Timeless quotes on women

The following is a list of quotes regarding the nature of women and the relations between the sexes from various eminent figures throughout history: political figures, sages, philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers.

1,000–600 BC: The Bible (Old Testament)

While I was still searching but not finding—I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all.

—Ecclesiastes 7:28

For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey,and her speech is smoother than oil;but in the end she is bitter as gall,sharp as a double-edged sword. Her feet go down to death;her steps lead straight to the grave.

—Proverbs 5:3-5

For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread, but another man’s wife preys on your very life.

—Proverbs 6:21

Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and nagging wife.

—Proverbs 21:19

Youths oppress my people, women rule over them. My people, your guides lead you astray; they turn you from the path.

—Isaiah 3:12

In that day seven women will take hold of one man and say, “We will eat our own food and provide our own clothes;only let us be called by your name. Take away our disgrace!

—Isaiah 4:1

570–510 BC: Pythagoras of Samos

There is a good principle which created order, light, and man, and an evil principle which created chaos, darkness, and woman.

c. 800-700 BC: The Iliad

"So no scrambling for home till each has slept with a Trojan woman [conquered a Trojan wife], as reward for the pain and toil Helen brings [brought] him."

—

"There Hector met him, and showered reproach on him: ‘Sinful Paris beautiful to look on, seducer and deceiver of women, I wish you had never been born, or had died before you wed. Such is my wish indeed, far better than disgrace us all, an object of men’s contempt. The long-haired Greeks must laugh out loud, and cry that our champion was chosen only for beauty, devoid of strength and courage. [...] And dare you not face Menelaus, beloved of Ares, now? You would find what kind of man it is whose fair wife you stole. Your lyre will not help you, nor will those gifts of Aphrodite."

—

"Over her Diomedes of the loud war-cry raised a great shout of triumph: ‘Daughter of Zeus [Aphrodite], leave battle and strife to others. Isn’t it enough that you snare feeble women? Rejoin the fight and you’ll learn to shudder at the name of war!’

—

"To this Hector of the gleaming helm made no answer, but Helen spoke to him in gentle tones: ‘Brother, I am indeed that wicked she-dog [slut] whom all abhor. I wish that on the day of my birth, some vile blast of wind had blown me to the mountains, or into the waves of the echoing sea, where the waters would have drowned me, and none of this would have come about. But since the gods ordained this fate, I wish that I had a better man for husband, who felt the reproaches and contempt of his fellow men. But this man of mine is fickle, and ever will be so, and will reap the harvest of it hereafter. But enter, now and be seated, my brother, since you are the most troubled in mind of all, through my shamelessness and Paris’ folly. Zeus has brought an evil fate upon us, and in days to come we shall be a song for those yet unborn."

—

[Thetis to Achilles]: "Why not find comfort with some woman, since you have but a brief time left to live, and the shadows of Death and remorseless Fate are already close upon you."

—

c. 800-700 BC: The Odyssey

"So true is it that there is nothing more dread or more shameless than a woman who puts into her heart such deeds [...]"

—Homer. The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes, Book XI.

"And another thing will I tell thee, and do thou lay it to heart: in secret and not openly do thou bring thy ship to the shore of thy dear native land; for no longer is there faith in women."

—Homer. The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes, Book XI.

c. 800-700 BC: Hesiod

"[About the creation of Pandora, the first mortal woman]:

And at once he [Zeus] made an affliction for mankind to set against the fire. The renowned Ambidexter ['skilled or strong in both arms', an epiphet for the God Hephaestus] moulded from earth the likelihood of a modest maiden, by Kronos' son's design. [...]

When he had made a pretty bane to set against a blessing, he let her out to where the other gods and men were, resplendent in the finery of the pale-eyed one [Athena] whose father is stern. Both immortal gods and mortal man were struck with wonder when they saw that precipitious trap, more than mankind can manage. For from her is descended the female sex, a great affliction to mortals as they dwell with their husband—no fit partners for accursed poverty, but only for plenty."

—Hesiod, 1988, Theogeny and Works and Days, trans. M.L West, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, p. 20.

"As the bees in their sheltered nests feed the drones, those conspirators in badness, and while they busy themselves each day and every day till sundown making the white honeycomb, the drones stay in their sheltered shells and pile the toil of others into their own bellies, even so as a bane for mortal men has high-thundering Zeus created women, conspirators in causing difficulty."

—ibid, pp. 20-21.

"And he [Zeus] gave a second bane to set against a blessing for the man who, to avoid marriage and the trouble women cause, chooses not to wed, and arrives at grim old age lacking anyone to look after him. He is not short of livelihood while he lives, but when he dies, distant relatives share out his living. Then again, the man who does partake of marriage, and gets a good wife who is sound and sensible, spends his life with the bad competing with the good; while the man who gets an awful kind lives with unrelenting pain in heart and spirit, and is ill without a cure"

—ibid, p. 21.

fl. 6th century BC (disputed): Lao Tzu

"The female always uses stillness to conquer the male. By using stillness, she becomes lower-than (inferior)."

—The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 61

551–479 BC: Confucius

"Women and people of low birth are very hard to deal with. If you are friendly with them, they get out of hand, and if you keep your distance, they resent it."

fl. 5th century BC: Bhartṛhari

A firm bosom; sparkling eyes; a small mouth [...] are characteristics of a woman which are always praised. But when we neglect the surface we find that the internal characteristics corresponding to these are hardness of heart, shifty eyes, a deceitful face, insecurity and cunning. When we bear in mind both the superficial and inward characteristics of a woman, we must declare that the one who should possess them can be dear only to the beasts of the field.

—The Vairagya Sataka

A woman talks to one man, looks at a second, and thinks of a third.

—The Sringa Sataka

Woman is the chain by which man is attached to the chariot of folly. Ibid

Circa 5th century BC: Acharanga Sutra

"The world is overpowered by women (it has become their slave). O man! They (the slaves of women) say—"woman is the source of pleasure." This concept is the cause of grief and is instrumental in his (man's) passage through fondness, death, hell and rebirth as animals (reincarnation)."

—Acharanga Sutra, Book I

470–399 BC: Socrates

"By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you will be happy. If you get a bad one, you will be a philosopher."

446–386 BC: Aristophanes

"[Choir of] Men: O botheration take you all! How you (women) cajole and flatter. A hell it is to live with you; to live without, a hell"

—Aristophanes, Lysistrata, Jack Lindsay translation, 1926

[Choir of] Men: There is no beast, no rush of fire, like woman so untamed. She calmly goes her way where even panthers would be shamed.

—Aristophanes, Lysistrata, Jack Lindsay translation, 1926

Woman is adept at getting money for herself and will not easily let herself be deceived; she understands deceit too well herself.

—Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae, line 236-238

There is but one thing in the world worse than a shameless woman, and that's another woman.

—Thesmorphoriazusae

423–348 BC: Plato

Women are accustomed to creep into dark places, and when dragged out into the light they will exert their utmost powers of resistance ... therefore, as I said before, in most places they will not endure to have the truth spoken without raising a tremendous outcry.

—Plato, Laws VI

"Is there any natural activity in which men are not better in all these respects than women? We need not waste time over weaving and various cooking operations, at which women are thought to be experts, and get badly laughed at if a man does them better.' 'It's quite true', he replied, 'that in general the one sex is much better at everything than the other. A good many women, it is true, are better than a good many men at a good many things. But the general rule is as you stated it."

—The Republic, Book V

c. 408-334 BC: Antiphanes

One single thing I trust a woman saying. To other statements no attention paying : "When I am dead, I won't return to grieve you." Till death takes place, in naught else I'll believe you.

—Antiphanes: Fragment.

What ! When you court concealment, will you tell the matter to a woman? Just as well tell all the criers in the public squares! Tis hard to say which of them louder blares.

—Antiphanes: Fragment.

384–322 BC: Aristotle

"Woman may be said to be an inferior man."

—Poetics, XV

"Females are weaker and colder in nature, and we must look upon the female character as being a sort of natural deficiency."

—On the Generation of Animals

"For the male is more fitted to rule than the female, unless conditions are quite contrary to nature; and the elder and fully grown is more fitted than the younger and undeveloped."

—Arist., Politica, trans. T.A Sinclair, Third Edition (1992), Penguin, London, I, XII, 1259b1.

"It is true that in most cases of rule by statesmen there is an interchange of the role of ruler and rules, which aims to preserve natural equality and non-differentiation; nevertheless, so long as one is ruling and the other is being ruled, the ruler seeks to mark distinctions in outward dignitity, in style of address, and in honours paid. [...] As between man and woman this relationship is permanent."

—Arist., Politica, trans. T.A Sinclair, Third Edition (1992), Penguin, London, I, XII, 1259b2-3.

"Thus the deliberative faculty of the soul is not present at all in a slave; in a female it is present but ineffective, in a child present but undeveloped."

—Arist., Politica, trans. T.A Sinclair, Third Edition (1992), Penguin, London, I, XIII, 1260a13.

"So it is evident that each of the classes spoken of must have moral virtue, and that restraint is not the same in a man as in a woman, nor justice or courage either, as Socrates thought; the one is the courage of a ruler, the other a courage of a servant, and likewise with the other virtues."

—Arist., Politica, trans. T.A Sinclair, Third Edition (1992), Penguin, London, I, XIII, 1260a17.

"For example, the poet [Sophocles] singles out 'silence' as 'bringing credit to a woman'; but that is not so for a man."

—Arist., Politica, trans. T.A Sinclair, Third Edition (1992), Penguin, London, I, XIII, 1260a28.

"Again, the lack of control over Spartan women is detrimental both to the attainment of the aims of the constitution and to the happiness of the state. For just as a man and woman are each part of a household, so we should regard a state also as divided into two parts approximately equal numerically, one of men, one of women. So in all constitutions were the position of women is ill-regulated, one half of the state may be regarded as not properly legislated for. And that is what has happened in Sparta. For there the lawgiver [Lycurgus, main crafter of Sparta's constitution], whose intention it was that the whole state should be tough, has obviously shown toughness himself as far as the man are concerned, but has been negligent over the women. For at Sparta women live intemperately, enjoying every license and indulging in every luxury."

—Arist., Politica, trans. T.A Sinclair, Third Edition (1992), Penguin, London, II, IX, 1269b12-22.

"An inevitable result under such a constitution [as the Spartan's] is that esteem is given to wealth, particularly in cases where the men are dominated by the women; and this is a common state of affairs in the military and warlike races, though not among the Celts and other races where male homosexuality is esteemed. Indeed it seems the first person to relate the myth of a union between Ares and Aphrodite did not lack some rational basis for it: certainly all such people seem compulsively attracted by sexual relations, either with males or with females. This is why that state of affairs prevailed among the Spartans, where in the days of their supremacy a great deal was managed by women. And what is the difference between women ruling and rulers ruled by women? The result is the same."

—Arist., Politica, trans. T.A Sinclair, Third Edition (1992), Penguin, London, II, IX, 1269b23-36.

"If, as has been said earlier, the position of [Spartan] women is wrong, not only does it look like a blot on the constitution in itself, but it seems to contribute some thing to the greed for money; for one might go on next to attack the Spartan inequality of property-ownership."

—Arist., Politica, trans. T.A Sinclair, Third Edition (1992), Penguin, London, II, IX, 1270a11.

"The features of extreme democracy are also all characteristic of a tyrant's policy: the dominance of women in the home, and slack control of slaves. The reason for both features is the same. Tyrants expect in this way to get information against the men, for women and slaves do not plot against tyrants: keep them satisfied and they must always be supports of tyrannies—and of democracies too, for the people likes to be the sole ruler."

—Arist., Politica, trans. T.A Sinclair, Third Edition (1992), Penguin, London, V, XI, 1313b32-34.

"It is also more conductive to restraint that daughters should be no longer young when their fathers bestow them in marriage, because it seems that women who have sexual intercourse at an early age are more likely to be dissolute. [...] Accordingly, we conclude that the appropriate age for the union is about the eighteenth year for girls and for men the thirty-seventh. With such timing, their union will take place when they are physically in their prime, and it will bring them down together to the end of procreation at exactly the right moment for both."

—Arist., Politica, trans. T.A Sinclair, Third Edition (1992), Penguin, London, VII, XVI, 1335a12-15

Circa 300 BC-400 AD: The Jataka Tales

"Cursed be the dart of love that works men pain! Cursed be the land where women rule supreme! And cursed the fool that bows to woman’s sway!"

—Jataka 13

"In lust unbridled, like devouring fire,

Are women,—frantic in their rage. The sex renouncing, fain would I retire

To find peace in a hermitage."

—Jataka 61

"Such, we learn, is the wickedness of women. What crime will they not commit; and then, to deceive their husbands, what oaths will they not take--aye, in the light of day--that they did it not!

So false-hearted are they! Therefore has it been said:—A sex composed of wickedness and guile, Unknowable; uncertain as the path

Of fishes in the water,—womankind

Hold truth for falsehood, falsehood for the truth!

As greedily as cows seek pastures new,

Women, unsated, yearn for mate on mate.

As sand unstable, cruel as the snake,

Women know all things; naught from them is hid!

—Jataka 62

"For in days to come, women shall lust after men and strong drink and finery and gadding abroad and after the joys of this world. In their wickedness and profligacy these women shall drink strong drink with their paramours; they shall flaunt in garlands and perfumes and unguents; and heedless of even the most pressing of their household duties, they shall keep watching for their paramours, even at crevices high up in the outer wall; aye, they shall pound up the very seed-corn that should be sown on the morrow so as to provide good cheer;--in all these ways shall they plunder the store won by the hard work of their husbands in field and byre, devouring the poor men’s substance even as the hungry jackal under the bench ate up the rope of the rope-maker as he wove it.

—Jataka 77

"Full of seductive wiles, deceitful all, They tempt the most pure-hearted to his fall.

Down--down they sink: a man should flee afar from women, when he knows what kind they are. Whomso they serve, for gold or for desire,

They burn him up like fuel in the fire."

—Jataka 263

254-184 BC: Titus Maccius Plautus

There's no such thing as picking out the best woman: it's only a question of comparative badness. (Nam optuma nulla potest eligi; Alia alia pejor est.)

—Plautus, Aulularia

234–149 BC: Marcus Porcius Cato (Cato the Elder)

Give the reins to a headstrong nature, to a creature that has not been tamed, and then hope that they will themselves set bounds to their licence if you do not do it yourselves. This is the smallest of those restrictions which have been imposed upon women by ancestral custom or by laws, and which they submit to with such impatience. What they really want is unrestricted freedom, or to speak the truth, licence, and if they win on this occasion what is there that they will not attempt?

—Livy, The Early History of Rome

Call to mind all the regulations respecting women by which our ancestors curbed their licence and made them obedient to their husbands, and yet in spite of all those restrictions you can scarcely hold them in ... From the moment that they become your fellows (equals) they will become your masters.

—Livy, The Early History of Rome

c. 200 BC: Bhagavad Gita

“When irreligion is prominent in the family, O Krsna, the women of the family become polluted, and from the degradation of womanhood, O descendant of Vrsni, comes unwanted progeny.”

—Bhagavad-Gita 1:40

c. 85–43 BC: Publilius Syrus

Woman is man's superior in cunning.

—Sententiae (The Moral Sayings of Pubilius Syrus)

A woman's solitary thoughts are her worst ones. ibid

Woman becomes good, when she is openly wicked. ibid

Woman loves or hates : she knows no middle course. ibid

It is easy for women to shed tears without salt. ibid

You may despair of quiet; if you manage the affairs of women. ibid

43 BC–18 AD: Ovid

"A chaste woman is one who has not been propositioned."

"[A woman] is constant only in her inconstancy."

"Thus neither with thee [woman] nor without thee, can I live."

"Many women long for what eludes them, and like not what is offered them."

"A virgin princess shared his room, but what escaped her, revealed itself at last as male: he raped her. So yes, it’s true that she was conquered by brute force, but that’s what she’d been wishing for, of course." (Ovid, The Art of Love)

"“Girls praise a poem, but go for expensive presents. Any illiterate oaf can catch their eye provided he’s rich. Today is truly the Golden Age: gold buys honor, gold procures love.”

Circa 80 AD: The Bible (New Testament)

"But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God."

—1 Corinthians 11:3

"A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.

—1 Timothy 2:11

"I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.

—1 Timothy 2:12

"And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.

—1 Timothy 2:14

"I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes".

—1 Timothy 2:9

"Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good."

—Titus 2:3

fl. 1st-2nd Century AD: Juvenal

"For when danger comes in a right and honourable way, a woman's heart grows chill with fear; she cannot stand upon her trembling feet: but if she be doing a bold, bad thing, her courage fails not. For a husband to order his wife on board ship is cruelty: the bilge-water then sickens her, the heavens go round and round. But if she is running away with a lover, she feels no qualms: then she vomits over her husband; now she messes with the sailors, she roams about the deck, and delights in hauling at the hard ropes."

—Satire VI

"Her dear Sergius had already begun to shave; a wounded arm gave promise of a discharge, and there were sundry deformities in his face: a scar caused by the helmet, a huge wen upon his nose, a nasty humour always trickling from his eye. But then he was a gladiator! It is this that transforms these fellows into Hyacinths! it was this that she preferred to children and to country, to sister and to husband. What these women love is the sword: had this same Sergius received his discharge, he would have been no better than a Veiento (likely referring a senator that the unfaithful woman alluded to in this passage cuckolded)."

—Ibid

"Do you really expect the mother to teach her daughter honest ways—ways different from her own? Nay, the vile old woman finds a profit in bringing up her daughter to be vile."

—Ibid

"I hear all this time the advice of my old friends—keep your women at home, and put them under lock and key. Yes, but who will watch the warders? Wives are crafty and will begin with them. High or low their passions are all the same."

—Ibid

155–240: Tertullian

"Woman is a temple built upon a sewer."

—De cultu feminarum (The Ornaments of Women)

"You are the devil’s gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die ... Woman, you are the gateway to hell."

—De cultu feminarum (The Ornaments of Women)

349–407: St John Chrysostom

"Amongst all the savage beasts none is found so harmful as woman."

"It does not profit a man to marry. For what is a woman but an enemy of friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a domestic danger, delectable mischief, a fault in nature, painted with beautiful colors?"

"God maintained the order of each sex by dividing the business of life into two parts, and assigned the more necessary and beneficial aspects to the man and the less important, inferior matter to the woman."

—Homily 9 on First Timothy

"..the [female] sex is weak and fickle."

—The Kind of Women who ought to be taken as Wives

354–440: St Augustine of Hippo

"I don’t see what sort of help woman was created to provide man with, if one excludes procreation. If woman is not given to man for help in bearing children, for what help could she be? To till the earth together? If help were needed for that, man would have been a better help for man. The same goes for comfort in solitude. How much more pleasure is it for life and conversation when two friends live together than when a man and a woman cohabitate?"

—De Genesi ad literam (The Literal Meaning of Genesis) 9.5.9

" ... woman was given to man, woman who was of small intelligence and who perhaps still lives more in accordance with the promptings of the inferior flesh than by superior reason. Is this why the apostle Paul does not attribute the image of God to her?"

—De Genesi ad literam Book 11.42

"Watch out that she does not twist and turn you for the worse. What difference does it make whether it is in a wife or in a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman."

—Letter to Laetus (Letter 243.10)

570–632: Muhammad

"I was shown Hell and I have never seen anything more terrifying than it. And I saw that the majority of its people are women.” They said, “Why, O Messenger of Allah?” He said, “Because of their ingratitude (kufr).” It was said, “Are they ungrateful to Allah?” He said, “They are ungrateful to their companions (husbands) and ungrateful for good treatment. If you are kind to one of them for a lifetime then she sees one (undesirable) thing in you, she will say, ‘I have never had anything good from you.’” (Narrated by al-Bukhari, 1052).

"When the Prophet heard the news that the people of the Persia had made the daughter of Khosrau their Queen (ruler), he said, "Never will succeed such a nation as makes a woman their ruler." (Narrated by al-Bukhari, 7099).

1016–1041: Naropa

"Countless are woman's defects. My elephantine mind has fallen. Into the poisonous swamp of guile. So I must renounce the world."

1225–1274: Thomas Aquinas

"As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power."

—Summa Theologica, Vol. I, Q. 92, Art. 1, Reply to Objection 1.

"So by such a kind of subjection woman is naturally subject to man, because in man the discretion of reason predominates.

—Summa Theologica, Volume 1, Q. 92, Art. 1, Reply to Objection 2.

c. 1340s-1400: Geoffrey Chaucer

"And now of my fifth husband will I tell.

God grant his soul may never get to Hell!

And yet he was to me most brutal, too;

My ribs yet feel as they were black and blue,

And ever shall, until my dying day.

But in our bed he was so fresh and gay,

And therewithal he could so well impose,

What time he wanted use of my belle chose,

That though he'd beaten me on every bone,

He could re-win my love, and that full soon.

I guess I loved him best of all, for he

Gave of his love most sparingly to me.

—Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Prologue, lines 509-520

"We women have, if I am not to lie,

In this love matter, a quaint fantasy;

Look out a thing we may not lightly have,

And after that we'll cry all day and crave.

Forbid a thing, and that thing covet we;

Press hard upon us, then we turn and flee.

Sparingly offer we our goods, when fair;

Great crowds at market for dearer ware,

And what's too common brings but little price;

All this knows every woman who is wise.

—Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Prologue, lines 521-530

"My liege lady, generally," said he,

"Women desire to have the sovereignty

As well upon their husband as their love,

And to have mastery their man above;

This thing you most desire, though me you kill

Do as you please, I am here at your will."

In all the court there was no wife or maid

Or widow that denied the thing he said ....

—Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Tale, lines 1043-1050

c. 1430-1505: Heinrich Kramer

"(Woman) is more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations. And it should be noted that there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib, that is, a rib of the breast, which is bent as it were in a contrary direction to a man. And since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, she always deceives."

—Malleus Malificarum (The Hammer of the Witches)

"To this point is Ecclesiasticus xxxvii: Neither consult with a woman touching her of whom she is jealous. Meaning that it is useless to consult with her, since there is always jealousy, that is, envy, in a wicked woman. And if women behave thus to each other, how much more will they do so to men.

—ibid

"And now let us examine the carnal desires of the body itself, whence has arise unconscionable harm to human life. Justly we may say with Cato of Utica: If the world could be rid of women, we should not be without God in our intercourse. For truly, without the wickedness of women, to say nothing of witchcraft, the world would still remain proof against innumerable dangers. Hear what Valerius said to Rufinus: You do not know that woman is the Chimaera, but it is good that you should know it; for that monster was of three forms; its face was that of a radiant and noble lion, it had the filthy belly of a goat, and it was armed with the virulent tail of a viper. And he means that a woman is beautiful to look upon, contaminating to the touch, and deadly to keep."

—ibid

"If we inquire, we find that nearly all the kingdoms of the world have been overthrown by women. Troy, which was a prosperous kingdom, was, for the rape of one woman, Helen, destroyed, and many thousands of Greeks slain. The kingdom of the Jews suffered much misfortune and destruction through the accursed Jezebel, and her daughter Athaliah, queen of Judah, who caused her son's sons to be killed, that on their death she might reign herself; yet each of them was slain. The kingdom of the Romans endured much evil through Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, that worst of women. And so with others. Therefore it is no wonder if the world now suffers through the malice of women.

—ibid

"Let us consider also her gait, posture, and habit, in which is vanity of vanities. There is no man in the world who studies so hard to please the good God as even an ordinary woman studies by her vanities to please men."

—ibid

1469-1527: Niccolò Machiavelli

"For my part I consider that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is, therefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her. "

—The Prince

"It makes him (the ideal ruler) hated above all things, as I have said, to be rapacious, and to be a violator of the property and women of his subjects, from both of which he must abstain. And when neither their property nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content, and he has only to contend with the ambition of a few, whom he can curb with ease in many ways."

—The Prince

"And in the first place we see how women have been the occasion of many divisions and calamities in States, and have wrought great harm to rulers; as when, according to our historian, the violence done to Lucretia drove the Tarquins from their kingdom, and that done to Virginia broke the power of the decemvirs. And among the chief causes which Aristotle assigns for the downfall of tyrants are the wrongs done by them to their subjects in respect of their women, whether by adultery, rape, or other like injury to their honour."

—Discourses on Livy

1483–1546: Martin Luther

"The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes."

"No gown worse becomes a woman than the desire to be wise."

"What defects women have, we must check them for in private, gently by word of mouth, for woman is a frail vessel.

—Table-Talk, DCXXXVII

"“For woman seems to be a creature somewhat different from man, in that she has dissimilar members, a varied form and a mind weaker than man. Although Eve was a most excellent and beautiful creature [...] yet she was a woman. For as the sun is more glorious than the moon, though the moon is a most glorious body, so woman, though she was a most beautiful work of God, yet she did not equal the glory of the male creature.”

—Commentary on Genesis, Chapter 2, Part V, 27b.

1509–1564: John Calvin

"But woman can never be the best governor, by reason that she being spoiled of the spirit, can never attain to that degree, to be called or judged a good governor. Because in the nature of all woman, lurketh such vices, as in good governors are not tolerable."

"Thus the woman, who had perversely exceeded her proper bounds, is forced back to her own position. She had, indeed, previously been subject to her husband, but that was a liberal and gentle subjection; now, however, she is cast into servitude."

On the first post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to women rather than to men: "I consider this was done by way of reproach, because they [the men] had been so tardy and sluggish to believe. And indeed, they deserve not only to have women for their teachers, but even oxen and asses ... Yet it pleased the Lord, by means of those weak and contemptible vessels, to give display of his power."

—Commentary on the Gospel of John

1547-1616: Miguel Cervantes

"“That is the natural way of women,” said Don Quixote, “to scorn the one that loves them, and love the one that hates them."

—Don Quixote

"But who is there in the world that can

boast of having fathomed or understood the wavering mind and unstable

nature of a woman? Of a truth no one."

—Don Quixote

"I am persuaded,

my friend, that a woman is virtuous only in proportion as she is or is not tempted; and that she alone is strong who does not yield to the promises, gifts, tears, and importunities of earnest lovers; for what thanks does a woman deserve for being good if no one urges her to be bad, and what wonder is it that she is reserved and circumspect to whom no opportunity is given of going wrong and who knows she has a husband that will take her life the first time he detects her in an

impropriety?"

—Don Quixote

"Woman has by nature a nimbler wit than man for good

and for evil, though it is apt to fail when she sets herself

deliberately to reason."

—Don Quixote

"Between a woman’s ‘yes’ and ‘no’ I wouldn’t venture to put the point of a pin, for there would not be room for it."

—Don Quixote

"Leandra’s youth furnished an excuse for her fault, at least with those to whom it was of no consequence

whether she was good or bad; those who knew her shrewdness and intelligence did not attribute her misdemeanour to ignorance but to

wantonness and the natural disposition of women, which is for the most part flighty and ill-regulated."

—Don Quixote

"I follow another, easier, and to my mind wiser course, and that is to rail at the frivolity of women, at their inconstancy, their

double dealing, their broken promises, their unkept pledges, and in short the want of reflection they show in fixing their affections and

inclinations."

—Don Quixote

1564-1616: William Shakespeare

"Frailty, thy name is WOMAN!

—Hamlet Act I, sc. 2.

"Such duty as the subject owes the prince,

Even such a woman oweth to her husband;

And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,

And not obedient to his honest will,

What is she but a foul contending rebel

And graceless traitor to her loving lord?

I am asham'd that women are so simple

To offer war where they should kneel for peace;

Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,

When they are bound to serve, love, and obey."

—The Taming of the Shrew Act V, Sc. 2.

"The wiles and guiles that women work,

Dissembled with an outward show,

The tricks and toys that in them lurk,

The cock that treads them shall not know.

Have you not heard it said full oft,

A woman's nay doth stand for nought?"

— The Passionate Pigrim, 340.

"And let not women’s weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man’s cheeks! …
No, I’ll not weep.
I have full cause of weeping, but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws
Or ere I’ll weep."

—King Lear

"O devil, devil!

If that the earth could teem with woman's tears,

Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.

Out of my sight!"

— (Othello, 4.1.2685)

1588-1679: Thomas Hobbes

"Forme (looks) is Power; because being a promise of Good, it recommendeth men to the favour of women and strangers."

—Leviathan

"But the question lyeth now in the state of meer Nature; where there are supposed no lawes of Matrimony; no lawes for the education of children; but the Law of Nature, and the naturall inclination of the Sexes, one to another, and to their children. If there be no contract, the dominion is in the mother. For in the condition of Meer Nature, where there are no matrimoniall lawes, it cannot be known who is the father, unlesse it be declared by the mother: and therefore the right of dominion over the child dependeth on her will, and is consequently hers.

—Ibid

"By this it appears, that a great Family if it be not part of some Commonwealth, is of it self, as to the Rights of Soveraignty, a little Monarchy; whether that Family consist of a man and his children; or of a man and his servants; or of a man, and his children, and servants together: wherein the Father of Master is the Soveraign.

—Ibid

1608-1674: John Milton

"Rather than solid virtue; all but a rib

Crooked by nature, bent, as now appears,

More to the part sinister, from me drawn;

Well if thrown out, as supernumerary

To my just number found. Oh, why did God,

Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven

With Spirits masculine, create at last

This novelty on earth, this fair defect

Of nature, and not fill the world at once

With men, as angels, without feminine;

Or find some other way to generate

Mankind? This mischief had not been befallen,

And more that shall befall;innumerable

Disturbances on earth through female snares."

—Paradise Lost, Chapter X: 864-878.

"But still I see the tenor of Man's woe

Holds on the same, from Woman to begin.

From Man's effeminate slackness it begins,

Said the angel, who should better hold his place

By wisdom, and superior gifts received."

—Paradise Lost, Chapter XI: 632-636.

1613–1680: François de La Rochefoucauld

"The intellect of the generality of women serves more to fortify their folly than their reason."

"All women are flirts, but some are restrained by shyness, and others by sense"

1652-1685: Thomas Otway

"Be a true woman, rail, protest my wrongs. Resolve to hate him, and yet love him still ..."

—The Orphan

"Woman the fountain of all humane frailty ! What mighty ills have not been done by woman! Who was 't betray'd the Capitol? A woman.

Who lost Mark Anthony the world ? A woman.

Who was the cause of a long ten years war, And laid at last Old-Troy in ashes ? Woman.

Destructive, damnable, deceitful, woman..."

—ibid

""Who trusts his heart with woman 's surely lost: You were made fair on purpose to undo us. Whilst greedily we snatch th' alluring bait, And ne're distrust the poyson that it hides ...

—ibid

1688-1744: Alexander Pope

"NOTHING so true as what you once let fall, Most women have no characters at all."

—Moral Essays: EPISTLE II, of The Characters of Women

"See sin in state, majestically drunk;

Proud as a peeress, prouder as a punk;

Chaste to her husband, frank to all beside,

A teeming mistress, but a barren bride."

—ibid

"Who breaks with her (woman), provokes revenge from hell,

But he's a bolder man who dares be well.

Her ev'ry turn with violence pursu'd,

Nor more a storm her hate than gratitude ... Offend her, and she knows not to forgive;

Oblige her, and she'll hate you while you live ..."

—ibid

"Men, some to bus'ness, some to pleasure take; But ev'ry woman is at heart a rake ..."

—ibid

1712-1788: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Women so easily stir a man’s senses and fan the ashes of a dying passion, that if philosophy ever succeeded in introducing this custom [of an unleashed female libido] to any unlucky country…the men, tyrannised over by the women, would at last become their victims, and would be dragged to their death without the least chance of escape."

"Woman and man are made for each other, but their mutual dependence is not equal: men are dependent on women because of their desires; women are dependent on men because of both their desires and their needs. We men could subsist more easily without women than they could without us.

"Women, for their part, are always complaining that we raise them only to be vain and coquettish, that we keep them amused with trifles so that we may more easily remain their masters; they blame us for the faults we attribute to them. What stupidity! And since when is it men who concern themselves with the education of girls? Who is preventing the mothers from raising them as they please? [...] Is anyone forcing your daughters to waste their time on foolish trifles? Are they forced against their will to spend half their lives on their appearance, following your example? Are you prevented from instructing them, or having them instructed according to your wishes? Is it our fault if they please us when they are beautiful, if their airs and graces seduce us, if the art they learn from you attracts and flatters us, if we like to see them tastefully attired, if we let them display at leisure the weapons with which they subjugate us? Well then, decide to raise them like men; the men will gladly agree; the more women want to resemble them, the less women will govern them, and then men will truly be the masters."

1724–1804: Immanuel Kant

"Women are more inclined to be miserly than men. This is in keeping with the nature of woman, for the women have to be more sparing since they are spending money which they do not earn themselves."

"Woman has a superior feeling for the beautiful, so far as it pertains to herself".

"Those guardians who have kindly taken supervision upon themselves see to it that the overwhelming majority of mankind—among them the entire fair sex—should consider the step to maturity, not only as hard, but as extremely dangerous.

—What is Enlightenment?

1744: Man Superior to Woman by 'A Gentleman'

"Hitherto, the women, conscious of their own inabilities, have cheerfully acknowledged the authority which wisdom gives to men over them, content with the soft dominion which love secures to them over the men ... But the case must necessarily alter from the minute that sex forgets its allegiance to us. Once the women presume to call in question the great duty of vassalage to us, it must be time to withdraw our hearts from their power. They can no longer be safe in the custody of such women as refuse to submit their heads to our authority."

—Man Superior to Woman;or, The Natural Right of the Men to Sovereign Authority Over the Women, Asserted and Defended.

"... unluckily for them (women), all the greatest sages of antiquity, as well as the wisest legislators of all ages, have been of the same mind. The greatest poets, the most eminent divines, the brightest orators, the ablest historians, the most skillful physicians, and the profoundest philosophers, in a word, all who have been famous for excelling in learning, wisdom, and arts, have condemned the women to perpetual subjection, and less noble, less perfect, and consequently inferior to men.... "

—ibid

"What else do we find in women but the bane of friendship, an inevitable pain, a native temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic snare, a flattering mischief, the very essence of evil, under the semblance of good?"

—ibid

"The man, who weds a beautiful woman, measures a mark for every libertine's lechery. But he who marries a plain one, marries lechery itself. The former will find it an arduous task to preserve inviolated his private property in the object of public lust. And how wretched must be the fate of the latter, to be confined to the society of one, whom none else would condescend to couple with! However upon the whole there may be, perhaps, much less misery annexed to the possession of a homely wife, than to the difficulty of keeping a handsome one chaste. But still it is plain there is misery in both.

—ibid

"Man, created by Nature to rule, was endowed with a soul equal to the task. His body is strong, his mind vigorous, and his heart resolute; his understanding is fitted for the most sublime speculations, and his person for the most hardy and important exercises ... If there are a few degenerate creatures, who answer not this character, they are such only as by conversing with womankind, putting on their foibles, and affecting to be like them, degrade themselves of manhood, commence intellectual eunuchs, and, though they are, deserve no more to be reputed of the same sex with us.

—ibid

"Let women then give up their claim to an equality with the men, and be content with the humble station which Nature has allotted them. And since neither their capacity for head nor their dispositions of heart can lift them to emulate, let them apply their little talents at least to imitate us: That pleased with the pretty mimics of ourselves, we may venture to place them in our bosoms without fear of cherishing a viper there."

—ibid

1762-1814: Johann Gottlieb Fichte

"The female sex stands one step lower in the arrangement of nature than the male sex; the female sex is the object of a power of the male sex, and no other arrangement was possible if both sexes were to be connected. But at the same time both sexes, as moral beings, ought to be equal. To make this possible, a new faculty, utterly wanting in the male sex, had to be given to the female sex. This faculty is the form in which the sexual impulse appears to woman (i.e. passive and indirect Ed.), whereas to man it appears in its true form. [...] Man may court, but not woman. [...] If some women claim that they should have the same right to court as men, we would answer: 'No one disputes you that right, why then, do you not make use of it?'".

—Fichte, JG 1889, The Science of Rights, trans. AE Kroeger, Trübner & Co., London, pp. 396-397.

"The man in whom there still lingers generosity, and the woman in whom there still dwells modesty, are open to the utmost degree of culture; but both are on the sure path to all vices when the one becomes mean and the other shameless, as indeed experience invariably shows it to be the case."

—ibid, p. 405.

"Polygamy presupposes that women are not rational beings like men, but merely willess and lawless means to gratify man. Such is, indeed, the doctrine of the religious legislation which tolerates polygamy. This religion has—probably without being clearly conscious of the grounds—drawn one sided conclusions from the destination of woman to remain passive. Polyandry is utterly against nature, and hence very rare. If it were not a condition of utter brutishness, and if it could presuppose any thing, it would have to presuppose that there is no reason and no dignity of reason."

—ibid, p. 407.

"Women are not habituated, and can not be habituated, to look upon the form as means, because they could be accustomed to do so only by making use of the form. Hence they look upon it as an end in itself, as something noble and excellent in itself. This is the reason why really learned women—I do not speak of those who reason purely through their common sense, for these are very estimable—are usually pedantic."

—ibid, p. 448.

"Woman, therefore, is especially practical, and not at all speculative in her womanly nature. She can not and shall not go beyond the limit of her feeling."

—ibid, p. 449.

1769–1821: Napoleon Bonaparte

"We treat women too well, and in this way have spoiled everything. We have done every wrong by raising them to our level. Truly the Oriental nations have more mind and sense than we in declaring the wife to be the actual property of the husband. In fact nature has made woman our slave ... Woman is given to man that she may bear children ... consequently she is his property."

"Women ... are mere machines to make children".

"Women ... are capable of committing the worst atrocities. . If war broke out between men and women, it would be quite a different business from the struggles we have seen between nobles and the people, or whites and blacks".

"Nothing is more imperious ... than weakness when it knows it is backed by strength; look at women".

1770-1831: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

"Women are capable of education, but they are not made for activities which demand a universal faculty such as the more advanced sciences, philosophy, and certain forms of artistic production. Women may have happy ideas, taste, and elegance, but they cannot attain to the ideal.

—Elements of the Philosophy of Right

"The difference between men and women is like that between animals and plants. Men correspond to animals, while women correspond to plants because their development is more placid and the principle that underlies it is the rather vague unity of feeling. When women hold the helm of government, the state is at once in jeopardy, because women regulate their actions not by the demands of universality but by arbitrary inclinations and opinions.

—Elements of the Philosophy of Right

"The man's dominion is scientific universal cognition, and so art is also the object of the man, for although it is presented in individuality, it is a universal, a universal idea, the imagination inspired by reason, the Idea of a universal. These are the man's provinces. There can be exceptions for individual women, but the exception is not the rule. Women, when they trespass into these provinces, put the provinces themselves in danger."

—Quoted in Allen W. Wood (ed) 2012, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 439

"While singular individuality is thus mingled into the woman’s relationship, her ethical life is not pure. However, insofar as she is ethical, singular individuality is a matter of indifference, and the wife dispenses with the moment of cognizing herself as this self in an other."

—Phenomenology of Spirit

"I need only give examples for my sentence, which everyone will admit to contain it. So a murderer is led to the place of execution. Ladies may remark that he is a strong, handsome, interesting man. Those people find the remark appalling: what a murderer is beautiful? How can one be so badly thinking and call a murderer beautiful; you are probably something not much better! This is a corruption of morals that reigns among the noble people, perhaps the priest who knows the reason for things and the hearts adds."

—Who Thinks Abstractly?

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1772-1801: Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (Novalis)

"Man must control his nature and secure right and mastery for the individual in himself – mastery of the will is proper to him. Woman must obey nature – constrain her individuality – her sensation must determine her will. [...] She must have a subordinated will, he must have a subordinated sensation. (He simplifies the universal, she universalizes the singular.) He and she both serve reason—He is the ideal of content—She is the soul of form."

—Novalis 2003, Fichte Studies, trans. J Kneller, Cambridge University Press, NY, pp. 157-158

"The man obeys himself as object – the woman as subject. The man must transform his sensations into concepts, the woman her concepts into sensations. The concept does not deceive him, sensation does not deceive her."

—ibid, p. 159

"The morality of the woman is grounded in feeling – as the morality of the man is grounded in reason."

—ibid, p. 174

"The hero is lyrical, the ordinary person epic, the genius dramatic - man is lyrical , woman epic, marriage dramatic."

—Novalis 1997, 'Philological Fragments' in M Mahony Stoljar (ed.), Novalis: Philosophical Writings, State University of New York Press, NY, p. 65.

"The most depraved fellow is not so different from the most worthy man as the wretched hussy is from a noble woman. And is it not also that one finds very much good spoken of men but nothing good of women yet."

—Novalis 1997, 'Teplitz Fragments' in M Mahony Stoljar (ed.), Novalis: Philosophical Writings, State University of New York Press, NY, p. 104.

"Charcoal and diamonds are one substance - and yet how different. Should it not be the same with man and woman. We are made of clay and women are jewels and sapphires that also consist of clay."

—ibid, p. 105

"The more energetically that which is to be eaten resists, the livelier will the flame of the moment of enjoyment be. Application to oxygen. Rape is the most intense kind of enjoyment. Woman is our oxygen."

—Novalis 1997, 'General Draft' in M Mahony Stoljar (ed.), Novalis: Philosophical Writings, State University of New York Press, NY, p. 124.

"Is woman the purpose of man and is woman without purpose?"

—ibid, p. 165

1788–1860: Arthur Schopenhauer

"Taken as a whole, women are . . . thorough-going philistines, and quite incurable."

"It is certainly a revolting idea that widows should sacrifice themselves on their husband’s dead body (as was customary is parts of India at the time); but it is also revolting that the money which the husband has earned by working diligently for all his life, in the hope that he was working for his children, should be wasted on her paramours."

"The fundamental fault of the female character is that it has no sense of justice."

"Women are directly adapted to act as the nurses and educators of our early childhood, for the simple reason that they themselves are childish, foolish, and short-sighted—in a word, are big children all their lives, something intermediate between the child and the man, who is a man in the strict sense of the word."

"That woman is by nature intended to obey is shown by the fact that every woman who is placed in the unnatural position of absolute independence at once attaches herself to some kind of man, by whom she is controlled and governed; this is because she requires a master. If she, is young, the man is a lover; if she is old, a priest."

"Because women in truth exist entirely for the propagation of the race, and their destiny ends here, they live more for the species than for the individual, and in their hearts take the affairs of the species more seriously than those of the individual."

"The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower it is in arriving at maturity. A man reaches the maturity of his reasoning powers and mental faculties hardly before the age of twenty-eight; a woman at eighteen. And then, too, in the case of woman, it is only reason of a sort — very niggard in its dimensions. That is why women remain children their whole life long; never seeing anything but what is quite close to them, cleaving to the present moment, taking appearance for reality, and preferring trifles to matters of the first importance."

1802-1870: Alexander Dumas, père

"But so it is; a woman will often, from mere wilfulness, prefer that which is dangerous to that which is safe. Therefore, in my opinion, my dear baron, the best and easiest way is to leave them to their fancies, and allow them to act as they please, and then, if any mischief follows, why, at least, they have no one to blame but themselves."

—The Count of Monte Cristo

"It was evident that Madame Danglars was suffering from that nervous irritability which women frequently cannot account for even to themselves; or that, as Debray had guessed, she had experienced some secret agitation that she would not acknowledge to anyone. Being a man who knew that the former of these symptoms was one of the inherent penalties of womanhood, he did not then press his inquiries, but waited for a more appropriate opportunity when he should again interrogate her, or receive an avowal proprio motu (on her impulse)."

—Ibid

"Women, on the contrary, are rarely tormented with remorse; for the decision does not come from you—your misfortunes are generally imposed upon you, and your faults the results of others’ crimes."

—Ibid

"“Ah! I wish I had never seen you!” cried d’Artagnan, with that ingenuous roughness which women often prefer to the affectations of politeness, because it betrays the depths of the thought and proves that feeling prevails over reason."

—The Three Musketeers

1803-1873: Edward Bulwer-Lytton

" You women regard men just as you buy books—you never care about what is in them, but how they are bound and lettered."

—The Lady of Lyons

" ... they may talk of the devotion of the sex [women], but the most faithful attachment in life is a woman in love—with herself"

—ibid

Oh, woman! woman! thou shouldst have few sins
Of thine own to answer for! Thou art the author
Of such a book of follies in a man,
That it would need the tears of all the angels
To blot the record out!

—ibid

1809-1865: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

I said the facts reveal that which every individual of good faith glimpses and knows: That man is stronger, but less beautiful; woman more beautiful, but less vigorous. At this you laugh. You deny the facts, because, contrary to your own thesis, you imagine that I cite them with bad intent. You go so far as to say that I don’t produce facts;even more, that the facts favor you. The woman surprised in adultery always denies; her husband still has an obligation to believe her.

—

(Woman) has naturally more of a penchant for lasciviousness than man; first because her ego is weaker, and liberty and intelligence struggle less in her against the inclinations of animality; then because love is the great, especially singular occupation of her life, and in love, the ideal always implies the physical . . .

—

The more predominant beauty is in her (woman), the more she inclines to force [...] in order to tame this force, the offer of her beauty may be free or it is an act of prostitution.

—

In certain epochs, sex consciousness gets mixed up; the cowardice of men becomes an auxiliary of the woman’s audacity; and we see appear these theories of enfranchisement and promiscuity, of which the last word is PORNOCRACY. At this point society is finished.

—

The lover who gives herself for nothing is a phoenix that doesn’t exist except for the poets; this is why when she gives herself outside marriage, she is a libertine, she is a prostitute; she knows this so well that if, later, she finds someone to marry, she will present herself as a widow; she will lie; to impudence she will join both hypocrisy and perfidy.

—

1809-1882: Charles Darwin

"Man is more courageous, pugnacious, and energetic than woman, and has a more inventive genius."

—

"Man is more powerful in body and mind than woman, and in the savage state he keeps her in a far more abject state of bondage than does the male of any other animal; therefore it is not surprising that he should have gained the power of selection. Women are everywhere conscious of the value of their beauty; and when they have the means, they take more delight in decorating themselves with all sorts of ornaments."

—

"There can be little doubt that the greater size and strength of man, in comparison with woman, together with his broader shoulders, more developed muscles, rugged outline of body, his greater courage and pugnacity, are all due in chief part to inheritance from some early male progenitor, who, like the existing anthropoid apes, was thus characterised [...] These characters will, however, have been preserved or even augmented during the long ages whilst man was still in a barbarous condition, by the strongest and boldest men having succeeded best in the general struggle for life, as well as in securing wives, and thus having left a large number of offspring [...] With civilised people the arbitrament of battle for the possession of the women has long ceased; on the other hand, the men, as a general rule, have to work harder than the women for their mutual subsistence; and thus their greater strength will have been kept up."

—

"The half-human male progenitors of man, and men in a savage state, have struggled together during many generations for the possession of the females. But mere bodily strength and size would do little for victory, unless associated with courage, perseverance, and determined energy."

—

"These latter (reason, intellect) as well as the former faculties (courage, determination etc.) will have been developed in man, partly through sexual selection,—that is, through the contest of rival males, and partly through natural selection,—that is, from success in the general struggle for life; and as in both cases the struggle will have been during maturity, the characters thus gained will have been transmitted more fully to the male than to the female offspring. Thus man has ultimately become superior to woman."

—

1812-1870: Charles Dickens

"A man is lucky if he is the first love of a woman. A woman is lucky if she is the last love of a man."

—The Mystery of Edward Drood

"Women can always put things in fewest words. Except when it's blowing up; and then they lengthens it out."

—Oliver Twist

"One can't be troubled, you know; and WE know, Mr. Weller—we, who are men of the world—that a good uniform must work its way with the women, sooner or later."

—The Pickwick Papers

1813–1855: Søren Kierkegaard

"For my part, if I were a woman, I had rather be a woman in the orient where I would be a slave, for to be a slave, neither more nor less, is at any rate something definite, in comparison with being . . . nothing whatever."

"Man can never be so cruel as a woman. Consult mythologies, fables, folktakes, and you will find this view confirmed. If a natural principle is to be described, whose mercilessness knows no limits, it will always be a feminine nature."

"When God created Eve, He let a deep sleep fall over Adam; for woman is the dream of man."

"Woman is personified egotism. Her fervent, burning devotion to man is neither more nor less than her egotism."

1819–1901: Queen Victoria

"I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of ‘Women’s Rights,’ with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety. Feminists ought to get a good whipping. Were woman to ‘unsex’ themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection."

1839–1925: Nakahara Nantenbō (Tōjū)

"The outward manner and temper of women is rooted in the negative (yin) power, and so temperamentally women are apt to be sensitive, petty, narrow, and jaundiced ... among women compassion and honesty are rare indeed. That is why Buddhism says that women are particularly sinful and have the greatest difficulty in attaining Buddhahood."

1844–1900: Friedrich Nietzsche

"From the beginning, nothing has been more alien, repugnant, and hostile to woman than truth—her great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance and beauty"

"Woman! One-half of mankind is weak, typically sick, changeable, inconstant... she needs a religion of weakness that glorifies being weak, loving, and being humble as divine"

"But the man who is not superficial, who has depth of thought as well as of purpose, the depth which not only makes him desire right but endows him with determination and strength to do right, must always look on woman from the oriental standpoint:—as a possession, as private property, as something born to serve and be dependent on him ... What a necessary, logical, desirable growth for mankind! if we could only attain to it ourselves!

"While she thus appropriates new rights, aspires to be 'master', and inscribes the 'progress' of woman on her flags and banners, the very opposite reveals itself with terrible obviousness: woman retrogrades."

—Beyond Good and Evil

"Every relation that does not lift pulls down, and vice versa; therefore men usually sink a little when they take women, while women are lifted a little. Men who are too spiritual need marriage as much as they resist it like an adverse medicine."

—Human, All Too Human

"Inexperienced girls flatter themselves with the idea that it is in their power to make a man happy; later they learn that it means 'to look down on a man if one assumes that it only takes one girl to make him happy.' The vanity of women demands that a man to be more than a happy husband."

—Human, All Too Human

"In the state of hatred, women are more perilous than men; first of all, by no consideration of fairness, they can be inhibited in their once-aroused hostility, but allow their hatred to grow undisturbed to its final consequences, then because they are trained to find wounds (which every person, every party has), they stick to it: for which their sharp intellect provides them excellent services (whereas men are reserved at the sight of wounds, often generous and forgiving in their tune)."

—Human, All Too Human

"If the discontented, bitter and grumbling-heads were denied reproduction, the earth could be enchanted into a garden of happiness - This one rule belongs in a practical philosophy for the female sex."

—Human, All Too Human

"Reflect on the whole history of women: do they not have to be
first of all and above all else actresses? Listen to physicians who
have hypnotized women; finally, love them—let yourself be
“hypnotized by them”! What is always the end result? That
they “put on something” even when they take off everything.
Woman is so artistic."

—The Gay Science

"Untroubled, scornful, outrageous - this is how wisdom wants us to be: she is a woman and she never loves anyone but a warrior."

—(Nietzsche, 1961/1883-91, p. 68, Part 1, "Of Reading and Writing"). Nietzsche, F. W. (1961). Thus Spoke Zarathustra (R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). Penguin (Original work published 1883-1891).

"Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a lusty woman? And just look at these men: their eyes reveal it—they know of nothing better on earth than to lie with a woman. There is filth at the bottom of their souls; and it is worse if this filth still has something of the spirit in it!"

—(Nietzsche, 1961/1883-91, p. 81, Part 1, "Of Chastity").

"Are you a slave? If so, you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? If so, you cannot have friends. In woman, a slave and a tyrant have all too long been concealed. For that reason, woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knows only love. In a woman's love is injustice and blindness towards all that she does not love. And in the enlightened love of a woman, too, there is still the unexpected attack and lighting and night, along with the light. Women is not yet capable of friendship, women are still cats and birds. Or at best cows. Woman is not yet capable of friendship. But tell me you men, which of you is yet capable of friendship?"

—(Nietzsche, 1961/1883-91, pp. 83-84, Part 1, "Of the Friend").

"A little old woman encountered me and spoke this to my soul: 'Zarathustra has spoken to us women to, but he has never spoken to us about woman'. And I answered her: 'One should speak about women only to men' [...] Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has one solution: it is called pregnancy. For the woman, the man is the means, the end is the child. But what is woman for the man? Every true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything. Man should be trained for war and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly. The warrior does not like fruit that is too sweet. Therefore he likes woman; even the sweetest woman is still bitter."

—(Nietzsche, 1961/1883-91, pp. 91-92, Part 1, "Of Old and Young Women").

"Women understands children better than a man, but man is more childlike than woman. A child is concealed in the true man: it wants to play. Come, woman, discover the child in man!"

—(Nietzsche, 1961/1883-91, pp. 91-92, Part 1, "Of Old and Young Women").

"Let woman be a plaything, pure and fine like a precious stone illuminated by the virtues of a world that does not yet exist. Let the flash of a star glitter in your love! Let the hope of a woman be: 'May I bear the Superman'. [...] Let there be honour in your love. Woman has understood little otherwise about honour. But let this be your honour: always to love more than you are loved and never be second in this. Let men fear woman when she loves. Then she bears every sacrifice and every other thing she accounts valueless. Let man fear woman when she hates, for man is at the bottom of his soul only wicked, but woman is base."

— (Nietzsche, 1961/1883-91, p. 92, Part 1, "Of Old and Young Women".

"Whom does woman hate most? - Thus spoke the iron to the magnet: 'I hate you most, because you attract me, but are not strong enough to draw me to you'. The man's happiness is: I will. The woman's happiness is: He will."

—(Nietzsche, 1961/1883-91, p. 92, Part 1, "Of Old and Young Women").

"And woman has to obey and find a depth for her surface. Woman's nature is surface, a changeable, stormy film upon waters. But a man's nature is deep, its torrent roars in subterranean caves: woman senses its power but does not comprehend it."

—(Nietzsche, 1961/1883-91, p. 92, Part 1, "Of Old and Young Women").

"Then the little old woman answered me: Zarathustra has said many nice things, especially for those you are still young enough for them. It is strange, Zarathustra knows little about women and yet he is right about them. Is this because with women nothing is impossible?' [...] 'Give me your little truth, woman!' I said. And thus spoke the little old woman: "Are you visiting women, do not forget your whip!' Thus spoke Zarathustra."

—(Nietzsche, 1961/1883-91, pp. 92-93, Part 1, "Of Old and Young Women").

"Happiness runs after me. That is because I do not run after women. Happiness, however, is a woman."

—(Nietzsche, 1961/1883-91, p. 184, Part 3, "Of Involuntary Bliss").

"There is little manliness here: therefore their women make themselves manly. For only he that is sufficiently a man will - redeem the woman in woman."

—(Nietzsche, 1961/1883-91, p. 189, Part 3, II "Of the Virtue That Makes Small").

"Sensual pleasure: the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness and highest hope. For marriage is promised to many, and more than marriage - to many that are stranger to one another than man and woman: and who has fully conceived how strange man and woman are to one another!"

—(Nietzsche, 1961/1883-91, p. 204, Part 3, II "Of the Three Evil Things").

"Much hidden goodness and power is never guessed at; the most exquisite dainties find no takers! Women, or the most exquisite of them, know this: a little fatter, a little thinner - oh how much fate lies in so little!"

—(Nietzsche, 1961/1883-91, p. 212, Part 3, II "Of the Spirit of Gravity").

"You creators, you higher men! Whoever has to give birth is sick; but whoever has given birth is unclean. Ask the women: one does not give birth for pleasure. The pain makes hens and poets cackle. You creators, there is much in you that is unclean. That is because you have to be mothers."

—(Nietzsche, 1961/1883-91, p. 302, Part 4, XII "Of the Higher Man").

1849–1912: August Strindberg

"Every healthy man is a woman hater—yet he cannot survive if he does not ally himself with his enemy."

"All deviates and effeminate perverts among men have an adoration for women."

"To love is an active verb, and woman is a passive noun. He loves—she is loved."

"Women amount to nothing by themselves but mean everything to us, and are everything for us. They are our honor and our shame; our greatest joy, and our deepest pain and distress; our redemption and our fall; our reward and our punishment; our strength and our weakness."

1854-1925: E. Belfort Bax

"And while male man has ceased to represent a sex, in developing into the human personality complete up to date; woman still represents a sexual principle; her personality centres in sex, in fact she still remains for the most part, an amplified, beautified, embellished sexual organ."

—Some Heterodox Notes on the Women Question

"[the idea that] women are, and have been in the past, grievously oppressed by men, is, on one side of it wholly false, and on the other true only to a very limited extent ... Now, as a matter of fact, at no period of the world’s history has the female sex constituted a disinherited or oppressed class. Women may have been liable to certain disabilities. But these have been always compensated and often more than compensated by exemptions and special privileges. Economically, although dependent on men, women have for the most part had the “lion’s share at the banquet of life.”

—ibid

"As a friend intimately acquainted with current political life recently observed to me, what these people want to get the suffrage for is not to further any broad social views whatever, but simply to get infamous laws passed against men as men. This I believe to be true. What they really want is the erection of a sex domination.

—ibid

1854-1900: Oscar Wilde

"A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction."

"Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat."

"How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being”

"Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects."

"Men always want to be a woman's first love—women like to be a man's last romance.

"Every woman is a rebel."

"A man’s love is like that. It is wider, larger, more human than a woman’s. Women think that they

are making ideals of men. What they are making of us are false idols merely. You made your false idol of me, and I had not the courage to

come down, show you my wounds, tell you my weaknesses. I was afraid that I might lose your love, as I have lost it now."

—The Ideal Husband

"The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain."

—The Importance of Being Earnest

"A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her."

—The Portrait of Dorian Grey

"My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals."

—ibid

1856-1939: Sigmund Freud

"Women oppose change, receive passively, and add nothing of their own."

"Girls hold their mother responsible for their lack of a penis and do not forgive her for their being thus put at a disadvantage."

(When asked why he had no explanations for female mental development by a woman):"Well it's clear to me that you all are the problem."

"The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?"

1856–1950: George Bernard Shaw

"You sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanishness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly."

"It is a great advantage to women to be regarded as a race apart, an advantage, which, as usual, they abuse unscrupulously."

"Give women the vote and in five years there will be a crushing tax on bachelors".

"Women are supposed to have no political power; but clever women put stupid husbands into parliament and into ministerial offices quite easily."

1857-1924: Joseph Conrad

"It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.

—Heart of Darkness

1874-1936 G.K Chesterton

"It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands."

"Ten thousand English women marched through the streets shouting, 'We will not be dictated to,' and went off and became stenographers."

"A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition."

"All women dress to be noticed—gross and vulgar women to be grossly and vulgarly noticed, wise and modest women to be wisely and modestly noticed."

"Most of the women were of the kind vaguely called emancipated, and professed some protest against male supremacy. Yet these new women would always pay to a man the extravagant compliment which no ordinary woman ever pays to him, that of listening while he is talking."

—The Man Who Was Thursday

1875–1961: Carl Gustav Jung

"The animus of women is an answer to the spirit which rules the man. It has its origin in father's mind and shows what the girl has received from the lovely, kind, and incompetent father. His family weakness on the other hand he owes to the animus of his mother and thus the evil is handed on from generation to generation."

"No one can evade the fact, that in taking up a masculine calling, studying and working in a man's way, woman is doing something not wholly in agreement with, if not directly injurious to, her feminine nature."

1880–1903: Otto Weininger

"A superior woman is still infinitely inferior to that which, at least potentially, exists in the lowest of men."

—Sex and Character

"No men who really think deeply about women retain a high opinion of them; men either despise women or they have never thought seriously about them."

—Ibid

"The well-known phrase, “Women have no character,” really means the same thing. Personality and individuality (intelligible), ego and soul, will and (intelligible) character, all these are different expressions of the same actuality, an actuality the male of mankind attains, the female lacks."

— Ibid

"How can I accuse woman after all, for serving man? Man wants nothing other than her. There is no man who would not be happy when he exercises sexual effect upon a woman. Hatred against woman is always only the not yet overcome hatred of one's own sexuality".

— Ibid

1880-1936: Oswald Spengler

"The male livingly experiences Destiny, and he comprehends Causality, the causal logic of the become. The female, on the contrary, is herself Destiny and Time and the organic logic of the Becoming, and for that very reason the principle of Causality is for ever alien to her.

—The Decline of The West

"Woman is strong and wholly what she is, and she experiences the Man and the sons only in relation to herself and her ordained role. In the masculine being, on the contrary, there is a certain contradiction; he is this man, and he is something else besides, which woman neither understands nor admits, which she feels as robbery and violence upon that which to her is holiest. This secret and fundamental war of the sexes has gone on ever since there were sexes, and will continue - silent, bitter, unforgiving, pitiless - while they continue."

—Ibid

"The man climbs up in his history until he has the future of a country in his hands - and then woman comes and forces him to his knees. Peoples and states may go down in ruin over it, but she in her history has conquered. This, in the last analysis, is always the aim of political ambition in a woman of race."

—Ibid

"And not until women cease to have race enough to have or to want children, not until they cease to be history, does it become possible for them to make or to copy the history of men."

—Ibid

"Man as peasant or noble turns towards, man as priest turns away from, woman [...] But for the true priest media vita in morte sumus (in the midst of life we be in death); what he shall bequeath is intellectual, and rejected woman bears no part in it."

—Ibid

"The woman is world-history. By conceiving and giving birth she cares for the perpetuation of the blood. The mother with the child at her breast is the grand emblem of cosmic life."

—Ibid

"Quite animal still is the trickery of woman towards man, and equally so the peasant's shrewdness in obtaining small advantages - both differing in no wise from the slyness of the fox, both consisting in the ability to see into the secret of the victim at one glance."

—Ibid

"Women, as more instinctive and nearer to cosmic rhythms, adapt themselves more readily than men to the forms of a new milieu. Women from the bottom strata move in elegant society with entire certainty after a few years—and sink again as quickly."

—Ibid

"Woman is Sin so the great ascetics felt, as their fellows of the Classical, of China, and of India had felt. The Devil rules only through woman."

—Ibid

1880-1956: H. L. Mencken

"The first-rate woman is a realist. She sees clearly that, in a world dominated by second-rate men, the special capacities of the second-rate man are esteemed above all other capacities and given the highest rewards, and she endeavors to get her share of those rewards by marrying a second-rate man at the top of his class".

"[Women] are quite without that dog-like fidelity to duty which is one of the shining marks of men. They never summon up a high pride in doing what is inherently disagreeable; they always go to the galleys under protest, and with vows of sabotage".

"Women do not like timid men. Cats do not like prudent rats".

"Misogynist: a man who hates women as much as women hate one another."

1935–: Esther Vilar

"Men have been trained and conditioned by women, not unlike the way Pavlov conditioned his dogs, into becoming their slaves. As compensation for their labours men are given periodic use of a woman's vagina."

"Someday it will dawn on man that woman does not read the wonderful books with which he has filled his libraries, and though she may well admire his marvelous works of art in museums she herself will rarely create, only copy."

"By the age of twelve at the latest, most women have decided to become prostitutes. Or to put it another way, they have chosen a future for themselves that consists of choosing a man and letting him to do all the work."

"A man who would cry only if a real catastrophe occurred (perhaps the death of his wife) must assume that when his wife breaks into floods of tears because of cancelled holiday plans, for example, her emotions are equally strong ... What an advantage a man would have if only he realized the cold, clear thoughts running through a woman's head while her eyes are brimming with tears."

1947–: Camille Paglia

"If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts."

"Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist."

"A woman simply is, but a man must become."

"Men are run ragged by female sexuality all their lives. From the beginning of his life to the end, no man ever fully commands any woman. It's an illusion. Men are pussy-whipped. And they know it. That's what the strip clubs are about; not woman as victim, not woman as slave, but woman as goddess."

External links

• The Pocket Book Of Quotations
• The Home Book Of Quotations - 8th ed.
• Carleton's hand-book of popular quotations

See also

• History of female sex-favoritism
• Women
• Foid
• Female solipsism