A woman is the most inconsistent compound of obstinacy and self-sacrifice that I am acquainted with.
Women Quotes
This is a large page and a mixed one. Feminist theory, nineteenth-century verse, comedy and plain contempt sit side by side, and the source line is how you tell them apart. Warren Farrell has the most entries, then Shakespeare, Camille Paglia and Mignon McLaughlin.
Some of the best-sourced entries are the plainest. Betty Friedan, in The Feminine Mystique (1963): “The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women.” Shulamith Firestone, in The Dialectic of Sex (1970), argued that women and love are underpinnings, and that examining them threatens the whole structure of a culture. Dorothy Parker, in Enough Rope (1926), observed that men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.
Two statements that are regularly credited to Catharine MacKinnon are flagged here as misattributed. If you are checking one of them, the notes on its page are the place to start.
Honor women! they entwine and weave heavenly roses in our earthly life.
A child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman.
A woman impudent and mannish grown
Is not more loath’d than an effeminate man
In time of action.
She is not worthy to be loved, that hath not some feeling of her own worthiness.
She is no worthy woman who forsakes her honour for her body, or her body for her honour.
Through her, through your Aldonza, through women you will see into the entire universe.
The bird of the spirit of Humanity cannot fly with only one wing.