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 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 (b.1941) American Social Critic, Essayist
When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart’s the last part moves, her last, the tongue.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow, a herb most bruised is woman.
—Euripides (480–406 BCE) Ancient Greek Dramatist
Women of quality are so civil, you can hardly distinguish love from good breeding.
—William Wycherley (c.1640–1716) English Dramatist
A faithful woman looks to the spring, a good book, perfume, earthquakes, and divine revelation for the experience others find in a lover. They deceive their husbands, so to speak, with the entire world, men excepted.
—Jean Giraudoux (1882–1944) French Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.
—Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American Poet
Male supremacy has kept woman down. It has not knocked her out.
—Clare Boothe Luce (1903–87) American Playwright, Diplomat, Journalist, Diplomat, Elected Rep
‘Tis strange what a man may do and a woman yet think him an angel.
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) English Novelist
A good cigar is as great a comfort to a man as a good cry is to a woman.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
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
There is simply no dignified way for a woman to live alone. Oh, she can get along financially perhaps (though not nearly as well as a man), but emotionally she is never left in peace. Her friends, her family, her fellow workers never let her forget that her husbandlessness, her childlessness—her selfishness, in short—is a reproach to the American way of life.
—Erica Jong (b.1942) American Novelist, Feminist
Eve is a twofold mystery.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61) English Poet
I love the idea of there being two sexes, don’t you?
—James Thurber
Every man has a secret ambition: To outsmart horses, fish and women.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
I like men who have a future and women who have a past.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns.
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) American Social Reformer
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
Given the cultural barriers to intersex conversation, the amazing thing is that we would even expect women and men to have anything to say to each other for more than ten minutes at a stretch. The barriers are ancient—perhaps rooted, as some paleontologist may soon discover, in the contrast between the occasional guttural utterances exchanged in male hunting bands and the extended discussions characteristic of female food-gathering groups.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b.1941) American Social Critic, Essayist
Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
No matter how good she looks, some other guy is sick and tired of putting up with her crap.
—Unknown
It’s the good girls who keep the diaries; the bad girls never have the time.
—Tallulah Bankhead (1902–68) American Actress
I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you’re important and nice, but you take second place all the same.
—Iris Murdoch (1919–99) British Novelist, Playwright, Philosopher
Women get more unhappy the more they try to liberate themselves.
—Brigitte Bardot (b.1934) French Film Star
Women keep a special corner of their hearts for sins they have never committed.
—Cornelia Otis Skinner (1899–1979) American Actress, Playwright
Women do not find it difficult nowadays to behave like men, but they often find it extremely difficult to behave like gentlemen.
—Compton Mackenzie (1883–1972) British Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Islam exhorts men to respect and honor women. The status of the wife is so respected in Islam that it is not obligatory for her to do household chores. She may do them of her own accord. But if her husband forces her to do household work, he will have to account for his conduct in the hereafter.
—Anonymous
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
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Woman does not forget she needs the fecundator, she does not forget that everything that is born of her is planted in her.
—Anais Nin (1903–77) French-American Essayist