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.
By night are blemishes hid, and every fault is forgiven: that hour makes any woman fair.
It is easy for a woman to be good, when all that hinders her from being so is removed.
A blue-stocking is the scourge of her husband, children, friends, servants, and every one.
Once a woman has lost her chastity, she will refuse nothing.
Women are like tricks by sleight of hand,
Which, to admire, we should not understand.
Womanliness means only motherhood;
All love begins and ends there.
How happy could I be with either,
Were t' other dear charmer away!
She doeth little kindnesses
Which most leave undone, or despise.
But woman's grief is like a summer storm,
Short as it violent is.
Who trusts himself to women, or to waves,
Should never hazard what he fears to lose.
He is a fool who thinks by force or skill
To turn the current of a woman's will.
Please, come take my hand
Girl, you'll be a woman soon
Soon, you'll need a man.