quotes, quotations, and nice thoughts about women

It has been women who have
breathed gentleness and care into
the hard progress of humankind.

Queen Elizabeth II

Because I have a heart for God I also have a heart for women. As I hear their stories, I realize so many feel themselves to be inadequate. What a joy it is to believe them into doing those things they never believed they could do and being the people they never believed they could be. Jill Briscoe

A woman is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture, and transform. A woman knows that nothing can come to fruition without light. Let us call upon woman's voice and woman's heart to guide us in this age of planetary transformation. Diane Mariechild

Women are never what they seem to be. There is the woman you see and there is the woman who is hidden. Buy the gift for the woman who is hidden. Erma Bombeck

Don't shut yourself up in a bandbox because you are a woman, but understand what is going on, educate yourself to take your part in the world's work, for it all affects you and yours. Louisa May Alcott I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner. Arthur Conan Doyle

There is a great line of women stretching out behind you
into the past, and you have to seek them out and
find them in yourself and be conscious of them.

Doris Lessing

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Young women today often have very little appreciation for the
real battles that took place to get women where they are
today in this country. I don't know how much history
young women today know about those battles.

Sandra Day O'Connor

A woman can't be, until a girl dies. . . . I mean the sprites
that girls are, so different from us, all their fancies,
their illusions, their flower world, the dreams they live in.

Christina Stead

One is not born a woman; one becomes one.

Simone de Beauvoir

In every girl is a goddess.

Francesca Lia Block

There cannot be too many glorious women.

Marianne Williamson

Women are the architects of society.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Where there is a woman, there is magic.

Ntozake Shange

It certainly must have been a relief for women of the country to realize
that one could be a woman and a lady and yet be thoroughly political.

Pearl S. Buck

The deepest experience of the creator is feminine,
for it is experience of receiving and bearing.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Modern invention has banished the spinning-wheel, and the same
law of progress makes the women of today a different
woman from her grandmother.

Susan B. Anthony

I do not wish to give (women) a first place, still less a second one--
but the complete freedom to take their true place, whatever it may be.

Elizabeth Blackwell

Women share with the men the need for personal success, even the
taste for power, and no longer are willing to satisfy those needs
through the achievements of surrogates, whether husbands,
children, or merely role models.

Elizabeth Dole

I believe that what woman resents is not so much giving
herself in pieces as giving herself purposelessly.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The thing women must do to rise to power is to redefine their femininity.
Once, power was considered a masculine attribute. In fact, power has no sex
.
Katharine Graham

I've always believed that one woman's success
can only help another woman's success.

Gloria Vanderbilt

When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture
of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman.

Betty Friedan

As I grow in age, I value women who are over forty most of all. Here are just a few reasons why: A woman over forty will never wake you in the middle of the night to ask, “What are you thinking?” She doesn’t care what you think.

If a woman over forty doesn’t want to watch the game, she doesn’t sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do. And, it’s usually something more interesting.

A woman over forty knows herself well enough to be assured in who she is, what she is, what she wants and from whom. Few women past the age of forty give a hoot what you might think about her or what she’s doing.

Women over forty are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you deserve it, they won’t hesitate to shoot you, if they think they can get away with it.

Older women are generous with praise, often undeserved. They know what it’s like to be unappreciated.

A woman over forty has the self-assurance to introduce you to her women friends. A younger woman with a man will often ignore even her best friend because she doesn’t trust the guy with other women. Women over forty couldn’t care less if you’re attracted to her friends because she knows her friends won’t betray her.

Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to a woman over forty. They always know.

A woman over forty looks good wearing bright red lipstick. This is not true of younger women. Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over forty is far sexier than her younger counterpart.

Older women are forthright and honest. They’ll tell you right off that you are a jerk, if you are acting like one. You don’t ever have to wonder where you stand with her.

Yes, we praise women over forty for a multitude of reasons. Unfortunately, it’s not reciprocal. For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed hot woman of forty-plus, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some twenty-two-year-old waitress.

Ladies, I apologize.

For all those men who say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free,” here’s an update for you. Now 80 percent of women are against marriage. Why? Because women realize it’s not worth buying an entire pig just to get a little sausage.

Andy Rooney

Most women's magazines simply try to mold women into bigger and better consumers.

Gertrude Stein

Because man and woman are the complement of one another, we need
woman's thought in national affairs to make a safe and stable government.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Women are never so strong as after their defeat.

Alexandre Dumas

The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears,
The figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair.
The beauty of a woman must be see from in her eyes,
Because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides.

Audrey Hepburn

I feel there is something unexplored about a woman
that only a woman can explore.

Georgia O'Keeffe

If I were asked ... to what the singular prosperity and growing strength
of Americans ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply:
To the superiority of their women.

Alexis De Tocqueville

I agree today that a man has no business trying to tell women what
their characteristics are, which ones are inborn, which are more
admirable, which will be best utilized by what occupations.

Benjamin Spock

Women don't want a divided life. . . . They recognize that career is not
enough; they want to be interconnected with people. They want
to keep growing throughout their lives, adjusting as needed to
different circumstances. They want to live a balanced life.

Mary Ellen Ashcroft

In today's world. . . it is still women's business to make life better,
to make tomorrow better than today.

Helen Thames Raley

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Women have to be the biggest champions in the world of other women's choices.

Dee Dee Myers

Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved,
I believe that you must become its soul.

Coretta Scott King

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: "Women are, by their power of
conversation and their social influence, the civilizers of humankind.
What is civilization? I answer, the power of good women." The
solidarity of wise, good women will be the great power to guide
the world toward peace and happiness.

Daisaku Ikeda
Buddhism Day by Day

A Woman's Viewpoint

Age 8: Looks at herself and sees Cinderella

Age 15: Looks at herself and sees Cinderella/Sleeping Beauty/cheerleader

Age 20: Looks at herself and sees too fat/too thin, too short/too tall, too straight/too curly, decides she doesn't have time to fix it and goes out

Age 40: Looks at herself and sees too fat/too thin, too short/too tall, too straight/too curly and says, "At least I'm clean," and goes out

Age 50: Looks at herself, says "I am," and goes wherever she wants to

Age 60: Looks at herself and remembers all the people who can't even see themselves in the mirror anymore, goes out and conquers

Age 70: Looks at herself, sees wisdom and laughter, and goes out to enjoy life

Age 80: Doesn't even bother to look: just puts on a red hat and goes out to be who she is

unattributed

What a ride it is, this life lived in a woman’s body.
The moment we think we have found a shelf
to rest on, a sort of “aha, so this is how it works”,
we are again thrown into new territory.
Once we think that we have finally worked through,...
healed, those old wounds,
another scab is brutally ripped off
exposing once again our undefended heart.
As Yoginis, we learn to breathe and open through it all.

Chameli Ardagh

The here, the now, and the individual, have always been the special
concern of the saint, the artist, the poet, and--from time immemorial-
the woman. In the small circle of the home she has never quite
forgotten the particular uniqueness of each member of the family; the
spontaneity of now; the vividness of here. This is the basic substance
of life. These are the individual elements that form the bigger entities
like mass, future, world. We may neglect these elements,
but we cannot dispense with them. They are the drops that
make up the stream. They are the essence of life itself.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Gift from the Sea

It was frankly sort of confusing, the way everyone stared at our bodies
exactly as they tried to erase the ideas of our bodies from our minds.
We were supposed to get over ourselves but no one was supposed to
get over us. The female body was our worst handicap and our best
advantage--the surest means to success, the surest course to failure.

Hilary Thayer Hamann
Anthropology of an American Girl

For women there are, undoubtedly, great difficulties in the path, but so
much the more to overcome. First, no woman should say, "I am but
a woman!" But a woman! What more can you ask to be?

Maria Mitchell

But the female mind has demonstrated a capacity for all the mental
acquirements and achievements of men, and as generations ensue that
capacity will be expanded; the average woman will be as well educated
as the average man, and then better educated, for the dormant faculties
of her brain will be stimulated to an activity that will be all the more
intense and powerful because of centuries of repose. Woman will
ignore precedent and startle civilization with their progress.

Nikola Tesla

Please know that I am aware of the hazards. I want to do it because
I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried.
When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others.

Amelia Earhart