Quotes about women

One of the first lessons life teaches us is that on these occasions of back-chat between the delicately-nurtured a man should retire into the offing, curl up in a ball, and imitate the prudent tactics of the opossum, which, when danger is in the air, pretends to be dead, frequently going to the length of hanging out crêpe and instructing its friends to stand round and say what a pity it all is.

At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.

A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.

Many people wonder where my secret lies,

I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model size.

When I try to show them they think I'm telling lies.

I say, it's in the reach of my arms,

the span of my hips,

the stride of my step,

the curl of my lips I'm Woman,

Phenominally .

I walk in a room just as cool as you please,

And to a man the fellows stand,

or fall down on their knees.

And then they swarm around me; a hive of honey bees.

I say,

oh it's the fire in my eyes,

the flash of my teeth,

the swing in my waist,

the joy in my feet.

Men themselves have wondered what they see in me.

They try so much but they can't touch my inner mystery.

When I try to show them they say they still can't see.

I say oh, it's in the arch of my back.

And now you understand just why my head's not bowed.

I don't shout or jump about,

or have to talk too loud.

When you see me walking out it ought to make you proud.

I say it's in the click of my heels.

The bend of my hair.

The palm of my hands.

The need for my care,

because I'm a woman.

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal Woman.

That's my mother,

and all your mothers.

And then my grandmothers.

And all your grandmothers.

And my great grandmothers,

And all your great grandmothers.

And my great great great,

And all your great great...

And all you women here,

And me.

I believe most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft are written by men.

In such places as these a woman is only a poor drudge muddling among an infinity of jobs. She may keep up her spirits, but she cannot keep up her standards of cleanliness and tidiness. There is always something to be done, and no conveniences and almost literally not room to turn round. No sooner have you washed one child's face than another is dirty; before you have washed the crocks from one meal the next is due to be cooked.

Is it men’s disgust of women that makes so many of them treat women with such contempt? Is it that which makes it so easy to point out that the Don Juans and the Lotharios, for all their hunger for women, are often merely trying to see how many women they can punish?

So it is easily seen that the sexual insignes are nothing in themselves, for any of them, in another time and place, might belong to both sexes, the other sex, or neither. In other words, a skirt does not make the social entity, woman. It takes a skirt plus a social attitude to do it.

But all through history, in virtually every culture and country, there has indeed been a “woman’s province” and a “man’s province,” and in most cases the differences between them have been exploited to fantastic, sometimes sickening extremes.

Why?

You cannot be objective about this because you have been indoctrinated, sermonized, drenched, imbued, inculcated and policed on the matter since first you wore blue booties. You come from a time and place in which the maleness of the male, and the femaleness of the female, and the importance of their difference, were matters of almost total preoccupation.

Mankind has in it a crushing need to feel superior. This doesn’t have to bother the very small minority who actually are superior, but it sure troubles the controlling majority who are not. If you can’t be really good at anything, then the only way to be able to prove you are superior is to make someone else inferior. It is this rampaging need in humanity which has, since pre-history, driven a man to stand on the neck of his neighbor, a nation to enslave another, a race to tread on a race. But it is also what men have done to women.

Did they actually find them inferior to begin with, and learn from that to try to feel superior to other things outside—other races, religions, nationalities, occupations?

Or was it the other way around: did men make women inferior for the same reason they tried to dominate the outsider? Which is cause, which effect?

There is in mankind a deep and desperate necessity to feel superior. In any group there are some who genuinely are superior...but it is easy to see that within the parameters of any group, be it culture, club, nation, profession, only a few are really superior; the mass, clearly, are not.

But it is the will of the mass that dictates the mores, initiated though changes may be by individuals or minorities; the individuals or minorities, more often than not, are cut down for their trouble. And if a unit of the mass wants to feel superior, it will find a way. This terrible drive has found expression in many ways, through history—in slavery and genocide, xenophobia and snobbery, race prejudice and sex differentiation. Given a man who, among his fellows, has no real superiority, you are faced with a bedevilled madman who, if superiority is denied him, and he cannot learn one or earn one, will turn on something weaker than himself and make it inferior. The obvious, logical, handiest subject for this inexcusable indignity is his woman.

He could not do this to anyone he loved.