Let’s buy a pack of cards, good wine, bridge scores, knitting needles, all the paraphernalia needed to fill an enormous void, everything needed to hide that horror – the old woman. Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, Cheri, 1920
Far hence, keep far from me, you grim women! Ovid, Amores
The women come to see the show, they come to make a show themselves. Ovid, Ars Amatoria
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his. Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895
If the heart of a man is deprest with cares,
The mist is dispelled when a woman appears. John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera, 1728
I must have women. There is nothing unbends the mind like them. ibid.
She who has never loved, has never lived. John Gay, The Captives, 1724
Women do not find it difficult nowadays to behave like men, but they often find it extremely difficult to behave like gentlemen. Compton Mackenzie, Literature in My Time, 1933
That man over there say that women needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place. And aren’t I a woman? ... I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me – and aren’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear the lash as well – and aren’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children and seen them most all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard – and aren’t I a woman? Sojourner Truth, speech Women’s Rights Convention, 1851
That little man ... he says women can’t have as much rights as men, cause Christ wasn’t a woman. Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with Him. ibid.
There is a great stir about coloured men getting their rights, but not a word about the coloured women; and if coloured men get their rights, and not coloured women theirs, you see the coloured men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again. Sojourner Truth, speech Equal Rights Convention 1867
They’ve ruined the place [Cambridge] and they’ve ruined your university too. Gilbert Harding, interview BBC
Music and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is. Samuel Pepys, diary 9th Mary 1666
Woman’s at best a contradiction still. Alexander Pope, Epistles to Several Persons, 1735
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair ...
Thus I: faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling. Thomas Hardy, The Voice
It is hard for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs. Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd
Whilst all the landscape was in neutral shade his companion’s face, which was the focus of his eyes, rising above the mist stratum, seemed to have a sort of phosphorescene upon it. She looked ghostly, as if she were merely a soul at large. In reality her face, without appearing to do so, had caught the cold gleam of day from the north-east; his own face, though he did not think of it, wore the same aspect to her.
It was then, as has been said, that she impressed him most deeply. She was no longer the milkmaid, but a visionary essence of woman – a whole sex condensed into one typical form. Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Eustacia Vye was the raw material of a divinity. On Olympus she would have done well with a little preparation. She had the passions and instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman. Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native
A woman like you does more damage than she can conceivably imagine. Far From the Madding Crowd 1968 ***** starring Julie Christie & Terence Stamp & Peter Finch & Alan Bates & Fiona Walker & John Barrett & Owen Berry & Lawrence Carter & Denise Coffey & Paul Dawkins & Vincent Harding et al, director John Schlesinger, soldier
The insistent demand of women for recognition in spheres of work outside the home, which has quietly but unremittingly been advanced in the course of the last hundred years, has grudgingly been conceded. As a doctor and a Member of Parliament I am fully conscious of the fact that the doors both of the medical schools and of the House of Commons had to be forced by furious and frustrated women before their claims were recognized. It would be quite inaccurate to suggest that we were welcomed into the universities or into public life. Edith Summerskill
She’s beautiful and therefore to be wooed;
She is a woman, therefore to be won. William Shakespeare, I Henry VI V iii 78
No grace, no womanhood – ah, beastly creature,
The blot and enemy to our general name. William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus II iii 182-183, Lavinia to Demetrius
O most insatiate and luxurious woman! ibid. V i 88, Lucius to Aaron
Was ever woman in this humour wooed?
Was ever women in this humour won?
I’ll have her, but I will not keep her long. William Shakespeare, Richard III I ii 229
O! tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide! William Shakespeare, III Henry VI I iv 137
Women grow by men. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet I iii 97, Nurse to Capulet’s wife and Juliet
Beshrew me but I love her heartily,
For she is wise, if I can judge of her;
And fair she is, if that mine eye be true;
And true she is, as she hath proved herself;
And therefore like herself, wise, fair and true,
Shall she be placed in my constant soul. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice II vi 52-57, Lorenzo to Graziano
For, having such a blessing in his lady,
He finds the joys of heaven here on earth. ibid. III iv 70-71, Jessica to Lorenzo and Lancelot
See the hell of having a false woman! William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor II ii 281, Ford to Sir John
How weak a thing
The heart of woman is. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar II iv 41-42
She is too subtle for thee, and her smoothness,
Her very silence, and her patience
Speak to the people, and they pity her.
Thou art a fool. William Shakespeare, As You Like It I iii 76-69, Duke Frederick to Celia & Rosalind
Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak. ibid. III ii 265
Frailty, thy name is woman! William Shakespeare, Hamlet I ii 146, Hamlet
O most pernicious woman! ibid. I v 105 Hamlet
... for wise men know
well enough what monsters you make of them
To a nunnery go. ibid. III i 138-140
Ophelia: ’Tis brief, my lord.
Hamlet: As woman’s love. ibid. III ii 141-142
She’s so conjunctive to my life and soul
That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
I could not but by her. ibid. IV vii 14-16, King to Laertes
Proper deformity shows not in the fiend
So horrid as in woman. William Shakespeare, The History of King Lear IV ii 58-59, Albany
Howe’er thou art a fiend,
A woman’s shape doth shield. ibid. IV ii 65-66, Albany