Femininity Quotes

“If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be? Half the world is feminine--why is there resentment at a female-oriented art? Nobody asks The Tale of Genji to be masculine! Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity (because they are not themselves at the center of creation, cannot bear children) that a woman writer of genius evokes murderous rage, must be brushed aside with a sneer as 'irrelevant'?”
― May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

“I believe that a godly home is a foretaste of heaven. Our homes, imperfect as they are, must be a haven from the chaos outside. They should be a reflection of our eternal home, where troubled souls find peace, weary hearts find rest, hungry bodies find refreshment, lonely pilgrims find communion, and wounded spirits find compassion.”
― Jani Ortlund

“I learned that being female is as prefab, thoughtless, soulless, and abjectly capitalistic as a Big Mac. It's not important that it's real. It's only important that it's tasty.”
― Chelsea G. Summers, A Certain Hunger

“Beauty is to recognize how full of Love you are. Sensuality is to let some of that Love shine through your body.”
― Nityananda Das, Divine Union

“The stiletto is a feminine weapon that men just don't have.”
― Christian Louboutin

“When a Wanderess has been caged,
or perched with her wings clipped,
She lives like a Stoic,
She lives most heroic,
smiling with ruby, moistened lips
once her cup of Death is welcome sipped.”
― Roman Payne

“I was beautiful; after all, my skin was as rich and dark as wet, brown mud, a complexion that any and every pale white girl would pray for - that is, if she believed in God. My butt sat high in the air and my hips obviously gave birth to Creation. Titties like mangoes, firm, sweet, and ready. My thighs and legs were big and powerful, kicking Vanna White and Cindy Crawford to the curb.”
― Sister Souljah, No Disrespect

“In trans women's eyes, I see a wisdom that can only come from having to fight for your right to be recognized as female, a raw strength that only comes fro unabashedly asserting your right to be feminine in an inhospitable world.”
― Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity

“I believe a woman, in order to be a good wife, must be (among other things) both sensual and maternal.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be a Woman

“Every man who is any kind of artist has a great deal of female in him. I act and give of myself as a man, but I register and receive with the soul of a woman. The only really good artists are feminine. I can't admit the existence of an artist whose dominant personality is masculine.”
― Orson Welles, My Lunches with Orson

“Those of us who embrace the feminine know its strength.”
― Betsy Cornwell

“Mami wanted me to be a lady:
sit up straight, cross my ankles,

let men protect me.
Papi wanted me to be a leader.

To think quick & strike hard,
to speak rarely, but when I did,

to always be heard. Me?
Playing chess taught me a queen is both:

deadly & graceful, poised & ruthless.
Quiet & cunning. A queen

offers her hand to be kissed,

& can form it into a fist
while smiling the whole damn time.

But what happens when those principles
only apply in a game? & in the real world,

I am not treated as a lady or a queen,
as a defender or opponent

but as a girl so many want to strike off the board.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, Clap When You Land

“The male orientation of classical Athens was inseparable from its genius. Athens became great not despite but because of its misogyny.”
― Camille Paglia

“I feel your words on my lips
and feel your mood in my hips”
― Maquita Donyel Irvin

“Our culture is now one of masculine triumphalism, in which transhistorically feminine expressions – empathy, sweetness, volubility, warmth – are seen as impediments to a woman’s professional trajectory in many sectors.”
― Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Mama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love

“An appreciation for high fashion does not preclude possession of common sense.”
― Tasha Alexander, Tears of Pearl

“There was something factitious and brittle and thereby utterly feminine about her charm which made me want to crush her, even to crunch her. She had a slight cast in one eye which gives her gaze a strange concentrated intensity. Her eyes sparkle, almost as if they were actually emitting sparks. She is electric. And she could run faster in very high-heeled shoes than any girl I ever met.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“It is only through my daughter that I have come to realise that a life without femininity – devoid of mystery, emotion, gentleness and the unerring power of a woman’s love – is no life at all.”
― Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Mama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love

“There are transitional forms between the metals and non-metals; between chemical combinations and simple mixtures, between animals and plants, between phanerogams and cryptogams, and between mammals and birds [...]. The improbability may henceforth be taken for granted of finding in Nature a sharp cleavage between all that is masculine on the one side and all that is feminine on the other; or that any living being is so simple in this respect that it can be put wholly on one side, or wholly on the other, of the line.”
― Otto Weininger

“When you see a man struggling financially, usually it's because he simply lacks a perfect muse.”
― Lebo Grand, Sensual Lifestyle

“Because misogynists are the best of men.” All the poets reacted to these words with hooting. Boccaccio was forced to raise his voice: “Please understand me. Misogynists don’t despise women. Misogynists don’t like femininity. Men have always been divided into two categories. Worshipers of women, otherwise known as poets, and misogynists, or, more accurately, gynophobes. Worshipers or poets revere traditional feminine values such as feelings, the home, motherhood, fertility, sacred flashes of hysteria, and the divine voice of nature within us, while in misogynists or gynophobes these values inspire a touch of terror. Worshipers revere women’s femininity, while misogynists always prefer women to femininity. Don’t forget: a woman can be happy only with a misogynist. No woman has ever been happy with any of you!”
― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

“Femininity is imposed for the most part through an unremitting discipline that concerns every part of the body and is continuously recalled through the constraints of clothing or hairstyle.”
― Pierre Bourdieu

“Her voice is still pitched high, thanks to her youth, but it has a certain incipient darkness to it, a low richness that will mature in the coming years to the smoky tones of a priestess or a queen -- a woman of great natural power.”
― Libbie Hawker, Daughter of Sand and Stone

“Amid all the harsh words of a cruel world, let my voice speak out in tenderness. There is an inner light which must be nourished and cannot be replaced with a blind eye. Soft spirits are so much more than the simple result of hopeless romanticism. Each one is the soul of beauty and love combined.”
― Erin Forbes

“Frozen in time, captured in memories, filled in passion, she melted in love before his eyes.”
― Luffina Lourduraj

“Je serais intelligente, cultivée, un peu détachée, comme Anne.”
― Françoise Sagan, Bonjour tristesse

“When you are playing the ‘strong and independent’ woman game, YOU ARE IN RESISTANCE TO YOUR OWN SENSUALITY.”
― Lebo Grand

“When I see a word held hostage to manhood I have to rescue it. Sweet trembling word, locked in a tower, tired of your Prince coming and coming.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The World and Other Places: Stories

“He certainly is very charming, but he makes me feel slightly ill at ease—almost as if I were a woman manquée, if there could be such a thing—you know, something lacking in me."
"Oh, well, that's hardly his fault."
"No," Dulcie agreed. "Mine, of course.”
― Barbara Pym, No Fond Return of Love

“One minute!' she called out. She's ungirlish girl; she appeared in one minute.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress