#omen

When you judge a woman by her appearance, it doesn't define her, it defines you. Ladies, never allow yourself to be defined by someone's inability to appreciate your unique beauty. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#appreciate #beauty #define #judge #life

She could just distinguish his features, as he slept the perfect sleep. In this darkness, she seemed to see him so distinctly. But he was far off, in another world. Ah, she could shriek with torment, he was so far off, and perfected, in another world. She seemed to look at him as at a pebble far away under clear dark water. And here was she, left with all the anguish of consciousness, whilst he was sunk deep into the other element of mindless, remote, living shadow-gleam. He was beautiful, far-off, and perfected. They would never be together. Ah, this awful, inhuman distance which would always be interposed between her and the other being! There was nothing to do but to lie still and endure. She felt an overwhelming tenderness for him, and a dark, under-stirring of jealous hatred, that he should lie so perfect and immune, in an other-world, whilst she was tormented with violent wakefulness, cast out in the outer darkness. ↗

— D.H. Lawrence

#beauty

Last year, when Zora was a freshman, sophomores had seemed altogether a different kind of human: so very definite in their tastes and opinions, in ther loves and ideas. Zora woke up this morning hopeful that a transformation of this kind might have visited her in the night, but, finding it hadn't, she did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead. ↗

— Zadie Smith

#women #beauty

This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living. ↗

— Zadie Smith

#love #women-s-strength #age

If ever i happen to love a woman, it will be because of my mother. ↗

— Michael Bassey Johnson

#passion #women #love

Give us a world where half our homes are run by men, and half our institutions are run by women. I'm pretty sure that would be a better world. ↗

— Sheryl Sandberg

#leadership #lean-in #women-in-business #business

Lysistrata: Oh, Calonicé, my heart is on fire; I blush for our sex. Men will have it we are tricky and sly... Calonicé: And they are quite right, upon my word! Lysistrata: Yet, look you, when the women are summoned to meet for a matter of the last importance, they lie abed instead of coming. Calonicé: Oh, they will come, my dear; but 'tis not easy you know, for a woman to leave the house. One is busy pottering about her husband; another is getting the servant up; a third is putting her child asleep or washing the brat or feeding it. ↗

— Aristophanes

#humor #women #business

That was what stuck in the craws of all the good women of Deptford: Mrs Dempster had not been raped, as a decent woman would have been—no, she had yielded because a man wanted her. The subject was not one that could be freely discussed even among intimates, but it was understood without saying that if women began to yield for such reasons as that, marriage and society would not last long. Any man who spoke up for Mrs Dempster probably believed in Free Love. Certainly he associated sex with pleasure, and that put him in a class with filthy thinkers like Cece Athelstan. ↗

— Robertson Davies

#women #business

In youth, it was a way I had, To do my best to please. And change, with every passing lad To suit his theories. But now I know the things I know And do the things I do, And if you do not like me so, To hell, my love, with you. ↗

— Dorothy Parker

#change #character #empowerment #love #men

The quality you most admire in a man? Courage moral and physical: 'anima'—the ability to think like a woman. Also a sense of the absurd. The quality you most admire in a woman? Courage moral and physical: “anima”—the ability to visualize the mind and need of a man. Also a sense of the absurd. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#courage #empathy #men #sensitivity #women