quotations about women
A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.
HONORE DE BALZAC
A Woman of Thirty
What a woman thinks of women is the test of her nature.
GEORGE MEREDITH
Diana of the Crossways
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", November 18, 1938
A goodlookin horse is like a goodlookin woman.... They're always more trouble than what they're worth. What a man needs is just one that will get the job done.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses
No man can have a reasonable opinion of women until he has long lost interest in hair-restorers.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
He who has found a good wife has found great happiness, but a quarrelsome woman is like a roof that lets in the rain.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
The Silence of Colonel Bramble
With other women he had not been able to touch their flesh without experiencing the desire to devour it, as though ravenous with an abominable hunger to butcher them. But this one, could he then love her, and not kill her?
ÉMILE ZOLA
La Bête Humaine
Women are like those blinkin' little Greek islands, places to call at but not to stay.
STACY AUMONIER
"The Great Unimpressionable", The Golden Windmill and Other Stories
'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
The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and its ominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him ... In any case, the more traits and proportions of a woman seem contrived, the more she delighted the heart of man because she seemed to escape the metamorphosis of natural things. The result is this strange paradox that by desiring to grasp nature, but transfigured, in woman, man destines her to artifice.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Second Sex
That's the nature of women ... not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of it.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Maxims for Revolutionists
I think it's time we women stopped carrying supplies for the entire family. If children don't have room to carry their own toys, if men don't have pockets in their pants, tougho.
ERMA BOMBECK
Forever, Erma
Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person; they make friendships as kings of old made leagues, who sacrificed some poor animal betwixt them, and commenced strict allies; so the ladies, after they have pulled some character to pieces, are from henceforth inviolable friends.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
Women are the backbone of this country. We do it all -- we are the most organized and compassionate workers -- and we do it knowing our counterparts are paid more.
TONYA MURRAY
Los Angeles Times, March 8, 2017
Women are so sensitive, darling. They have to be. They have to be aware what a man wants, what their children want. They have antennae all over them, whiskers of feeling. And unfortunately that has a down side. It means they get hurt.
TANITH LEE
Hunting the Shadows
When a woman gets over 35 she is generally willing to embark on the sea of matrimony with almost any life-buoy.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
Women are not for using. Women are for loving.
KEVIN LEMAN
Sex Begins in the Kitchen
The heart of a coquette, like the tail of a lizard, always grows again after she has lost it.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China, August 31, 1995