Her father’s fortune will make the ugliest girl attractive.
—Spanish Proverb
If a girl seems as shy as a mouse, you still have to look out for the tiger within her.
—Chinese Proverb
Eat your fish while it is still fresh and marry the girl while she is still young.
—German Proverb
Girls are so queer you never know what they mean. They say No when they mean Yes, and drive a man out of his wits for the fun of it.
—Louisa May Alcott (1832–88) American Novelist
Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
A girl with brains ought to do something with them besides think.
—Anita Loos (1888–1981) American Actor, Novelist, Screenwriter
I have the same goal I’ve had ever since I was a little girl. I want to rule the world.
—Madonna (b.1958) American Pop Singer, Actress
It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) French Historian, Political Scientist
All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl.
—Jean-luc Godard (b.1930) French-born Swiss Film Director, Film Critic
It is easier to guard a sack full of fleas than a girl in love.
—Yiddish Proverb
It is a common phenomenon that just the prettiest girls find it so difficult to get a man.
—Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German Poet, Writer
The girl who can’t dance says the band can’t play.
—Yiddish Proverb
No one knows how it is that with one glance a boy can break through into a girl’s heart.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
There are three things that can destroy a preacher, the glory, the gold, and the girls.
—U.S. Proverb
A lovely girl attracts attention by her good looks, an ugly girl by the help of a mirror.
—Maltese Proverb
Marry a mountain girl and you marry the whole mountain.
—Irish Proverb
There are so many girls, and so few princes.
—Liza Minnelli (b.1946) American Singer, Actress
All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.
—Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British Actor
If I were a girl, I’d despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.
—Robert Ranke Graves (1895–1985) English Poet, Novelist, Critic, Classical Scholar
There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion.
—Colette (1873–1954) French Novelist, Performer
The whisper of a pretty girl can be heard further than the roar of a lion.
—Arabic Proverb
I saved a girl from being attacked last night. I controlled myself.
—Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American Comedian, TV Personality, Actor
A toddling little girl is a center of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.
—F. H. Bradley (1846–1924 ) British Idealist Philosopher
A girl without a friend is like the spring without roses.
—French Proverb
Every little girl knows about love. It is only her capacity to suffer because of it that increases.
—Francoise Sagan (1935–2004) French Novelist, Playwright, Short-Story Writer
A girl never grows into a lady.
—Russian Proverb
Never kiss an ugly girl; she will tell everyone.
—Hebrew Proverb
A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
The knowingness of little girls hidden underneath their curls.
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–78) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer of Children’s Books
It’s the good girls who keep the diaries; the bad girls never have the time.
—Tallulah Bankhead (1902–68) American Actress
We know less about the sexual life of little girls than of boys. But we need not feel ashamed of this distinction; after all, the sexual life of adult women is a dark continent for psychology.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Away from home the girl picks forbidden fruit.
—African Proverb
Girls we love for what they are; men for what they promise to be.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
You may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
There is not one female comic who was beautiful as a little girl.
—Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American Comedienne, Writer
Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as “nymphets.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
Girls. You never know what they’re going to think.
—J. D. Salinger (1919–2010) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
It is easier to watch over one hundred fleas than one young girl.
—Polish Proverb
When a girl is born it is like having six thieves invade the house.
—Polish Proverb
A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.
—Coco Chanel (1883–1971) French Fashion Designer
What we ought to see in the agonies of puberty is the result of the conditioning that maims the female personality in creating the feminine.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
Girls like to be played with, and rumpled a little too, sometimes.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
To have beautiful servant girls is a threat to good marriages.
—Chinese Proverb
The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.
—Willa Cather (1873–1947) American Novelist, Writer