"Women are like teabags; you never know how strong they are until they're put in hot water."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea."
— Robert A. Heinlein

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."
— Virginia Woolf

"The cure for boredom is curiosity.
There is no cure for curiosity."
— Dorothy Parker

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment."
— Jane Austen

"Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men."
— Joseph Conrad

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman."
— Anaïs Nin

"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his."
— Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)

"Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?"
— Virginia Woolf

"The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity."
— Margaret Nadauld

"Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings."
— Cheris Kramarae

"As a woman, I have no country. As a woman my country is the world. "
— Virginia Woolf

"I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

"A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power."
— George Meredith (Diana of the Crossways)

"Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody. "
— Jane Austen

"She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression."
— C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)

"They sicken of the calm who know the storm."
— Dorothy Parker

"As they passed the rows of houses they saw through the open doors that men were sweeping and dusting and washing dishes, while the women sat around in groups, gossiping and laughing.

'What has happened?' the Scarecrow asked a sad-looking man with a bushy beard, who wore an apron and was wheeling a baby carriage along the sidewalk.

'Why, we've had a revolution, your Majesty -- as you ought to know very well,' replied the man; 'and since you went away the women have been running things to suit themselves. I'm glad you have decided to come back and restore order, for doing housework and minding the children is wearing out the strength of every man in the Emerald City.'

'Hm!' said the Scarecrow, thoughtfully. 'If it is such hard work as you say, how did the women manage it so easily?'

'I really do not know,' replied the man, with a deep sigh. 'Perhaps the women are made of cast-iron.'"
— L. Frank Baum (The Marvellous Land of Oz)

"Women only nag when they feel unappreciated."
— Louis de Bernières (Corelli's Mandolin)

"She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down."
— Zadie Smith

"If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next -- if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions -- you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning.
You'd never dare to."
— Margaret Atwood (Der blinde Mörder / The Blind Assassin)

"The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity. "
— Virginia Woolf

"Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood."
— Susan B. Anthony

"I don't like it when I outweigh my men."
— Patricia Briggs (Moon Called)

"Women have always been spies."
— Harriet Rubin (The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women)

"When children, frightened of the wolf at the window, were asked what did it want to do, the little boy replied, 'Gobble me up.' The little girl said, 'Let's ask it.' "
— Darrian Leader

"Woman is sacred; the woman one loves is holy."
— Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo)

"Empowerment is about doing something for yourself, not doing something to get a reaction."
— jankit

"Every word a woman writes changes the story of the world, revises the official version."
— Carolyn See

"Conversation between a princess and an outlaw:
"If I stand for fairy-tale balls and dragon bait--dragon bait--what do you stand for?"
"Me? I stand for uncertainty, insecurity, bad taste, fun, and things that go boom in the night."
"Franky, it seems to me that you've turned yourself into a stereotype."
"You may be right. I don't care. As any car freak will tell you, the old models are the most beautiful, even if they aren't the most efficient. People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve."
"Well, you may get off on being a beautiful stereotype, regardless of the social consequences, but my conscience won't allow it."
"And I goddamn refuse to be dragon bait. I'm as capable of rescuing you as you are of rescuing me."
"I'm an outlaw, not a hero. I never intended to rescue you. We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves."
— Tom Robbins

"A woman's destiny, they say, is not fulfilled until she holds in her arms her own little book."
— Caroline Mytinger (Headhunting in the Solomon Islands: Around the Coral Sea)

"That's how it's going to be, however much people may grumble."
— Anne Boleyn, Christmas 1530

"You cant beat women anyhow and that if you are wise or dislike trouble and uproar you dont even try to."
— William Faulkner

"An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense: and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know.

All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter; then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was!-that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant . . ."
— Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway)

"If your wife wants to learn to drive, don't stand in her way."
— Stan Levenson

"Es natural condición de las mujeres desdeñar a quien las quiere y amar a quien las aborrece"
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quijote de la Mancha)

"And if he had judged her harshly? If her life were a simple rosary of hours, her life simple and strange as a bird's life, gay in the morning, restless all day, tired at sundown? Her heart simple and willful as a bird's heart? "
— James Joyce (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)

"I doubt if there are many normal women who can resist looking at houses. I believe, in fact, that when a house is up for sale more than half the people who look over it are not prospective buyers, but merely ladies who cannot resist exploring someone else's house.

—chapter 8"
— Mary Stewart (The Stormy Petrel)

"Backlock, a poet blind from his birth, could describe visual objects with accuracy; Professor Sanderson, who was also blind, gave excellent lectures on color, and taught others the theory of ideas which they had and he had not. In the social sphere these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have only heard. We call it intuition."
— Thomas Hardy (The Return of the Native)

"No, women like you don't write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness."
— Edwidge Danticat (Krik? Krak!)

"...heavily tattooed women can be said to control & subvert the ever-present 'male gaze' by forcing men (and women) to look at their bodies in a manner that exerts control."
— Margo Demello

"Women's philanthropic leadership is fundamental to their advancement in society."
— Kay Ballard