A Well-Behaved Woman Quotes

“no person’s good opinion of you matters more than your own.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“For-ty. For-ty. Not that there was any way to steer clear of it except to die first, and that hardly seemed a reasonable response to middle age.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“No matter how right you are in your thinking, you could die waiting for some people to change their minds.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“Strong women—especially if they elect to lead lives outside of the domestic sphere—are often depicted without appropriate context, are made to seem one-note (as if any of us could be defined by a single act in our personal history or a single aspect of personality), and are described with sexist labels. An intelligent, ambitious, outspoken woman is called “pushy,” “domineering,” “abrasive,” “hysterical,” “shrill,” etc., most often by men but sometimes by other women as well.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“Patience has not been my most reliable virtue.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“Love was a frivolous emotion, certainly no basis for a marriage—every young lady knew this. You must always put sense over feeling, Madame Denis, Alva’s favorite teacher, had said. Sense will feed you, clothe you, provide your homes and your horses and your bibelots. Feelings are like squalls at sea—mere nuisances if one is lucky, but many girls have lost their way in such storms, some of them never to return. Alva did not need to love William Vanderbilt; she needed only to marry him.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“Yet she understood a truth she could never say aloud: this ideal life was still deficient. She was not wholly content. Perhaps she should be, but contentment, she had learned, lay beyond money's considerable reach.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman

“This is the danger of excellence, don’t you know: it invites scorn. Yet we must not permit ourselves to be any less than we are.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“On ne suit pas l’exemple, on le définit.” One does not follow the example, one sets”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“program itself, you’ll only ever get the same already-converted bunch coming to hear you—if that. I didn’t learn a single thing that wasn’t said fifty years ago.” “Our mission is to educate—” “Stimulate,” Alva said. “That’s what you need to do. Give ladies your age a reason to miss their bridge games and piano recitals. Get yourself a firebrand speaker—the equivalent of Christabel Pankhurst, that English suffragette who keeps getting herself arrested. Use a meeting to organize a march on the Metropolitan Club in Washington; the congressmen are more likely to be there than in chambers. Make posters. Write letters. Do things.” Kitty smiled as politely as Alva had done a minute before. “I’m sure we appreciate the advice.” “You know, for an intelligent woman, you are not very sensible.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“May the burning of my bridges—if indeed any more are burned—light the way for others!”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“Stuffed squab.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“Cobras dance before our eyes, hypnotizing us so that we’re not watching for the strike.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“Life was contrast. Light”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“Wars are campaigns, not solitary battles.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“curb,”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“Alva did suffer when the next wave came, and again and again and again, but a short while later she brought into the Vanderbilt family a girl with tufts of dark hair and wide eyes and the sweetest little bow of a mouth. This infant was perfect. Pain? What pain? Look at this child!”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman

“Alva smiled. “And Harold, when he’s old enough—that God made us equal and it’s man who creates the imbalances, the unfairness, the arbitrary rules meant to keep power in the hands of—” “Don’t trouble them with politics,” William said.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

“Consuelo was correct: marrying for money alone was not ideal. Alva hoped for status, too - though not for the reasons her mother had sought it, self-importance and admiration. Status gave a woman more control over her existence, more protection from being battered about by others' whims or life's caprices.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, A Well-Behaved Woman