c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Conversation between a princess and an outlaw: "If I stand for fairy-tale balls and dragon bait--dragon bait--what do you stand for?""Me? I stand for uncertainty, insecurity, bad taste, fun, and things that go boom in the night.""Franky, it seems to me that you've turned yourself into a stereotype.""You may be right. I don't care. As any car freak will tell you, the old models are the most beautiful, even if they aren't the most efficient. People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve.""Well, you may get off on being a beautiful stereotype, regardless of the social consequences, but my conscience won't allow it." "And I goddamn refuse to be dragon bait. I'm as capable of rescuing you as you are of rescuing me.""I'm an outlaw, not a hero. I never intended to rescue you. We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.
— Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.
— Margaret Sanger
Never use the word “cheap”. Today everybody can look chic in inexpensive clothes (the rich buy them too). There is good clothing design on every level today. You can be the chicest thing in the world in a T-shirt and jeans — it’s up to you.
— Karl Lagerfeld
In societies where men are truly confident of their own worth, women are not merely tolerated but valued."(From a speech read on video on August 31, 1995 before the NGO Forum on Women, Beijing, China)
— Aung San Suu Kyi
Is it time for your period, or somet
— Linda Howard, Drop Dead Gorgeous
Vaginas beat penises every time. They're like kryptonite.Penises are defenseless against them.
— Emma Chase, Tangled
The desire to get married is a basic and primal instinct in women. It's followed by another basic and primal instinct: the desire to be single again.
— Nora Ephron
Over a lifetime of dealing with difficult women, I have learned it is often better to give into their demands immediately.
— Patricia Briggs, When Demons Walk
Right. I look fine. Except I don't,' said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust. To that end she had tried banning television in the early years, and never had a lipstick or a woman's magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kiki's knowledge, but these and other precautionary measures had made no difference. It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies-- it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.
— Zadie Smith, On Beauty
In all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones. You call this a Paradox, and demand my Reasons. They are these:1. Because as they have more Knowledge of the World and their Minds are better stor’d with Observations, their Conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreable.2. Because when Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over Men, they supply the Diminution of Beauty by an Augmentation of Utility. They learn to do a 1000 Services small and great, and are the most tender and useful of all Friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old Woman who is not a good Woman.3. Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly produc’d may be attended with much Inconvenience.4. Because thro’ more Experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an Intrigue to prevent Suspicion. The Commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your Reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the Affair should happen to be known, considerate People might be rather inclin’d to excuse an old Woman who would kindly take care of a young Man, form his Manners by her good Counsels, and prevent his ruining his Health and Fortune among mercenary Prostitutes.5. Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.6. Because the Sin is less. The debauching a Virgin may be her Ruin, and make her for Life unhappy.7. Because the Compunction is less. The having made a young Girl miserable may give you frequent bitter Reflections; none of which can attend the making an old Woman happy.8thly and Lastly They are so grateful!!
— Benjamin Franklin
A woman who is not happy with herself can never be happy for someone else." -Toyi Ward
— Kamryn Adams, Par for the Curse
Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
A man fishes for two reasons: he’s either sport fishing or fishing to eat, which means he’s either going to try to catch the biggest fish he can, take a picture of it, admire it with his buddies and toss it back to sea, or he’s going to take that fish on home, scale it, fillet it, toss it in some cornmeal, fry it up, and put it on his plate. This, I think, is a great analogy for how men seek out women.
— Steve Harvey, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment
I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting.
— Oscar Wilde
The emerging woman ... will be strong-minded, strong-hearted, strong-souled, and strong-bodied...strength and beauty must go together.
— Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Girl
Over the years I have learned that what is important in a dress is the woman who is wearing it.
— Yves Saint-Laurent
Nobody around here had ever seen a lady beekeeper till her. She liked to tell everybody that women made the best beekeepers, 'cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting. It comes from years of loving children and husbands.
— Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
Usually when you see females in movies, they feel like they have these metallic structures around them, they are caged by male energy.
— Björk
Some women are meant to change the world, while others are meant to hold it together. And then there are those of us who simply don't want to be in it, because we know no matter how much we struggle, we can't comfortably fit.
— Jodi Picoult, Second Glance
Women should be obscene and not heard.
— Paul Meredith Potter
God made man stronger but not necessarily more intelligent. He gave women intuition and femininity. And, used properly, that combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I’ve ever met.
— Farrah Fawcett
Women often seemed to leave things unsaid, and in his limited experience it was what they did not say that proved the most trouble.
— Robert Jordan, The Great Hunt
He was ugly, himself. Weird-ugly. But ugliness in a man doesn't matter, much. Ugliness in a woman is her life.
— Joyce Carol Oates, Faithless
These days, however, I am much calmer - since I realised that it’s technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism, you wouldn’t be allowed to have a debate on women’s place in society. You’d be too busy giving birth on the kitchen floor - biting down on a wooden spoon, so as not to disturb the men’s card game - before going back to quick-liming the dunny. This is why those female columnists in the Daily Mail - giving daily wail against feminism - amuse me. They paid you £1,600 for that, dear, I think. And I bet it’s going in your bank account, and not your husband’s. The more women argue loudly, against feminism, the more they both prove it exists and that they enjoy its hard-won privileges.
— Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman
Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I'm not ready for that yet.
— Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye
A woman of many talents. And intelligent, too. He'd probably have to kill her soon.
— Robin Hobb
Let a woman too close, and while she sucked your cock, she sucked your brains and manhood right out of you, too.
— Larissa Ione, Eternal Rider
I have not yet spoken my last word about women. I believe that if a woman succeeds in withdrawing from the mass, or rather raising herself from above the mass, she grows ceaselessly and more than a man.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy
Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
— Socrates
Darwin may have been quite correct in his theory that man descended from the apes of the forest, but surely woman rose from the frothy sea, as resplendent as Aphrodite on her scalloped chariot.
— Margot Datz, A Survival Guide for Landlocked Mermaids
I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.
— Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist
Individual heterosexual women came to the movement from relationships where men were cruel, unkind, violent, unfaithful. Many of these men were radical thinkers who participated in movements for social justice, speaking out on behalf of the workers, the poor, speaking out on behalf of racial justice. However when it came to the issue of gender they were as sexist as their conservative cohorts.
— bell hooks
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
— Marie Shear
We men are very simple people: if we like what we see, we’re coming over there. If we don’t want anything from you, we’re not coming over there. Period. Please highlight this part right here so you can always remind yourself the next time a man steps to you: a man always wants something. Always. And when it comes to women, that plan is always to find out two things: (1) if you’re willing to sleep with him, and (2) if you are, how much it will cost to get you to sleep with him.
— Steve Harvey, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment
To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it.
— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
No, whether a woman is a concubine to fuck or a damsel to redeem, she's always just some passive object to fulfill a man's purpose.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Snuff
It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity. Through Mary, and the other holy women, the feminine element stands at the heart of the Christian religion.
— Pope Benedict XVI
My heart is set, as firmly as ever heart of man was set on woman. I have no thought, no view, no hope, in life beyond her; and if you oppose me in this great stake, you take my peace and happiness in your hands, and cast them to the wind.
— Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
I won't be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.
— E.M. Forster
Women fall in love when they get to know you. Men are just the opposite. When they finally know you they're ready to leave
— James Salter, Dusk and Other Stories
Great minds may have cold hearts. Form but no color. It is an incompleteness. And so they are afraid of any woman who both thinks and feels deeply.
— Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer
Why did God make women so beautiful and man with such a loving heart?
— Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins
Of all the nasty outcomes predicted for women's liberation...none was more alarming than the suggestion that women would eventually become just like men.
— Barbara Ehrenreich
I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
Forgiving men is so much easier than forgiving women.
— Margaret Atwood, CAT'S EYE.
On one issue, at least, men and women agree: they both distrust women.
— H.L. Mencken
Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.
— Milan Kundera, Laughable Loves
Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life. 
— Erica Jong, How to Save Your Own Life
heavily tattooed women can be said to control and subvert the ever-present 'male gaze' by forcing men (and women) to look at their bodies in a manner that exerts control.
— Margo Demello
I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.
— Elizabeth I
To force a female to do things in male fashion is not equal opportunity, it is distorted idealism.
— Gregory Hartley, I Can Read You Like a Book: How to Spot the Messages and Emotions People Are Really Sending with Their Body Language
All a woman actually wants is to feel special.
— Matt Dunn, The Ex-Boyfriend's Handbook
A woman means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others...thus, while the woman thinks of doing good offices and the man of respecting other people’s rights, each sex, without any obvious unreason, can and does regard the other as radically selfish.
— C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
She is a woman of honour and smartness whose wild leaves out luck, always taking risks, and there is something in her brow now, that only she can recognize in a mirror. Ideal and idealistic in that shiny dark hair! People fall in love with her. She is a woman I don’t know well enough to hold in my wing, if writers have wings, to harbour for the rest of my life.
— Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
All children should be taught to unconditionally accept, approve, admire, appreciate, forgive, trust, and ultimately, love their own person.
— Asa Don Brown
Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference - those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older - know that survival is not an academic skill...For the master's tools will not dismantle the master's house. They will never allow us to bring about genuine change.
— Audre Lorde
Boys are just boys after all, but sometimes girls really seem to be the turn of a pale wrist, or the sudden jut of a hip, or a clutch of very dark hair falling across a freckled forehead. I'm not saying that's what they really are. I'm just saying sometimes it seems that way, and that those details (a thigh mole, a full face flush, a scar the precise shape and size of a cashew nut) are so many hooks waiting to land you.
— Zadie Smith
I doubt if there are many normal women who can resist looking at houses. I believe, in fact, that when a house is up for sale more than half the people who look over it are not prospective buyers, but merely ladies who cannot resist exploring someone else's house.
— Mary  Stewart, The Stormy Petrel
Only insecure boys will belittle a woman. The greatest way to "man-up" is to empower women.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Anytime a woman competes with another woman she demeans herself.
— Sherry Argov, Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship
She was a free bird one minute: queen of the world and laughing. The next minute she would be in tears like a porcelain angel, about to teeter, fall and break. She never cried because she was afraid that something 'would' happen; she would cry because she feared something that could render the world more beautiful, 'would not' happen.
— Roman Payne, The Wanderess
True lovers may never know what love means. A man may love a woman out of his reach. She does not know he loves her, and he will never speak of it.
— Rosalind Miles, Isolde, Queen of the Western Isle
Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. They live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. Why speak of time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action? How men envy and often hate these warm clocks, these wives, who know they will live forever.
— Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
Men were always quick to believe in the madness of women.
— Alison Goodman, Eona: The Last Dragoneye
An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense: and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know.All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter; then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was!-that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant . . .
— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no heed to her, if she has a plain face. What folly will not a pair of bright eyes make pardonable? What dullness may not red lips are sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome nor wise. 
— William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
No woman marries for money; they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him first.
— Cesare Pavese
I know that you and your girls have been told for years on end that you just don’t pass up any opportunities when a man walks your way—he could be The One. But I’m here to tell you that this philosophy is just plain dumb. Women are smart—you all can tell when your friends are lying, you know when your kids are up to no good, co-workers can’t get anything past you atthe job. You’re quick to let each one of them know that you’re not stupid, that you see them coming a mile away, and you’re not going to let them play that game with you. But when it comes to your relationships with the opposite sex, all of that goes out the window; you relinquish your power and lose all control over the situation—cede it to any old man who looks at you twice. Just because he happened to look at you twice.
— Steve Harvey, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment
She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight.
— Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Women need food, water, and complimentsThat's right.And an occasional pair of shoes.
— Chris Rock
You know what it's like," said Storm, "when you want to--just--pour a woman into a glass and--just-drink her--just drink her down, one gulp, body and soul?
— Andrew Klavan, The Uncanny
Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.
— Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were. Butterflies for instance, and women who've been in love with the wrong man too often.
— Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic
Women can always put things in fewest words. Except when it's blowing up
—  and then they lengthens it out.
Sometimes women scare the hell out of me.
— Michael Crichton, Disclosure
When women hold off from marrying men, we call it independence. When men hold off from marrying women, we call it fear of commitment.
— Warren Farrell
Men read maps better than women because only men can understand the concept of an inch equaling a hundred miles.
— Roseanne Barr
He saw so many emotions mingled on her face: anger disappointment, fear – and defiance. Like her daughter, thought Fenoglio again. So uncompromising, so strong. Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn’t break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out, very slowly.
— Cornelia Funke, Inkdeath
In reaction against the age-old slogan, "woman is the weaker vessel," or the still more offensive, "woman is a divine creature," we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that "a woman is as good as a man," without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is something so obvious that it is apt to escape attention altogether, viz: (...) that a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual. What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.
— Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society
Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings
She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, feared at tea-parties, hated in shops, and loved at crises.
— Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd
A woman's apathy is far more devastating than her wrath.
— Gasmaskman
She is one of those ladies who is more beautiful at sixty than she could possibly have been at twenty. (how I hope someone says that about me someday)!
— Mary Ann Shaffer
We desire to possess a beauty that is worth pursuing, worth fighting for, a beauty that is core to who we truly are. We want beauty that can be seen; beauty that can be felt; beauty that affects others; a beauty all our own to unveil.
— Stasi Eldredge, Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul
I've been ignored by prettier women than you, but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silenceso far, without spilling a drop.
— Jeffrey McDaniel
Never trust girls who let themselves be touched right away. But even less those who need a priest for approval.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
You don't know a woman until you've met her in court.
— Norman Mailer
Women waste so much time wearing no perfume. As for me, in every step that I have taken in life, I have been accompanied by an exquisite perfume!
— C. JoyBell C.
For me, a woman who is absorbed in her work, who does not care about gaining one’s favour, strong yet subtle at the same time, is essentially more seductive. The more she hides and abandons her femininity, the more it emerges from the very heart of her existence.
— Yohji Yamamoto
Women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems.
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
With the spread of conformity and image-driven superficiality, the allure of an individuated woman in full possession of herself and her powers will prove irresistible. We were born for plenitude and inner fulfillment.
— Elizabeth Prioleau, Seductress - Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love
We, who are so schooled in the art of listening to the voices of others, can often hear our own voice only when we are alone. . . For many women, the first choice, then, is to give ourselves the necessary time and space in which to renew our acquaintance with our lost voice, to learn to recognize it, and to rejoice as we hear it express our truth.
— Florence Falk, On My Own: The Art of Being a Woman Alone
I'm getting the impression that women, in any form, scare you."He shrugged. "They're the more violent species. And unpredictable. I'd rather take on a wild boar. You can't shoot women.
— Maya Banks, Hidden Away
He had carefully avoided her out of the natural cowardice that characterizes the stronger sex.
— Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
That woman was sexy. . . . Out of your league? Son, let women figure out why they won't screw you. Don't do it for them.
— Justin Halpern, Sh*t My Dad Says
In order to induce the process of decay, water is necessary. I think that, in the case of women, men are the water.
— Natsuo Kirino, Grotesque
I come across too much material on "how to make a man want you", "how to make a man commit", "how to make a man finally pop the question", "how to make a man take you seriously", "how to get into a man's emotions." And I laugh. My dear fellow women, enough! Do not busy yourselves with such things! Instead, fall in love with yourself!
— C. JoyBell C.
Nobody knows much about women, not even Freud, not even women themselves. But it's like electricity: you don't need to know how it works to get a shock on the fingers.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón
There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo.
— Beryl Markham, West with the Night
One is never over-dressed or underdressed with a Little Black Dress.
— Karl Lagerfeld
Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor. 
— Willa Cather
The rule seemed to be that a great woman must either die unwed ... or find a still greater man to marry her. ... The great man, on the other hand, could marry where he liked, not being restricted to great women; indeed, it was often found sweet and commendable in him to choose a woman of no sort of greatness at all.
— Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night
..the hope I have for women: that we can start to see ourselves-and encourage men to see us-as more than just the sum of our sexual parts: not as virgins or whores, as mothers or girlfriends, or as existing only in relation to men, but as people with independent desires, hopes and abilities. But I know that this can't happen as long as American culture continues to inundate us with gender-role messages that place everyone-men and women-in an unnatural hierarchical order that's impossible to maintain without strife. For women to move forward, and for men to break free, we need to overcome the masculinity status quo-together.
— Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women
There is no deception on the part of the woman, where a man bewilders himself: if he deludes his own wits, I can certainly acquit the women. Whatever man allows his mind to dwell upon the imprint his imagination has foolishly taken of women, is fanning the flames within himself -- and, since the woman knows nothing about it, she is not to blame. For if a man incites himself to drown, and will not restrain himself, it is not the water's fault.
— John Gower, Confessio Amantis
For a woman, all resurrection, all salvation, from whatever perdition, lies in love; in fact, it is her only way to it.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
Your man Jesus seems to me a bit of a son of a bitch when it comes to women,´Roland said. ´Was He ever married?´The corners of Callahan's mouth quirked. ´No´ he said, ´but His girlfriend was a whore.´´Well,´ Roland said, ´that's a start.´
— Stephen King, Wolves of the Calla
[M]en, though they know full well how much women are worth and how great the benefits we bring them, nonetheless seek to destroy us out of envy for our merits. It's just like the crow, when it produces white nestlings: it is so stricken by envy, knowing how black it is itself, that it kills its own offspring out of pique.
— Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men
A yet women -good women- frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep. Basically I craved prostitutes, base women, because they were deadly and hard and made no personal demands. Nothing was lost when they left. Yet at the same time I yearned for a gentle, good woman, despite the overwhelming price.
— Charles Bukowski, Women
It is a severe cruelty inflicted upon women...that we should be the ones who so desperately need love...affection...acceptance.And yet, we suffer...many of us, for lack of it throughout our entire lives."-Shackles of Honor
— Marcia Lynn McClure
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
I must be in love with this woman, Sumire realized with a start. Nomistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I'm in love. And thislove is about to carry me off somewhere. This current's toooverpowering; I don't have any choice. It may very well be a specialplace, some place I've never seen before. Danger may be lurkingthere, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I mightend up losing everything. But there's no turning back. I can only gowith the flow. Even if it means I'll be burned up, gone forever.
— Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
I see God now as an unimaginative writer of popular fictions, someone who builds stories around sadistic and graceless plots, narratives that exist only to express His terror of a woman's power to choose who and how to love, to redefine love as she sees fit, not as God thinks it ought to be. The author is unworthy of His own characters.
— Joe Hill, Horns
First rule of cleavage: it's not how low you go, but where and when you show.
— Elisabeth Dale
I’ve said over and over again jokingly that the only way a woman can truly be completely satisfied is to get herself four different men—an old one, an ugly one, a Mandingo, and a gayguy. Now the four of them combined? They got you covered.
— Steve Harvey, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment
That is the injustice of a woman's lot. A woman has to bring up her children; and that means to restrain them, to deny them things they want, to set them tasks, to punish them when they do wrong, to do all the unpleasant things. And then the father, who has nothing to do but pet them and spoil them, comes in when all her work is done and stealstheir affection from her.
— George Bernard Shaw
Fat-bashing in all its varied forms–criticism, exclusion, shaming, fat talk, self-deprecation, jokes, gossip, bullying–is one of the last acceptable forms of prejudice. From a very young age, before they can walk away or defend themselves, women are taught that they are how they look, not what they do or what they know. (1)
— Robyn Silverman, Good Girls Don't Get Fat: How Weight Obsession Is Messing Up Our Girls and How We Can Help Them Thrive Despite It
..she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn't know exactly. Her breath was gusty and short. She knew things that nobody ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. .. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making. 
— Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Young girls are like helpless children in the hands of amorous men, whatever is said to them is true and whatever manipulation on their bodies seems like love to them, sooner or later, they come back to their senses, but the scars are not dead inasmuch as her spoiler lives.
— Michael Bassey Johnson, Trials Of A Damsel
I think women are sexy when they got some clothes on. And if later they take them off then you've triumphed. Somebody once said it's what you dont see you're interested in, and this is true.
— Groucho Marx
Resentment is often a woman's inner signal that she has been ignoring an important God-given responsibility - that of making choices.
— Brenda Waggoner
Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
What girls do to each other is beyond description. No Chinese torture comes close.
— Tori Amos, Tori Amos: Piece by Piece
Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Why were girls in such a hurry to grow up? Agatha would never understand. Childhood was magical. Leaving it behind was a magnificent loss.
— Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper
The woman is the home. That's where she used to be, and that's where she still is. You might ask me, What if a man tries to be part of the home -- will the woman let him? I answer yes. Because the he becomes one of the children.
— Marguerite Duras
There was her face, like a summer peach, beautiful and warm, and the light of the candles reflected in her dark eyes. [He] held his breath. The entire world waited and held its breath.
— Ray Bradbury
Sometimes I forget how much I like riding the bike." Most chicks do," I said. "Roar of the engine and so on."Murphy's blue eyes glittered with annoyance and anticipation. "Pig. You really enjoy dropping all women together in the same demographic, don't you?" It's not my fault all women like motorcycles, Murph. They're basically huge vibrators. With wheels.
— Jim Butcher, Blood Rites
The Vatican won't prosecute pedophile priests but I decide I'm not ready for motherhood and it's condemnation for me? These are the same people that won't support national condom distribution that PREVENTS teenage pregnancy.
— Sonya Renee Taylor
No nation can ever be worthy of its existence that cannot take its women along with the men. No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a great competition and rivalry between the two. There is a third power stronger than both, that of the women.
— Muhammad Ali Jinnah
If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
— William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
When she can't bring me to heal with scolding, she bends me to shape with guilt.
— Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing
He'd always liked women who'd talk back to him just a little bit. "Girls with balls" were good. Women with an actual mind of their own who could prove him wrong in something were, of course, castrating bitches who should be drowned in bottomless wells.
— Warren Ellis, Crooked Little Vein
Backlock, a poet blind from his birth, could describe visual objects with accuracy; Professor Sanderson, who was also blind, gave excellent lectures on color, and taught others the theory of ideas which they had and he had not. In the social sphere these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have only heard. We call it intuition.
— Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native
When anesthesia was developed, it was for many decades routinely withheld from women giving birth, since women were "supposed" to suffer. One of the few societies to take a contrary view was the Huichol tribe in Mexico. The Huichol believed that the pain of childbirth should be shared, so the mother would hold on to a string tied to her husband's testicles. With each painful contraction, she would give the string a yank so that the man could share the burden. Surely if such a mechanism were more widespread, injuries in childbirth would garner more attention.
— Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
There was a strange but universal understanding among women. On some level all women knew, they all understood, the fear of being outnumbered, of being helpless. It throbbed in their chests when they thought about the times they left stores and were followed. The knocks on their car windows as they were sitting alone at red lights, and strangers asking for rides. Having too much to drink and losing their ability to be forceful enough to just say no. Smiling at strange men coming on to them, not wanting to hurt their feelings, not wanting to make a scene. All women remembered these things, even if they had never happened to them personally. It was a part of their collective unconscious.
— Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper
The violence between women is unbelievable...women try to make each other crawl so that their knees are bleeding.
— Tori Amos
Her joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was, in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces, a stunning and final girl.
— J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories
I don't think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I'm sure it's very bad for them. It puts ideas in their heads, and women are never at ease with themselves when they have ideas.
— W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling.
— Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot
A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view.
— Sophia Loren
She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened.
— Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells
I love classic beauty. It’s an idea of beauty with no standard.
— Karl Lagerfeld
In fact, there is perhaps only one human being in a thousand who is passionately interested in his job for the job's sake. The difference is that if that one person in a thousand is a man, we say, simply, that he is passionately keen on his job; if she is a woman, we say she is a freak.
— Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society
If you have to convince someone to stay with you then they have already left.
— Shannon L. Alder
Scratch most feminists and underneath there is a woman who longs to be a sex object, the difference is that is not all she longs to be.
— Betty Rollin
And an unaware witch means a witch who doesn't know she's a witch, and because she's a women that makes her double trouble. Never trust a women." My mothers a women," I said, suddenly feeling a little angry, "and I trust her."Mothers are usually women," said the Spook. "And mothers are usually quite trustworthy, as long as your their son. Otherwise look out!
— Joseph Delaney, Revenge of the Witch
Women complain about premenstrual syndrome, but I think of it as the only time of the month that I can be myself.
— Roseanne Barr
Human kind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible that a mass is improved by the improvement of only one part and the other part is ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains and the other half can soar into skies?
— Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
I never touch sugar, cheese, bread... I only like what I'm allowed to like. I'm beyond temptation. There is no weakness. When I see tons of food in the studio, for us and for everybody, for me it's as if this stuff was made out of plastic. The idea doesn't even enter my mind that a human being could put that into their mouth. I'm like the animals in the forest. They don't touch what they cannot eat.
— Karl Lagerfeld
When exactly did every housewife in America become a whore?
— Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Over your breasts of motionless current,over your legs of firmness and water,over the permanence and the prideof your naked hairI want to be, my love, now that the tears arethrowninto the raucous baskets where they accumulate,I want to be, my love, alone with a syllableof mangled silver, alone with a tip of your breast of snow.
— Pablo Neruda
Does a rake deserve to possess anything of worth, since he chases everything in skirts and then imagines he can successfully hide his shame by slandering [women in general]?
— Christine de Pizan, Der Sendbrief vom Liebesgott / The Letter of the God of Love
To face a man in combat is challenge enough. To find the goddess in a woman is the life work of a man. Hard though the first may be, the second is the harder longer road. But every man seeks the woman of the dream, and only the best of men finds what he seeks.
— Rosalind Miles, Isolde, Queen of the Western Isle
Living with a whore--even the best whore in the world--isn't a bed of roses.
— Henry Miller
Women know intuitively when they are being devalued. (121)
— Robyn Silverman, Good Girls Don't Get Fat: How Weight Obsession Is Messing Up Our Girls and How We Can Help Them Thrive Despite It
She rides as a man, goes unveiled as a man, fights as a man. Let her prove herself worthy as a man, worthy of her weapons and of our friendship.
— Tamora Pierce
To me, there's nothing on earth other than women. It's why I get out of bed every morning.
— James Ellroy
Women are going to form a chain, a greater sisterhood than the world has ever known.
— Nellie L. McClung
Word by word, the language of women so often begins with a whisper.
— Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice
Any time your life is at stake and you can't find even one woman to come forward and say, 'This is a good man,' your problem isn't what kind of woman THEY are. Your problem is what kind of men YOU are.
— Pearl Cleage, Just Wanna Testify
Women need to remember that if nature has made them plain, grace can make them beautiful, and if nature has made them beautiful, good deeds can add to their beauty. Grace will make you beautiful and will attract truly godly men to you. Make godliness and inward beauty your priority.
— Joshua Harris, Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship
Even to me the issue of "stay small, sweet, quiet, and modest" sounds like an outdated problem, but the truth is that women still run into those demands whenever we find and use our voices.
— Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
Women need to shift from thinking "I'm not ready to do that" to thinking "I want to do that- and I'll learn by doing it.
— Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
I think that the most important thing a woman can have- next to talent, of course- is her hairdresser.
— Joan Crawford
So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day.
— Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer, and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.
— Charlotte Brontë
Woman is the most superstitious animal beneath the moon. When a woman has a premonition that Tuesday will be a disaster, to which a man pays no heed, he will very likely lose his fortune then. This is not meant to be an occult or mystic remark. The female body is a vessel, and the universe drops its secrets into her far more quickly than it communicates them to the male.
— Edward Dahlberg
The heart is capable of sacrifice. So is the vagina. The heart is able to forgive and repair. It can change it's shape to let us in. It can expand to let us out. So can the vagina. It can ache for us and stretch for us, die for us and bleed and bleed us into this difficult, wondrous world. So can the vagina. I was there in the room. I remeber.
— Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues
Men were created before women. ... But that doesn't prove their superiority – rather, it proves ours, for they were born out of the lifeless earth in order that we could be born out of living flesh. And what's so important about this priority in creation, anyway? When we are building, we lay foundations on the ground first, things of no intrinsic merit or beauty, before subsequently raising up sumptuous buildings and ornate palaces. Lowly seeds are nourished in the earth, and then later the ravishing blooms appear; lovely roses blossom forth and scented narcissi.
— Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men
A strong woman builds her own world. She is one who is wise enough to know that it will attract the man she will gladly share it with.
— Ellen J. Barrier, How to Trust God When All Other Resources Have Failed
Women want men, careers, money, children, friends, luxury, comfort, independence, freedom, respect, love, and a three-dollar pantyhose that won't run.
— Phyllis Diller
Immodest creature, you do not want a woman who will accept your faults, you want the one who pretends you are faultless – one who will caress the hand that strikes her and kiss the lips that lie to
— George Sand, The Intimate Journal
I do not scruple to employ mendacity and a fictitious appearance of female incompetence when the occasion demands it.
— Elizabeth Peters
To all those women -- strong enough to be heroes
—  fair enough to be ladies. This song is for you.
[She] was a remarkable looking woman. Remarkable in that she wasn’t what most people would call beautiful. But she oozed a raw femaleness that I was certain made most women uncomfortable and sent men walking into walls. And when she smiled. Well. That was magic.
— Beth Hoffman, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
Never underestimate the power of a woman!
— Archie Andrews
A weapon men use against women is the refusal to take them seriously.
— David Mitchell, Ghostwritten
Powerful women always interpret hostility as unrequited love.
— Tina  Brown
That's what's wrong with women. They want you to wait for them until they get ready and then they don't even tell you how they feel. 
— Walter Dean Myers, Slam!
Men always fall for frigid women because they put on the best show.
— Fanny Brice
Maybe we weren't at the Last Supper, but we're certainly going to be at the next one.
— Bella Abzug
I would suggest that a feminism which does not also seek to alter the exploitation of poorer women is not feminism at all, but is simply a varient for of upper-class politics & self-privileging.
— Jack D. Forbes, Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Imperialism, Exploitation and Terrorism
For he was aware of the great secret of life: Women don't look for handsome men. Women look for men who have had beautiful women. Having an ugly mistress is therefore a fatal mistake.
— Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting