c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
On a number of occasions, Tamara joined “Che” on his sorties into the Bolivian highlands, without incident. However, on March 24, 1967, a guerrilla fighter who had been captured by the Bolivian army betrayed her by giving away Tamara’s location. Although she escaped, the Bolivian soldiers found an address book in her Jeep and came after her in hot pursuit. With no other place to hide, she made her way back to “Che” Guevara’s forces. It was considered an open secret that Tamara had been intimate with “Che” but now the troops could not help but notice what was going on. The way they looked into each other’s eyes, and whispered sweet nothings, left no doubt in anyone’s mind, but that she was his lover….The Bolivian highlands are notorious for the infestation of the Chigoe flea parasite, which infected Tamara. Having a leg injury and running a high fever, she and 16 other ailing fighters were ordered out of the region by Guevara. On August 31, 1967, up to her waist in the Rio Grande of Bolivia, and holding her M 1 rifle above her head, she and eight men were shot and killed in a hail of gunfire by Bolivian soldiers. Leaving their bodies in the water, it was several days before they were recovered downstream. Piranhas had attacked the bodies and their decomposing carcasses were polluting the water. Since the water was being used for drinking purposes by the people in a nearby village, the soldiers were ordered to clear the bodies out of the river. As they were preparing to bury Tamara’s remains in an unmarked grave, a local woman protested what was happening, and demanded that a woman should receive a Christian burial.When he received the news of what had happened, Guevara was stunned and refused to accept it, thinking it was just a propaganda stunt to demoralize him. In Havana Fidel Castro declared her a “Heroine of the Revolution.”There is always the possibility that Tamara was a double agent, whose mission it was to play up to “Che” when they met in Leipzig and then report back to the DDR (Democratic German Republic), who would in turn inform the USSR of “Che’s” activities. The spy game is a little like peeling an onion. Peel off one layer and what you find is yet another layer.
— Captain Hank Bracker, The Exciting Story of Cuba
I'm not a guru. I wish you wouldn't pose these things at me, man. Ask me about women or something.
— Charles Bukowski
Mothering or nurturing is not just a calling for women who have biological or adopted children. Mothering is a calling for all women. Every Christian woman is called to the spiritual motherhood of making disciples of all nations.
— Gloria Furman, Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God
Like a wolf, she lived by instinct.
— Nikki Rowe
What does this wildish intuition do for women? Like the wolf, intuition has claws that pry things open and pin things down, it has eyes that can through the shields of persona, it has ears that hear beyond the range of mundane human hearing. With these formidable psychic tools a woman takes on a shrewd and even precognitive animal consciousness, one that deepens her femininity and sharpens her ability to move confidently in the outer world.
— Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
It didn't matter that there was a war on our doorstep. She had things to do, places to be.
— Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
If you think there’s a thing—anything—women didn’t do in the past, you’re wrong.
— Kameron Hurley, The Geek Feminist Revolution
Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate, and their pack. They are experienced in adapting to constantly changing circumstances; they are fiercely stalwart and very brave.
— Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
So, the word wild here is not used in its modern pejorative sense, meaning out of control, but in its original sense, which means to live a natural life, one in which the criatura, creature, has innate integrity and healthy boundaries. These words, wild and woman, cause women to remember who they are and what they are about. They create a metaphor to describe the force which funds all females. They personify a force that women cannot live without.
— Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
It’s the angle. You can’t see me from where you’re standing.
— Susan Rieger, The Heirs
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
She did, she really told her. She was pretty scary, actually," "The best women always are, love; you don't get to my age without realizing that.
— Gil McNeil, Needles and Pearls
While I do not in any way mean to say that a woman should throw herself into a torturous or abusive situation, I do mean she must set for herself something in life that she is willing to reach for and therefore take risks for.
— Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
I found there are many things women ask for in a love. Other women demand money, power, or adventure. All I pray for is that he is patient, and plead that he will love me.
— R. Y.S. Perez, I Hope You Fall in Love: Poetry Collection
What she was doing was, she was letting it be his idea. She was walking him along, holding his hand tightly enough to lead him, loosely enough for him to be unaware of it. She was an absolute natural. Or maybe all women could do that to all men, if they wanted to.
— Ben H. Winters, Underground Airlines
I sometimes refer to economics as a woman. To me the subject was always a she. People would ask me why. Easy. She's obviously a woman: all the men are trying to do her, and mostly they're failing.
— Frances Weetman, Whose Model is It Anyway?: Why Economists Need to Face Up to Reality
Embrace your inner goddess, never let go of the light you carry within.
— Cynthia Dougherty-Bernal
I've learned that in order to be an efficacious woman with any sort of spiritual power, I first have to love my body.
— Ashley Mae Hoiland, One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly: The Art of Seeking God
There's something infinitely fascinating or fatal about a woman behind the wheel.
— Ahmed Mostafa
Women create an idealized, hopeful vision for the future to inspire other women. Fiction and fantasy are the crucial first steps to changing the world.
— Maya Rodale, Dangerous Books for Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels Explained
Romance novels feature nuanced portrayals of female characters having adventures, making choices, and accepting themselves just as they are. When we say these stories are silly and unrealistic, we are telling young girls not to expect to be the heroines in their own real lives.
— Maya Rodale, Dangerous Books for Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels Explained
Women emerging like aliens in a hesitant future, in a men’s world with impervious codes, may feel like dots in an uncharted territory. Discovering the crucial points, which don't line up with the unbearability of reality, may be a key to the right compass in life. ( "Terra incognita")
— Erik Pevernagie
It's not new, our valuation of young female people for how they can serve, satisfy, and satiate. Our girls are both the platter and the meal, and we eat them up--we eat their meat, we lap up their sweetness, we covet and control and consume.
— Elana K. Arnold, What Girls Are Made Of
When the last woman dies, the last man dies!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
In order to be accepted, women must compensate for their ambition and strength by being nice. Men don't have to be nearly as much d as women. I do not believe women are natively nicer than men. They may learn that niceness brings rewards and hat names ambition is often punished. They may ingratiate themselves because such behavior is rewarded and a strategy of stealth may lead to better results than being forthright, but even when women are open and direct, they are not always seen or heard.
— Siri Hustvedt, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind
Beware the wounded lioness, for she is a natural hunter.
— A.H. Septimius
Men go to the ballpark with an assumed knowledge and interest, whereas women need to constantly demonstrate how much they know and care.
— Stacey May Fowles, Baseball Life Advice
Just as we tell women today to vote, in honour of the suffragettes who campaigned for the right to do so, we owe it to these female sports pioneers to draw inspiration from their stories, to continue the fight.
— Anna Kessel, Eat Sweat Play: How Sport Can Change Our Lives
Now listen to me. I will not walk on one-way streets any longer. Your wound is my wound, (though you don't know that mine is yours), and I do what I can, but the well will run dry. You will use us up. There are women whose first stretching across borders was into your lives. When they discover how you make use of their compassion, they will turn away heartsick, stricken, withering in the freshness of their hope. There are women who were leaders, who worked night and day, defeated not by foreign policy, but by the sexual politics of solidarity, bitter now, unable to work anywhere near you. How dare you speak of the New Woman! We are your richest resource besides your endurance, and you use us like rags to wrap around your pain.
— Aurora Levins Morales, Getting Home Alive
Men tend to treat women as fragile creatures, but our bodies were built to withstand pain and hard work, think with profound insight. We were created to do what men can’t. And if that isn’t reason enough for us to be treated equal, I’m not sure what is.
— Caroline George, The Vestige
we said we would be to each other as two voices, who shadows.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Gender bias is written and practiced throughout all of the world's societies.From the words 'mankind' to 'man'.From the inequality in 'pays for work done' and to 'tasks which are needed to be done'. From the sanctity of marriage when a woman takes a 'man's' name.From the religious overtones when women are not allowed or permitted to join in and be treated as equal and conduct rites.Even the words 'woman' and 'women' are gender orientated.The genders will never be equal, nor will they ever be allowed to be for man has seen to that.To man, everything is about ownership and dominance with the need to control everything that he sees fit.Maybe...it's time for a change in thinking and being.it's a time to be equal and one.
— Anthony T. Hincks
I am strong and human with a mouth that works like a man’s and a more intelligible brain, and I demand to be heard.
— Caroline George, The Vestige
Pretty women with no soul like paintings on the wall
— Sami Abouzid
Women most often experience shame as a web of layered, conflicting, and competing social-community expectations. The expectations dictate who we should be, what we should be, how we should be.
— Brené Brown
Let me tell you something. You won't mind, will you? Don't have scenes with your young ladies. Try not to. Because you can't have scenes without crying, and then you pity yourself so much you can't remember what the other person's said. You'll never be able to remember conversations that way. Just try and be calm. I know it's awfully hard. But remember, it's for literature. We all ought to make sacrifices for literature. Look at me. I'm going to England without a protest. All for literature.
— Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Just because the book has sex in it doesn’t mean women are only reading it for the sexy bits.
— Jenny Trout, Say Goodbye to Hollywood
I was satisfied that I had done my best. She was insane.
— John Fante, Ask the Dust
[The ideology of beauty] has grown strong to take over the work of social coercion that myths about motherhood, domesticity, chastity, and passivity, no longer can manage. It is seeking right now to undo psychologically and covertly all the good things that feminism did for women materially and overtly.
— Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth
You are first and foremost a person. A reckless, foolish person, but a person nonetheless. If I ever say you are not permitted to do something, rest assured that the last reason I would ever say so would be because you are a girl.
— Renee Ahdieh, Flame in the Mist
I was too smart and that made people uncomfortable--most folks where we've lived our whole lives don't trust too much intelligence in a woman. There is also the problem of my eyes--they don't hide anything. If I don't care for a person, my eyes make it plain. I don't care for most. Folks are generally comfortable with the small lies they tell each other. They don't know what to do with someone like me, who mostly doesn't bother with small lies.
— Roxane Gay, Difficult Women
And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends. (...) almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. (...) [women in fiction were] not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman's life is that
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
I need not flatter any man
—  he has nothing to give me
One does not like to be told that one is naturally the inferior of a little man
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
Literature is impoverished beyond our counting by the doors that have been shut upon women
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. (...) Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves. Women, then, have not had a dog's chance of writing poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one's own
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
History is too much about wars
—  biography too much about great men
We must pay attention to gender, but it is difficult to pay attention to gender all by itself…It emerges differently in women’s lives because it hooks onto other markers such as race, class, sexual orientation and age.
— Sari Knopp Biklen, School Work: Gender and the Cultural Construction of Teaching
It is harder for queens, who have no luxury of meekness. History does not know how to reconcile our ambition or our power when we are strong enough to survive it. The priests have no tolerance for those of us driven by the divine madness of questions. And so our stories are blackend from the fire of righteous indignation by those who envy our imagined fornications. We become temptresses, harlots, and heretics.I have been all and none of these, depending on who tells the tale.
— Tosca Lee, The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen
The history keepers will no doubt tell their own tale, and the priests another. It is the men's accounts that seem to survive a world obsessed with conquest, our actions beyond bedchamber and hearth remembered only when we leave their obscurity. And so we become infamous because we were not invisible, the truth of our lives ephemeral as incense.
— Tosca Lee, The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen
I am fascinated that no one I have read seems to have noticed that the literature on Picasso continually turns grown-up women into girls.
— Siri Hustvedt, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind
A woman's heart is much stronger than a man's. They are weak creatures, dear. Weak, and often far more insecure than they present on the outside. Trust your love, child. The rest will follow.
— Joyce Reardon, The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red
You musn't talk of a young lady *belonging* to anybody, as if she was a piece of furniture, or money in the Three per Cent, or something of that sort.
— Wilkie Collins, Hide and Seek
Some women's arms are placed of exile
—  others are a native land.
Some women's arms are places of exile
—  others are a native land.
We have a world full of women who are unable to exhale fully because they have for so long been conditioned to fold themselves into shapes to make themselves likeable.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
Feminism and femininity are not mutually exclusive. It is misogynistic to suggest that they are. Sadly, women have learned to be ashamed and apologetic about pursuits that are seen as traditionally female, such as fashion and makeup. But our society does not expect men to feel ashamed of pursuits considered generally male - sports cars, certain professional sports. In the same way, men's grooming is never suspect in the way women's grooming is - a well-dressed man does not worry that, because he is dressed well, certain assumptions might be made about his intelligence, his ability, or his seriousness. A woman, on the other hand, is always aware of how a bright lipstick or a carefully-put-together outfit might very well make others assume her to be frivolous.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You hear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying.
— Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Handle with care. Probably has Views. Do not attempt to kiss hand.
— Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
A bumper sticker from the 1970s read, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
— Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
What else is as beautiful as a woman?
— Muhammed Muazu Mukaddas
He went on, but I tuned him out. I made eye contact and nodded occasionally, but I didn’t hear what he was saying. I had heard it all before. Even men who should’ve known better–overeducated progressive types who probably considered themselves feminists–had no compunction explaining things to me.
— Alexis M. Smith, Marrow Island
[Talking about ancient Greece](...) the great institutions (...) were created by older males who then trained younger males. They all had a strong homoerotic element. (...) This thereby increased the "rightness" of masculinity, never mind that half the world was feminine. That other half was also interested in philosophy, the arts, the law, religion, and athletics, but they had this other task -bringing children to term and nurturing them through the early years of their lives. And doing it again and again. Not that this gave status to women. On the contrary, the man's seed made the child. A woman was simply the receptacle provided by nature to carry the child until it was ready to come out. (...)
— Tina Packer, Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays
You should be proud of the pleasure you give to others' eyes.
— BadSquirrel, The Dark Side of the Moon
Men don’t think, high and low-alike, they take what a woman does for them for granted.
— D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover
All adventurous women do.
— Lena Dunham
I have an extremely strong, masculine mind and a feminine sensibility level, which is kind of an unusual combination. Both men and women tell me things and I can relate on two levels simultaneously.
— Truman Capote
I hate the twaddle talk of love, whether it's about myself or about any one else. It makes me feel ashamed of my sex, when I find out that I cannot talk of myself to another woman without being supposed to be either in love or thinking of love, -- either looking for it or avoiding it. When it comes, if it comes prosperously, it's a very good thing. But I for one can do without it, and I feel myself injured when such a state of things is presumed to be impossible.
— Anthony Trollope, The Belton Estate
She knew it was time, What for was the mystery but focused; she remained.She turned her back on anythingthat no longer served her strengths nor taught her vital lessons with her weaknesses.She said no without explanation & assigned validation back just to parking spots. She was fierce but gentle and authentic in her approach to live even if it meant standing alone.She knew the hard days weren't over but stood proud that she had already survived some of the worst. She laughed in the midst of a mindfuck & gathered her worth with all the pieces of herself that have held her together throughout the years. She knew it was timeWhat for was the mystery, but focused; she remained. She learnt that motherhood provided unconditional love doesn't have boundaries, it's pure in all its forms. Family are rare connections.Friendships are like shoes, not all will fit but when some do it's like you have won the lotto. She learnt that every love was different and how important it was to keep her heart open for the possibility of being able to experience it just one more time.
— Nikki Rowe
She's vodka in a sexy lingerie and high heels.I'm always drunk.
— J.A. ANUM
Women were still strange and inscrutable creatures. Men didn’t understand them. And women didn’t understand themselves either. It was always a performance of some sort. Everywhere you went, it was like there was a spotlight shining down on your head. You were on a stage when you were on the trolley. You were being judged and judged and judged. Every minute of your performance was supposed to be incredible and outstanding and sexy.You were often only an ethical question away from being a prostitute.
— Heather O'Neill, The Lonely Hearts Hotel
[Talking about Rosalind in As You Like It] She disguises herself as a boy, drops all the covering inhibitions of "femininity", and really searches for her true self (...) Her disguise gives her the ability to find out about herself, what she really thinks and feels (...). And she can do all this freely, without having anyone in power tell her how women should or should not behave.(...)
— Tina Packer, Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays
[Talking about Othello] His dying words are about the service he has done to the state -not what he has done to Desdemona. (...) He acknowledges not love but the power structure (...). Othello believes his fellow officer [Iago] rather than his wife, believes death is suitable punishment for infidelity (...).It makes me uneasy that we so easily state that Othello is a play about race. Race is one of its ingredients, but the most pervasive subject that Shakespeare is tackling is sexism. The two women [Desdemona and Emilia, Iago's wife] end up dead. Bianca, the third woman in the play, Cassio's mistress, ends up in jail for something she never did, and nobody bothers to get her out. Iago, the symbol of evil, remains alive. Brabantio, Desdemona's father, dies of a broken heart because of his daughter's disobedience. And everyone is very regretful about what has happened. But no one, other than Emilia, has pointed out that there is a terrible double standard, something rotten in the system itself.
— Tina Packer, Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays
If a Greek woman tells you to do something, you do it.
— Dave Barry, Best. State. Ever.: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland
[Shakespeare realized that] Women are able to understand themselves better on a personal level and survive in the world if they dress in men's clothing, thus living underground, safe (...). The presence of women disguising themselves as men dictates that the play be a comedy; women remaining in their frocks, a tragedy. In four great tragedies -Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear- almost all the women die (...). How much the women have to adhere to the rules and regulations of their enviroment makes a large difference. Once Rosalind [disguised as a man in As You Like It] has run away from the court, she has no institutional structures to deal with. Ophelia [in her frocks] is surrounded tightly by institutional structures of family, court, and politics; only by going mad can be get out of it all.
— Tina Packer, Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays
A maidenhead, the virgin's troubleIs well-compare-d to a bubbleon a navigable riverSoon 'tis touched t'is gone forever
— John Clare, Selected Poems and Prose of John Clare
Girls and women, in their new, particular unfolding, will only in passing imitate men's behavior and misbehavior and follow in male professions. Once the uncertainty of such transitions is over it will emerge that women have only passed through the spectrum and the variety of those (often laughable) disguises in order to purify their truest natures from the distorting influences of the other sex. Women, in whom life abides and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully and more trustingly, are bound to have ripened more thoroughly, become more human human beings, than a man, who is all too light and has not been pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of a bodily fruit and who, in his arrogance and impatience, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity which inhabits woman, brought to term in pain and humiliation, will, once she has shrugged off the conventions of mere femininity through the transformations of her outward status, come clearly to light, and men, who today do not yet feel it approaching, will be taken by surprise and struck down by it. One day (there are already reliable signs which speak for it and which begin to spread their light, especially in the northern countries), one day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer just signify the opposite of the male but something in their own right, something which does not make one think of any supplement or limit but only of life and existence: the female human being.This step forward (at first right against the will of the men who are left behind) will transform the experience of love, which is now full of error, alter its root and branch, reshape it into a relation between two human beings and no longer between man and woman. And this more human form of love (which will be performed in infinitely gentle and considerate fashion, true and clear in its creating of bonds and dissolving of them) will resemble the one we are struggling and toiling to prepare the way for, the love that consists in two solitudes protecting, defining and welcoming one another.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Like Wollstonecraft, Austen rejects the notion that ‘man was made to reason, woman to feel.’ Perhaps Austen was tired of reading passages in conduct books suggesting that young women were innately sensitive, quivering, emotional messes.
— Emily Auerbach
Stranger inside me, when you are born, I will give youa closed book and ask you never to read it, never rest, never forgive a man who wants to save you.
— Traci Brimhall, Our Lady of the Ruins
It unsettles the women as they have dropped their disguise and are now giant praying mantis with blonde and auburn wigs, lipstick smeared on those deadly pincher-like insect jaws.
— Irvine Welsh, Marabou Stork Nightmares
Because the same as any man, women were entitled to a fuss-free sex life should they so choose. And it didn't make us sluts, or whores, or any of the other nasty, misogynistic, double-standard bullshit that got thrown a woman's way when she didn't fit with the traditional ideals of who and what a female should be.
— Kylie Scott, Twist
Women are the most powerful and beautiful power in the world.
— Ben Tolosa, Masterplan Your Success
... just one more reminder that the rules are always different for girls, no matter who they are and no matter what they do.
— Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist
This tension-the idea that there is a right way to be a woman, a right way to be the most essential woman- is ongoing and pervasive.
— Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist
He [Hamlet] sees ghosts and listens to dreams. And when his ghost father tells him that he (Hamlet Senior) was killed by his brother and asks Hamlet Junior to avenge his death, in the right, honorable way, Hamlet says yes, yes, yes, he'll do it. But somehow he never gets round to it. Not like the other two young men in the play. The Norwegian Prince Fortinbras(...) has made his life [!!] pursuing the honor that his father lost when Hamlet Senior beat him in single combat. (...). When the lord chamberlain,Polonius, is killed, his son, Laertes, returns to the court immediately, demanding restitution, (...). So there is no shortage of examples of how young men are expected to and do act in this world where honor demands an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. But Hamlet doesn't do it. Instead, he beats up on his girlfriend and he's cruel to his mother.
— Tina Packer, Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays
men thinks women are stupid about finance ,about science and politics. otherwise they think themselves super intelligent. no . I am not saying this from hate or anger ,I am saying this because I have seen such persons around me . if a woman weak in finance ,with a limited budget how they manage households ? or in crisis come up with reserved fund ? they understand loan ,as equal overdraft ,they understand where her signature can protect her respect where might insult . they just pretend to be stupid much time ,that their loved one may feel safe and can be relaxed that their tricks are still unknown . funny . like let them win
— litymunshi
a body betrayeda heart destroyeda mind in confusionand yet a womanis capable of taking painand transforming it into triumph
— R.H. Sin
I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart.” I struggle to think of any line of thinking more linked to being a socialized female than to consider the declaration of simply existing to feel like a form of bragging. But that, of course, is the plight of the feeling girl: to be told again and again that her very existence is something not worth declaring.
— Alana Massey, All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers
She was a rule breaker, never settling her fierce spirit for things built of structure.
— Nikki Rowe
I decided that being called “crazy” by a man was not an insult but a challenge. It gives the woman an opportunity to say, “Crazy? Oh, I’ll show you fucking crazy.
— Alana Massey, All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers
While we avoid taking credit for success, women leap at the opportunity to take responsibility for failure. Men tend to externalize the reasons for their failure, putting it off on something or someone else. Not so women, who absorb blame as if they were born to be societys doormats. (Some women like to speak of their willingness to take blame as if it were a form of altruism. It isn't. Women take the blame because they find it scary to confront those who are actually culpable of wrongdoing.)
— Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence
Sylvia was an early literary manifestation of a young woman who takes endless selfies and posts them with vicious captions calling herself fat and ugly. She is at once her own documentarian and the reflexive voice that says she is unworthy of documentation. She sends her image into the world to be seen, discussed, and devoured, proclaiming that the ordinariness or ugliness of her existence does not remove her right to have it.
— Alana Massey, All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers
He [Shakespeare] was a wordsmith who loved to act and to see things from many points of view.(...) His genius lay in being able to see all sides of an argument.
— Tina Packer, Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays
The problem with feminists is that they're so motivated by competing against men that they end up becoming more masculine than men themselves, which makes them start complaining that men aren't masculine enough. Well, when you become more masculine than men, only a gorilla can satisfy you, and that's why such women end up with bad boys. When they marry them, they then complain that their husband is an idiot. This whole time, they can't see that they've destroyed everything along the way by simply refusing to just, and simply, be a woman. Because, you see, there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with being a woman. But there are many things terribly wrong with being a feminist.
— Daniel Marques
I went back to the women and said, 'Tell me exactly what you want us to do.' And they said, 'Don't do anything for us, do somethingfor our children'.
— Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
Multi-tasking is a skill. It may be stressful but a woman’s capacity to handle stress helps her to multi task
— Uma Shanker
Women need to learn to accept the incredible blessing that God created us to be. When God created Eve, He termed her a comparable mate, a helper to man. When God took Jesus, He gave us the Holy Spirit as a Helper and Comforter. The lie is: people think a helper is weak. The truth is: without help, what can anyone accomplish?There is indeed great power in who we are as women. We indeed need to let go of the lies. We also need to embrace the truth.
— LaShawnda Jones
Her mouth was wide; no rosebud that could only open just enough to let out a 'yes' and 'no', and 'an't please you, sir'.
— Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
Trouble is you never knew her. Died too soon. It's always a pity when they die too soon, but maybe it's worse when they live too long.
— Florence Stevenson, The House at Luxor
We have nothing to fear from others because approval and acceptance lies within ourselves.from Chapter 4
— Mare Chapman, Unshakeable Confidence the Freedom to Be Our Authentic Selves: Mindfulness for Women
Outside voices are the feelings, wants and opinions of others that ring so loudly in your ears, you can't hear anymore what's true for yourself ... when outside voices take over, they keep you from knowing and trusting the best guide you have, your own inner experience ... Needing other people makes us feel vulnerable, and feeling vulnerable causes our outside voices to go into veritable feeding frenzies. In fact, if you're in the midst of an outside-voice attack, there's a good chance you've done, tried to do, or were thinking about doing, something very vulnerable for you. .
— Helene G. Brenner, Ph.D
Man is always inferior to a woman, a fact he will never realize nor confess in his lifetime!
— Ramana Pemmaraju
I am not the number or beautiful face on your black board as you want to give identity to me ! I am me . I am my identity .
— litymunshi
You don’t know what you miss. A woman’s body is like whipped cream, so delicate and delicious it will melt in your mouth.
— Sanchit Gupta, The Tree with a Thousand Apples
We are diamonds in the roughThrough the thrust and toil, we come out strongWe are the breath of the earth,Our wombs tell of humanity's birthWe are seeds splattered on putrid soilsStill we sprout, through every stormWe are not here to survive,We are here to live...Inward and outwardIn the incandescence of our existenceYes, our voices may sometimes be brokenBut our spirit remains indestructible. We are women, unapologetically!
— Chinonye J. Chidolue
Just as there is an archetype of woman as the object of man's eternal love, so there must be an archetype of her as the object of his eternal fear, representing, perhaps, the shadow of his own evil actions.
— Fumiko Enchi, Masks
I am proud to be a female and I know that we are strong. I do not need women parading themselves around in vagina suits and screaming vulgar terms to represent me. Let's keep it classy ladies.
— Victoria Boccella
But seriously – how is this a good example of womanhood? How is this something we should be propping up and praising? Think about the women in your life – your mom, your aunts, your grandmothers, your sisters, your daughters, your nieces, your friends. Would you like ANY of them reduced to one small part of their anatomy? Would you tell them to their faces that they are nothing more than a walking life support system for their vaginas? ‘Cause that’s the message that feminism is sending to women the world over.I thought feminists cared more about a woman’s mind and heart, and less about her body parts....Ladies, we are so much more than our body parts. Don’t take Hollywood airheads like Cate Blanchett as your life example.
— Chrissy Johnson
Every time I saw Lacey, she'd gained five more pounds. She was turning into the kind of obese girl who does her hair like a forties pinup and wears bright red lipstick, a blue polka-dot dress with a white doily collar, colorful tattoos across her huge, smushed cleavage, as if these considerations would distract us from how fat and miserable she'd become.
— Ottessa Moshfegh, Homesick for Another World
I was born in the hands of a woman. And I want to die in the hands of one.
— M.B. Mohan
When one demands equal rights for women, one needs to assess in which areas women can work better than men, in which they can work like men, and in which they need protection and affirmative action for when they cannot work like men.
— Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire
In truth, we were similar. Like two sides of a fan, we were at odds with each other, we competed with each other, but our fates similarly rested in the hands of the Emperor--the holder, the commander, the manipulator of our destinies.
— Weina Dai Randel, The Moon in the Palace
Once a woman is comfortable in her own skin, living her own life and building a foundation by herself; it takes one heck of a man to make her want to sacrifice her independence.
— Nikki Rowe
Society doesn't owe us anything. I don't need someone to pay for my female hygiene products to feel empowered. Can we work? Yes. Can we vote? Yes. Do we have the same rights and opportunities as men? Yes. What rights are they [feminists] fighting for? What are they specifically? What don't they have?
— Hannah Bleau
The psychological need to avoid independence - the "wish to be saved" - seemed to me an important issue, quite probably the most important issue facing women today. We were brought up to depend on a man and to feel naked and frightened without one. We were taught to believe that as women we cannot stand alone, that we are too fragile, too delicate, needful of protection. So that now, in these enlightened days, when our intellects tell us to stand on our own two feet, unresolved emotional issues drag us down.
— Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence
Much of what is considered "good" in little girls is considered downright repulsive in little boys. Physical timidity or hypercautiousness, being quietly "well behaved", and depending on others for help and support are thought to be natural - if not outright charming - in girls. Boys, however, are actively discouraged from the dependent forms of relating, which are considered "sissyish" in male children.
— Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence
As a general rule, it is highly desirable that ladies should keep their temper: a woman when she storms always makes herself ugly, and usually ridiculous also. There is nothing so odious to man as a virago. Though Theseus loved an Amazon, he showed his love but roughly, and from the time of Theseus downward, no man ever wished to have his wife remarkable rather for forward prowess than retiring gentleness. A low voice "is an excellent thing in woman.
— Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers
traditional folk music and dance in India ,specially women oriented . every folk music has a homely story where women are portraits as house wife within four walls ,who has only knowledge about her husband and households activities. world is for men . though this is changing now .
— litymunshi
Many of the most charming women I know possess at least on cat or dog. Maybe after getting used to an affectionate quadruped it is hard to settle for a man.
— Luigina Sgarro
If God is good, and if He wants us to subdue this planet, and if He wants us to obey the Great Commission and conquer this world for Christ, and if He tells half the human race that they're in charge of tending the home, it follows from this that the home is actually one of the most strategic and important tools by which the world will be won.
— Rebekah Merkle
A low voice is an excellent thing in woman.
— Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers
(...) psychiatrists today recognize the contortionist's act that was required of women in an age when they were expected to stifle their own healthiest impulses. (...) "To be able to renounce your own achievements without feeling that you were sacrificing requires constant effort. To be lovely and unaggressive, a woman spends a lifetime keeping hostile or resentful impulses down. Even healthy self-assertion is often sacrificed since it may be mistaken by hostility. Therefore, [women] often repress their initiative, give up their aspirations, and unfortunately end up excessively dependent with a deep sense of insecurity and uncertainty about their abilities and their worth.
— Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence
Love will work no matter what job i have, what nationality I claim, or what street i live on. It will work even if i kiss a woman. and it does.
— Daisy Hernandez, A Cup of Water Under My Bed: A Memoir
Tomorrow's character is made out of today's thoughts. Temptation may come suddenly, but sin doesn't.
— Randy Alcorn, The Purity Principle: God's Safeguards for Life's Dangerous Trails
What I feel now doesn't matter at all? But at what point am I entitled to say to myself, what I am feeling now is valid? After all, Anna-' Here Tommy turned to face her: 'one can't go through one's whole life in phases. There must be a goal somewhere.' His eyes gleamed out hatred; and it was with difficulty that Anna said: 'If you're suggesting that I've reached a goal, and I'm judging you from some superior point, then it's not true.''Phases,' he insisted. 'Stages. Growing pains.''But I think that's how women see-people. Certainly their own children. In the first place, there's always been nine months of not knowing whether the baby would be a girl or a boy. Sometimes I wonder what Janet would have been like if she'd been born a boy. Don't you see! And then babies go through one stage after another, and then they are children. When a woman looks at a child she sees all the things he's been at the same time. When I look at Janet sometimes I see her as a small baby and I feel her inside my belly and I see her as various sizes of small girl, all at the same time.' Tommy's stare was accusing and sarcastic, but she persisted: 'That's how women see things. Everything in a sort of continuous creative stream-well, isn't it natural we should?
— Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
And woman was mystery in itself, she discovered. There was in all of them a quality of raw material, something that might one day define itself but which was never realized, because its real essence was "becoming". Wasn't it precisely through this that the past was united with the future and with all times?
— Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart
As long as there have been women." Mom told me, "there have been ways to punish them for being women.
— Elana K. Arnold
Many men remain spoiled boys that have never grown up. Women are prepared to raise them and take pain with patience, both as a condescendant contribution to supercilious compassion and as a proof of the eminence of their sense of worth. ("Prêt-à-penser" / "Ready-to-wear thinking")
— Erik Pevernagie
And I realized that this is what it's like to be an adult, learning to pick from a lot of bad choices and do the best you can with that dreadful compromise. Learning to smile, to put your best foot forward, when the world around you seems to have collapsed in its entirety, become a place of isolation, a sepia photograph of its former illusion.
— Jennifer    Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir
A sense of responsibility— or was it guilt?— hung over me, that I was in some way at fault because of cowering to all these pompous men all these years, when I should have had the bravery to reclaim my own mind. That if we women had done this years ago, before the last war, before this one, we’d be in a very different world.
— Jennifer    Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir
Trigger warnings are the most ridiculous, patronizing and infantilizing creations ever to come out of feminism....But feminists adore trigger warnings because it reinforces the idea that women are ruled by their emotions, are incapable of recovering from trauma and are just generally hysterical nitwits unprepared to confront adulthood and reality.
— Janet Bloomfield
Even without overt sexual abuse, all young women are known to experience a descent into low self-esteem at puberty, probably as they realize their role as sexual objects. The highly sensitive girl will sense all the implications even more and make self-protection a higher priority. Some overeat to become unattractive, some overstudy or overtrain so they have no free time, some pick one boy early and hang on to him for protection.
— Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You
I didn’t realize that in his wish to transform me was the proof that he didn’t like me as I was, he wanted me to be different, or, rather, he didn’t want just a woman, he wanted the woman he imagined he himself would be if he were a woman. For Franco, I said, I was an opportunity for him to expand into the feminine, to take possession of it: I constituted the proof of his omnipotence, the demonstration that he knew now to be not only a man in the right way, but also a woman.
— Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
There are lot of things we don't want to know about the people we love.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Women empowerment begins at home!
— Alex Haditaghi
And yet she was content to pair off with this dull young adventurer in the tarnished lace! It was, he supposed, the sort of thing to be expected of a sex that all philosophy had taught him to regard as the maddest part of a mad species.
— Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche
Women are like a living, breathing casinoLike a judge and juryThey sense everythingThey sense what you try to hideThey sense your weaknessesThey sense your power levelsOne must be patientOne must listenWatchAnd waitBefore one strikes
— Robert  Black
Do not judge a woman on her knees
—  you never know how tall she is when she stands.
If a man ever lets you know that he sees marriage as a trap, and women as nothing but scheming connivers, you are by no means to marry him. Any man that sees your entire sex in so harsh a light has nothing to offer you.
— Courtney Milan, Unveiled
As you come close to God in prayer, He brings purpose even from the brokenness of your life.
— Sue Detweiler
Amma and Malati called her a beggar, a whore, and it was clear from the disbelief on her face that she had never been spoken to in such manner. [....] On that day I became convinced that it is the words of women that deeply wound other women.
— Vivek Shanbhag, Ghachar Ghochar
Yes, the woman." Cunco took a deep breath. "Women like her don't come along that often, you know. Maybe only every two hundred years. She everything a man could dream of. Beautiful, clever, wise, considerate, passionate--absolutely everything.
— Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop
I believe that within every one of us is a woman of undiscovered beauty, a woman who is charming and talented and light of heart
— Sarah Strohmeyer, The Cinderella Pact
Every woman I'd ever known had two sets of memories: the one they wanted to remember and the one their heart wouldn't let them forget. The first kind were chosen, mostly positive and personality building, but the second would live on forever, despite age and fatigue and life-stealing diseases like dementia and Alzheimer's. Coded on the heart like a hard drive, the feelings never vanished.
— Max Monroe, Banking the Billionaire
She didn't say anything, just a long, quiet "shhhh," as if she had learned that the troubles of the world could be absorbed and deafened by slow, steady wistfulness, and I suddenly understood that she'd been silencing the noise for the past twenty years.
— Jennifer    Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir