A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“A woman isn't very powerful without her intuition.”
“A woman journalist in England asked me why Americans usually wrote about their childhood and a past that happened only in imagination, why they never wrote about the present. This bothered me until I realized why - that a novelist wants to know how it comes out, that he can't be omnipotent writing a book about the present, particularly this one.”
Source: Conversations with John Steinbeck
“A woman keeps to home and family, and tends to matters inside the home. A man keeps to war games and tends to matters outside."
A queen tends to both, I wanted to say, but did not. She would not understand.”
Source: Lady Macbeth
“A woman knows a skirt-chaser.”
“A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments, soccer games, romances, best friends, location of friend's houses, favorite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams. A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.”
“A woman knows by intuition, or instinct, what is best for herself.”
“A woman knows she can walk away from a pot to tend something else and the pot will go on boiling; if she couldn't this world would end at once.”
Source: Pigs in Heaven
“A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.”
“A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)
“A woman laughing is a woman conquered.”
“A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.”
“A woman like that...she doesn't come around all the time, but when she leaves; you never forget her. I'm telling you, brother...that one isn't like the rest. You better dust off and give her your best - or you'll never get another shot and wonder what happened with the best you ever got.”
“A woman like that who still loves you after you walked out of her life at the worst possible time? That's a damn miracle. You don't appreciate it, and I'm pretty sure God is going to strike you down.”
Source: Whispers of You
“A woman like you, how do we begin to describe you? how do we describe the strength of the eagle, when it rides against the wind and soars? how do we describe the ocean without paying homage to its depth? tell me, how do we begin to describe a woman like you?”
“A woman likes a strong, silent man because she thinks he is listening.”
“A woman lives a life of contradictions wrapped inside paradoxes wrapped inside a big candy wrapper.”
Source: Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo
“A woman looking for her King and not a Prince shows of her high intelligence and her value on her limited time not to waste it”
“A woman loses a charm with every pin she takes out.”
“A woman made of parts is a dangerous thing. You never know when she'll throw away a piece you may need.”
Source: The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
“A woman makes an outfit her own with accessories.”
“A woman may be a mother, a sister, a business woman, or she may own a business. Woman do many things, and it is important that we do it with grace and style.”
“A woman may be as wicked as she likes, but if she isn't pretty it won't do her much good.”
Source: A Writer's Notebook
“A woman may be beautiful but have poor character. A man may be a business genius, making money left and right, but lack common courtesy, sensitivity, and compassion.”
Source: Waiting and Dating: A Sensible Guide to a Fulfilling Love Relationship
“a woman may be called a wife and mother for most of her life, while a man is called a husband and father only at his funeral.”
Source: One's Company: Reflections on Living Alone
“A woman may get to love by degrees—the best fire does not flare up the soonest.”
Source: Adam Bede
“A woman may have a witty tongue or a stinging pen but she will never laugh at her own individual shortcomings.”
“A woman may not hit a ball stronger than a man, but it is different. I prize that difference.”
“A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no heed to her, if she has a plain face. What folly will not a pair of bright eyes make pardonable? What dullness may not red lips are sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome nor wise.”
Source: Vanity Fair
“A woman may race to get a man a gift but it always ends in a tie.”
“A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.”
“A woman may walk around naked in front of a man, but a civilized man would never jump over her, driven by his primordial state of arousal, regardless of an involuntary erection. Erection is involuntary, but whether a man would act on it, is voluntary.”
Source: Lord is My Sheep: Gospel of Human
“A woman means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others...thus, while the woman thinks of doing good offices and the man of respecting other people's rights, each sex, without any obvious unreason, can and does regard the other as radically selfish.”
“A woman might as well propose: her husband will claim she did.”
“A woman might claim to retain some of the child's faculties, although very limited and defused, simply because she has not been encouraged to learn methods of thought and develop a disciplined mind. As long as education remains largely induction ignorance will retain these advantages over learning and it is time that women impudently put them to work.”
Source: the female eunuch
“A woman mixed of such fine elements
That were all virtue and religion dead
She'd make them newly, being what she was.”
Source: Theophrastus Such, Jubal and other poems and The Spanish gypsy
“A woman moved is like a fountain troubled, Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.”
“A woman must be a cute, cuddly, naive little thing - tender, sweet, and stupid.”
“A woman must be a genius to create a good husband.”
“A woman must be a woman and cannot be a man. She, too, is God's creature and her divine station is that she should bear and care for and rear children. So I am a man created for another office and work. But should I be proud because of this and say: I am not a woman, therefore I am better in the sight of God? Should I not rather praise God for creating both the woman and me also through the woman and putting me in this station? What a un-Christian thing it is that one should despire another because he is in another station or is doing something other then he is doing?... "Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled." for God will not and can not tolerate such pride and arrogance.”
“A woman must be able to stand in the face of power, because ultimately some part of that power will become hers.”
Source: Women Who Run With the Wolves
“A woman must be inspired to achieve her goals.”
“A woman must be nursed into subsistence by love, where a man can become stronger by being hated." - from 'Cows in Art Class”
“A woman must be truly refined to incite chivalry in the heart of a man.”
“A woman must combine the role of mother, wife and politician.”
“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another....
One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.”
Source: Ways of Seeing
“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.
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Every woman's presence regulates what is and is not 'permissible' within her presence. Every one of her actions - whatever its direct purpose or motivation - is also read as an indication of how she would like to be treated. If a woman throws a glass on the floor, this is an example of how she treats her own emotion of anger and so of how she would wish it to be treated by others. If a man does the same, his action is only read as an expression of his anger. If a woman makes a good joke this is an example of how she treats the joker in herself and accordingly of how she as a joker-woman would like to be treated by others. Only a man can make a good joke for its own sake.
One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision : a sight.”
Source: Ways of Seeing
“A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages; she must be well trained in the fighting styles of the Kyoto masters and the modern tactics and weaponry of Europe. And besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half-deserved. All this she must possess, and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading, meditation, and Oriental discipline.”
Source: Pride and Prejudice
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
“A woman must make her fortune before she is 30; or work after she is 30; or get married.”
“A woman must marry the man who loves her but never the one she loves; that is the secret of lasting happiness.”