Women Are Like Tricks by Sleight of Hand

Women are like tricks by sleight of hand, Which, to admire, we should not understand.

WILLIAM CONGREVE, Love for Love

I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart, 'Tis woman's whole existence.

LORD BYRON, Don Juan

It is the plain women who know about love; the beautiful women are too busy being fascinating.

KATHARINE HEPBURN, Evan Esar's 20,000 Quips & Quotes

The plainest man who pays attention to women, will sometimes succeed as well as the handsomest man who does not.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does a woman want?”

SIGMUND FREUD, Ernest Jones' Sigmund Freud: Life and Work

A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.

HENRIK IBSEN, From Ibsen's Workshop

"Woman" is my slave name; feminism will give me freedom to seek some other identity altogether.

ANN SNITOW, "A Gender Diary," Conflicts in Feminism

There is in every true woman's heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.

WASHINGTON IRVING, The Sketch Book

Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work ... a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work.

BARBRA STREISAND, People Magazine, May 31, 1993

Every woman should have four pets in her life. A mink in her closet, a jaguar in her garage, a tiger in her bed, and a jackass who pays for everything.

PARIS HILTON

If young women were not deceived into a belief that affectation pleases, they would scarcely trouble themselves to practise it so much.

MARIA EDGEWORTH, Mademoiselle Panache

Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has a single solution: that is, pregnancy.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Thus Spake Zarathustra

For I cannot think that GOD Almighty ever made them [women] so delicate, so glorious creatures; and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind; with souls capable of the same accomplishments with men: and all, to be only Stewards of our Houses, Cooks, and Slaves.

DANIEL DEFOE, The Education of Women

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.

OSCAR WILDE, The Importance of Being Earnest

A woman's whole life is a history of the affections.


Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Scarlet Letter

When women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. If it fails, they generously give her the whole.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, Little Women

What happens is that, as with drugs, he needs a stronger shot each time, and women are just women. The consumption of one woman is the consumption of all. You can’t double the dose.

IAN FLEMING, John Pearson's The Life of Ian Fleming

Every world has faults This one has too many Unattainable Female Objects.

DAVID JONATHAN NEWMAN, "U.F.O.," The Light Looks Another Way

Don't wait for the good woman. She doesn't exist.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI, letter to Steve Richmond, Nov. 1971

Woman was God's second mistake.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, The Antichrist

I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do it at all. We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that.

TONI MORRISON, Newsweek, Mar. 30, 1981

You won't regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.

BERNARD CORNWELL, The Winter King

Lone women, like to empty houses, perish.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Hero and Leander

Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man’s equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation.

MARGARET SANGER, "Morality and Birth Control," Birth Control Review, Feb-Mar., 1918

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE, Jane Eyre

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

GEORGE ELIOT, The Mill on the Floss

In revenge and in love woman is more barbaric than man is.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Beyond Good and Evil

No matter what a woman looks like, if she's confident, she's sexy.

PARIS HILTON

I, Woman, am that wonder-breathing rose That blossoms in the garden of the King.

ELSA BARKER, The Mystic Rose

I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men.

GEORGE ELIOT, Adam Bede

I know little of women. But I've heard dread tales.

HAROLD PINTER, Moonlight

O woman, perfect woman! what distraction Was meant to mankind when thou wast made a devil!

JOHN FLETCHER, Monsieur Thomas

In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, Gene Shalit's Great Hollywood Wit

It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status.

HOWARD ZINN, A People's History of the United States

Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow, A herb most bruised is woman.

EURIPIDES, Medea

The sexual life of adult women is a “dark continent” for psychology.

SIGMUND FREUD, The Question of Lay Analysis

Woman's mind Oft' shifts her passions, like th'inconstant wind; Sudden she rages, like the troubled main, Now sinks the storm, and all is calm again.

JOHN GAY, Dione

The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Table Talk, July 23, 1827

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.

JOHN GRAY, Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus

I'm supposed to have a Ph.D. on the subject of women. But the truth is I've flunked more often than not. I'm very fond of women; I admire them. But, like all men, I don't understand them.

FRANK SINATRA, quoted in The Way You Wear Your Hat

Woman ... is the divine object, violated, endlessly sacrificed yet always reborn, whose only joy, achieved through a subtle interplay of images, lies in contemplation of herself.

PAULINE RÉAGE, introduction, The Image

From birth to eighteen, a girl needs good parents, from eighteen to thirty-five she needs good looks, from thirty-five to fifty-five she needs a good personality, and from fifty-five on she needs cash.

SOPHIE TUCKER, Women Who Date Too Much

The best judge of whether or not a country is going to develop is how it treats its women. If it's educating its girls, if women have equal rights, that country is going to move forward. But if women are oppressed and abused and illiterate, then they're going to fall behind.

BARACK OBAMA, Ladies' Home Journal, Sep. 2008

As all-consuming as a young girl's fancies were ... a woman's desires could be twice as dangerous.

TERESA MEDEIROS, The Vampire Who Loved Me

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries. At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.... The truth is that male religious leaders have had -- and still have -- an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.

JIMMY CARTER, "Losing My Religion for Equality"

A woman calls it giving you a piece of her mind, but our experience has been that she generally winds up by giving you the whole dad-burned thing.

ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES, Poems and Paragraphs

The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed, women ... merely adored.

OSCAR WILDE, The Ideal Husband

There are some women that don't do it for some men. That's why they turn out so many models.

JOHN UPDIKE, Rabbit is Rich

It seems to me as a woman's face doesna want flowers; it's almost like a flower itself.... It's like when a man's singing a good tune, you don't want t' hear bells tinkling and interfering wi' the sound.


Miracle woman ... Your mouth is wine, and all your tender flesh An easeful meadow for my weariness.

DONALD EVANS, "For the Haunting of Mauna"

If a woman shows too often the Medusa's head, she must not be astonished if her lover is turned into stone.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, Table-Talk

Wretched Women! When you are wholly lovely Man cannot forget either of his two afflictions, Soul, or body!

MARJORIE ALLEN SEIFFERT, "Ode in the New Mode"

Under his forming hands a creature grew, Man-like, but different sex; so lovely fair That what seemed fair in all the world, seemed now Mean, or in her summed up, in her contained, And in her looks; which from that time infus'd

Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before, And into all things from her air inspir'd The spirit of love and amorous delight. She disappear'd, and left me dark; I wak'd To find her, or for her ever to deplore Her loss, and other pleasures abjure: When out of hope, behold her, not far off, Such as I saw her in my dream, adorn'd With what all Earth or Heaven could bestow To make her amiable: On she came, Led by her Heavenly Maker, though unseen, And guided by his voice; nor uninform'd Of nuptial sanctity, and marriage rites: Grace was in her steps, heaven in her eye, In every gesture dignity and love.

JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost

Modern women are just bombarded. There's nothing but media telling us we're all supposed to be great cooks, have great style, be great in bed, be the best mothers, speak seven languages, and be able to understand derivatives. And we don't really have women we're modeling after, so we're all looking for how to do this.

JAMIE LEE CURTIS, Good Housekeeping, Oct. 2010

Though women appear to belong to the same species as man, they are actually quite different creatures, and these incomprehensible, insidious beings have, fantastic as it seems, always looked after me. In my case such an expression as "to be fallen for" or even "to be loved" is not in the least appropriate; perhaps it describes the situation more accurately to say that I was "looked after."

OSAMU DAZAI, No Longer Human

Never mix your women.

CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM, The Maxims of Marmaduke

Women's eyes have pierced more hearts than ever did the bullets of war.

WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY, Proverbs

Woman is the only creature in nature that hunts down its hunters and devours the prey alive.

ABRAHAM MILLER, Unmoral Maxims

The fear of women is the beginning of knowledge.

GELETT BURGESS, The Maxims of Methuselah

When once the woman has tempted us, and we have tasted the forbidden fruit, there is no such thing as checking our appetites, whatever the consequences may be.

GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Mrs. Richard Stockton, Sep. 2, 1783

With women the heart argues, not the mind.

MATTHEW ARNOLD, Merope

Oh! too convincing -- dangerously dear -- In woman's eye the unanswerable tear!

LORD BYRON, The Corsair

There is such a thing as the wrong woman. She makes a man a fraction.... But the right woman! She multiplies a man.

HORACE HOLLEY, "The Genius"

As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity, winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly support ing the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.

WASHINGTON IRVING, "The Wife," The Sketch Book

When one sees one of the romantic creatures before him he imagines he is looking at some holy being, so wonderful that its one breath could dissolve him in a sea of a thousand charms and delights; but if one looks into the soul -- it's nothing but a common crocodile.

ANTON CHEKHOV, The Boor

Of all the paths lead to a woman's love Pity's the straightest.

JOHN FLETCHER, The Knight of Malta

I think that women as a group are so powerful. I still don't think we are able to embrace our power well enough yet. We think we live in a man's world and we have to follow their rules, and yet, we're so different, and our rules are so different. I wish that we could come together more as a political force. If women ran the world, I don't believe that there would be war. I really don't.... We understand the bigger picture. We understand our impact on the environment, on the world. We understand the generations that will go after us because we gave birth to them.

KYRA SEDGWICK, Newsweek, Oct. 15, 2007

[Women] ... is nothin' but little girls in long skirts, and their hair done up.

EDNA FERBER, "Sun Dried"

There's a lot of pressure on women to fulfill certain fantasies. They expect you to be a little bit of a tart, to flirt with all the men. A lot of women do it. But I'm not doing that. I talk with these guys about their wives and kids right away. When they say inappropriate things, I let them, because boys will be boys, but I'm not looking to participate in their conversations.

JESSICA ALBA, Marie Claire Magazine, March 2008

Most women are not so young as they are painted.

MAX BEERBOHM, A Defence of Cosmetics

Women age early, and their mistake is not knowing where to hide all the time that lies behind them so that no one sees it. What are they to do, devour it like the umbilical cords of their children? Hell and damnation!

ELFRIEDE JELINEK, Lust

Women and music should never be dated.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH, She Stoops to Conquer

There are two kinds of spiritual law, two kinds of conscience, one in man and another, altogether different, in woman. They do not understand each other; but in practical life the woman is judged by man's law, as though she were not a woman but a man.


What is better than wisdom? Woman. And what is better than a good woman? Nothing.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER, The Canterbury Tales

Women are seldom silent. Their beauty is forever speaking for them.

PHILIP MOELLER, Helena's Husband

A sensible woman can never be happy with a fool.

GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Eleanor Parke Custis, Jan. 16, 1795

I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access; while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for man must battle for his fortress at every door and window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero.

WASHINGTON IRVING, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democratic president. It's kind of a pipe dream; it's a personal fantasy of mine.

ANN COULTER, Newsweek, Oct. 15, 2007

Women are leaders everywhere you look--from the CEO who runs a Fortune 500 company to the housewife who raises her children and heads her household. Our country was built by strong women and we will continue to break down walls and defy stereotypes.

NANCY PELOSI, Glamour Magazine, Jan. 2007

Women still have an uneasy relationship with power and the traits necessary to be a leader. There is this internalized fear that if we are really powerful, we are going to be considered ruthless or pushy or

strident--al those epithets that strike right at our femininity. We are still working at trying to overcome the fear that power and womanliness are mutually exclusive.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, Newsweek, Oct. 15, 2007

As a woman, I have an inherent need to be all things to all people, to make certain everybody's taken care of. I know I can't sustain that level all the time, so I'm finding the proper balance and it's made me infinitely happier.

SARAH JESSICA PARKER, Woman's Day Magazine, Sep. 12, 2007

A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult.

MELINDA GATES, Woman's Day Magazine, Oct. 2, 2007

A woman with a well-stocked toy drawer isn't dependent on anyone and is unlikely to hurl herself at a lowlife just for nooky.

ARIANNE COHEN, Marie Claire Magazine, March 2008

A man in love ... is the master, so it seems, but only if his lady friend permits it! The need to interchange the roles of slave and master for the sake of the relationship is never more clearly demonstrated than in the course of an affair. Never is the complicity between victim and executioner more essential. Even chained, down on her knees, begging for mercy, it is the woman, finally, who is in command ... the all powerful slave, dragging herself along the ground at her master's heels, is now really the god. The man is only her priest, living in fear and trembling of her displeasure.


I think women of a certain generation, mine in particular, feel like we can have it all because that's what we were fed. It's like, we reap the benefits of the feminist movement - they did all the legwork and now we're going to try to be parents and successful business people and great wives and good friends and take a cooking class and blah, blah, blah...

SARAH JESSICA PARKER, BBC interview, Dec. 13, 2005

'Of womenkind such indeed is the love, Or the word love abused, Under which many childish desires And conceits are excused.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH, As Ye Came from the Holy Land

Women are not allowed to be complicated in our society. We still very much have a Madonna-whore complex. We're comfortable seeing women as great mothers, and then we're comfortable seeing them as hookers, but there's no in-between.

CHARLIZE THERON, Glamour Magazine, July 2008

All the world's a stage, and it's a dead easy guess which sex has all the speaking parts.


I am not accustomed to the language of eulogy. I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women. But I must say, that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, speech, Mar. 18, 1864

Accepting the theory that the monkey is man's ancestor, one is inclined to infer that woman, judging by the number and length of her hatpins, is a lineal descendant of the porcupine.


Women themselves condition their daughters to serve the system of male primacy. If a daughter challenges it, the mother will generally defend the system rather than her daughter. These mothers, victims themselves, have unwittingly become wounded wounders. Women need to attack culture's oppression of women, for there truly is a godlike socializing power that induces women to "buy in" or collude, but we also need to confront our own part in accepting male dominance and take responsibility where appropriate.

SUE MONK KIDD, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter

Because a woman brought death a bright Maiden overcame it, and so the highest blessing in all of creation lies in the form of a woman, since God has become man in a sweet and blessed Virgin.

HILDEGARD OF BINGEN, "Quia ergo femina"

I know the woman has no soul, I know The woman has no possibilities Of soul or mind or heart, but merely is The masterpiece of flesh: well, be it so. It is her flesh that I adore; I go Thirsting afresh to drain her empty kiss. I know she cannot love: it is not this My vanquished heart implores in overthrow. Tyrannously I crave, I crave alone, Her splendid body, Earth's most eloquent Music, divinest human harmony; Her body now a silent instrument, That 'neath my touch shall wake and make for me The strains I have but dreamed of, never known.

ARTHUR SYMONS, "Idealism"

When a woman gets over 35 she is generally willing to embark on the sea of matrimony with almost any life-buoy.


A woman in Deep Sleep is one who goes about in an unconscious state. She seems unaware or unfazed by the truth of her own female life, the truth about women in general, the way women and the feminine have been wounded, devalued, and limited within culture, churches, and families. She cannot see the wound or feel the pain. She has never acknowledged, much less confronted, sexism within the church, biblical interpretations, or Christian doctrine. Okay, so women have been largely missing from positions of church power, we've been silenced and relegated to positions of subordination by biblical

interpretations and doctrine, and God has been represented to us as exclusively male. So what? The woman in Deep Sleep is oblivious to the psychological and spiritual impact this has had on her. Or maybe she has some awareness of it all but keeps it sequestered nicely in her head, rarely allowing it to move down into her heart or into the politics of her spirituality.

SUE MONK KIDD, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter

For men have marble, women waxen, minds, And therefore are they form'd as marble will; The weak oppress'd, the impression of strange kinds Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill: Then call them not the authors of their ill, No more than wax shall be accounted evil Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, The Rape of Lucrece

It does seem paradoxical. But when a woman has curves we always want her 'round.


A good woman’s arms round a man’s neck is a lifebelt thrown out to him from heaven.

JEROME K. JEROME, "A Charming Woman"

Horns to bulls wise Nature lends; Horses she with hoofs defends; Hares with nimble feet relieves; Dreadful teeth to lions gives; Fishes learn through streams to slide; Birds through yielding air to glide; Men with courage she supplies; But to women these denies. What then gives she? Beauty, this Both their arms and armour is: She, that can this weapon use, Fire and sword with ease subdues.

ANACREON, "Beauty"

How do those who contend that woman is the intellectual inferior of man account for the fact that she can give a man a piece of her mind 365 days in the year and still have a huge reserve supply?


Two women can't share a house comfortably, no matter how fond they might be of each other. It's got to be one woman's kitchen.

NORA ROBERTS, Blue Smoke

As God is my witness, the more I deal with women, the more I like my cat.

P. N. ELROD, The Dark Sleep

A woman is rarely up to date on the subject of her age.


Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin, but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building.

OSCAR WILDE, A Woman of No Importance

Before marriage a woman may procure some éclat by pretending to believe in the fiction of her ascendancy; but after marriage, the worshipped beauty becomes a very plain every-day sort of person, and the poetry of the sex's power is at an end for ever!

ROBERT BELL, Marriage: A Comedy in Five Acts

Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder.

THORNTON WILDER, The Matchmaker

A bride at her second marriage does not wear a veil. She wants to see what she is getting.

HELEN ROWLAND, A Guide to Men

Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences.

ISADORA DUNCAN, My Life

Beware of a woman who signeth not her name to her letters; she will bear watching, aye, she hath a past.


I don't see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly.

GEORGE ELIOT, Middlemarch

Nature admits of no permanence in the relation between man and woman.... It is only man's egoism that wants to keep woman like some buried treasure. All endeavors to introduce permanence in love, the most changeable thing in this changeable human existence, have gone shipwreck in spite of religious ceremonies, vows, and legalities.

LEOPOLD VON SACHER-MASOCH, Venus in Furs

Don't tell me about God having made such creatures to be companions for us! I don't say but He might make Eve to be a companion for Adam in Paradise--there was no cooking to be spoilt there, and no other woman to cackle with and make mischief; though you see what mischief she did as soon as she'd an opportunity.


Son, heed my instruction, and apply thyself to know women; let thine eyes observe her when she is with another, for what she doeth with him, she will do with thee, also.


The mere idea of marriage, as a strong possibility, if not always nowadays a reasonable likelihood, existing to weaken the will by distracting its straight aim in the life of practically every young girl, is the simple secret of their confessed inferiority in men's pursuits and professions today.

WILLIAM BOLITHO, Twelve Against the Gods

To awake a woman's curiosity is to make her pliable.


A woman's lot is made for her by the love she accepts.

GEORGE ELIOT, Felix Holt

My son, beware of a plain damsel who charmeth thee, for she needeth much wile, and useth diverse weapons.


Woman is the salvation or destruction of the family. She carries its destinies in the folds of her mantle.

HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL, journal, Dec. 11, 1872

Woman is the highest, holiest, most precious gift to man. Her mission and throne is the family, and if anything is withheld that would make her more efficient, useful, or happy in that sphere, she is wronged, and has not her rights.

JOHN TODD, Woman's Rights

It is easier to make a glass tube pliable than to convince an obstinate woman she is in fault.


No man ever reaches manhood till a woman's tenderness Is a part of his possession.

EDWIN LEIBFREED, "The Conquerors"

For one to admire a woman merely for her beauty, is to love the building for its exterior; but to love one for the greatness of her soul, is to appreciate the tenement for its intrinsic value.


Men's eyes are in their heads; women's, in their hearts.

IVAN PANIN, Thoughts

Man dreams of fame while woman wakes to love.

ALFRED TENNYSON, Idylls of the King

Most fashionable ladies are as diamonds because they are more costly than useful.


It's a strange thing to think of a man as can lift a chair with his teeth, and walk fifty mile on end, trembling and turning hot and cold at only a look from one woman out of all the rest i' the world. It's a mystery we can give no account of.


An artful or false woman shall set thy pillow with thorns.

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER, Proverbial Philosophy

The world is full of women, and the women full of wile; so that a man, if he goeth not warily withal, shall surely fall a prey thereunto.


Woman began at zero, and has through ages slowly unfolded and risen. Each age has protested against growth as unsexing woman.

HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

When the hour of adversity arrives, when false friends are scattered, when we are moving through the keen atmosphere of selfishness, then it is that the virtuous wife, like an angel of light, shines with peculiar lustre.


Men do foolish things thoughtlessly, knowing not why; but no woman doeth aught without a reason.


What we like about women is sensuality, wildness, hormones. Women who make a song and dance about their intuition.

YASMINA REZA, The God of Carnage

It's the silliest lie a sensible man like you ever believed, to say a woman makes a house comfortable. It's a story got up, because the women are there, and something must be found for 'em to do. I tell you there isn't a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it's bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha' been left to the men.... I tell you, a woman 'ull bake you a pie every week of her life, and never come to see that the hotter th' oven the shorter the time.


Women are beautiful when they're young, and not after. Men can still preserve their sex appeal well into old age.... Some men can maintain, if they embrace it ... cragginess, weary masculinity. Women just get old and fat and wrinkly.

TRACY LETTS, August: Osage Country

The less you notice them the more they chase after you. There's something perverse about women ... they're all masochists at heart.

HENRY MILLER, Tropic of Cancer

A woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.

J.M. COETZEE, Disgrace

A reproof entereth more into a woman of sense than an hundred compliments into a fool.


Yesterday woman was a chattel. Now she is, in law, a minor. Tomorrow she will be free, or partially so--that is to say, as free as man.

ELBERT HUBBARD, The American Bible

People may talk about the equality of the sexes! They are not equal. The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman will vanquish ten men.

HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

If thou makest a statement concerning women, lo, she shall immediately try to disprove it straightway. She goeth by contraries.


All is possible to woman, for woman alone may make herself impossible.


Woo her not till thou hast seen her mother, for a score of years worketh wonders.


Affection with some women amounts almost to disease.

LEWIS F. KORNS, Thoughts

Beauty in woman is that potent alchemy which transforms men into asses.


We never see the mass of women en costume, without being reminded of the artificial flies used in angling--tricked out, also, with much the same object, only that, like St. Peter, women are "fishers of men."

CHARLES WILLIAM DAY, The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos

They often say woman cannot keep a secret, but every woman in the world, like every man, has a hundred secrets in her own soul which she hides from even herself. The more respectable she is, the more certain it is the secrets exist.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought

Pleasure is to a woman what the sun is to the flower: if moderately enjoyed, it beautifies, it refreshes, and it improves; if immoderately, it withers, deteriorates, and destroys. But the duties of domestic life, exercised as they must be in retirement, and calling forth all the sensibilities of the female, are perhaps as necessary to the full development of her charms, as the shade and the shower are to the rose, confirming its beauty, and increasing its fragrance.


Hurry not a woman's favor; neither forcer her hastily to surrender to thee. For she goeth into love as she goeth into the waters at the seashore; first a hand and then a lip goeth she in by littles. She diveth not, she leapeth not from the pier; but by gentle shocks and cries of protest she entereth slowly; yet when the waters of love encompass her, then she is supported. She swimmeth in her joy; she floateth on the tide of happiness.


It is not the woman man can be rich with who is the most companionable, but the woman he can be poor with.


Feline, feminine: A quaint similarity of sound. Brutal the thought that suggests an analogy.


A woman, like a cross-eyed man, looks one way, but goes another--hence her mysteriousness.


Modesty is the richest ornament of a woman ... the want of it is her greatest deformity.


Woman is like a diamond with many facets: the imagination of man, the light which produces from them innumerable permutations and combinations of color. The character of woman is comparatively simple, but man imagines much and attributes it to her.


Any woman may act the part of a coquette successfully who has the reputation without the scruples of modesty. If a woman passes the bounds of propriety for our sakes, and throws herself unblushingly at our heads, we conclude it is either from a sudden and violent liking, or from extraordinary merit on our parts, either of which is enough to turn any man's head who has a single spark of gallantry or vanity in his composition.

WILLIAM HAZLITT, Characteristics

Seek one woman whom thou canst trust, and to her who lovest thee best, tell thy secrets. She will deliver thee from the hands of strange women, she will expose their craft; and of her who flattereth thee, will she make known the reason.


While a woman is losing confidence in a man she is usually reposing it in another.

LEWIS F. KORNS, Thoughts

Some women are to be captured by storm and some taken by siege; yet if there be not a traitor in her heart that shall deliver up the garrison, thou shalt not prevail over her.


No man can have a reasonable opinion of women until he has long lost interest in hair-restorers.


Most women bestow their favors upon men, not from Passion, but from Compassion.


With women, the great business of life is love; and they generally make a mistake in it. They consult neither the heart nor the head, but are led away by mere humour and fancy. If instead of a companion for life, they had to choose a partner in a country-dance or to trifle away an hour with, their mode of calculation would be right. They tie their true-lover's knot with idle, thoughtless haste, while the institutions of society render it indissoluble.


A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male.


Can a woman entertain a man and a pet at the same time? I say unto thee, one of the twain shall suffer jealousy.


The affected modesty of most women is a decoy for the generous, the delicate, and unsuspecting; while the artful, the bold, and unfeeling either see or break through its slender disguises.


The most trying misfortune that can befall a man, is to be domesticated with a bad-tempered woman.

CHARLES WILLIAM DAY, The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos

A woman that speaks the truth finds no favor in my eyes, for she disturbs the pretty theories I cherish about her sex.


If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself;--all that runs over will be yours.


Destruction often lurks in women's eyes.

EDWARD COUNSEL, Maxims

Woman is the social barometer; she is an admirably contrived instrument for gauging the defects of her generation.


Some women destroy all your sensibility towards them by their coldness, others by their heat.

FULKE GREVILLE, Maxims, Characters, and Reflections

The opinion I have of the generality of women--who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time, forms a barrier against matrimony which I rejoice in.

JOHN KEATS, letter to George and Georgiana Keats, Oct. 14, 1818

Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain, Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies.

JOHN KEATS, "Woman! When I Behold Thee"

A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, letter to "Scottie," Nov. 18, 1938

In the choice of a wife, we ought to make use of our ears, and not our eyes.

WELLINS CALCOTT, Thoughts Moral and Divine

In the eighty or ninety years I have given to this subject, trying to trace out the meanderings of their twisty little minds, the only thing that I have learned for certain about women is that when a gal is gonna, she's gonna. All a man can do is cooperate with the inevitable.

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, Stranger in a Strange Land

Almost all women will give a sympathizing hearing to men who are in love. Be they ever so old, they grow young again with that conversation, and renew their own early times.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, Philip

I have often felt that I would find it more complicated, troublesome and unpleasant to ascertain the feelings by which a woman lives than to plumb the innermost thoughts of an earthworm.


The original oppression of Woman was based on crude denigration. She caused Man to fall, so she became a scapegoat. No, not a scapegoat which might be blameless but a culprit richly deserving of whatever suffering Man chose thereafter to heap on her. That is Woman in the Book of Genesis. Out here, our ancestors, without the benefit of hearing about the Old Testament, made the very same story differing only in local color. At first the Sky was very close to the Earth. But every evening Woman cut off a piece of the Sky to put in her soup pot, or in another version, she repeatedly banged the top end of her pestle carelessly against the Sky whenever she pounded millet or, as in yet another rendering - so prodigious is Man’s inventiveness, she wiped her kitchen hands in the Sky’s face. Whatever the detail of Woman’s provocation, the Sky moved away in anger, and God with it.

CHINUA ACHEBE, Anthills of the Savannah

It took him a moment to respond to the unguarded sweetness of her smile, her body calculated to a millimeter to suggest a bud yet guarantee a flower.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Tender Is the Night

I don't think a woman should be in any government job whatever. I mean, I really don't. The reason why I do is mainly because they are erratic. And emotional.

RICHARD NIXON, conversation with John Mitchell, Slate, Oct. 11, 2001

Men are often like that. They grow bored with simple goodness and want a woman who is dangerous, a challenge.

SUSANNE ALLEYN, Game of Patience

Difficult folk, these women!

MIKHAIL BULGAKOV, The Master and Margarita

Men are forever eager to press drink upon those they consider their superiors, hoping thereby to eliminate that distinction between them.... And women, when confronted by superiors, substitute for drink the crippling liquor of their sex.

KEN KESEY, Sometimes a Great Notion

Men can sleep with a different woman every night and indulge in the most revolting practices--but let an unmarried woman make one mistake, be led astray when she's young and silly and knows nothing of the world, and she's tainted for life and called a harlot!

SUSANNE ALLEYN, Game of Patience

The faces of most American women over thirty are relief maps of petulant and bewildered unhappiness.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, letter to "Scottie" Fitzgerald, Oct. 5, 1940

A woman's heart is much like the moon, always changing but always has a man in it.

GRENVILLE KLEISER, Dictionary of Proverbs

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

TIMOTHY LEARY, attributed, Was It Good for You Too?

Man makes one journey all his living days, Down through the realms of music and of art; Down through the halls of fame and glorious praise; Down through the tears and triumphs of the heart To some sweet woman waiting some place there. For her he builds his cities and makes war, Seeks gold and glorious wealth to store.

EDWIN CURRAN, "The Eternal Quest"

The successful woman has a secret. She's learned that she owes it to herself, her children, and the world to make the contribution she was born to make. She's learned to ask for advice and help, to insist on getting paid what she's worth, and to set boundaries at work and at home so that her needs get met, not trampled. She puts her dreams at the top of her priorities list, not at the bottom. She feels great about being recognized for her accomplishments, and she's totally OK with the fact that not everyone is going to like her when she stands up to those who would discount her or put her down.

DEBRA CONDREN, Good Housekeeping, Aug. 2010

A woman needn't be dragged down by her functions.

D. H. LAWRENCE, Lady Chatterley's Lover

I tell you the women who make fervent wives And sweet tender mothers, had Fate been less fair, Are the women who might have abandoned their lives To the madness that springs from and ends in despair. As the fire on the hearth which sheds brightness around, Neglected, may level the walls to the ground.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, "Angel or Demon"

There is nothing in the female sex more graceful or becoming than Modesty. It adds charm to their beauty, and gives a new softness to their sex. Without it simplicity and innocence appear rude; reading and good sense, masculine; wit and humour, lascivious. This is so necessary a quality for pleasing, that the loose part of the sex, whose study it is to ensnare men's hearts, never fail to support the appearance of what they know is essential to that end.

WELLINS CALCOTT, Thoughts Moral and Divine

I have always found the female of the human species many times more difficult to understand than the male.


The ladies usually go for the biggest damn fool they can find; that is why the human race stands where it does today: we have bred the clever and lasting Casanovas, all hollow inside, like the chocolate Easter bunnies we foster upon our poor children.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI, Notes of a Dirty Old Man

A woman has to have something on or there's nothing to take off.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI, Notes of a Dirty Old Man

A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry whom she likes. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field, and don't know their own power. They would overcome us entirely if they did.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, Vanity Fair

Women are like tricks by sleight of hand, Which, to admire, we should not understand.

WILLIAM CONGREVE, Love for Love

I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart, 'Tis woman's whole existence.

LORD BYRON, Don Juan

It is the plain women who know about love; the beautiful women are too busy being fascinating.

KATHARINE HEPBURN, Evan Esar's 20,000 Quips & Quotes

The plainest man who pays attention to women, will sometimes succeed as well as the handsomest man who does not.


The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does a woman want?”

SIGMUND FREUD, Ernest Jones' Sigmund Freud: Life and Work

A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.


"Woman" is my slave name; feminism will give me freedom to seek some other identity altogether.

ANN SNITOW, "A Gender Diary," Conflicts in Feminism

There is in every true woman's heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.


Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work ... a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work.

BARBRA STREISAND, People Magazine, May 31, 1993

Every woman should have four pets in her life. A mink in her closet, a jaguar in her garage, a tiger in her bed, and a jackass who pays for everything.

PARIS HILTON

If young women were not deceived into a belief that affectation pleases, they would scarcely trouble themselves to practise it so much.

MARIA EDGEWORTH, Mademoiselle Panache

Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has a single solution: that is, pregnancy.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Thus Spake Zarathustra

For I cannot think that GOD Almighty ever made them [women] so delicate, so glorious creatures; and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind; with souls capable of the same accomplishments with men: and all, to be only Stewards of our Houses, Cooks, and Slaves.

DANIEL DEFOE, The Education of Women

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.

OSCAR WILDE, The Importance of Being Earnest

A woman's whole life is a history of the affections.


Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Scarlet Letter

When women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. If it fails, they generously give her the whole.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, Little Women

What happens is that, as with drugs, he needs a stronger shot each time, and women are just women. The consumption of one woman is the consumption of all. You can’t double the dose.

IAN FLEMING, John Pearson's The Life of Ian Fleming

Every world has faults This one has too many Unattainable Female Objects.

DAVID JONATHAN NEWMAN, "U.F.O.," The Light Looks Another Way

Don't wait for the good woman. She doesn't exist.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI, letter to Steve Richmond, Nov. 1971

Woman was God's second mistake.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, The Antichrist

I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do it at all. We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that.

TONI MORRISON, Newsweek, Mar. 30, 1981

You won't regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.

BERNARD CORNWELL, The Winter King

Lone women, like to empty houses, perish.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Hero and Leander

Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man’s equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation.

MARGARET SANGER, "Morality and Birth Control," Birth Control Review, Feb-Mar., 1918

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their

more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE, Jane Eyre

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

GEORGE ELIOT, The Mill on the Floss

In revenge and in love woman is more barbaric than man is.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Beyond Good and Evil

No matter what a woman looks like, if she's confident, she's sexy.

PARIS HILTON

I, Woman, am that wonder-breathing rose That blossoms in the garden of the King.

ELSA BARKER, The Mystic Rose

I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men.


I know little of women. But I've heard dread tales.

HAROLD PINTER, Moonlight

O woman, perfect woman! what distraction Was meant to mankind when thou wast made a devil!

JOHN FLETCHER, Monsieur Thomas

In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, Gene Shalit's Great Hollywood Wit

It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status.

HOWARD ZINN, A People's History of the United States

Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow, A herb most bruised is woman.

EURIPIDES, Medea

The sexual life of adult women is a “dark continent” for psychology.

SIGMUND FREUD, The Question of Lay Analysis

Woman's mind

Oft' shifts her passions, like th'inconstant wind; Sudden she rages, like the troubled main, Now sinks the storm, and all is calm again.

JOHN GAY, Dione

The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Table Talk, July 23, 1827

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.

JOHN GRAY, Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus

I'm supposed to have a Ph.D. on the subject of women. But the truth is I've flunked more often than not. I'm very fond of women; I admire them. But, like all men, I don't understand them.

FRANK SINATRA, quoted in The Way You Wear Your Hat

Woman ... is the divine object, violated, endlessly sacrificed yet always reborn, whose only joy, achieved through a subtle interplay of images, lies in contemplation of herself.


From birth to eighteen, a girl needs good parents, from eighteen to thirty-five she needs good looks, from thirty-five to fifty-five she needs a good personality, and from fifty-five on she needs cash.

SOPHIE TUCKER, Women Who Date Too Much

The best judge of whether or not a country is going to develop is how it treats its women. If it's educating its girls, if women have equal rights, that country is going to move forward. But if women are oppressed and abused and illiterate, then they're going to fall behind.

BARACK OBAMA, Ladies' Home Journal, Sep. 2008

As all-consuming as a young girl's fancies were ... a woman's desires could be twice as dangerous.

TERESA MEDEIROS, The Vampire Who Loved Me

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries. At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.... The truth is that male religious leaders have had -- and still have -- an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.

JIMMY CARTER, "Losing My Religion for Equality"

A woman calls it giving you a piece of her mind, but our experience has been that she generally winds up by giving you the whole dad-burned thing.


The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed, women ... merely adored.

OSCAR WILDE, The Ideal Husband

There are some women that don't do it for some men. That's why they turn out so many models.

JOHN UPDIKE, Rabbit is Rich

It seems to me as a woman's face doesna want flowers; it's almost like a flower itself.... It's like when a man's singing a good tune, you don't want t' hear bells tinkling and interfering wi' the sound.


Miracle woman ... Your mouth is wine, and all your tender flesh An easeful meadow for my weariness.

DONALD EVANS, "For the Haunting of Mauna"

If a woman shows too often the Medusa's head, she must not be astonished if her lover is turned into stone.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, Table-Talk

Wretched Women! When you are wholly lovely Man cannot forget either of his two afflictions, Soul, or body!

MARJORIE ALLEN SEIFFERT, "Ode in the New Mode"

Under his forming hands a creature grew, Man-like, but different sex; so lovely fair That what seemed fair in all the world, seemed now Mean, or in her summed up, in her contained, And in her looks; which from that time infus'd Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before, And into all things from her air inspir'd The spirit of love and amorous delight. She disappear'd, and left me dark; I wak'd To find her, or for her ever to deplore Her loss, and other pleasures abjure: When out of hope, behold her, not far off, Such as I saw her in my dream, adorn'd With what all Earth or Heaven could bestow To make her amiable: On she came, Led by her Heavenly Maker, though unseen, And guided by his voice; nor uninform'd Of nuptial sanctity, and marriage rites: Grace was in her steps, heaven in her eye, In every gesture dignity and love.

JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost

Modern women are just bombarded. There's nothing but media telling us we're all supposed to be great cooks, have great style, be great in bed, be the best mothers, speak seven languages, and be able to understand derivatives. And we don't really have women we're modeling after, so we're all looking for how to do this.

JAMIE LEE CURTIS, Good Housekeeping, Oct. 2010

Though women appear to belong to the same species as man, they are actually quite different creatures, and these incomprehensible, insidious beings have, fantastic as it seems, always looked after me. In my case such an expression as "to be fallen for" or even "to be loved" is not in the least appropriate; perhaps it describes the situation more accurately to say that I was "looked after."


Never mix your women.


Women's eyes have pierced more hearts than ever did the bullets of war.


Woman is the only creature in nature that hunts down its hunters and devours the prey alive.


The fear of women is the beginning of knowledge.

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Women Are Like Tricks by Sleight of Hand