I love the idea of there being two sexes, don’t you?
—James Thurber
Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women?
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English 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 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 Writer, Poet, Children’s Books Author
If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure—the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
Women serve but to keep a man from better company.
—William Wycherley (c.1640–1716) English Dramatist
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
The incomprehensibleness of women is an old theory, but what is that to the curious wondering observation with which wives, mothers, and sisters watch the other unreasoning animal in those moments when he has snatched the reins out of their hands, and is not to be spoken to! . It is best to let him come to, and feel his own helplessness.
—Margaret Oliphant (1828–97) Scottish Author
The little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
The man, at the head of the house, can mar the pleasure of the household, but he cannot make it.—That must rest with the woman, and it is her greatest privilege.
—Arthur Helps (1813–75) British Essayist, Historian
Coming to terms with the rhythms of women’s lives means coming to terms with life itself, accepting the imperatives of the body rather than the imperatives of an artificial, man-made, perhaps transcendentally beautiful civilization. Emphasis on the male work-rhythm is an emphasis on infinite possibilities; emphasis on the female rhythms is an emphasis on a defined pattern, on limitation.
—Margaret Mead (1901–78) American Anthropologist, Social Psychologist
Nature makes woman to be won and men to win.
—George William Curtis (1824–92) American Writer, Editor, Orator
Men and women, women and men; it will never work.
—Erica Jong (b.1942) American Novelist, Feminist
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
I have an idea that the phrase ‘weaker sex’ was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm.
—Ogden Nash (1902–71) American Writer of Sophisticated Light Verse
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
There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Men naturally resent it when women take greater liberties in dress than men are allowed.
—Michael Korda (b.1933) English-born Writer, Novelist
I don’t know why women want any of the things men have when one the things that women have is men.
—Coco Chanel (1883–1971) French Fashion Designer
Man made one grave mistake: in answer to vaguely reformist and humanitarian agitation he admitted women to politics and the professions. The conservatives who saw this as the undermining of our civilization and the end of the state and marriage were right after all; it is time for the demolition to begin.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
The source of all life and knowledge is in man and woman, and the source of all living is in the interchange and the meeting and mingling of these two: man-life and woman-life, man-knowledge and woman-knowledge, man-being and woman-being.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Critic
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
For a man to strike any women is most brutal, and I, as well as everyone else, think this far worse than any attempt to shoot, which, wicked as it is, is at least more comprehensible and more courageous.
—Queen Victoria (1819–1901) British Royal
Every theory of love, from Plato down teaches that each individual loves in the other sex what he lacks in himself.
—G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924) American Psychologist
If the wife sins, the husband is not innocent.
—Italian Proverb
A women knows how to keep quiet when she is in the right, whereas a man, when he is in the right, will keep on talking.
—Malcolm de Chazal (1902–81) Mauritian Writer, Painter, Philosopher
So it is naturally with the male and the female; the one is superior, the other inferior; the one governs, the other is governed; and the same rule must necessarily hold good with respect to all mankind.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) (1862–1910) American Writer of Short Stories
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