Gender Roles Quotes

“O, the difference of man and man!To thee a woman's services are due.”

“Women being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the walls.”

“Man is the will, and woman the sentiment. In this ship of humanity, Will is the rudder, and Sentiment the sail; when woman affects to steer, the rudder is only a masked sail.”

“Women are not the weak, frail little flowers that they are advertised. There has never been anything invented yet, including war, that a man would enter into, that a woman wouldn't, too.”

“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.”

“It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of woman's life is that.”

“Love, the poet said, is woman's whole existence.”

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”

“And when we are writing the life of a woman, we may, it is agreed, waive our demand for action, and substitute love instead. Love, the poet has said, is a woman's whole existence.”

“A man without a woman is like a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman who makes the man go off.”

“Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it.”

“The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor I.”

“The tender breasts of ladies were not formed for political convulsion.”

“It is said that when manners are licentious, a revolution is always near: the virtue of woman being the main girth and bandage ofsociety; because a man will not lay up an estate for children any longer than whilst he believes them to be his own.”

“She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.”

“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”

“I don't feel ashamed to be loud, which is an argument I've had with lots of men, who thought I was too sassy and unladylike.”

“No woman should have a memory. Memory in a woman is the beginning of dowdiness. One can always tell from a woman's bonnet whether she has got a memory or not.”

“A man's life is of more value than a woman's. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. Our lives revolve in curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that a man's life progresses. I have just learnt this, and much else with it, from Lord Goring. And I will not spoil your life for you, nor see you spoil it as a sacrifice to me, a useless sacrifice.”

“Football is all very well as a game for rough girls, but is hardly suitable for delicate boys.”

“There are two races of people -- men and women -- no matter what women's libbers would have you pretend. The male is motivated by toys and science because men are born with no purpose in the universe except to procreate. There is lots of time to kill beyond that. They've got to find work. Men have no inherent center to themselves beyond procreating. Women, however, are born with a center. They can create the universe, mother it, teach it, nurture it. Men read science fiction to build the future. Women don't need to read it. They are the future.”

“For a male person bric-a-brac hunting is about as robust a business as making doll-clothes.”

“Do you see these hands?" Jo said, holding them up. "These were made for caressing handsome men and meant to be adorned with pretty nails and diamond rings. They're not made for paint rollers and paint splatter and that kind of manual labor.”

“A woman should always challenge our respect, and never move our compassion.”

“A man will go to war, fight and die for his country. But he won't get a bikini wax.”