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
There is no occasion for women to consider themselves subordinate or inferior to men.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) Indian Hindu Political leader
The charms of a passing woman are usually in direct relation to the speed of her passing.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women.
—Madeleine Albright (1937–2022) Czech-born American Diplomat
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 (b.1943) American Educator, Activist
All one’s life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to being noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous.
—Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British Novelist, Poet
Woman’s destiny is to be wanton, like the bitch, the she-wolf; she must belong to all who claim her.
—Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French Writer
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
Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
I’m 65 and I guess that puts me in the geriatrics. But if there were 15 months in the year, I’d only be 48. That’s the trouble with us. We number everything. Take women, for example. I think they deserve to have more than 12 years between the ages of 28 and 40.
—James Thurber
Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Give back my book and take my kiss instead.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,
What a big book for such a little head!
Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink!
Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.
I never again shall tell you what I think.
I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;
You will not catch me reading any more:
I shall be called a wife to pattern by;
And some day when you knock and push the door,
Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,
I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American Poet, Playwright, Feminist
I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.
—Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) (1885–1962) Danish Novelist, Short-story Writer
Let us leave the beautiful women to men with no imagination.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
Men mourn for what they have lost; women for what they ain’t got.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (1818–85) American Humorist, Author, Lecturer
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God’s name. And I leave them where they are, for I know that wherever I go, others will punctually come for ever and ever.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot ail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all.
—Aung San Suu Kyi (b.1945) Burmese Politician, Human Rights Activist
God had given you one face, and you make yourself another.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
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
A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other’s affairs, who “come out” together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
The feminist anti-pornography movement, no less than the feminist movement of a century ago, encourages the assumption that male and female sexuality, and possibly morality, are as unlike as yin and yang.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (1941–2022) American Social Critic, Essayist
I hate women because they always know where things are.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
Women’s liberation, if it abolishes the patriarchal family, will abolish a necessary substructure of the authoritarian state, and once that withers away Marx will have come true willy-nilly, so let’s get on with it.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Isn’t that the problem? That women have been swindled for centuries into substituting adornment for love, fashion (as it were) for passion? All the cosmetics names seemed obscenely obvious to me in their promises of sexual bliss. They were all firming or uplifting or invigorating. They made you tingle. Or glow. Or feel young. They were prepared with hormones or placentas or royal jelly. All the juice and joy missing in the lives of these women were to be supplied by the contents of jars and bottles. No wonder they would spend twenty dollars for an ounce of face makeup or thirty for a half-ounce of hormone cream. What price bliss? What price sexual ecstasy?
—Erica Jong (b.1942) American Novelist, Feminist
Women serve but to keep a man from better company.
—William Wycherley (c.1640–1716) English Dramatist
Impenetrable in their dissimulation, cruel in their vengeance, tenacious in their purposes, unscrupulous as to their methods, animated by profound and hidden hatred for the tyranny of man—it is as though there exists among them an ever-present conspiracy toward domination, a sort of alliance like that subsisting among the priests of every country.
—Denis Diderot (1713–84) French Philosopher, Writer
When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even out virtues.
—Honore de Balzac (1799–1850) French Novelist
It is because of men that women dislike one another.
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
To be completely woman you need a master, and in him a compass for your life. You need a man you can look up to and respect. If you dethrone him it’s no wonder that you are discontented, and discontented women are not loved for long.
—Marlene Dietrich (1901–92) German-American Film Actress, Cabaret Performer
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