quotations about women
Daughters of the attitude that produced them, certain women will not appeal to us without the double bed in which we find peace by their side, while others, to be caressed with a more secret intention, require leaves blown by the wind, water rippling in the dark, things as light and fleeting as they are.
MARCEL PROUST
The Guermantes Way
Too credulous a woman's longing flies
And spreading swiftly, swiftly dies.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
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
Young India, October 4, 1930
Women ... I mean, they are the other half of the sky, and without them there is nothing. And without us there's nothing. There's only the two together creating children, creating society.
JOHN LENNON
interview, KFRC RKO Radio, December 8, 1980
All one's life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to be noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It's a positive thing. You can move about unnoticed and invisible.
DORIS LESSING
attributed, An Uncommon Scold
What a woman thinks of women is the test of her nature.
GEORGE MEREDITH
Diana of the Crossways
Women ... to them any wedding is better than no wedding and a big wedding with a villain preferable to a small one with a saint.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom, Absalom!
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.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
I love women. I love all the bright and attractive people and things of this world, the flame and also the moth, the dancer and the dance.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983
Don't wait for the good woman. She doesn't exist.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
letter to Steve Richmond, November 1971
Sometimes women who aren't perfect are more interesting; they've done more, or learned something.
JEAN M. AUEL
The Valley of Horses
A woman unsatisfied must have luxuries. But a woman who loves a man would sleep on a board.
D. H. LAWRENCE
letter to John Middleton Murry, November 27, 1913