c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
She was decidedly attractive, he saw, but in an ill-natured, ungracious way. Because of his connection with Fitzgerald, Carstairs & Scott, Johnnie had an extensive knowledge of the external appearance and different modes of behavior of a great variety of attractive women: they came up to the office in shoals, with their nails dipped in blood and their faces covered with pale cocoa. And some were charming and simple beneath their masks, and some were complex and arrogant. This girl belonged to the latter type, the type which would ignore or stare surlily at him if he spoke to them, until they learned that the actual money came through him, when their manner sweetened wonderfully. This girl wore her attractiveness not as a girl should, simply, consciously, as a happy crown of pleasure, but rather as a murderous utensil with which she might wound indiscriminately right and left, and which she would only employ to please when it suited her purpose. They were like bad-tempered street-walkers, without walking the street.
— Patrick Hamilton, Hangover Square
The natural tenderness and delicacy of our constitution, added to the many dangers we are subject to from your sex, renders it almost impossible for a single lady to travel without injury to her character. And those who have a protector in a husband have, generally speaking, obstacles to prevent their roving.
— Abigail Adams
But if a role model in her seventies isn't layered with contradictions - as we all come to be - then what good is she? Why bother to cut the silhouette of another's existence and place it against our own if it isn't as incongruous, ambiguous, inconsistent, and paradoxical as our own lives are?
— Molly Peacock, The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72
Officially, the New Testament church at an early stage took seriously their responsibility for widows who lacked family or other resources. The office of deacon was instituted initially to address this pressing need.
— Carolyn Custis James, The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules
But pomp and power alone are woman's care,And where these are light Eros finds a feere;Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair.
— George Gordon Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so many agreeable females with rich jointures, a prey for the vilest bonzes, who hide their flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin when they might multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart weep.
— James Joyce, Ulysses
When bad things happen to men we say it’s terrible, but when bad things happen to women we say that’s just a cultural practice,” says Lou de Baca, U.S. Ambassador at Large, Office to Combat and Monitor Human Trafficking.
— Nita Belles, In Our Backyard: A Christian Perspective on Human Trafficking in the United States
Casey glanced at her plate again, recalling the posters of her elementary school lunchroom: YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT. So, how much you ate indicated the quantity of your desire. Walter was also implying that how quickly you got your food revealed the likelihood of achieving your goals. She was in fact terribly hungry, but she'd pretended to be otherwise to be ladylike and had moved away from the table to be agreeable, and now she'd continue to be hungry" (Free Food For Millionaires, p.92.)
— Min Jin Lee, Free Food for Millionaires
... I regularly frequent St. George';s, Hanover Square, during the genteel marriage season; and though I have never seen the bridegroom's male friends give way to tears, or the beadles and officiating clergy in any way affected, yet it is not at all uncommon to see women who are not in the least concerned in the operations going on -- old ladies who are long past marrying, stout middle-aged females with plenty of sons and daughters, let alone pretty young creatures in pink bonnets, who are on their promotion, and may naturally taken an interest in the ceremony -- I say it is quite common to see the women present piping, sobbing, sniffling; hiding their little faces in their little useless pocket-handkerchiefs; and heaving, old and young, with emotion.
— William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
For he did not, he would have said, care for women; he never felt at home or at ease with them; and that monstrous creature beginning to be talked about, the New Woman of the nineties, filled him with horror. He was a quiet, conventional person, and the world, viewed from the haven of Brookfield, seemed to him full of distasteful innovations; there was a fellow named Bernard Shaw who had the strangest and most reprehensible opinions; there was Ibsen, too, with his disturbing plays; and there was this new craze for bicycles which was being taken up by women equally with men. Chips did not hold with all this modern newness and freedom. He had a vague notion, if he ever formulated it, that nice women were weak, timid, and delicate, and that nice men treated them with a polite but rather distant chivalry.
— James Hilton, Good-Bye, Mr. Chips
Shooting Willoughby carrying Marianne up the path. ... Male strength -- the desire to be cradled again? ... I'd love someone to pick me up and carry me off. Frightening. Lindsay assures me I'd start to fidget after a while. She's such a comfort.
— Emma Thompson, The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film
Aw honey. Today's as important as forever." Grandpa Joe in "Shave and a Haircut" Flash Warden and Other Stories
— Eileen Granfors
What'll Geoffrey do when you pull off your First, my child?" demanded Miss Ha
— Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night
The younger man stepped away from the table and came toward me, his whole posture radiating menace. Every Darre woman is taught to deal with such behavior from men. It is an animal trick that they use, like dogs ruffling their fur and growling. Only rarely is there an actual threat behind it, and a woman's strength lies in discerning when the threat is real and when it is just hair and noise.
— N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
The women of the South have brought into American literature a unique mixture of domesticity and grotesquerie.
— James Dickey
In its various forms, so far as we know them, Love seems always to have a deep significance and a most practical importance to us little mortals. In one form, as the mere semi-conscious Sex-love, which runs through creation and is common to the lowest animals and plants, it appears as a kind of organic basis for the unity of all creatures; in another, as the love of the mother for her offspring—which may also be termed a passion—it seems to pledge itself to the care and guardianship of the future race; in another, as the marriage of man and woman, it becomes the very foundation of human society. And so we can hardly believe that in its homogenic form, with which we are here concerned, it has not also a deep significance, and social uses and functions which will become clearer to us, the more we study it.
— Edward Carpenter, The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women
She was one of those women of good family who no longer exist, elegant, distinguished, and haughty, whose pallor and thinness seem to say, 'I am conquered by the era, like all my breed. I am dying, but I despise you,' and - devil take me! - plebeian as I am, and though it is not very philosophical , I cannot help finding that beautiful.
— Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Le bonheur dans le crime
Anyhow, with their extraordinary gift for, and experience in, affairs of the heart from the double point of view, both of the man and of the woman it is not difficult to see that these people have a special work to do as reconcilers and interpreters of the two sexes to each other.
— Edward Carpenter, The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women
The girl's life had been squandered in the streets, and among the most noisome of the stews and dens of London, but there was something of the woman's original nature left in her still; and when she heard a light step approaching the door opposite to that by which she had entered, and thought of the wide contrast which the small room would in another moment contain, she felt burdened with the sense of her own deep shame: and shrunk as though she could scarcely bear the presence of her with whom she had sought this interview.
— Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
Perhaps grown women are beings of a good deal more complexity than cats
— Jude Morgan, Indiscretion
America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash--and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumberable editions of The Lamplighter (by Maria Susanna Cummins), and other books neither better nor worse? Worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the hundred thousand.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
Always the way!" muttered the Jew to himself as he turned homewards. "The worst of these women is, that a very little thing serves to call up some long-forgotten feeling; and the best of them is, that it never lasts. Ha! ha!
— Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
Teachers were not allowed to beat children as they did in the past, although, Mma Ramotswe reflected, there were some boys-and indeed some young men-who might have been greatly improved by moderate physical correction. The apprentices, for example: would it help if Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni resorted to physical chastisement-nothing severe, of course-but just an occasional kick in the seat of the pants while they were bending over to change a tyre or something like that? The thought made her smile. She would even offer to administer the kick herself, which she imagined might be oddly satisfying, as one of the apprentices, the one who still kept on about girls, had a largeish bottom which she thought would be quite comfortable to kick. How enjoyable it would be to creep up behind him and kick him when he was least expecting it, and then to say: Let that be a lesson! That was all one would have to say, but it would be a blow for women everywhere.
— Alexander McCall Smith, The Kalahari Typing School for Men
...the state of Virginia had turned down twenty-one thousand women for admission to state colleges in 1970 while not turning away a single man...
— Meg Waite Clayton
Even for women without children, trading hours that produce income for hours that produce “only” art seems like a foolish decision. What a loss for the world, though, to have women's voices silenced because art is our last priority.
— Holly Robinson
That was what stuck in the craws of all the good women of Deptford: Mrs Dempster had not been raped, as a decent woman would have been—no, she had yielded because a man wanted her. The subject was not one that could be freely discussed even among intimates, but it was understood without saying that if women began to yield for such reasons as that, marriage and society would not last long. Any man who spoke up for Mrs Dempster probably believed in Free Love. Certainly he associated sex with pleasure, and that put him in a class with filthy thinkers like Cece Athelstan.
— Robertson Davies, Fifth Business
Miss West is never idle. Below, in the big after-room, she does her own laundering. Nor will she let the steward touch her father's fine linen. In the main cabin she has installed a sewing-machine. All hand-stitching, and embroidering, and fancy work she does in the deck-chair beside me. She avers that she loves the sea and the atmosphere of sea-life, yet, verily, she has brought her home-things and land-things along with her--even to her pretty china for afternoon tea.
— Jack London, The Mutiny of the Elsinore
Now,' Elias said, 'if only I didn't have to go home to my lousy wife. I married her in 1929. A lot of things've changed since 1929.' He sighed. 'What's a woman?' he asked. 'A Woman is a trap.
— Irwin Shaw, Short Stories: Five Decades
I think both Protestants and Catholics have killed the woman for the sake of the mother. (Rubem Alves, p. 201)
— Mev Puleo, The Struggle Is One: Voices and Visions of Liberation
Ida was a natural historian who knew how to throw in enough fiction to keep up dramtic tension. And she was replete with details, like a big fat colorful nineteenth-century historical novel, inching forward slowly....Ida's narrative line, like her waistline, was ample.
— Marissa Piesman, Heading Uptown
Life with Ilona was invariably lived on two levels, or rather in two simultaneous and parallel directions. On the one hand, your feet were always on the ground, you were always intelligently but not obsessively alert to what each day offered in response to the routine question of surviving. On the other hand, imagination and unbounded fantasy suggested a spontaneous and unexpected sequence of scenarios that were always aimed at the radical subversion of every law ever written or established. This was a permanent, organic, rigorous subversion that never permitted travel on the beaten path, the road preferred by most people, the traditional patterns that offer protection to those whom Ilona, without emphasis or pride but without any concessions either, would call "the others.
— Álvaro Mutis, The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
The feminist challenge was sweeping: it embraced education andoccupation, together with legal, political, and social status. It evendared broach the subject of equality in personal, and especiallymatrimonial, relationships. Such assertiveness was more unsettlingthan the racial threat because it was more intimate and immediate:few white men lived with blacks, but most lived with women.
— Cynthia Russett, Sexual Science: The Victorian Constuction of Womanhood
What a storyteller does is *see* more than most of us. We say he's making up his stories, but he—or better yet, *she*—watches more carefully, and then tells us what we would have seen ourselves if we'd just stopped to look."-Leah said—to Nadine, although she was looking at Marjorie (pg 138)
— Dean Hughes, Before the Dawn
Men - gifts that we love to open
—  women - gifts that we love to keep.
Woman is like a russian roulette", i've used to say, "it doesn't matter how many you dodge away or find the ones that would steal your breath and makes you sweat, at the end of the day, the fatal one always finds you. It is simply the law of the Love Gun.
— Mladen Đorđević, Svetioničar - Vesnici oluje
They radiated that orgasm-free lifestyle so unique and universal among Seabrook women.
— Holly Peterson, It Happens in the Hamptons
A man once said of women, "Women are like roads, the more curves, the more fun, exciting and dangerous they are." While the evolved man smiles with class and confidence and says, women with more curves, twists and turns in her mind are the most beautiful, exciting, dangerous creatures alive. And the evolved woman, well, she will accept no less than the evolved man; a man with honor, dignity and depth.
— Melody  Lee, Moon Gypsy
It is not really hard to understand when women say that they like 'tall,dark and handsome' men..They simply mean a tall man with dark fantasies and handsome salary..
— Himmilicious
Still trying to figure out the dynamics of rights and responsibilities as a woman? How about striking out the word Woman and making it Human.
— Haritha Velpureddy
Her stories were made of badass women teasing monsters and running wild with dragons.
— Melody  Lee, Moon Gypsy
You are good enough to make whatever you want to achieve possible. You just need to find your talent and passion, then put a heck a lot of work into it.
— Ashley Graham
A lot of performers, if they go to bed with a woman on the road, they think of her as a slut. As a person and a man, what does that make them then? Lowlife or high living, you give as good as you get, and I don't think women's sex lives have a thing to do with the kinds of human beings they are.
— Waylon Jennings, Waylon: An Autobiography
When RBG fretted over the first dry opinion the chief justice assigned her, O'Connor gave her a pep talk. As RBG read that opinion on the bench, O'Connor, who had dissented in the case, passed her a note. "This is your first opinion for the Court," she had written. "It is a fine one, I look forward to many more." Remembering the comfort that note gave her on such a nerve wracking day, RBG did the same for the next two women to join the court, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
— Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I think if you had been born a boy, perhaps you would have been satisfied with what the world offered you. That is how we are alike. We saw everything that was not ours, and we hungered. Do not lose that hunger. You will always have to fight for everything. Even when you already have it, you will have to keep fighting to maintain it. You will have to be more ruthless, more brutal, more everything. Any weakness will undo everything you have accomplished. They will see any crack as evidence that they were right that a woman cannot do what you do.
— Kiersten White, Now I Rise
Trusting women means also trusting them to find their way. This isn’t to say, of course, that I think women’s sexual choices are intrinsically “empowered” or “feminist.” I just believe that in a world that values women so little, and so specifically for their sexuality, we should be giving them the benefit of the doubt. Because in this kind of hostile culture, trusting womenis a radical act.
— Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women
Women were very queer. Unexpectedly cruel and unexpectedly kind.
— Agatha Christie, The A.B.C. Murders
Trusting women means also trusting them to find their way. This isn’t to say, of course, that I think women’s sexual choices are intrinsically 'empowered' or 'feminist.' I just believe that in a world that values women so little, and so specifically for their sexuality, we should be giving them the benefit of the doubt. Because in this kind of hostile culture, trusting womenis a radical act.
— Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women
. . since [no] women whose acquaintance I had made in fiction had much to do with the life I led or wanted to lead, I was not female. . . . if Molly Bloom was a woman. what was I? A mutant or a dinosaur.
— Lee R. Edwards, Woman: An Issue
What it is about Islam, I thought, that can make a woman so strong that she no longer strives to be noticed by men, no longer needs the admiring gaze to feel attractive, no longer puts herself on display when the rest of the world is doing just that?
— Na'ima B. Robert, From My Sisters' Lips
I do not take orders from women.”“My men do not have a similar problem.” Lada lifted a hand. The man fell, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest.
— Kiersten White, Now I Rise
The cause of every anomaly can be found in woman.
— G.I. Gurdjieff
Female monsters take things as personally as they really are. They study facts. Even if rejection makes them feel like the girl who's not invited to the party, they have to understand the reasons why.... Every question, once it's formulated, is a paradigm, contains its own internal truth. We have to stop diverting ourselves with false questions. And I told Warren: I aim to be a female monster too.
— Chris Kraus, I Love Dick
The moment a woman was born determined so much of who she was allowed to become.
— J. Courtney Sullivan, Saints for All Occasions
When I was a child, my mother would try to convince me of a woman's need for a secret stash. "It can be anything: land, property, even a couple hundred dollars. You know, in case anything goes wrong and you have to get the hell out of there." Her mother had told her this, as her mother before had told her.
— Zinzi Clemmons, What We Lose
I was painter staring at a canvas waiting for the forgotten visions of my new abstract piece to come to me. But I am the abstract piece and my mind cannot comprehend the work my heart has created.
— Rediet Worku
Some women who married and also had lesbian relationships were genuinely bisexual. Many others married because they could see no other viable choice in the day.
— Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America
I am going to stop mainlining my life force / Into your self-esteem: / Air pump girl blowing up boy rubber ball / You can stay flat and go nowhere by yourself
— Eve Ensler, Insecure at Last
Women are not there to spike testosterone.
— Abhijit Naskar
Dear Dick, I'm not sure I still want to fuck you. At least, not in the same way. Sylvère keeps talking about us disturbing your "fragility", but I'm not sure that I agree. There's nothing so remarkable in one more woman adoring you. It's a "problem" you're confronting all the time. I'm just a particularly annoying one, one who refuses to behave... And yet I feel this tenderness towards you, after all we've been through.
— Chris Kraus, I Love Dick
All acts of sex were forms of degradation.... What do you do with the Serious Young Woman (short hair, flat shoes, body slightly hunched, head drifting back and forth between the books she's read)? You slap her, fuck her up the ass and treat her like a boy. The Serious Young Woman looked everywhere for sex but when she got it it became an exercise in disintegration. What was the motivation of these men? Was it hatred she evoked? Was it some kind of challenge, trying to make the Serious Young Woman femme?
— Chris Kraus, I Love Dick
It was the kind of story everybody likes, about a tough girl who becomes a truer version of herself by uncovering her vulnerability. It was the kind of story people like because its universe is played out in the story of one person. It was the kind of story (dare I say it?) that women are supposed to write because all its truths are grounded in a single lie: denying chaos.
— Chris Kraus, I Love Dick
Some women’s love of being loved is insatiable ; and so, often, is their love of loving; and in the last case they may find that they can’t give it continuously to the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop’s licence to receive it.
— Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
We are relentless. We don't compromise grace. But when we hunt, we're vicious.
— Frida R.
It is those who injure women who get the most kindness from them.
— William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
For life is too short to resign ourselves to reading poorly written books and sleeping with women we don't love.
— Anne Garréta, Not One Day
Who knows a woman's heart? Most women will shrug off what a man would kill you for, and kill you for what a man would shrug off.
— Robert Jordan, The Path of Daggers
Analysis is about re-parenting yourself and relearning the habits of a lifetime.
— Stephen Galloway, Leading Lady; Sherry Lansing and the Making of a Hollywood Groundbreaker
Poor women suffer terrible sexual violence that goes unreported. Because of their social class, these women do not have access to therapy or other methods of healing. Their repeated abuse ultimately eats away at their self-esteem, driving them to drugs, prostitution, AIDS, and in many cases, death.
— Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues
You cannot wear every expectation. Consider putting aside one's that don't fit.
— Bozena Zawisz
You cannot wear every expectation. Consider putting aside ones that don't fit.
— Bozena Zawisz
Insecurity is disconnecting from what inspires you and taking on board an external point of reference.
— Bozena Zawisz
What bothers me most about my teeth is that they don’t travel loin south, don’t sprout from the Mother Mouth. Vagina dentata, come closah, say high.
— Virginia Petrucci
Spring was becoming summer, not yet the oppressive heat of July and August, but sweaty days that were harbingers. Of course, now we had the modern conveniences, air-conditioning, to deal with them in a way Augustine Lamoureaux and her girls on the edge of summer did not. As much as things had changed—and they had—it was still bitter how close so many women lived to the edge. One jealous boyfriend, walking down the wrong street, saying the wrong thing, not being “feminine” enough, bad luck, combined with a few wrong choices—we all make them—and like Tiffany, we would fall forever over the edge.
— J.M. Redmann, The Girl on the Edge of Summer
Tigers and Women ! Tigers and women have something in common, it is their disposition; they must be treated majestically.
— Henrietta Newton Martin
Don't compare her to sunshine and roses when she's clearly orchids and moonlight.
— Melody  Lee, Moon Gypsy
As long as there have been women," Mom told me, "there have been ways to punish them for being women.
— Elana K. Arnold, What Girls Are Made Of
A soldier: "I know where heaven is and it's Lithuania ... The women are beautiful, pagan, with a practical view towards sex. Who says communism was bad? You're working three levels of advantages: you're a foreign male, you're a rich, exotic American, and their men are a bunch of drunken, criminal slobs.
— Robert D. Kaplan, Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground
When a woman says she doesn't want to be your fling, it doesn't mean she wants to be your girlfriend either. All the signs and words may just be her way of accommodating you or showing that you're good company, and not because she loves you at all to want more from you.
— Temitayo Olami
Oh, I love, love, love women! I think women are wonderful! I love women!
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Women are beautiful because the world sees with the eyes of men and us men are still influencing the preferences of humanity.
— Hockson Floin
This is not a men vs women issue. It’s about people vs prejudice.
— Laura Bates, Everyday Sexism
Mr Reichman was brilliant and very good at what he did, but he was still a man, and men rarely knew what decisions a woman had or hadn't made.
— Charlotte Rogan, The Lifeboat
In the twentieth century the women who wanted to be on their own were some of the best, the honest ones, those who instinctively rejected the trash. But here came a tragical dilemma. If they accepted Business and served it, they served the very thing from which they fled, and at best became imitation men. If they rejected Business and lived on allowances or incomes, they were in the anomalous position of hunting with the industrial hounds and running with the agricultural hare. An instinctive sense of this made many of them turn "artist." And so Europe was cluttered up with incompetent women "artists" -- not that a woman is incapable of being an artist, but because the assumed role provided an escape. Either situation was impossible, and the solution is not yet found.
— Richard Aldington, Women Must Work
If they should only be ill,' she said, 'there would be so many little things we could do for them. It does seem in a kind of a way an opportunity. I often think it is only when a man is ill that he understands what a woman means in his life.
— Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September
I was lonely, desperate, and angry. At that moment, I truly understood what it meant to be a Saudi woman. It meant being confronted with every possible kind ofobstacle and discrimination. It meant being told that if you want to race with men, you’d have to do it with your hands and legs cut off. I started to wish I had been born somewhere—anywhere—else.
— Manal Al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening
How odd it is that we judge a woman by her clothes and the place she eats lunch and the subjects she talks about with her colleagueson her coffee break, yet we don’t judge a man if he doesn’t grow his beard or if he works with women or speaks to them. Why do Saudi women allow subjugation to a man and adhere to men’s rules and conditions? Why did I?
— Manal Al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening
So you’re the infamous Manal al-Sharif,” he said, eyeing me from behind his desk. “Aren’t you ashamed of what you did?”“Is driving a car something shameful?” I answered back.
— Manal Al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening
A black woman making art is a disruptive act. Every story that I tell as a woman is a political act, even if I want to tell a 'silly love story.' The fact it exists through my gaze is radical.
— Ava DuVernay
Things can get pretty rough out there," he says. "Can't they? For you girls? You're all a bunch of warriors, aren't you? Lionhearted.
— Megan Abbott, The End of Everything
Kill the women? No – nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave, and you’re always as polite as pie to them; and by-and-by they fall in love with you and never want to go home any more.
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
A woman's power source is from the pussy.
— Robert  Black
Many men think the same way about women, treating them as stars. They admire us from a distance, solely because of our appearance. And when some of them eventually decide to approach the ones they long to be with, they often get burnt.
— Marcin Dolecki, Philosopher's Crystal: The Treacherous Terrain of Tassatarius
It's as if our being academic equals means we must be inadequate wives and mothers,' says Noura.All of these girls have been called 'intimidating' and 'outspoken' by their Muslim counterparts, simply for being themselves. Their accomplishments usually leave men feeling emasculated, they say.'It's still going to take Muslim men a couple more generations to catch up and realise girls like us want love, not money,' says Ayesha.
— Sabrina Mahfouz
Pandora opened the box with the new high-heels, put them on and went out to town.
— Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land
To be perfectly honest, if I had my way women wouldn’t even be allowed inside grounds, and I certainly believe that if a ground is sold out and a male of the species is locked outside, someone should go in, grab the nearest female and throw her out so that the bloke can have her seat.
— Dougie Brimson, Geezer's Guide to Football: A Lifetime of Lads, Lager and Labels
Women‘s football is crap. If it were any good people would go and watch it, but it isn’t and they don’t. And, to be honest, I doubt they ever will.
— Dougie Brimson, Geezer's Guide to Football: A Lifetime of Lads, Lager and Labels
The only people that can't handle the truth are those that suffer so much anxiety that they will live in denial, in order to prevent their illusion from being destroyed and feeling more anxiety.
— Shannon L. Alder
What could women accomplish if they did not have to continually mind their skirts, keep them from dragging in the mud or getting trampled on the steps of an omnibus? If they had pockets! With pockets, women could conquer the world!
— Theodora Goss, The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter
When a man modifies or adorns a woman's name, or dispatches an endearment into her vicinity, he is attempting at once to alter and deny her, to dilute the privacy of the category she has inherited and to require that she respond as someone quite less than herself.
— Ben Marcus, Notable American Women
Two women at the same event wearing the same outfit is a disaster. But two women at the same event singing the same song is a party. And two women at the same event talking about Doris from Fame is a friendship for life. Fill yourself with words, choruses, and heroes, like you're supposed to fill your wardrobe with shoes, brooches, and belts.
— Caitlin Moran, Moranifesto
Only you can know what's true for you. I'll help you get there.
— Ann Davidman, Motherhood - Is It For Me?: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Clarity
It was, she believed, a simple and unassailable fact of life that if a woman went to epic lengths to throw herself on the mercy of a man, the man would not, could not, refuse.
— Nicholas Evans, The Horse Whisperer
Make noise for justice.Make noise for inclusion.Make noise for empathy.Make noise for our planet.Make noise for civil rights.Make noise for women’s rights.Make noise for compassion.Make noise for LOVE.
— Scott Stabile
It is remarkable, remembering the bitterness of those days, what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about. No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house, and clothing are mine forever. Therefore not merely do effort and labour cease, but also hatred and bitterness. I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me.
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
—And what's so bad about being soft like a woman? Why is it men or whoever, some poor bastard, some queen, can't be sensitive, too, if he's got a mind to? —I don't know, but sometimes that kind of behavior can get in a man's way.—When? When it comes to torturing?”—No, when it comes to being finished with the torturers.”—But if men acted like women there wouldn't be anymore torturers.
— Manuel Puig, Kiss of the Spider Woman
A woman, desires to hear nice words from a man who can praise her beauty.
— Auliq Ice
Galileo, yet men turn around women!
— Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land
And even though I knew in my head there’s nothing a man can do that a woman can’t, I also knew in my heart we can’t help doing it for different reasons. And just like a man will never understand exactly how a woman feels when she has a baby, or an orgasm, or the reasons why she’ll fight so hard to be loved, a woman can’t know in what way a man satisfies himself, what question he answers for himself, when he looks right at death.
— Pam Houston, Cowboys Are My Weakness
Of man there is little here: therefore do their women masculinize themselves. For only he who is man enough will save the woman in woman.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Lady Caroline: As far as I can make out, the young women of the present day seem to make it the sole object of their lives to be always playing with fire. Mrs. Allonby: The one advantage of playing with fire, Lady Caroline, is that one never gets even singed. It is the people who don't know how to play with it who get burned up.
— Oscar Wilde
It seems to me if I were young and in love I should never deem a man of ordinary caliber worthy of my devotion.
— Kate Chopin, The Awakening
There is something so marvelous about women comfortable in their own skin.
— Jen Hatmaker, 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess
Women are delicate creatures at the best of times moved by desires unknown to the men who place trust in them.
— Melvin Musera
If he’d explained his reasoning with humor, rather than with condescension, she might have stayed sane; now she’d grind his bones to make her bread.-The Widow Nash
— Jamie Harrison
Beautiful women have a following all their own. If that sounds misogynistic, I’m sorry, that’s the way the world works. Homer said the Greeks went to war over a woman. I can’t get a battle, but I can get a few hundred thousand views with the right face in a skirt.
— Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, Numbercaste
Perhaps that was a thing about attractive women: A rejection demanded their respect, made them trust you more.
— Jo Nesbø, The Snowman
How can I believe the people that say women have equal rights? When the worst insult a man can be called is a woman, girly, a twat, a cunt, that he needs to 'man up' and the list goes on. My gender is not an insult. I'm tired of all this shit.
— Laura Bates, Everyday Sexism
He needed a stiff drink. With a side of straightjacket.
— Kelly Moran, Benediction
Why have I spent so long settling for less when I know damn well the world expects more?
— Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Women are born to serve and breed, and when we fail at this, what else is there? What is it that we can do that men can't? We bring their screaming mouths into this world only to be told by those mouths, now grown, that we're lesser than. Only good for being on our knees, backs, or perched over stoves. We're told, You're smart for a woman, you're mouthy for a woman, you're brazen for a woman. They tell us we're dangerous and emotional, prone to hysterics like landmines, and I wonder, if this is true, why aren't they afraid?
— Felicia C. Sullivan, Follow Me into the Dark
I've never looked for women. When I was a teenager, perhaps. But they are looking for us, and we [men] must learn that very quickly. They decide. We just turn up. Never mind the superficialities – tall and handsome and all that. Just turn up
— Peter O'Toole
...Minnesota, Wisconsin, all around there... has the kind of women I liked when I was younger. Pale-skinned and blue-eyed, hair so fair it's almost white, wine-colored lips, and round, full breasts with the veins running through them like a good cheese.
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
Stop telling me I’m oppressed.....I’m not a victim. I don’t know why feminists are so hellbent on characterizing me as one.....Feminists don’t speak for me. They’re not my voice. They’re not my representation. I owe them nothing, except maybe a shred of sympathy. How miserable must they be to see oppression at every turn?...You DON’T speak for me. You DON’T represent me or my concerns....We’re living proof that the modern day feminist movement is a crock.Feminists are victims of their own delusions, and we’ll never buy what they’re selling.
— Hannah Bleau
Boys and girls are only little men and women. And WE are much harder and hardier than they are--" (Peter liked the "we." Perhaps the Doctor had known he would.)--"and much stronger, and things that hurt THEM don't hurt US. You know you mustn't hit a girl--""I should think not, indeed," muttered Peter, indignantly."Not even if she's your own sister. That's because girls are so much softer and weaker than we are; they have to be, you know," he added, "because if they weren't, it wouldn't be nice for the babies. And that's why all the animals are so good to the mother animals. They never fight them, you know.""I know," said Peter, interested; "two buck rabbits will fight all day if you let them, but they won't hurt a doe.""No; and quite wild beasts--lions and elephants--they're immensely gentle with the female beasts. And we've got to be, too.""I see," said Peter."And their hearts are soft, too," the Doctor went on, "and things that we shouldn't think anything of hurt them dreadfully. So that a man has to be very careful, not only of his fists, but of his words. They're awfully brave, you know," he went on. "Think of Bobbie waiting alone in the tunnel with that poor chap. It's an odd thing- -the softer and more easily hurt a woman is the better she can screw herself up to do what HAS to be done. I've seen some brave women-- your Mother's one," he ended abruptly."Yes," said Peter."Well, that's all. Excuse my mentioning it. But nobody knows everything without being told. And you see what I mean, don't you?
— E. Nesbit, The Railway Children
She keeps telling herself and others that she doesn't want a relationship to silence the longing in her soul. That alternative fact feeds her insecurities and starves her soul.
— Sanjo Jendayi
I don't want them to think that we dress like savages,' she replied, with a scorn that Pocahontas might have resented; and he was struck again by the religious reverence of even the most unworldly American women for the social advantages of dress.'It's their armour,' he thought, 'their defence against the unknown, and their defiance of it.' And he understood for the first time the earnestness with which May, who was incapable of tying a ribbon in her hair to charm him, had gone through the solemn rite of selecting and ordering her extensive wardrobe.
— Edith Wharton
The dilemma for women who love to write may not have so much to do with finding the elusive literary voice, as with being reluctant to use the one that's already lurking inside, just waiting for the chance to speak up. Many of us, especiall,y those from the generations taught to be good, accommodating girls, are afraid of sounding too strong, too loud, too unconventional, or simply too much like the self we're afraid to reveal to the world. Most of us have at least an inkling of what form our writing voice should take, if only we might find the courage to reveal it.
— Nava Atlas, The Literary Ladies' Guide to the Writing Life
I suggest that the representation of women deserves a much higher consideration in our religious discourse. When words are presented as if they come directly from God, they can have monumental impact on our psyches, our spirits, our hearts, and our relationships. Women are given, in story at least, first place in the lifeboats, but often in more common circumstances we are consigned to the back of the bus.
— Carol Lynn Pearson, The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy: Haunting the Hearts and Heaven of Mormon Women and Men
I love you for unfathomable reasons
— A.H. Septimius
I guess lesbianism wasn't so rampant in those days, they would've gotten a bunk with each other and just left me alone, you know. Which would have been just as well, you know..
— Charles Bukowski
Nothing like beautiful legs. 'Cause with beautiful legs, even if you've been there only once or twice, there might be something up there besides the cunt, there might be something really marvellous this time - it could be a cunt, but it could be - it's just something about looking at the legs just makes you - I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the cunt, I'm just saying, you always imagine - some extra magic when you're looking at the outside portion of the female.
— Charles Bukowski
Have not women preferred hatred to indifference, and the reputation of witchcraft, with all its penalties, to absolute insignificance?
— J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Uncle Silas
He was savoring for the first time the ineffable subtleties of feminine refinement. Never had he encountered this grace of language, this quiet taste in dress, these relaxed, dove like postures. He marveled at the sublimity of her soul and at the lace on her petticoat. With her ever-changing moods, by turns brooding and gay, chattering and silent, fiery and casual, she aroused in him a thousand desires, awakening instincts or memories. She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague "she" of all the poetry books.
— Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
She tried to remember all the times she had spoken to him. She replayed every moment she could remember at the beach last week. Not once had she led him to believe that she liked him improperly. And yet, last night, he had appeared as if she had invited him. She had given herself so willingly, so lasciviously, that he must have thought she had desired him all along. Perhaps she had, or perhaps she had not realised how pleasurable intimacy could be.
— Mahita Vas, Rain Tree
Hodel saw it through her sister's eyes: women were created to be in every way partners, not mindless slaves or brainless doormats, but helpers, collaborators, equals. And that was a thing of great beauty.
— Alexandra Silber, After Anatevka: A Novel Inspired by Fiddler on the Roof
I am afraid we women are factionists; we always take a side, and nature has formed us for advocates rather than judges.
— J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Uncle Silas
Straight women love a feminine sensibility in a man, but that love only goes up to, and unfortunately does not quite pass, the fact of his being an actual woman.
— Jennifer Finney Boylan, Long Black Veil
I figured a woman can't be understood the way a man can. Women have purposes men can't even imagine.
— Craig Davidson, Cataract City
Don’t we see that men’s rightful task is to go out to work and wear themselves out trying to accumulate wealth, as though they were our factors or stewards, so that we can remain at home like the lady of the house directing their work and enjoying the profit of their labors? That, if you like, is the reason why men are naturally stronger and more robust than us — they need to be, so they can put up with the hard labor they must endure in our service.
— Moderata Fonte
Why is the half of humanity with a special sensitivity to the preciousness of life, the half untainted by testosterone poisoning, almost wholly unrepresented in defense establishments and peace negotiations worldwide? [blurb on Daniella Gioseffi's _Women on War_; quoted in Carol Lynn Pearson's _The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy_]
— Carl Sagan
for frail but surprisingly strong fairies who had lost their way above groundfor burned mermaids and sick vampire girlsfor wild wolfish women with sharp teeth and leaves in their hair
— Francesca Lia Block, How to (Un)cage a Girl
I like driving cab. Receptionists, sales clerks, waitresses -- they all have to look pleasant all the time. I can snarl if I want. There ain't too many women who can do that. Maybe garment workers are allowed to snarl at their sewing machines. But women mostly have to look pleasant when they're fucking miserable, and smile when they're angry.
— Helen Potrebenko, Taxi!: A Novel
I feel different, better, about my personal life as well as my professional life. So much confidence comes simply because I have reached this very good age. Women my age today are forging new ground. Society stops defining us by our reproductive capacity, sexual attractiveness, or other traditional measures, so we become liberated from stereotype. We are freed to grow into our full selves.I couldn’t have allowed myself to feel so positive in the past. When I was at the height of my film career, I didn’t have the kind of respect I now have from the theatrical community. I hadn’t yet proved that I have the chops for the stage. But now I have a stature I’ve never before enjoyed.Virginia Woolf herself observed that when her Aunt Mary left her enough money to live on, her financial independence meant she “need not hate” or “flatter any man.” She said this was of even more value to her freedom and autonomy than the right to vote.
— Kathleen Turner, Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on My Life, Love, and Leading Roles
Understanding why so many western women are giving birth to unnaturally large babies that either damage the birth canal or will not fit down it is one of the greatest challenges to modern medicine.
— Steven Magee
As far as I can reckon, a woman can stand absolutely anything under God's heaven that she knows; but she just up and can't stand the littlest, teeniest, no-account sort of thing that she ain't sure of. Answers may kill 'em dead enough, but it's questions that eats 'em alive.
— Eleanor Hallowell Abbott, The Indiscreet Letter
Alanna Carrington, head witch of the Philadelphia Coven, hurtled his way, and with her, trouble was a guarantee.
— Katherine McIntyre, Rising for Autumn
A society is patriarchal to the degree that it promotes male privilege by being male dominated, male identified, and male centered. It is also organized around an obsession with control and involves as one of its key aspects the oppression of women.... If men occupy superior positions, it's a short leap to the idea that men must be superior...[and that] whatever men do will tend to be seen as having greater value.
— Allan G. Johnson, The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy
The man who reproaches you is unfair
— You're a woman and not a saint.
She feels a little sad. Is she sad? Helen considers an alternative: She is dehydrated.
— Meg Howrey, The Wanderers
Don’t you wonder sometimes,” Miranda asked, “whether women have all the power or no power at all?
— David Burr Gerrard, Short Century: A Novel
I believe in women helping each other feel good about themselves instead of trying to compete.
— Hopal Green
Tamara Bunke was the only woman to fight alongside “Che” during his Bolivian campaign. She was an East German national, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 19, 1937, of Communist activist parents. As a child, her home was frequently used for meetings, hiding weapons and conducting other Communist activities. After World War II, in 1952 she returned to Germany where she attended Humboldt University in Berlin. Tamara met “Che” Guevara when she was an attractive 23-year-old woman in Leipzig, and he was with a Cuban Trade Delegation. The two instantly hit it off as she cozied up to him and, having learned how to fight and use weapons in Pinar del Rio in western Cuba, she joined his expedition to Bolivia.Becoming a spy for the ELN, she adopted the name “Tania” and posed as a right-wing authority of South-American music and folklore. In disguise, she managed to warm up to and entice Bolivian President René Barrientos. She even went on an intimate vacation to Peru with him.
— Captain Hank Bracker, The Exciting Story of Cuba