The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Oscar Wilde5 quotes
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed. — Oscar Wilde · 1890Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship. — Oscar Wilde · 1892Men always want to be a woman's first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about things. What we like is to be a man's last romance. — Oscar Wilde · 1893Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. — Oscar Wilde · 1891William Shakespeare5 quotes
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never. — William Shakespeare · 1600He is the half part of a blessèd man,
Left to be finishèd by such as she,
And she a fair divided excellence,
Whose fullness of perfection lies in him. — William Shakespeare · 1616However we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women’s are. — William Shakespeare · 1602Though men can cover crimes with bold stern looks,
Poor women's faces are their own faults' books. — William Shakespeare · 1594She's beautiful, and therefore to be wooed;
She is a woman, therefore to be won. — William Shakespeare · 1592Susan B. Anthony3 quotes
Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less. — Susan B. Anthony · 1868When two people take each other on terms of perfect equality, without the desire of one to control the other, to make the other subservient, it is a beautiful thing. It is the truest and highest state of life. — Susan B. Anthony · 1896Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it. — Susan B. Anthony · 1875William Congreve3 quotes
Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd. — William Congreve · 1697Women are like tricks by sleight of hand,
Which, to admire, we should not understand. — William Congreve · 1695True, 'tis an unhappy circumstance of life that love should ever die before us, and that the Man so often should outlive the Lover. But say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved. — William Congreve · 1700Abigail Adams2 quotes
In the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. — Abigail Adams · 1776It is really mortifying, sir, when a woman possessed of a common share of understanding considers the difference of education between the male and female sex, even in those families where education is attended to... Nay why should your sex wish for such a disparity in those whom they one day intend for companions and associates. Pardon me, sir, if I cannot help sometimes suspecting that this neglect arises in some measure from an ungenerous jealousy of rivals near the throne. — Abigail Adams · 1778Alfred Tennyson2 quotes
Man for the field and woman for the hearth:
Man for the sword and for the needle she:
Man with the head and woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey;
All else confusion. — Alfred Tennyson · 1847Man is the hunter; woman is his game. — Alfred Tennyson · 1847Chris Rock2 quotes
Women always ready to settle down. Shit, a woman goes on four good dates, she's like "Why are we bullshittin'? What are you waiting for?" Men—never ready to settle down. Men don't settle down. We surrender. — Chris Rock · 1996When guys cheat, it’s like we want something new. But then you know what happens? Your woman finds out, and now she’s new. She is never the same again. — Chris Rock · 2018Doris Lessing2 quotes
None of you ask for anything-except everything, but just for so long as you need it. — Doris Lessing · 1962A woman without a man cannot meet a man, any man, of any age, without thinking, even if it's for a half-second, Perhaps this is the man. — Doris Lessing · 1962Elaine Benes2 quotes
I hate men, but I’m not a lesbian. — Elaine Benes · 1992I don’t know how you guys walk around with those things. — Elaine Benes · 1994Elizabeth Cady Stanton2 quotes
Woman's degradation is in man's idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customers, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton · 1860The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton · 1848Friedrich Nietzsche2 quotes
In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1886God created woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment-but many other things ceased as well! Woman was God's second mistake. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1895George Bernard Shaw2 quotes
Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another. — George Bernard Shaw · 1913Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another. — George Bernard Shaw · 1905George Costanza2 quotes
Jerry, this woman hates me so much, I’m starting to like her. — George Costanza · 1993This woman hates me so much, I'm starting to like her. — George Costanza · 1993Jane Austen2 quotes
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. — Jane Austen · 1813One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. — Jane Austen · 1816John Gay2 quotes
A woman's friendship ever ends in love. — John Gay · 1720If the heart of a man is depressed with cares,
The mist is dispelled when a woman appears. — John Gay · 1728John Milton2 quotes
Flesh of flesh,
Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe. — John Milton · 1667What thou art is mine;
Our state cannot be severed, we are one,
One flesh; to lose thee were to lose my self. — John Milton · 1667Lord Byron2 quotes
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence. — Lord Byron · 1819Alas! the love of women! it is known
To be a lovely and a fearful thing. — Lord Byron · 1819Mary Chudleigh2 quotes
Wife and Servant are the same,
But only differ in the name. — Mary Chudleigh · 1703Then shun, oh! shun that wretched state
And all the fawning flatterers hate:
Value yourselves, and men despise
You must be proud if you'll be wise. — Mary Chudleigh · 1703Professor Henry Higgins2 quotes
Why can't a woman be more like a man?
Men are so honest, so thoroughly square;
Eternally noble, historically fair;
Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat.
Why can't a woman be like that? — Professor Henry Higgins · 1964Pickering, why can't a woman be more like a man? — Professor Henry Higgins · 1964Simone de Beauvoir2 quotes
When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form. — Simone de Beauvoir · 1949It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills. — Simone de Beauvoir · 1949Virginia Woolf2 quotes
Why are women…so much more interesting to men than men are to women? — Virginia Woolf · 1929The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself. — Virginia Woolf · 1929Abdu'l-Baha1 quote
In this century, which is the century of light and the revelation of mysteries... It is well established that mankind and womankind as parts of composite humanity are coequal and that no difference in estimate is allowable, for all are human. — Abdu'l-Baha · 1912Alex Goran1 quote
We all fall for them. Pricks are spontaneous, they're unpredictable, and they're fun. And then we're surprised when they turn out to be pricks. — Alex Goran · 2009Alice Harford1 quote
Millions of years of evolution, right? Right? Men have to stick it in every place they can, but for women, women it is just about security and commitment and whatever the fuck else! — Alice Harford · 1999Alicia Huberman1 quote
I don't like gentlemen who grin at me. — Alicia Huberman · 1946Ambrose Bierce1 quote
To men a man is but a mind. Who cares
What face he carries or what form he wears?
But woman's body is the woman. — Ambrose Bierce · 1906Andrea Dworkin1 quote
Women do not believe that men believe what pornography says about women. But they do. From the worst to the best of them, they do. — Andrea Dworkin · 1981Anton Chekhov1 quote
Women can't forgive failure. — Anton Chekhov · 1896Archie Bunker1 quote
This ain't something a man usually tells a woman: I love you, Edith. — Archie Bunker · 1973Aristophanes1 quote
These impossible women! How they do get around us! The poet was right: can't live with them, or without them! — Aristophanes · 411 BC