Quotes about Women

Today, I would describe a preistess as a woman who lives in two worlds at once, who perceives life on earth against a backdrop of a vast, timeless, reality.

When women get together, they tell stories. This is how it has always been. Telling stories is our way of saying who we are, where we have come from, what we know, and where we might be headed.

We are all engaged in the task of peeling off the false selves, the programmed selves, the selves created by our families, our culture, our religions. It is an enormous task because the history of women has been as incompletely told as the history of blacks.

Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.

I know that, like every woman of the people, I have more strength than I appear to have.

I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.

The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I don't personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.

I confront the European elite's self-image as tolerant 'while under their noses women are living like slaves.

We women, when we're searching for a meaning to our lives or for the path of knowledge, always identify with one of four classic archetypes.

The Virgin (and I'm not speaking here of a sexual virgin) is the one whose search springs from her complete independence, and everything she learns is the fruit of her ability to face challenges alone.

The Martyr finds her way to self-knowledge through pain, suffering, and surrender.

The Saint finds her true reason for living in unconditional love and in her ability to give without asking anything in return.

Finally, the Witch justifies her existence by going in search of complete and limitless pleasure.

Our imagination is larger than the world around us; we go beyond our limits.  This used to be called 'witchcraft,' but fortunately things have changed, otherwise we would both already have been burned at the stake.  When they stopped burning women, science found an explanation for our behavior, normally referred to as 'female hysteria.'  We don't get burned anymore, but it does cause problems, especially in the workplace.  But don't worry, eventually they'll call it 'wisdom.'

the belly may be kept firm through numerous pregnancies
by means of sit-ups     jogging     dancing     (think of Russian ballerinas)
    & the cunt
as far as I know is ageless     possibly immortal     becoming simply
more open     more quick to understand     more dry-eyed     than at 22

which

after all     is what you were dying for     (as you ravaged
islands of turtles     beehives     oysterbeds     the udders of cows)
desperate to censor changes which you simply might     have let play
over you         lying back     listening         opening yourself
    letting the years make love the only way
        (poor blunderers)
            they know

Hooked for two years now on wrinkle creams     creams for
crowsfeet     ugly lines (if only there were one!)
any perfumed grease     which promises     youth     beauty
not truth     but all I need on earth     I've been studying
     how women age

I have urged on Woman independence of Man, not that I do not think the sexes mutually needed by one another, but because in Woman this fact has led to an excessive devotion, which has cooled love, degraded marriage, and prevented either sex from being what it should be to itself or the other.
I wish Woman to live, first for God's sake.  Then she will not make an imperfect man her god, and thus sink to idolatry.  Then she will not take what is not fit for her from a sense of weakness and poverty.  Then, if she finds what she needs in Man embodied, she will know how to love, and be worthy of being loved.

For you, who have
Condemned me as
Witch, as
Mother,     – I
Have no more
Any pity;
For you who have
Despised me as
Succubi, as
Ball-breaker...

My Passion is
Mine, nor am I
Vampire, nor
Banshee, nor
Screamer, nor
Waiting;     – I
Have turned away, and     I
Face a distance I
Have not run;      – I
Raise my fist beside the
Door of My Dreams and I
Take Time,
My Time,
All of it
In my Hands.

There is no savor more sweet, more salt than to be glad to be what, woman, and who, myself, I am...

If woman is inconstant, good, I am faithful to ebb and flow, I fall in season and now is a time of ripening.

yesterday i had a wild thot. hearing james brown on the radio singing say it loud: i'm black & i'm proud. i thot, wonder how it would feel to say, say it loud, i'm female & proud. it was obviously too silly. think how embarrassed i would be if a neighbor came to the door. what if john came home & i was making the bed yelling I'M FEMALE & I'M PROUD? i'd never hear the end of it. i started saying it and nearly choked on the words. coulnt get them out. realized it was a lie. i aint proud. didnt have a thing to do with it. took pot luck and came out a broad. kept trying to say it. after a few tries, i could. it wasnt very loud. it was probly the quietest sound in the room. me patting pillows into place on the bed and muttering, i'm female & i'm proud. then i got a little hostile and said it loud, i'm female and proud and thot about it and wanted to feel it and said it loud i'm female and proud and after the record was over i yelled it a couple of times and it felt okay, and i havent done it since but maybe i will again.

She must learn again to speak
starting with I
starting with We
starting as the infant does
with her own true hunger
and pleasure
and rage.

Nora leaves her husband, not--as the stupid critic would have it--because she is tired of her responsibilities or feels the need of woman's rights, but because she has come to know that for eight years she had lived with a stranger and borne him children.  Can there be anything more humiliating, more degrading than a life-long proximity between two strangers?  No need for the woman to know anything of the man, save his income.  As to the knowledge of the woman--what is there to know except that she has a pleasing appearance? 

All the way around, when we consider the absolute number of defining negative terms or the ratio of negative to positive word use for each gender, women lose out when it comes to positive, defining language. I mean, they really lose out. My search for definitions of chivalry or gallantry that apply specifically to women has so far come up with nothing. Consider the terms honor, steadfastness, and valor. Though not overtly gender-specific, they are male-tilted by broad context and long-established patterns of use. And these words, even though they can be applied to women, don't imply what gallantry and chivalry imply, which is a mixture of kindness, confidence, and power as specifically linked to one gender…

Lastly, of course, I must comment on the feminine version of the word hero, which of course is heroine. This term describes a woman's role in a story but does not specifically refer to character or nobility. Heroine is probably the most frequently used positive word for a woman in common vocabulary, but almost nobody I know would use it to describe a real, ordinary person. By our language's glaring lack of gender-specific terms for female nobility of character, and the ongoing presence of specialized male terms such as gallantry, we can infer that a bias against celebrating the feminine exists in Western culture much as it does in places like New Guinea, even if it takes a less physically brutal form. This language anomaly in no way reflects the actual nature of women as I have experienced them. Many women I know have shown chivalry equal to a man's in harrowing circumstances, including, in Patty's case, a brush with war in the jungles of New Guinea and making life-or-death decisions as a nurse midwife at the bedsides off hundreds of women in labor. The emotional heroism of women, in my opinion, far surpasses that of men, on a daily basis. By emotional heroism I mean the complex choices women often make, setting aside their own needs or supressing strong feelings, in the service of a greater good.

Cetseva is a female nobility of character, an art form emphasizing strength, endurance, intricate persistance, inclusiveness, fluidity, emotional intelligence, sacrifice, nuance, and grace.

I am Mother;

Life bringer
Nourisher
Leader
Provider
Healer
Warrior
Shape shifter
Sage
Goddess
and Prophesier

I am the wellspring;
for any and all that thirst or need fed.

I fill my cup from an inexhaustible source;
I am love and comfort
I am patience and truth
I am encouragement and strength
I am Faith.
and give you my cup to slake your thirst.
Marianne Goldweber

Woman is a mother. She's got a lot of mouths to feed. She feels like a martyr. Frustration is what she bleeds.

Tell me the story...
It was a woman.
You always say that.
There's always a woman somewhere, child; a princess, a witch, a stepmother, a mermaid, a fairy godmother, or one as wicked as she is beautiful, or as beautiful as she is good.
Is that the complete list?
Then there is the woman you love.
Who's she?
That's another story.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism.  But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another.  Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid.  There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.

So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?

One day I found myself saying to myself...  I can't live where I want to…  I can't go where I want to...  I can't do what I want to.  I can't even say what I want to.  I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to and say what I wanted to when I painted, and that seemed to be the only thing I could do that didn't concern anybody but myself.

"Women are the cup from
 which everyone drinks;
 Empowerment begins with
 Loving and Nurturing the
 self first- in order to quench
 the thirst of those who need us.."
Marianne Goldweber

In my younger days, when I was painted by the half-educated, loose and inaccurate ways women had, I used to say, "How much women need exact science"  But since I have known some workers in science, I have now said, "How much science needs women"