| Women |
| �I had been fed, in my youth, a lot of old wives' tales about the way men would instantly forsake a beautiful woman to flock around a brilliant one. It is but fair to say that, after getting out in the world, I had never seen this happen. ~ Dorothy Parker "Constant Reader"
�I know nothing of man's rights, or woman's rights; human rights are all that I recognize. ~ Sarah M. Grimke "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women" �I scarcely am able to govern my muscles, when I see a man start with eager, and serious solitude to lift a handkerchief, or shut a door, when the lady could have done it herself, had she only moved a pace or two. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft "A Vindication of the Rights of Women" �women have been called queens for a long time, but the kingdom given them isn't worth ruling. ~ Louisa May Alcott "An Old-Fashioned Girl" A father will have compassion on his son. A mother will never forget her child. A brother will cover the sin of his sister. But what husband ever forgave the faithlessness of his wife? ~ Marguerite of Navarre "Mirror of the Sinful Soul" A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after. ~ Gloria Steinem "Newsweek" A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary. ~ Dorothy Canfield Fisher "Her Son's Wife" A woman who takes things from a man is called a girlfriend; a man who takes things from a woman is called a gigolo. ~ Ruthie Stein All the tired women, Who sewed their lives away, Speak in my deft fingers As I sew today. ~ Hazell Hall "Instruction" And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace By each button, hook and lace. ~ Amy Lowell "Patterns" Any woman can be wife and mother; and hundreds have been queens. My husband. My children. To center your life upon these five or six, to be bound and shut in with every-thing that concerns�each day filled--so filled--with the thousand occupations that help or comfort them, that finally one sinks into the grave loved and honored, but as ignorant as the day one was born-- ~ Thornton Wilder "The Alcestiad" Beauty comes in all sizes--not just size 5. ~ Roseanne Beauty fades, dumb is forever. ~ Judy Sheindlin Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother. ~ Oprah Winfrey By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh "Gift from the Sea" Consider the "new" woman. She's trying to be Pollyanna Borgia, clearly a conflict of interest. She's supposed to be a ruthless winner at work and a bundle of nurturing sweetness at home. ~ Rita Mae Brown Den dat little man in black dar, he say women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothin' to do wid Him. ~ Sojourner Truth Every woman should have a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill and a black lace bra. ~ Anonymous Every women who vacates a place in the teachers' ranks and enters an unusual line of work, does two excellent things: she makes room for someone waiting for a place and helps to open a new vocation for herself and other women. ~ Frances E. Willard "What America Owes to Women" For in other ways a woman is full of fear, defenseless, dreads the sight of cold steel; but when once she is wronged in the matter of love, no other soul can hold so many thoughts of blood. ~ Euripedes "Medea" From the moment I was six I felt sexy. And let me tell you it was hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it. ~ Bette Davis Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization. ~ Rebecca West "The Freewoman" He looked at her hopelessly. Nothing is more perplexing to man than the mental process of a woman who reasons her emotions. ~ Edith Wharton "Souls Belated" How much it is to be regretted, that the British ladies should ever sit down contented to polish, when they are able to reform; to entertain when they might instruct; and to dazzle for an hour, when they are candidates for eternity! ~ Hannah More "On Dissipation" How say that by law we may torture and chase A woman whose crime is the hue of her face? ~ Frances Ellen Watkins Harper "She's Free!" I always say it was great for God to send his only son, but I'm waiting for him to send his only daughter. Then things will really be great. ~ Candace Pert I am obnoxious to each carping tongue, Who says my hand a needle better fits, A poet's pen, all scorn, I should thus wrong. ~ Anne Bradstreet "The Prologue" I do not consider, as it is so often stated, that the great object of marriage is to produce children; marriage has higher humanitarian objects. ~ Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell "How to Keep a Household in Health" I do not want a husband who honours me as a queen, if he does not love me as a woman. ~ Elizabeth I "The Sayings of Queen Elizabeth" I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft "A Vindication of the Rights of Women" I felt more determined than ever to become a physician, and thus place a strong barrier between me and all ordinary marriage. I must have something to engross my thoughts, some object in life which will fill this vacuum and prevent this sad wearing away of the heart. ~ Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell "Pioneer Work for Women" I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes--and six months later you have to start all over again. ~ Joan Rivers I have such an intense pride of sex that the triumphs of women in art, literature, oratory, science, or song rouse my enthusiasm as nothing else can. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton "Eighty Years and More" I was, being human, born alone; I am, being woman, hard beset. ~ Elinor Wylie "Let No Charitable Hope" In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman. ~ Margaret Thatcher It takes a woman twenty years to make a man of her son, and another woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him. ~ Helen Rowland "Reflections of a Bachelor Girl" It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens, but we, the whole people, who formed this Union. ~ Susan B. Anthony "speech" I've been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prize fighter, a man-hater, you name it. They call me Battling Bella, Mother Courage, and a Jewish mother with more complaints than Portnoy. There are those who say I'm impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash, and overbearing. Whether I'm any of these things, or all of them, you can decide for yourself. But whatever I am--and this ought to be made very clear--I am a very serious woman. ~ Bella Abzug "Bella!" Let's face it, there are no plain women on television. ~ Anna Ford "Observer" Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind. ~ Virginia Woolf "A Room of One's Own" Men and women should own the world as a mutual possession. ~ Pearl S. Buck Men seldom make passes At girls who wear glasses. ~ Dorothy Parker "News Item" Motherhood is the most important of all professions--requiring more knowledge than any other department in human affairs. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton "Eighty Years and More" Nagging is the repetition of unpalatable truths. ~ Edith Summerskill "speech to the Married Women's Association" Never think she loves him wholly, Never believe her love is blind, All his faults are locked securely In a closet of her mind. ~ Sara Teasdale "Appraisal" No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt No one should have to dance backward all their lives. ~ Jill Ruckelshaus No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother. ~ Margaret Sanger "Woman and the New Race" One is not born a woman; one becomes one. ~ Simone de Beauvoir One of the trails of woman-kind is the fear of being an old maid. To escape this dreadful doom, young girls rush into matrimony with a recklessness which astonishes the beholder; never pausing to remember that the loss of liberty, happiness, and self-respect is poorly repaid by the barren honor of being called "Mrs." instead of "Miss." ~ Louisa May Alcott "Happy Women" Only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls don't have time. ~ Tallulah Bankhead Reason and religion teach us that we too are primary existences, that it is for us to move in the orbit of our duty around the holy center of perfection, the companions not the satellites of men. ~ Emma Hart Willard "inscribed in the Hall of Fame of Great Americans" Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation. ~ Abigail Adams Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels. ~ Faith Whittlesey Society considers the sex experiences of man as attributes to his general development, while similar experiences in the life of a woman are looked upon as a terrible calamity, a loss of honor and of all that is good and noble in a human being. ~ Emma Goldman "Anarchism and Other Essays" Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the President's spouse. I wish him well! ~ Barbara Bush "The Ultimate Success Quotations Library" Suddenly you find--at the age of fifty, say--that a whole new life has opened before you,�as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you. ~ Agatha Christie "An Autobiography" The education of females has been exclusively directed to fit them for displaying to advantage the charms of youth and beauty�though well to decorate the blossom, it is far better to prepare for the harvest. ~ Emma Hart Willard "The Technique of Rest" The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor. ~ Willa Silbert Cather The fact that women in the home have shut themselves away from the thought and life of the world has done much to retard progress. We fill the world with the children of 20th century AD fathers and 20th century BC mothers. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman "History of Woman Suffrage" 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. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society but so are horses. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman "Women and Economics" The loneliest woman in the world is a woman without a close woman friend. ~ Toni Morrison "speech" The reason that husbands and wives do not understand each other is because they belong to difference sexes. ~ Dorothy Dix "syndicated column" To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. ~ Maya Angelou "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" Usually there are from a dozen to forty women really involved in every murder. ~ Stephen Crane "The Blue Hotel" Well-behaved women rarely make history. ~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich When women hold off from marrying men, we call it independence. When men hold off from marrying women, we call it fear of commitment. ~ Warren Farrell Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese? ~ Dame Edith Sitwell Wife and servant are the same, But only differ in the name. ~ Lady Mary Chudleigh "To the Ladies" You can attack me, you can send assassins after me�that's fine. But nobody messes with my boyfriend. ~ Joss Whedon "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" You have the skill. What is more, you were born a woman, and women, though most helpless in doing good deeds are of every evil the cleverest of contrivers. ~ Euripedes "Medea" His ambition, his wish to do good, his wish to control, that's not male, that's just human. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin I must have hated him too. I must have hated him without knowing it. It was he who brought me up to despise my own sex, to be half woman and half man. Who's to blame for what has happened? My father, my mother, myself? Myself? I don't have a self that's my own. I don't have a single thought I didn't get from my father, not an emotion I didn't get from my mother. And that last idea--about all people being equal--I got that from him. That's why I say he's beneath contempt. How can it be my own fault? Put the blame on Jesus, like she does? I'm too proud to do that--and too intelligent, thanks to why my father taught me...A rich man can't get into heaven? That's a lie. But at least she, who's got money in the savings bank, won't get in...Who's to blame? What difference does it make who's to blame? I'm still the one who has to bear the guilt, suffer the consequences. ~ August Strindberg "Miss Julie" Most men and women have both men and women inside them, lots of them, and are capable of being much more than they're told they're capable of being. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin The poets lie, for women are more like to lovely leeches than to flowers. ~ Michael J. DeLuca "The Sorcerer's Masterwork" Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. ~ Robert A. Heinlein You don't think I can stand the sight of blood, do you? You think I'm so weak, don't you? Oh, how I'd love to see your blood, your brains on that chopping block. I'd love to see the whole of your sex swimming in a sea of blood just like that. I could drink blood out of your skull. Use your chest as a footbath, dip my toes in your guts! I could eat your heart roasted whole! You think I'm weak! You think I loved you because my womb hungered for you semen. You think I want to carry your brood under my heart and feed it with my blood? Bear your child and take your name? Come to think of it, what is your name? I've never even heard your last name. I'll bet you don't have one. I'd be Mrs. Doorman or Madame Garbageman. You dog with my name on your collar--you lackey with my initials on your buttons! Do you think I�m going to share you with my cock and fight over you with my maid?! Ohh! You think I'm a coward who's going to run away! No, I'm going to stay--come hell or high water. ~ August Strindberg "Miss Julie" |
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