I really think that American gentlemen are the best after all, because kissing your hand may make you feel very good but a diamond and a sapphire bracelet lasts forever.
—Anita Loos (1888–1981) American Actor, Novelist, Screenwriter
Women have got to make the world safe for men since men have made it so darned unsafe for women.
—Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor (1879–1964) American-born British Politician
Perhaps women have always been in closer contact with reality than men: it would seem to be the just recompense for being deprived of idealism.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
A lady is smarter than a gentleman, maybe, she can sew a fine seam, she can have a baby, she can use her intuition instead of her brain, but she can’t fold a paper in a crowded train.
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–78) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer of Children’s Books
Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run.
—Edward Hoagland (b.1932) American Essayist, Novelist
The loss of sex polarity is part and parcel of the larger disintegration, the reflex of the soul’s death, and coincident with the disappearance of great men, great deeds, great causes, great wars, etc.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
A true gentleman is at a disadvantage in dealing with women. Women are realist, and their tactics are realistic, so no man should be a gentleman where women are concerned unless the women are very, very young. Women admire gentlemen, and sleep with cads.
—Louis L’Amour (1908–88) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
There are certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are of pretty woman to deserve them.
—Jane Austen (1775–1817) English Novelist
A woman should say: “Have I made him happy? Is he satisfied? Does he love me more than he loved me before? Is he likely to go to bed with another woman?” If he does, then it’s the wife’s fault because she is not trying to make him happy.
—Barbara Cartland (1901–2000) English Popular Romantic Novelist
A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men.
—Colette (1873–1954) French Novelist, Performer
A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover—but will sooner or later find a tyrant.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself—on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger. In the meantime, love represents in its most touching form the curse that lies heavily upon woman confined in the feminine universe, woman mutilated, insufficient unto herself.
—Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) French Philosopher, Writer, Feminist
Either sex alone is half itself.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92) British Poet
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
—Robert A. Heinlein (1907–88) American Science Fiction Writer
I have always been principally interested in men for sex. I’ve always thought any sane woman would be a lover of women because loving men is such a mess. I have always wished I’d fall in love with a woman. Damn.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
Whoever loves above all the approach of love will never know the joy of attaining it.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900–44) French Novelist, Aviator
With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please, every feature works.
—Jane Austen (1775–1817) English Novelist
There is something to me very softening in the presence of a woman, some strange influence, even if one is not in love with them, which I cannot at all account for, having no very high opinion of the sex. But yet, I always feel in better humor with myself and every thing else, if there is a woman within ken.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
What a strange thing man is; and what a stranger thing woman.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
Courtship—A man pursuing a woman until she catches him.
—Unknown
And when a woman’s will is as strong as the man’s who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
Whether women are better than men I cannot say – but I can say they are certainly no worse.
—Golda Meir (1898–1978) Israeli Head of State
When a woman is very, very bad, she is awful, but when a man is correspondingly good, he is weird.
—Minna Antrim (1861–1950) American Writer, Epigrammist
Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
A man’s idea in a game of cards is war, cruel, devastating, and pitiless. A lady’s idea of it is a combination of larceny, embezzlement and burglary.
—Finley Peter Dunne (1867–1936) American Author, Writer, Humorist
Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, absolutely lay aside all good breeding, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or disgust.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
The woman who is known only through a man is known wrong.
—Henry Adams (1838–1918) American Historian, Man of Letters
Intimacies between women go backwards, beginning with revelations and ending up in small talk without loss of esteem.
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish Novelist, Short-story Writer
Please know I am quite aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.
—Amelia Earhart (1897–1937) American Aviator
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Men and women are made for each other, but their mutual dependence differs in degrees; man is dependent on woman through his desires; woman is dependent on man through her desires and also through her needs; he could do without her better than she can do without him. She cannot fulfill her purpose in life without his aid, without his goodwill, without his respect…..Nature herself has decreed that woman, both for herself and her children, should be at the mercy of man s judgment.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
The great living experience for every man is his adventure into the woman. The man embraces in the woman all that is not himself, and from that one resultant, from that embrace, comes every new action.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
A man’s brain has a more difficult time shifting from thinking to feeling than a women’s brain does.
—Barbara De Angelis (b.1951) American Lecturer, Author, TV Personality, Motivational Speaker
I love the idea of there being two sexes, don’t you?
—James Thurber
A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humors and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly and forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
I do not know who first invented the myth of sexual equality. But it is a myth willfully fostered and nourished by certain semi-scientists and other fiction writers. And it has done more, I suspect, to unsettle marital happiness than any other false doctrine of this myth-ridden age.
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–78) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer of Children’s Books
Man forgives women anything save the wit to outwit him.
—Minna Antrim (1861–1950) American Writer, Epigrammist
Universal manhood suffrage, by establishing an aristocracy of sex, imposes upon the women of this nation a more absolute and cruel despotism than monarchy; in that, woman finds a political master in her father, husband, brother, son. The aristocracies of the old world are based upon birth, wealth, refinement, education, nobility, brave deeds of chivalry; in this nation, on sex alone; exalting brute force above moral power, vice above virtue, ignorance above education, and the son above the mother who bore him.
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American Civil Rights Leader
After centuries of conditioning of the female into the condition of perpetual girlishness called femininity, we cannot remember what femaleness is. Though feminists have been arguing for years that there is a self-defining female energy, and a female libido that is not expressed merely in response to demands by the male, and a female way of being and of experiencing the world, we are still not close to understanding what it might be. Yet every mother who has held a girl child in her arms has known that she was different from a boy child and that she would approach the reality around her in a different way. She is a female and she will die female, and though many centuries should pass, archaeologists would identify her skeleton as the remains of a female creature.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
Nature has not placed us in an inferior rank to men, no more than the females of other animals, where we see no distinction of capacity, though I am persuaded if there was a commonwealth of rational horses… it would be an established maxim amongst them that a mare could not be taught to pace.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, Writer
Every woman is like a time-zone. She is a nocturnal fragment of your journey. She brings you unflaggingly closer to the next night.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
Perhaps nothing is so depressing an index of the inhumanity of the male-supremacist mentality as the fact that the more genial human traits are assigned to the underclass: affection, response to sympathy, kindness, cheerfulness.
—Kate Millet (1934–2017) American Feminist, Writer, Sculptor
Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.
—Unknown
There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
—Unknown
For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.
—J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) British Scholar, Author
Men are like the earth and we are the moon; we turn always one side to them, and they think there is no other, because they don’t see it—but there is.
—Olive Schreiner (1855–1920) South African Writer, Feminist