No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.
William Penn
1. "The only time a woman really succeeds in changing a man is when he is a baby."
Natalie Wood
2. "A mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law in one house are like two cats in a bag."
Jewish proverb
Other categories: Family and Loneliness -:- Marriage
3. "A woman's passion is not the measure of a man's love."
Franz Grillparzer, "Sappho"
Other categories: Love
4. "The literature of women's lives is a tradition of escapees, women who have lived to tell the tale."
Phyllis Rose, "Women's Lives"
Other categories: Art and Culture
5. "Every man needs two women, a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph."
Iris Murdoch, "The Message to the Planet"
Other categories: Marriage
6. "Woman was God?s second mistake."
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Other categories: Defeates and Mistakes
7. "Ladies are like creeds; if you cannot speak well of them, say nothing."
Herman Melville, "Redburn"
8. "A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest."
Irish proverb
Other categories: Family and Loneliness -:- Love
9. "Women hope men will change after marriage but they don?t; men hope women won?t change but they do."
Bettina Arndt, "Private Lives"
Other categories: Marriage
10. "In America, every female under fifty calls herself a "girl.""
H.E. Bates, "Summertime"
Other categories: Youth and Age
11. "That woman speaks eighteen languages and can’t say No in any of them."
Dorothy Parker
12. "Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men’s nurses."
Francis Bacon, "Essays"
Other categories: Marriage -:- Youth and Age
13. "The one nice thing about sports is that they prove men do have emotions and are not afraid to show them."
Jane O?Reilly, "The Girl I Left Behind"
Other categories: Various
14. "An ideal wife is any woman who has an ideal husband."
Booth Tarkington, "Looking Forward and Others"
Other categories: Marriage
15. "A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment."
Jane Austen, "Pride and Prejudice"
Other categories: Love -:- Reality and Imagination
16. "In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past — a pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has disappeared."
Henri-Frederic Amiel, "Journal Intime"
Other categories: Love
17. "At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman."
Honoré De Balzac
Other categories: Beauty and Ugliness -:- Talent and Genius
18. "No man can understand why a woman shouldn’t prefer a good reputation to a good time."
Helen Rowland, "Reflections of a Bachelor Girl"
Other categories: Manners and Ethics
19. "When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of all the other men of her acquaintance for the inattention of just one."
Helen Rowland, "Reflections of a Bachelor Girl"
Other categories: Marriage
20. "Some women can be fooled all of the time, and all women can be fooled some of the time, but the same woman can’t be fooled by the same man in the same way more than half of the time."
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
Other categories: Loyalty and Betrayal -:- Truth and Falsity
21. "The hardest task of a girl’s life, nowadays, is to prove to a man that his intentions are serious."
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
Other categories: Manners and Ethics
22. "To make a man perfectly happy tell him he works too hard, that he spends too much money, that he is “misunderstood” or that he is “different”; none of this is necessarily complimentary, but it will flatter him infinitely more that merely telling him that he is brilliant, or noble, or wise, or good."
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
Other categories: Happiness
23. "To be happy with a man you must understand him a lot and love him a little. To be happy with a woman you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all."
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
Other categories: Happiness -:- Love
24. "Why does a man take it for granted that a girl who flirts with him wants him to kiss her — when, nine times out of ten, she only wants him to want to kiss her?"
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
Other categories: Manners and Ethics
25. "What a man calls his "conscience" is merely the mental action that follows a sentimental reaction after too much wine or love."
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
Other categories: Health and Alcohol -:- Sin and Conscience
26. "Don’t waste time trying to break a man’s heart; be satisfied if you can just manage to chip it in a brand new place."
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
27. "A bride at her second marriage does not wear a veil. She wants to see what she is getting."
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
Other categories: Marriage
28. "Woman! The peg on which the wit hangs his jest, the preacher his text, the cynic his grouch, and the sinner his justification!"
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
Other categories: Sin and Conscience -:- Wit and Humor
29. "Every man wants a woman to appeal to his better side, his nobler instincts and his higher nature — and another woman to help him forget them."
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
Other categories: Manners and Ethics
30. "Wedding: the point at which a man stops toasting a woman and begins roasting her."
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
Other categories: Marriage
31. "The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put makeup on two faces."
Maureen Murphy
Other categories: Politics and Diplomacy
32. "Beware of women who read—they also think."
Anne Holt
Other categories: Intellect, Judgement
33. "The woman cries before the wedding and the man after."
Polish proverb
Other categories: Joy and Sadness -:- Marriage
34. "A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman."
Wallace Stevens
Other categories: Art and Culture
35. "Saying that men talk about baseball in order to avoid talking about their feelings is the same as saying that women talk about their feelings in order to avoid talking about baseball."
Deborah Tannen
36. "A woman is four times as shy, six times as brave and eight times as lusty as a man."
Chanakya
37. "Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more."
James Thurber
Other categories: Wisdom and Stupidity
38. "A woman's greatest power is her vulnerability."
(?)
Other categories: Power and Weakness
39. "If women ruled the world and we all got massages, there would be no war."
Carrie Snow
Other categories: Peace and War
40. "Love is the whole history of a woman's life, it is but an episode in a man's."
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein
Other categories: Love
41. "Money and women. They're two of the strongest things in the world. The things you do for a woman you wouldn't do for anything else. Same with money."
Satchel Paige
Other categories: Richness and Money
42. "Glory to Women! They weave and entwine heavenly roses into an earthly life."
Friedrich von Schiller
Other categories: Beauty and Ugliness
43. "A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is a man who hopes they are."
Chauncey Depew
Other categories: Optimism and Hope
44. "Woman once made equal to man becomes his superior."
Socrates
Other categories: Authority, Government
45. "What a woman thinks of women is the test of her nature."
George Meredith
Other categories: Egoism
46. "There is a woman at the beginning of all great things."
Alphonse de Lamartine
47. "Woman would be more charming if one could fall into her arms without falling into her hands."
Ambrose Bierce
48. "Alimony: funds which allow a woman who lived unhappily married to live happily unmarried."
(?)
Other categories: Marriage
49. "To a smart girl men are no problem - they're the answer."
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Other categories: Question and Problem
50. "Men do not change; they unmask themselves."
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein
2007, collected and compiled by Kazimierz Matan
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