue, at least, men and women agree: they both distrust women.
  • H. L. Mencken, A Little Book in C Major (1916), p. 59

• I expect that woman will be the last thing civilized by man.
  • George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), p. 1

• O woman, born first to believe us;
  Yea, also born first to forget;
  Born first to betray and deceive us,
  Yet first to repent and regret.
  • Joaquin Miller, "Charity", Songs of the Sun-lands (1873), p. 199

• The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.
  • John Stuart Mill, Letter to Alexander Bain, 14 July 1869, in Hugh S. R. Elliot (ed.) Letters of John Stuart Mill, vol. 2 (1910)

• Too fair to worship, too divine to love.
  • Henry Hart Milman, "Apollo Belvidere", Oxford English Prize Poems (1808), p. 122

• I always thought a tinge of blue
  Improved a charming woman's stocking.
  • Richard Monckton Milnes, Four Lovers, pt 2. "In Summer"; Stray Verses, 1889–1890 (1891), p. 80

•    My latest found,
  Heaven's last best gift, my ever new delight!
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), bk. 5, l. 18

• Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
  In every gesture dignity and love.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), bk. 8, l. 488

•    For nothing lovelier can be found
  In woman, than to study household good.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), bk. 9, l. 232

• Oh! why did God,
  Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven
  With Spirits masculine, create at last
  This novelty on Earth, this fair defect
  Of Nature, and not fill the World at once
  With men as Angels, without feminine.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), bk. 10, l. 888

• A bevy of fair women.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), bk. 11, l. 582

•      Wisest men
  Have erred, and by bad women been deceived;
  And shall again, pretend they ne’er so wise.
  • John Milton, Samson Agonistes (1671), l. 210

• She was a sharp-jawed, pout-lipped maiden and her eyes were green as scum.
  • Michael Moorcock, The Golden Barge (wr. 1958; pub. 1980), ch. 5

• Disguise our bondage as we will,
  'Tis woman, woman rules us still.
  • Thomas Moore, "Sovereign Woman", st. 4, Poetical Works, vol. 9 (London, 1841), p. 414

• My only books
  Were woman's looks,
  And folly's all they've taught me.
  • Thomas Moore, "The Time I've Lost in Wooing", Irish Melodies (1821), p. 142

• For if a young lady has that discretion and modesty, without which all knowledge is little worth, she will never make an ostentatious parade of it, because she will rather be intent on acquiring more, than on displaying what she has.
  • Hannah More, "Thoughts on Conversation", Essays on Various Subjects (1777)

• The prevailing manners of an age depend more than we are aware, or are willing to allow, on the conduct of the women: this is one of the principal hinges on which the great machine of human society turns.
  • Hannah More, Essays on Various Subjects Principally Designed for Young Ladies (1777)

• Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them.
  • Muhammad, Quran 4:34 (Pickthall)

N

• Desubito famam tollunt si quam solam videre in via.
  • If men have seen some woman in the street
    Alone, straightway they raise a scandal.
  • Gnaeus Naevius, fragment of the lost Danae, quoted by Nonius, 305, 23

• Quasi pila
  in choro ludens datatim dat se et communem facit.
  Alii adnutat, alii adnictat, alium amat alium tenet.
  Alibi manus est occupata, alii pervellit pedem;
  anulum dat alii spectandum, a labris alium invoeat,
  cum alio cantat, at tamen alii suo dat digito litteras.
  • As though she were playing at ball, give-and-take in a ring, she makes herself common property to all men. To one she nods, at another she winks; one she caresses, another embraces. Now elsewhere a hand is kept busy; now she jerks another's foot. To one she gives her ring to look at, to another her lips blow a kiss that invites. She sings a song with one; but waves a message for another with her finger.
  • Gnaeus Naevius, fragment of the lost Tarentilla, quoted by Isidore, who goes on to quote in Latin Proverbs 6:13
  • E. H. Warmington, Remains of Old Latin, vol. 2 (1936), p. 115

• A penniless lass wi' a lang pedigree.
  • Carolina, Baroness Nairne, "The Laird o' Cockpen", in The Scottish Minstrel, vol. 3 (1821–4), p. 56

• So I wonder a woman, the Mistress of Hearts,
  Should ascend to aspire to be Master of Arts;
  A Ministering Angel in Woman we see,
  And an Angel need cover no other Degree.
  —O why should a Woman not get a Degree?
  • Charles Neaves, "O why should a Woman not get a Degree?", in Blackwood's Magazine (1869), p. 227

• The happiness of man is: I will. The happiness of woman is: he wills.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883) (tr. Thomas Common, 1909) — loq. Zarathustra

• Man is for woman, a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is woman for man? Two different things wanteth the true man: danger and diversion. Therefore wanteth he woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883) (tr. Thomas Common, 1909) — loq. Zarathustra

• Du gehst zu Frauen? Vergiss die Peitsche nicht!
  • You are going to women? Do not forget the whip!
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883) (tr. Walter Kaufmann, 1954) — loq. Old Woman

• Supposing truth is a woman—what then? Are there not grounds for the suspicion that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have been very inexpert about women? That the gruesome seriousness, the clumsy obtrusiveness with which they have usually approached truth so far have been awkward and very improper methods for winning a woman's heart? What is certain is that she has not allowed herself to be won.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886), preface (tr. Walter Kaufmann, 1966)

• Women want to become independent. To this end they are beginning to enlighten men about "women as such." This is one of the worst aspects of progress in the general uglification of Europe.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886), sect. 232 (tr. Marianne Cowan, 1955)

• In no age has the weaker sex been treated with as much respect by men as in ours: that belongs to the democratic inclination and basic taste, just like disrespectfulness for old age.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886), sect. 239 (tr. Walter Kaufmann, 1966)

• Wherever the industrial spirit has triumphed over the military and aristocratic spirit, woman now aspires to the economic and legal self-reliance of a clerk.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886), sect. 239 (tr. Walter Kaufmann, 1966)

• On aime plus âprement que l'on ne hait.
  • Translation: We women love more bitterly than we hate.
  • Anna de Noailles, Poème de l'amour (1924), sect. 102
  • In context the "on" refers to "woman"

O

• I am convinced that our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons. Our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity - men and women - to reach their full potential.
  • Barack Obama, "A New Beginning", speech at Cairo University (June 4, 2009).

• You know, today, women make up about half our workforce, but they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment. Women deserve equal pay for equal work.
  • Barack Obama on Tuesday, January 28th, 2014 in the State of the Union address

• Who trusts himself to women, or to waves,
  Should never hazard what he fears to lose.
  • John Oldmixon, The Governour of Cyprus (1703)

• Everything takes a different flavour when a woman does it.
  • Orlan "Orlan's art of sex and surgery", by Stuart Jeffries, The Guardian, 1 July, 2003.

• What mighty ills have not been done by woman!
  Who was't betray'd the Capitol? A woman;
  Who lost Mark Antony the world? A woman;
  Who was the cause of a long ten years' war,
  And laid at last old Troy in ashes? Woman;
  Destructive, damnable, deceitful woman!
  • Thomas Otway, The Orphan (1680), act 3, sc. 1

•      Who can describe
  Women's hypocrisies! their subtle wiles,
  Betraying smiles, feign'd tears, inconstancies!
  Their painted outsides, and corrupted minds,
  The sum of all their follies, and their falsehoods.
  • Thomas Otway, The Orphan (1680), act 3, sc. 1

• O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee
  To temper man: we had been brutes without you;
  Angels are painted fair, to look like you:
  There's in you all that we believe of Heaven,
  Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,
  Eternal joy, and everlasting love.
  • Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv'd (debuted 1682), act 1, sc. 1

• Wit and woman are two frail things, and both the frailer by concurring.
  • Thomas Overbury, "News from Court", in His Wife, 17th imp. (1664). Cf. John Webster, The Devil's Law Case (pub. 1623), act 1, sc. 2

They come to see; they come that they themselves may be seen. —Ovid

• Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsae.
  • They come to see; they come that they themselves may be seen.
  • Ovid, Ars Amatoria, bk. 1, l. 99 (tr. Henry T. Riley, 1852)

• Nocte latent mendae, vitioque ignoscitur omni,
  Horaque formosam quamlibet illa facit.
  • By night are blemishes hid, and every fault is forgiven: that hour makes any woman fair.
  • Ovid, Ars Amatoria, bk. 1, ll. 249–50 (tr. J. H. Mozley, 1929)

• Procul hinc, procul este, severae!
  • Away from me, far away, ye austere fair!
  • Ovid, Amores, bk. 2, no. 1, l. 3 (tr. Grant Showerman, 1914)

• Esse bonam facile est, ubi quod vetet esse remotum est.
  • It is easy for a woman to be good, when all that hinders her from being so is removed.
  • Ovid, Tristia, 5, 14, 25. Reported in King (1904), p. 88, no. 673

P

• Feminism has exceeded its proper mission of seeking political equality for women and has ended by rejecting contingency, that is, human limitation by nature or fate.
  • Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae (1990) p. 3

• Male mastery in marriage is a social illusion, nurtured by women exhorting their creations to play and walk. At the emotional heart of every marriage is a pietà of mother and son.
  • Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae (1990) p. 53

• Women have been discouraged from genres such as sculpture that require studio training or expensive materials. But in philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, the only materials are pen and paper. Male conspiracy cannot explain all female failures. I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant. Genius is not checked by social obstacles: it will overcome. Men's egotism, so disgusting in the talentless, is the source of their greatness as a sex. [...] Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species.
  • Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae (1990), p. 653

• The ladies men admire, I’ve heard,
  Would shudder at a wicked word.
  Their candle gives a single light;
  They’d rather stay at home at night.
  They do not keep awake till three,
  Nor read erotic poetry.
  They never sanction the impure,
  Nor recognize an overture.
  They shrink from powders and from paints...
  So far, I’ve had no complaints.
  • Dorothy Parker, "Interview", Enough Rope (1926)

• Still an angel appear to each lover beside,
  But still be a woman to you.
  • Thomas Parnell, "When thy Beauty Appears", Poems on Several Occasions (1722), p. 19

• Ah, wasteful woman! she who may
  On her sweet self set her own price,
  Knowing man cannot choose but pay,
  How has she cheapen'd Paradise!
  How given for nought her priceless gift,
  How spoil'd the bread and spill'd the wine,
  Which, spent with due respective thrift,
  Had made brutes men and men divine.
  • Coventry Patmore, The Angel in the House (1854; rev. 1862), bk. 1, canto 3, 3, "Unthrift"

• A woman is a foreign land.
  • Coventry Patmore, The Angel in the House (1854; rev. 1862), bk. 2, canto 9, 2, "The Foreign Land"

• Patience makes a woman beautiful in middle age.
  • Attributed to Elliot Paul. Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).

• Man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. And man was not created for the cause of the woman, but the woman for the cause of man; and therefore ought the woman to have a power upon her head.
  • Paul of Tarsus, 1 Corinthians 11:8-10 (KJV)

• Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak. If they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
  • Paul of Tarsus, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 (KJV)

• I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
  • Paul of Tarsus, 1 Timothy 2:12 (KJV)

• Silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts.
  • Paul of Tarsus, 2 Timothy 3:6 (KJV)

• To chase the clouds of life's tempestuous hours,
  To strew its short but weary way with flow'rs,
  New hopes to raise, new feelings to impart,
  And pour celestial balsam on the heart;
  For this to man was lovely woman giv'n,
  The last, best work, the noblest gift of Heav'n.
  • Thomas Love Peacock, "The Visions of Love", Palmyra, and Other Poems (1806), p. 49

• When a man is gone, all are wont to praise him, and should your merit be ever so transcendent, you will still find it difficult not merely to overtake, but even to approach their renown. The living have envy to contend with, while those who are no longer in our path are honoured with a goodwill into which rivalry does not enter. On the other hand, if I must say anything on the subject of female excellence to those of you who will now be in widowhood, it will be all comprised in this brief exhortation. Great will be your glory in not falling short of your natural character; and greatest will be hers who is least talked of among the men, whether for good or for bad.
  • Pericles, in Thucydides, bk. 2, ch. 6. Tr. Richard Crawley (1874)

• Women's liberation could have not succeeded if science had not provided them with contraception and household technology.
  • Max Ferdinand Perutz, "The Impact of Science on Society: The Challenge for Education", in J. L. Lewis and P. J. Kelly (eds.), Science and Technology and Future Human Needs (1987), p. 18

• Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.
  • 1 Peter 3:7 (KJV)

• In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant.
  • No woman shall succeed in Salic land.
  • Attributed to Pharamond, in Henry V, act 1, sc. 2, l. 40 (loq. Canterbury)

• Those who always speak well of women do not know them sufficiently; those who always speak ill of them do not know them at all.
  • Pigault-Lebrun (d. 1835). Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 892

• Every woman adores a Fascist,
  The boot in the face, the brute
  Brute heart of a brute like you.
  • Sylvia Plath, "Daddy" (wr. 1963); Ariel (1965)

• Out of the ash
  I rise with my red hair
  And I eat men like air.
  • Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus" (wr. 1962); Ariel (1965)

• In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
  Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
  • Sylvia Plath, "Mirror" (wr. 1961); Crossing the Water (1971)

• Nam multum loquaces merito omnes habemus,
  Nec mutam profecto repertam ullam esse
  Hodie dicunt mulierem ullo in seculo.
  • I know that we women are all justly accounted praters; they say in the present day that there never was in any age such a wonder to be found as a dumb woman.
  • Plautus, Aulularia, act 2. sc. 1, l. 5

• Multa sunt mulierum vitia, sed hoc e multis maximum,
  Cum sibi nimis placent, nimisque operam dant ut placeant viris.
  • Women have many faults, but of the many this is the greatest, that they please themselves too much, and give too little attention to pleasing the men.
  • Plautus, Pœnulus, act 5, sc. 4, l. 33

• Mulieri nimio male facere melius est onus, quam bene.
  • A woman finds it much easier to do ill than well.
  • Plautus, Truculentus, act 2, sc. 5, l. 17
  • Translations from Plautus reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 892

• Oh! say not woman's heart is bought
  With vain and empty treasure.
  * * * * *
  Deep in her heart the passion glows;
  She loves and loves forever.
  • Isaac Pocock, "Song", in The Heir of Veroni (1817)

• Most women have no characters at all.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), ep. 2, l. 2

• Ladies, like variegated tulips, show
  'Tis to their changes half their charms we owe.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), ep. 2, l. 41

• Offend her, and she knows not to forgive;
  Oblige her, and she'll hate you while you live.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), ep. 2, l. 137

• Men some to business, some to pleasure take;
  But every woman is at heart a rake;
  Men some to quiet, some to public strife;
  But every lady would be queen for life.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), ep. 2, l. 215

• O! bless'd with temper, whose unclouded ray
  Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day;
  She who can own a sister's charms, or hear
  Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear;
  She who ne'er answers till a husband cools,
  Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules.
  Charms by accepting, by submitting sways,
  Yet has her humour most when she obeys.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), ep. 2, l. 257

• And mistress of herself, though china fall.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), ep. 2, l. 268

• Woman's at best a contradiction still.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), ep. 2, l. 270

• Our grandsire, Adam, ere of Eve possesst,
  Alone, and e'en in Paradise unblest,
  With mournful looks the blissful scenes survey'd,
  And wander'd in the solitary shade.
  The Maker saw, took pity, and bestow'd
  Woman, the last, the best reserv'd of God.
  • Alexander Pope, "January and May", l. 63, in Works (1717), after Chaucer's "Merchant's Tale"

• Give God thy broken heart, He whole will make it:
  Give woman thy whole heart, and she will break it.
  • Edmund Prestwich, "The Broken Heart", Hippolitus, Translated out of Seneca (1651), p. 137

• That if weak women went astray,
  Their stars were more in fault than they.
  • Matthew Prior, "De la Fontaine's Hans Carvel, Imitated", Poems on Several Occasions (1709), p. 109

• Be to her virtues very kind;
  Be to her faults a little blind.
  Let all her ways be unconfin'd;
  And clap your padlock—on her mind.
  • Matthew Prior, An English Padlock (1705), l. 79

• The gray mare will prove the better horse.
  • Matthew Prior, Epilogue to Lucius. Last line. Butler, Hudibras, pt. 2, canto 50, l. 698. Fielding—The Grub Street Opera, act 2, sc. 4. Pryde and Abuse of Women (1550). The Marriage of True Wit and Science. Macaulay—History of England, vol. 1, ch. 3. Footnote suggests it arose from the preference generally given to the gray mares of Flanders over the finest coach horses of England. Proverb traced to Holland (1546). Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 893

As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion. —Proverbs

• As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion.
  • Proverbs 11:22 (KJV)

• It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman.
  • Proverbs 21:19 (ESV)
  • It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house. (KJV)

• Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.
  • Proverbs 31:10 (KJV)

• Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised.
  • Proverbs 31:30 (KJV)

• Kings’ daughters were among thy honourable women: upon thy right hand did stand the queen in a vesture of gold, wrought about with divers colours.
  • Psalm 45:10 (KJV)

• The King’s daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold. She shall be brought unto the King in raiment of needlework: the virgins that be her fellows shall bear her company, and shall be brought unto thee.
  • Psalm 45:14 (KJV)

• Instead of thy fathers thou shalt have children: whom thou mayest make princes in all lands.
  • Psalm 45:17 (KJV)

Q

• Like to the falling of a star,
  * * * *
  Like to the damask rose you see,
  Or like the blossom on the tree.
  • Francis Quarles, Argalus and Parthenia (1629). Claimed by him but attributed to John Phillipot (Philpott) in Harleian Manuscript, 3917, fol. 88 b., a fragment written about the time of James I. Credited to Simon Wastell (1629) by Mackay, as it is appended to his Microbiblion. Said to be an imitation of an earlier poem by Bishop Henry King. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 893

R

I am woman, hear me roar.
—Helen Reddy

The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun

• If she undervalue me,
  What care I how fair she be?
  • Attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh

• If she seem not chaste to me,
  What care I how chaste she be?
  • Attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh
  • J. Hannah (ed.) The Poems of Sir Walter Raleigh (George Bell & Sons, 1910), p. 82

• I am woman, hear me roar.
  • Helen Reddy and Ray Burton, I Am Woman (song), 1972.

• And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
  • Revelation 12:1-2 (KJV)

• And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.
  • Revelation 12:5-6 (KJV)

• That, let us rail at women, scorn and flout 'em,
  We may live with, but cannot live without 'em.
  • Frederick Reynolds, The Will (1797), act 3

• Such a plot must have a woman in it.
  • Samuel Richardson, Sir Charles Grandison (1753–1754), vol. 1, letter 24

• A woman is the most inconsistent compound of obstinacy and self-sacrifice that I am acquainted with.
  • Jean Paul Richter, Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces (1796), ch. 5

• O wild, dark flower of woman,
  Deep rose of my desire,
  An Eastern wizard made you
  Of earth and stars and fire.
  • Charles G. D. Roberts, "The Rose of my Desire", The Book of the Rose (1903), p. 14

• There exists a most ancient saying, "Where women are revered and safeguarded, prosperity reigns and the gods rejoice."
  • Helena Roerich, Letter (5 April 1938), in Letters of Helena Roerich, vol. 2

• I remember when OB tampons came out and you could hold them in your hand, and I'd walk down the hall holding my little OB tampon and I thought, "If I open my hand and show this to anybody, the whole building is going to explode."
  • Judy Roitman, mathematician, quoted by Claudia Henrion in Women in Mathematics: The Addition of Difference (1997)

• C'est chose qui moult me deplaist,
  Quand poule parle et coq se taist.
  • It is a thing very displeasing to me when the hen speaks and the cock is silent.
  • Roman de la Rose (14th century). Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 893

• ... there will be a woman President some day, but that day is not yet here. We women still have to prove ourselves, and at the present moment I do not think the country as a whole would have enough confidence in a woman, and without that confidence and cooperation she could not do a good job. Before we have a woman President we will have to have more women Governors of the States, more women in the Senate, and in Congress. The women who have served in those capacities have done good jobs, but they are far too few to create the confidence necessary
  • Eleanor Roosevelt, 16 June 1937, as quoted in David M. Dismore, "Today in Feminist History: Eleanor Roosevelt Says a Woman Will Be President", Ms. magazine (16 June 2020)

• Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
  (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve)
  That ere the snakes, her sweet tongue could deceive
  And her enchanted hair was the first gold—
  And still she sits, young while the earth is old
  And, subtly of herself contemplative,
  Draws men to watch the bright net she can weave,
  Till heart and body and life are in its hold.
  • Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "Body's Beauty", Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition (1868)

• Toute fille lettrée restera fille toute sa vie, quand il n'y aura que des hommes sensés sur la terre.
  • Every blue-stocking will remain a spinster as long as there are sensible men on the earth.
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile: or, On Education (1762), bk. 5

• Une femme bel-esprit est le fléau de son mari, de ses enfants, de ses amis, de ses valets, de tout le monde.
  • A blue-stocking is the scourge of her husband, children, friends, servants, and every one.
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile: or, On Education (1762), bk. 5

• Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.
  • Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish", Unpopular Essays (1950)

• And one false step entirely damns her fame.
  In vain with tears the loss she may deplore,
  In vain look back on what she was before;
  She sets like stars that fall, to rise no more.
  • Nicholas Rowe, Jane Shore (1714), act 1

• We're living through the most misogynistic period I've experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls. Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world's long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of grabbing them by the pussy, to the incel ("involuntarily celibate") movement that rages against women who won't give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.
  • J. K. Rowling, "J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues", J.K. Rowling website (10 June 2020)

• Not only am I scared of big, strong men, I'm scared of mean little women. It's just little skinny men and nice big women that I get along with.
  • Rudy Rucker, The Sex Sphere (1983), p. 40

• This brought back the sick, ashamed feeling I'd woken up with. I was no better than some geek with a foam-rubber woman's torso like they advertise in Hustler. What a pathetic, twisted version of womanhood: all the "inessential" parts lopped off, nothing left behind but tits and ass and holes. Lifelike washable plastic skin. Greek and French features. But yet, in a way, wasn't the sex sphere always what I'd wanted in a woman? An ugly truth there. "Shut up and spread!" How many times had I told Sybil that, if not in so many words?
  • Rudy Rucker, The Sex Sphere (1983), p. 69

• And behind every man who's a failure there's a woman, too!
  • John Ruge, cartoon caption, Playboy (March 1967), p. 138

• Queens you must always be: queens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and your sons, queens of higher mystery to the world beyond.... But, alas! you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest.
  • John Ruskin, quoted on the title page of D. M. Mulock, The Woman's Kingdom (1869). Reported in Notes and Queries, 7th s., vol. 5 (30 June 1888), p. 508

S

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety.
—Shakespeare

• That woman, as nature has created her, and man at present is educating her, is man's enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. This she can become only when she has the same rights as he and is his equal in education and work.
  • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs (1870), translated from the German by Uwe Moeller and Laura Lindgren (1928)

• Ne l'onde solca, e ne l'arena semina,
  E'l vago vento spera in rete accogliere
  Chi sue speranze fonda in cor di femina.
  • He ploughs the waves, sows the sand, and hopes to gather the wind in a net, who places his hopes on the heart of woman.
  • Jacopo Sannazaro, Ecloga Octava; "Plough the sands" found in Juvenal, Satires, no. 7. Jeremy Taylor, Discourse on Liberty of Prophesying (1647), introduction

• Such, Polly, are your sex—part truth, part fiction;
  Some thought, much whim, and all a contradiction.
  • Richard Savage, "To a Young Lady", Works, vol. 2 (1775), p. 168

• Ehret die Frauen! sie flechten und weben
  Himmlische Rosen in's irdische Leben.
  • Honor women! they entwine and weave heavenly roses in our earthly life.
  • Friedrich Schiller, Würde der Frauen (1796). Tr. reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 894

• The weakness of their reasoning faculty also explains why women show more sympathy for the unfortunate than men;... and why, on the contrary, they are inferior to men as regards justice, and less honourable and conscientious.
  • Arthur Schopenhauer, "On Women"

• ... the fundamental fault of the female character is that it has no sense of justice. This is mainly due to the fact... that women are defective in the powers of reasoning and deliberation; but it is also traceable to the position which Nature has assigned to them as the weaker sex. They are dependent, not upon strength, but upon craft; and hence their instinctive capacity for cunning, and their ineradicable tendency to say what is not true. For as lions are provided with claws and teeth, and elephants and boars with tusks, bulls with horns, and cuttle fish with its clouds of inky fluid, so Nature has equipped woman, for her defense and protection, with the arts of dissimulation.
  • Arthur Schopenhauer, "On Women"
  • T. B. Saunders, Studies in Pessimism (1913), pp. 108–10

• Woman's faith, and woman's trust,
  Write the characters in dust.
  • Walter Scott, The Betrothed (1825), ch. 20

• Widowed wife and wedded maid.
  • Walter Scott, The Betrothed (1825), ch. 28

• O Woman! in our hours of ease,
  Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
  And variable as the shade
  By the light quivering aspen made;
  When pain and anguish wring the brow,
  A ministering angel thou!
  • Walter Scott, Marmion (1808), canto 6, st. 30

• A woman's notes will not signify much truly, no more than her tongue.
  • William Scroggs, L.C.J., Trial of Richard Langhorn (1679), 7 How. St. Tr. 437

• Women had prerogative in deliberative sessions touching either peace-government, or martial affairs.
  • On the custom of the ancient Britons; Selden's Works, vol. 3, p. 10, cited in Chorlton v. Lings (1868), L.R. 4 C.P. 389

• Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
  Her infinite variety.
  • William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (1600s), act 2, sc. 2, l. 240

If ladies be but young and fair,
They have the gift to know it.
—Shakespeare

• If ladies be but young and fair,
  They have the gift to know it.
  • William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), act 2, sc. 7, l. 37

• Run, run, Orlando: carve on every tree
  The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she.
  • William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c. 1599–1600), act 3, sc. 2, l. 9

• I thank God I am not a woman, to be touched with so many giddy offences as He hath generally taxed their whole sex withal.
  • William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c. 1599–1600), act 3, sc. 2, l. 366

• Is there no way for men to be, but women
  Must be half-workers?
  • William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), act 2, sc. 5, l. 1

• O most delicate fiend!
  Who is't can read a woman?
  • William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), act 5, sc. 5, l. 47

• Frailty, thy name is woman!—
  A little month, or ere those shoes were old
  With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
  Like Niobe, all tears;—why she, even she,
  * * * married with my uncle.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (c. 1600), act 1, sc. 2, l. 146

• And is not my hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench?
  As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1 (c. 1597), act 1, sc. 2, l. 45.

• 'Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud;
  But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small:
  'Tis virtue that doth make them most admired;
  The contrary doth make thee wondered at:
  'Tis government that makes them seem divine.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3 (c. 1591), act 1, sc. 4, l. 128

• Women are soft, mild, pitiful and flexible;
  Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3 (c. 1591), act 1, sc. 4

• Her sighs will make a battery in his breast;
  Her tears will pierce into a marble heart;
  The tiger will be mild whiles she doth mourn;
  And Nero will be tainted with remorse,
  To hear and see her plaints.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3 (c. 1591), act 3, sc. 1, l. 37

• Two women plac'd together makes cold weather.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (c. 1613), act 1, sc. 4, l. 22

• I grant I am a woman, but withal,
  A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife:
  I grant I am a woman; but withal
  A woman well-reputed; Cato's daughter.
  • William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), act 2, sc. 1, l. 292 (loq. Portia)

• O constancy! be strong upon my side;
  Set a huge mountain ’tween my heart and tongue;
  I have a man’s mind, but a woman’s might.
  How hard it is for women to keep counsel!
  • William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), act 2, sc. 4, l. 6 (loq. Portia)

• Ah me, how weak a thing
  The heart of woman is!
  • William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), act 2, sc. 4, l. 39 (loq. Portia)

• She in beauty, education, blood,
  Holds hand with any princess of the world.
  • William Shakespeare, King John (1598), act 2, sc. 1, l. 493

• There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608), act 3, sc. 2, l. 35

But to the girdle do the Gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiends’.
—Shakespeare

• The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to’t
  With a more riotous appetite.
  Down from the waist they are Centaurs,
  Though women all above:
  But to the girdle do the Gods inherit,
  Beneath is all the fiends’.
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608), act 4, sc. 6

• Her voice was ever soft,
  Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman.
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608), act 5, sc. 3

• A child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman.
  • William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595-6), act 1, sc. 1, l. 266

• From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:
  They are the ground, the books, the academes,
  From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.
  • William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour's Lost (c. 1595-6), act 4, sc. 3

• From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:
  They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
  They are the books, the arts, the academes,
  That show, contain, and nourish all the world.
  • William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595-6), act 4, sc. 3

• Fair ladies mask'd are roses in their bud:
  Dismask'd, their damask sweet commixture shown,
  Are angels veiling clouds, or roses blown.
  • William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595-6), act 5, sc. 2, l. 295

• You should be women,
  And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
  That you are so.
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1606), act 1, sc. 3, l. 39 (loq. Banquo)

• Come, you spirits
  That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here...
  Come to my woman’s breasts,
  And take my milk for gall.
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1606), act 1, sc. 5 (loq. Lady Macbeth)

• Would it not grieve a woman to be overmaster'd with a piece of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a cloud of wayward marl?
  • William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), act 2, sc. 1, l. 63

• She speaks poniards, and every word stabs: if her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near her; she would infect to the north star.
  • William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), act 2, sc. 1, l. 255

• One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am well: another virtuous, yet I am well; but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace.
  • William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598–99), act 2, sc. 3, l. 27

• A maid
  That paragons description and wild fame;
  One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens,
  And in the essential vesture of creation
  Does tire the ingener.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), act 2, sc. 1, l. 61 (loq. Cassio)

• You are pictures out of doors,
  Bells in your parlours, wild-cats in your kitchens,
  Saints in your injuries, devils being offended,
  Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), act 2, sc. 1, l. 110 (loq. Iago)

• And have not we affections,
  Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?
  Then let them use us well: else let them know,
  The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), act 4, sc. 3 (loq. Emilia)

• Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), act 5, sc. 2 (loq. Othello)

• Have you not heard it said full oft,
  A woman's nay doth stand for nought?
  • William Shakespeare, The Passionate Pilgrim (c. 1599–1602), l. 339

• Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?
  Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
  * * * * * *
  Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
  And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
  * * * * * *
  And do you tell me of a woman's tongue,
  That gives not half so great a blow to hear
  As will a chestnut in a farmer's fire?
  • William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1593–94), act 1, sc. 2, l. 200

• Why, then thou canst not break her to the lute?
  Why, no; for she hath broke the lute to me.
  • William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1593-94), act 2, sc. 1, l. 148

• Say that she rail, why then I'll tell her plain
  She sings as sweetly as a nightingale;
  Say that she frown; I'll say she looks as clear
  As morning roses newly wash'd with dew;
  Say she be mute and will not speak a word;
  Then I'll commend her volubility,
  And say she uttereth piercing eloquence.
  • William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1593-94), act 2, sc. 1, l. 171

• A woman mov'd is like a fountain troubled,
  Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.
  • William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1593-94), act 5, sc. 2, l. 142

• I am ashamed that women are so simple
  To offer war where they should kneel for peace.
  • William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1593-94), act 5, sc. 2

• Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,
  Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
  But that our soft conditions and our hearts
  Should well agree with our external parts?
  • William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1593-94), act 5, sc. 2, l. 165

• Muse not that I thus suddenly proceed;
  For what I will, I will, and there an end.
  • William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590s), act 1, sc. 3, l. 64

• To be slow in words is a woman's only virtue.
  • William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590s), act 3, sc. 1, l. 338

• Thou dotard! Thou art woman-tir’d, unroosted
  By thy Dame Partlet here.
  • William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), act 2, sc. 3

• If, one by one, you wedded all the world,
  Or from the all that are took something good,
  To make a perfect woman, she you kill'd
  Would be unparallel'd.
  • William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), act 5, sc. 1, l. 13

•    Women are angels, wooing:
  Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing;
  That she beloved knows nought that knows not this:
  Men prize the thing ungained more than it is.
  • William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), act 1, sc. 2

• Women will love her that she is a woman
  More worth than any man; men, that she is
  The rarest of all women.
  • William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), act 5, sc. 1, l. 110

• In the beginning, said a Persian poet—Allah took a rose, a lily, a dove, a serpent, a little honey, a Dead Sea apple, and a handful of clay. When he looked at the amalgam—it was a woman.
  • William Sharp, in the Portfolio magazine (July 1894), p. 6

• Man was made when Nature was but an apprentice, but woman when she was a skilful mistress of her art.
  • Edward Sharpham, Cupid's Whirligig (1607)

• Woman's dearest delight is to wound Man's self-conceit, though Man's dearest delight is to gratify hers.
  • Bernard Shaw, Unsocial Socialist (wr. 1883; pub. 1887), ch. 5

• You sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanishness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly.
  • Bernard Shaw, Unsocial Socialist (wr. 1883; pub. 1887), ch. 18

• Women, for the sake of their children and parents, submit to slaveries and prostitutions that no unattached woman would endure.
  • Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion (1916), preface

• Woman reduces us all to the common denominator.
  • Bernard Shaw, Great Catherine: Whom Glory Still Adores (1913), sc. 1

• The fickleness of the woman I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
  • Bernard Shaw, The Philanderer (wr. 1893; debuted 1902), act 2

• Home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s workhouse.
  • Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903), "Maxims: Women in the Home"

• A lovely lady garmented in light.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Witch of Atlas (wr. 1820; pub. 1824), st. 5

• One moral's plain, * * * without more fuss;
  Man's social happiness all rests on us:
  Through all the drama—whether damn'd! or not—
  Love gilds the scene, and women guide the plot.
  • Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Rivals (1775), epilogue

• She is her selfe of best things the collection.
  • Sir Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (1593), "Thirsis and Dorus"

• Lor', but women's rum cattle to deal with, the first man found that to his cost,
  And I reckon it's just through a woman the last man on earth'll be lost.
  • George Robert Sims, "Moll Jarvis o' Morley", The Dagonet Ballads (1879), p. 104

• She is the vyolet,
  The daysy delectable,
  The columbine commendable,
  The jelofer amyable;
  For this most goodly floure,
  This blossom of fressh colour,
  So Jupiter me succour,
  She florysheth new and new
  In beaute and vertew.
  • John Skelton, "The Commendacions of maystres Jane Scrope"

• With solace and gladnes,
  Moche mirthe and no madnes,
  All good and no badnes,
  So joyously,
  So maydenly,
  So womanly
  Her demenying
  In every thynge.
• Far may be sought
  Erst that ye can fynde
  So corteise, so kynde
  As mirry Margarete,
  This midsomer flowre,
  Jentyll as fawcoun
  Or hawke of the towre.
  • John Skelton, "To maystres Margaret Hussey"

• By saynt Mary, my lady,
  Your mammy and your dady
  Brought forth a godely babi!
  • John Skelton, "To maystres Isabell Pennell"
  • Alexander Dyce (ed.) The Poetical Works of John Skelton, 2 vols. (1843)

• If we are to use women for the same things as the men, we must also teach them the same things.
  • Socrates, as quoted by Dr. Bettany Hughes Telegraph

• What wilt not woman, gentle woman, dare
  When strong affection stirs her spirit up?
  • Robert Southey, Madoc in Wales (1805), pt. 2, 2

• The state will only ever be a half of itself.
  • Socrates in Plato's Republic; on women lacking rights.

• I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.
  • Song of Songs 2:1 (KJV)

• Νῦν δ' οὐδέν εἰμι χωρίς.
  • Away from home I am nothing.
  • Sophocles, fragment of the lost Tereus, quoted by Stobaeus, Florilegium, 68, 19. C. M. Bowra, OBGVT (1938), p. 338. Cf. Philomela and Procne

We are... infinitely superior to men, and if we were free and developed, healthy in body and mind, as we should be under natural conditions, our motherhood would be our glory.
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton

• The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her... He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective to the franchise. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she has no voice... Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise , thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, her has oppressed her on all sides. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments at the Seneca Falls Convention, printed in the North Star (28 July 1848)

• The darkest page in history is the persecutions of woman.
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman's Bible (1898)

• Men think that self-sacrifice is the most charming of all the cardinal virtues for women, and in order to keep it in healthy working order, they make opportunities for its illustration as often as possible. I would fain teach women that self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman's Bible (1898)

• The only points in which I differ from all ecclesiastical teaching is that I do not believe that any man ever saw or talked with God, I do not believe that God inspired the Mosaic code, or told the historians what they say he did about woman, for all the religions on the face of the earth degrade her, and so long as woman accepts the position that they assign her, her emancipation is impossible.
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman's Bible (1898)

• Accepting the view that man was prior in the creation, some Scriptural writers say that as the woman was of the man, therefore, her position should be one of subjection. Grant it, then as the historical fact is reversed in our day, and the man is now of the woman, shall his place be one of subjection?
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman's Bible (1898)

• In the criminal code we find no feminine pronouns, as "He," "His," "Him," we are arrested, tried and hung, but singularly enough, we are denied the highest privileges of citizens, because the pronouns "She," "Hers" and "Her," are not found in the constitutions. It is a pertinent question, if women can pay the penalties of their crimes as "He," why may they not enjoy the privileges of citizens as "He"?
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman's Bible (1898)

• He beheld his own rougher make softened into sweetness, and tempered with smiles; he saw a creature who had, as it were, Heaven's second thought in her formation.
  • Richard Steele, The Christian Hero (1701), of Adam awaking, and first seeing Eve

• She is pretty to walk with,
  And witty to talk with,
  And pleasant too, to think on.
  • Sir John Suckling, Brennoralt (1639; pub. 1646), act 2, sc. 1

• If of herself she will not love,
  Nothing can make her:
  The devil take her!
  • Sir John Suckling, "Song", in Aglaura (1638); Fragmenta Aurea (1646)

• Women never look so well as when one comes in wet and dirty from hunting.
  • R. S. Surtees, Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour (1853), ch. 21

• Daphne knows, with equal ease,
  How to vex and how to please;
  But the folly of her sex
  Makes her sole delight to vex.
  • Jonathan Swift, "Daphne"

• Lose no time to contradict her,
  Nor endeavour to convict her;
  Only take this rule along,
  Always to advise her wrong,
  And reprove her when she's right;
  She may then crow wise for spite.
  • Jonathan Swift, "Daphne"
  • The Poems of Jonathan Swift, vol. 2 (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1910)

• Aperte mala quum est mulier, tum demum est bona.
  • When a woman is openly bad, then at least she is honest.
  • Publilius Syrus, 20. Reported in King (1904), p. 18, no. 138

T

• Neque fœmina, amissa pudicitia, alia abnuerit.
  • Once a woman has lost her chastity, she will refuse nothing.
  • Tacitus, Annales, bk. 4, ch. 3. Reported in King (1904), p. 216, no. 1670

• O Woman, you are not merely the handiwork of God, but also of men; these are ever endowing you with beauty from their own hearts. ... You are one-half woman and one-half dream.
  • Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener (1915), st. 59

• One way to hold a woman is not to hold her.
  • Gay Talese, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold (April 1966)

• I read somewhere that their periods attract bears. The bears can smell the menstruation.
  • Brick Tamland, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

• Femmina è cosa garrula e fallace:
  Vuole e disvuole, è folle uom chi sen fida,
  Si tra se volge.
  • Women have tongues of craft, and hearts of guile,
    They will, they will not; fools that on them trust;
    For in their speech is death, hell in their smile.
  • Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme (1581), bk. 19, st. 84. Tr. Edward Fairfax (1600)

• All virtuous women, like tortoises, carry their house on their heads, and their chappel in their heart, and their danger in their eye, and their souls in their hands, and God in all their actions.
  • Jeremy Taylor, Life of Christ (1649), pt. 1, sec. 2, par. 4
  • The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor, vol. 2 (London: Ogle, Duncan, and Co., 1822), p. 13

A woman's honor rests on manly love. —Esaias Tegnér

• A woman's honor rests on manly love.
  • Esaias Tegnér, Fridthjof's Saga (1825), canto 8
  • Tr. Thomas A. E. Holcomb and Martha A. Lyon Holcomb (Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co., 1877), p. 78

• Airy, fairy Lilian.
  • Alfred Tennyson, "Lilian", Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830)

• Woman is the lesser man.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall (1835; pub. 1842), st. 76

• With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,
  And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.
  • Alfred Tennyson, The Princess (1847), prologue, l. 141

• A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,
  And sweet as English air could make her, she.
  • Alfred Tennyson, The Princess (1847), prologue, l. 153

• The woman is so hard
  Upon the woman.
  • Alfred Tennyson, The Princess (1847), VI

• For woman is not undeveloped man
  But diverse; could we make her as the man
  Sweet love were slain; his dearest bond is this
  Not like to like but like in difference.
  • Alfred Tennyson, The Princess (1847), VII

• Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Maud; A Monodrama (1855), pt. 1, XXII, st. 9

• For men at most differ as Heaven and Earth,
  But women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (pub. 1859–1885), "Merlin and Vivian"

• She with all the charm of woman,
  She with all the breadth of man.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), l. 48

• Novi ingenium mulierum;
  Nolunt ubi velis, ubi nolis cupiunt ultro.
  • I know the nature of women. When you will, they will not; when you will not, they come of their own accord.
  • Terence, Eunuchus, act 4, sc. 7. l. 42. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 896

• When I say that I know women, I mean that I know that I don't know them. Every single woman I ever knew is a puzzle to me, as I have no doubt she is to herself.
  • William Makepeace Thackeray, Mr. Brown's Letters (1853)

• Since the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it.
  • William Makepeace Thackeray, The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844), ch. 1

• In describing this syren, singing and smiling, coaxing and cajoling, the author, with modest pride, asks his readers all around, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tale above water? No! Those who like may peep down under waves that are pretty transparent, and see it writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or curling round corpses; but above the water-line, I ask, has not everything been proper, agreeable, and decorous...?
  • William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1848), p. 577

I tell you, it's a whole different sex!

• Will you look at that! Look how she moves! It's like Jell-O on springs. Must have some sort of built-in motor or something. I tell you, it's a whole different sex!
  • Jerry (Jack Lemon) describing Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe) in Some Like It Hot (1959 film), written by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan

Oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know. —Tolkien

• Do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know.
  • J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), "Farewell to Lórien" (loq. Celeborn)

• Regard the society of women as a necessary unpleasantness of social life, and avoid it as much as possible.
  • Leo Tolstoy, Diary entry

• Woman is more impressionable than man. Therefore in the Golden Age they were better than men. Now they are worse.
  • Leo Tolstoy, Diary entry
  • Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 896

• With many women I doubt whether there be any more effectual way of touching their hearts than ill-using them and then confessing it. If you wish to get the sweetest fragrance from the herb at your feet, tread on it and bruise it.
  • Anthony Trollope, Miss Mackenzie (1865), ch. 10

• You have to treat 'em like s___.
  • Donald Trump, speaking to Philip Johnson in September 1992; as quoted in Julie Baumgold, "Fighting Back: Trump Scrambles Off the Canvas", New York magazine (November 9, 1992), p. 43

• I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.... Grab 'em by the pussy.
  • Donald Trump, Access Hollywood tape (2005)

• I love beautiful women, and beautiful women love me. It has to be both ways.
  • Donald Trump, as quoted in Al Cimino (ed.) Trump Talking: The Donald, in His Own Words (2016), p. 135

• He is a fool who thinks by force or skill
  To turn the current of a woman's will.
  • Sir Samuel Tuke, 1st Baronet, The Adventures of Five Hours (1663), act 5, sc. 3, l. 483

V

The husband enhances the beauty of a woman more than her ornaments. —Valmiki

• She was lovely like an indistinct lunar disc, like a streak of gold covered with dust, like a golden reed broken by the wind, like a scar left by an arrow!
  • Valmiki, Ramayana, bk. 5, ch. 5, v. 26 (tr. Makhan Lal Sen)

• The husband enhances the beauty of a woman more than her ornaments.
  • Valmiki, Ramayana, bk. 5, ch. 16, v. 26 (tr. Makhan Lal Sen). cf. Cornelia

• "Shariputra, who is not a woman, appears in a woman's body. And the same is true of all women-though they appear in women's bodies, they are not women. Therefore the Buddha teaches that all phenomena are neither male nor female."
  • Vimalakirti Sutra, ch. 7 (tr. Burton Watson, 2000)

• A slighted woman knows no bounds.
  • John Vanbrugh, The Mistake (1705), pt. 1, act 2, sc. 1

• Let our weakness be what it will, mankind will still be weaker; and whilst there is a world, 'tis woman that will govern it.
  • John Vanbrugh, The Provoked Wife, act 3 (1697)

A woman is always changeable and capricious. —Virgil

• Dux femina facti.
  • A woman was leader in the deed.
  • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), bk. 1, l. 364

•    Varium et mutabile semper,
  Femina.
  • A woman is always changeable and capricious.
  • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), bk. 4, l. 569

• Furens quid fœmina possit.
  • That which an enraged woman can accomplish.
  • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), bk. 5, l. 6

• Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.
  • Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique portatif (1764), "Women"

• All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.
  • Voltaire. Reported in Hoyt's (1922), p. 897

• "Woman" must ever be a woman's highest name,
  And honors more than "Lady," if I know right.
  • Walter von der Vogelweide, in A. E. Kroeger, The Minnesinger of Germany (1873), p. 43

W

• My wife is one of the best wimin on this Continent, altho' she isn't always gentle as a lamb with mint sauce.
  • Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne), "A War Meeting", Artemus Ward, His Travels (1865)

• She is not old, she is not young,
  The Woman with the Serpent's Tongue.
  The haggard cheek, the hungering eye,
  The poisoned words that wildly fly,
  The famished face, the fevered hand—
  Who slights the worthiest in the land,
  Sneers at the just, contemns the brave,
  And blackens goodness in its grave.
  • William Watson, "The Woman with the Serpent's Tongue", New Poems (1909), p. 64

• Ferdinand: And women like that part which, like the lamprey,
  Hath never a bone in’t.
  Duchess: Fie, sir!
  Ferdinand: Nay,
  I mean the tongue; variety of courtship:
  What cannot a neat knave with a smooth tale
  Make a woman believe?
  • John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (1623), act 1, sc. 2

• Unequal nature, to place women’s hearts
  So far upon the left side.
  • John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (1623), act 2, sc. 5
  • C. B. Wheeler (ed.) Six Plays by Contemporaries of Shakespeare (1915)

• There’s nothing sooner dry than women’s tears.
  • John Webster, The White Devil (1612), act 5, sc. 3

• Natalie had left the wives and joined the women.
  • Fay Weldon, The Heart of the Country (1987), p. 51

• Not from his head was woman took,
  As made her husband to o'erlook;
  Not from his feet, as one designed
  The footstool of the stronger kind;
  But fashioned for himself, a bride;
  An equal, taken from his side.
  • Charles Wesley, Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures (1762)

• All fiefs were originally masculine, and women were excluded from the succession of them because they cannot keep secrets.
  • Richard West, An Inquiry into the Manner of Creating Peers, 44

• Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the men,
  Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men;
  Where the city of the faithfullest friends stands,
  Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands,
  Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands,
  Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,
  There the great city stands.
  • Walt Whitman, "Song of the Broad-Axe"; entitled "Broad-Axe Poem" in Leaves of Grass (1856); retitled (1867)

• Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.
  • Charlotte Whitton, in Canada Month (June, 1963), as reported in James B. Simpson (ed.) Contemporary Quotations (1964), p. 286. Also quoted, without the last sentence, in the Arlington Heights Herald (August 26, 1965), p. 49

• Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.
  • Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

• Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to do something for them.
  • Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

• Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
  • Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

• There are only two kinds of women, the plain and the coloured.
  • Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), ch. 3. Same in Woman of No Importance, act 3

• Oh! no one. No one in particular. A woman of no importance.
  • Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893), act 1

• One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.
  • Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893), act 1, in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, vol. 7 (1923), p. 197. Lord Illingworth is speaking.

• All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
  • Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), act 1

• Angels listen when she speaks;
  She's my delight, all mankind's wonder;
  But my jealous heart would break
  Should we live one day asunder.
  • John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, "Song: My Dear Mistress has a Heart", st. 2
  • Vivian de Sola Pinto (ed.) Poems by John Wilmot Earl of Rochester, 2nd ed. (Harvard UP, 1964), p. 35

• "Whatever a woman is," Wendre said, "she's that second and a woman first."
  • Jack Williamson and James E. Gunn, Star Bridge (1955), ch. 21

• Our government should not be run like a business; it should be run like a family... Our system was designed before women had a voice in the public realm, and raising children was deemed to just be "women's work." But we certainly have a voice now, and we need to raise it on behalf of every mother's child... In any advanced mammalian species that survives and thrives, a common characteristic is the fierce behavior of the adult female of the species when she senses a threat to her cubs. Ours are threatened now, and we need to get fierce.
  • Marianne Williamson, If We Want a Prosperous America Tomorrow, Take Care of Our Children Today, Newsweek (23 July 2020)

• Too many people have taken the incels’ explanation of their own virulent misogyny at face value, and repeated the comfortable line that these men stand apart from all others. Along with influential columnists, even economists have endorsed the idea of “sexual marketplace”, wherein women are figured as a commodity, and some men have inadequate buying power to procure. (Most have been too polite to mention many incels’ accompanying belief that the world, and women, are so corrupted that sex is beneath them.)
  • Jason Wilson, "What do incels, fascists and terrorists have in common? Violent misogyny", The Guardian, (4, May 2018)

• Shall I, wasting in despair,
  Die because a woman's fair?
  Or make pale my cheeks with care
  'Cause another's rosy are?
  Be she fairer than the day,
  Or the flow'ry meads in May;
  If she be not so to me,
  What care I how fair she be?
  • George Wither, "Mistresse of Philarete", reported in Percy's Reliques (1765)

• Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
  • Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), ch. 3

• A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
  • Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929), ch. 1

• Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size.
  • Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929), ch. 2

• A Creature not too bright or good
  For human nature's daily food;
  For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
  Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.
  • William Wordsworth, "She was a Phantom of Delight"

• And now I see with eye serene,
  The very pulse of the machine;
  A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
  A Traveller betwixt life and death;
  The reason firm, the temperate will,
  Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill.
  • William Wordsworth, "She was a Phantom of Delight"

• A perfect Woman, nobly planned
  To warn, to comfort, and command.
  • William Wordsworth, "She was a Phantom of Delight"

• She was a Phantom of delight
  When first she gleamed upon my sight;
  A lovely Apparition, sent
  To be a moment's ornament.
  • William Wordsworth, "She was a Phantom of Delight"

• Thou, while thy babes around thee cling,
  Shalt show us how divine a thing
  A Woman may be made.
  • William Wordsworth, "To a Young Lady, who had been reproached for taking long Walks in the Country"
  • Poems, in Two Volumes (1807)

X

• How sad it is to be a woman!
  Nothing on earth is held so cheap.
  • Fu Xuan, tr. Arthur Waley, A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1922), p. 94

Y

•    And beautiful as sweet!
  And young as beautiful! and soft as young!
  And gay as soft! and innocent as gay.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742–5), night 3, l. 81

See also

• Gender
• Goddess
• Feminism
• Human
• Man
• Misogyny
• Mothers
• Pregnancy
• Wives

External links

Wikipedia

Wikipedia has an article about:

Women

Wikisource

Wikisource has original works on the topic:

Women

• W. F. H. King (ed.) Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), woman, 432, 606, 673, 1440a, 1839; a bad w., 138, 1670, 2448, 2488; a learned, 2596; a rich, 1126; woman’s best ornament, 863; w., either loves or hates, 190, 3022; 'a woman in every case', 317; women, 374, 438, 1440a, 1586, 2607, 2824, 3068; are all-powerful, 3072; are the comfort, 3101, and fragrance, 627, of life; and make the manners, 483, and morals, 1363, of society; are always in extremes, 190, 1360; a mystery, 742; are dilatory, 1584, fickle, 1232, 1583, 2758, 3099, perverse, 1806, sharp-tongued, 1248, and always speak with reservation, 1359; w. and men, 1363, 1364; success with w., 89, 696, 1839
• James William Norton-Kyshe (ed.) The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), pp. 249–50
• Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922), pp. 886–97