WOMEN QUOTES XVI

quotations about women

Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being.... Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.

EMMA GOLDMAN

"The Tragedy of Women's Emancipation", Anarchism and Other Essays


See, I will always have this penchant for what I call kamikaze women. I call them kamikazes because they, you know they crash their plane, they're self-destructive. But they crash into you, and you die along with them.

WOODY ALLEN

Husbands and Wives

Tags: Woody Allen


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

FULKE GREVILLE

Maxims, Characters, and Reflections

Tags: Fulke Greville


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

Tags: Charlize Theron


Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.

REX STOUT

Three Doors to Death


Women have traditionally been either put on pedestals or damned as the source of all sexual temptation and sin. These are two sides of the same coin, since both place women in a nonhuman role. Playboy has opposed these warped sexual values and, in so doing, helped women step down from their pedestals and enjoy their natural sexuality as much as men.

HUGH HEFNER

Playboy, January 1974


If you want to stay single, look for a perfect woman.

KEN ALSTAD

Savvy Sayin's

Tags: Ken Alstad


Man dreams of fame while woman wakes to love.

ALFRED TENNYSON

Idylls of the King

Tags: Alfred, Lord Tennyson


Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.

MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN

The Neurotic's Notebook

Tags: Mignon McLaughlin


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.

HENRIK IBSEN

From Ibsen's Workshop

Tags: Henrik Ibsen


To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue none the less to exist for him also: mutually recognising each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other. The reciprocity of their relations will not do away with the miracles -- desire, possession, love, dream, adventure -- worked by the division of human beings into two separate categories; and the words that move us -- giving, conquering, uniting -- will not lose their meaning. On the contrary, when we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the 'division' of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

The Second Sex

Tags: Simone de Beauvoir


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

Tags: Charles William Day


Woman's great strength lies in being late or absent. Presence immediately reveals the weak points of our beloved; when she is absent she become one of the sylph-like figures of our adolescence whom we endowed with perfection.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS

An Art of Living


A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.

COCO CHANEL

The Gospel According to Coco Chanel

Tags: Coco Chanel


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.

GEORGE ELIOT

Adam Bede


No man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a ticket in his pocket.

REX STOUT

Some Buried Caesar

Tags: Rex Stout


There are two races of people -- men and women -- no matter what women's libbers would have you pretend. The male is motivated by toys and science because men are born with no purpose in the universe except to procreate. There is lots of time to kill beyond that. They've got to find work. Men have no inherent center to themselves beyond procreating. Women, however, are born with a center. They can create the universe, mother it, teach it, nurture it. Men read science fiction to build the future. Women don't need to read it. They are the future.

RAY BRADBURY

Playboy, 1996

Tags: Ray Bradbury


There is no moment that exceeds in beauty that moment when one looks at a woman and finds that she is looking at you in the same way that you are looking at her. The moment in which she bestows that look that says, "Proceed with your evil plan, sumbitch."

DONALD BARTHELME

"The Sea of Hesitation"

Tags: Donald Barthelme


To know a mature woman is to know more than her body. It is to know her dreams and her secrets. It is to know that a dance is a fight, and a fight is a dance, and that passion and compassion beat in the same breast.

DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS

The Lost Diary of Don Juan

Tags: Douglas Carlton Abrams


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

LEWIS F. KORNS

Thoughts