Clever Woman Quotes

The surest aid in combating the male's disease of self-contempt is to be loved by a clever woman. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

A clever woman often compromises her husband; a stupid woman only compromises herself. ~ Charles Maurice De Talleyrand

She looked,' said Alec Guthrie dryly, 'like a clever woman who was not unaware that five ill-dressed passers-by were displaying an unhealthy interest in her personal life. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

I do like beauty, but an older woman can be beautiful and a clever woman is beautiful because that beauty shines through. ~ Patrick Demarchelier

A clever woman is more lethal than a freshly crafted magic wand, and that is why she is fear. ~ Nikita Gill

For the male sickness of self-contempt, the surest cure is to be loved by a clever woman ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Good women are rarely clever and clever women are rarely good. ~ Adah Isaacs Menken

You'll be happy if you'll remember that men don't change much. Women do. Women adapt themselves, and if you think that means they lose their individuality, you're wrong. Show me a happy marriage and I'll show you a clever woman. ~ Elizabeth Cadell

A clever woman succeeds in concealing her jealousy. Otherwise we men always feel so sure of ourselves ... ~ Kerstin Gier

Remember: a clever woman never lets a man know how cleaver she is ~ Lesley Downer

This woman is beautiful and clever: but how much cleverer she would have become if she were not beautiful! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

After all, then, she was not a clever woman, - not more clever than other women around her! ~ Anthony Trollope

Your wife sounds like a clever woman.
She is. I cannot account for the fact that she married me, but since it is to my benefit, I try not to bring it to her attention. ~ Madeline Miller

The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool. ~ Rudyard Kipling

Do you really not know that to praise a woman's mind is to abuse her? Is everyone not convinced that where there's cleverness there's no heart? Has it not been decided that a clever woman is a sort of monster who can feel nothing? Ask anyone, they'll all tell you so. ~ Karolina Pavlova

I don't like this idea of division: that if you're a clever woman then you've got to be a particular way. Because men don't. Men please themselves. ~ Marian Keyes

Christ, she was the most difficult woman he had ever tried to seduce. And the only one who really mattered. ~ Nina Croft

All amusements to which virtuous women are not admitted, are, rely upon it, deleterious in their nature. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

You have only one life, don't waste your life, fulfilling others dream. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

a woman with a lover's impatience with the whole world, a woman who feared when she did not get what she wanted that it meant she was not loved by creation itself; her need for success at seduction was like her need for dinner or breakfast. When ~ Alexander Chee

Women (...) have been encouraged since they were children to be dependent to an unhealthy degree. Any woman who looks within knows that she was never trained to be comfortable with the idea of taking care of herself, standing up for herself, asserting herself. At best she may have played the game of independence, inwardly envying the boys (and later the men) because they seemed so naturally self-sufficient.

It is not nature that bestows this self-sufficiency on men; it's training. Males are educated for independence from the day they are born. Just as systematically, women are taught that they have an out - that someday, in some way, they are going to be saved. That is the fairy tale, the life-message (...) We may venture out on our own for a while. We may go away to school, work, travel; we may even make good money, but underneath it all there is a finite quality to our feelings about independence. Only hang on long enough, the childhood story goes, and someday someone will come along to rescue you from the anxiety of authentic living. (The only savior the boy learns about is himself.) ~ Colette Dowling

Alexsandr, the old warlord, trained me to think as well as kill. Elena taught me to hate. This woman? She is teaching me to . . . love. For her, for my sister, I will find peace for us if I have to kill everyone in the south of Moscow to achieve it. ~ Jessica Clare

My mom was the strongest woman I know. ~ DeAngelo Williams

A woman is like a teabag - only in hot water do you realize how strong she is. ~ Nancy Reagan

The eyes of a woman who never cried can not be beautiful. ~ Sophia Loren

Greedy people only care about being greedy; clever people only care about being clever. ~ Marty Rubin

A woman with a gun in high heels, only the most dangerous combination a man could know. ~ Laura Teagan

My dear boy, in Ireland the midwife uses one hand to hold the baby's best fighting arm from the font water, and grips its jaws with the other lest the goes to litigation about it. Says O'LiamRoe ~ Dorothy Dunnett

When a man loves a woman, as our old troubadours used to say, even if he has heard or seen something that puts his beloved in a bad light, he should believe neither his ears nor his eyes, he should listen to his heart alone. ~ Marquis De Sade

Lenz tells Green how once he was at a Halloween party where a hydrocephalic woman wore a necklace made of dead gulls. ~ David Foster Wallace

Lady Ligeia," he began again, "is a woman in the literature who returns from the dead, taking over another woman's body to be with her true love."
"Oh, yes. Lovely" Isobel blanched. "I guess the other chick didn't mind at all? ~ Kelly Creagh

In my criminal work anything that wears skirts is a lady, until the law proves her otherwise. From the frayed and slovenly petticoats of the woman who owns a poultry stand in the market and who has grown wealthy by selling chickens at twelve ounces to the pound, or the silk sweep of Mamie Tracy, whose diamonds have been stolen down on the avenue... ~ Mary Roberts Rinehart

Why could he not have chosen some other woman? Why Avelina? But he knew why. It was because she had seemed good and kind and had expressed her thoughts without any false pride or pretense. He had admired her forthrightness and her compassion. And although he had never thought of a wife with strong opinions was a good thing, he actually found he liked her opinions-or at least admired her for having them. He wanted to get to know her, to know everything that was in her heart. He wanted to marry her and, surprising even himself, to love her. ~ Melanie Dickerson

When beautiful woman attracts money , she can't achieve a good end. ~ Kishore Bansal

The good intentions of a third party are powerless to control a woman who is annoyed to find herself pursued even into a ball-room by a man whom she does not love. Too often, the kind friend comes down again alone. ~ Marcel Proust

Everyone thinks I have a coffee plantation in Sierra Leone, but I have a cashew crop project. I wrote about a woman who owns a coffee plantation! When you are talking about a woman writer coming from a hot country, there's a complete assumption that she is writing about her own life. ~ Aminatta Forna

Rhoda, my mother, was what the neighbors euphemistically termed "a difficult woman." Her misery was like Texas oil: You could drill anywhere and find some. ~ Karla Jay

There was so much I didn't know about the ways between a man and woman. But I knew I wanted him. And I knew he wanted me. ~ Mary E. Pearson

And still, on occasion, I'll disable my social media blockers, and I'll sit there like a rat pressing the lever, like a woman repeatedly hitting myself on the forehead with a hammer, masturbating through the nightmare until I finally catch the gasoline whiff of a good meme. ~ Jia Tolentino

Fresh tadpoles coming out in the spring should be washed clean in cold well-water, and swallowed whole three or four days after menstruation. If a woman swallows fourteen live tadpoles on the first day and ten more on the following day, she will not conceive for five years. If contraception in still required after that, she can repeat the formula twice and be for ever sterile... This formula is good in that it is effective, safe and not expensive. The defect is that it can be used only in the spring. ~ Pearl S. Buck

The room smells of lemon oil, heavy cloth, fading daffodils, the leftover smells of cooking that have made their way from the kitchen or the dining room, and of Serena Joy's perfume: Lily of the Valley. Perfume is a luxury, she must have some private source. I breathe it in, thinking I should appreciate it. It's the scent of pre-pubescent girls, of the gifts young children used to give their mothers, for Mother's Day; the smell of white cotton socks and white cotton petticoats, of dusting powder, of the innocence of female flesh not yet given over to hairiness and blood. It makes me feel slightly ill, as it I'm in a closed car on a hot muggy day with an older woman wearing too much face powder. This is what the sitting room is like, despite its elegance. ~ Margaret Atwood

It was not a bed with curtains, but a bed with doors like shutters. This may not seem like a nice way of having a bed, but we would all be glad of the wooden curtains about us at night if we lived in such a cottage, on the side of a hill along which the wind swept like a wild river. Through the cottage it would be streaming all night long. And a poor woman with a cough, or a man who has been out in the cold all day, is very glad of such a place to lie in, and leave the the rest of the house to the wind and the fairies. ~ George MacDonald

Marriage is a partnership. Someone has observed that in the Bible account of the creation woman was not formed from a part of man's head, suggesting that she might rule over him, nor from a part of a man's foot that she was to be trampled under his feet. Woman was taken from man's side as though to emphasize the fact that she was always to be by his side as a partner and companion. ~ Harold B. Lee

I must confess that I too am a woman and that I am always prepared to applaud a woman who is more daring than I, and is equal to a man in fighting for freedom of behavior. ~ Paul Gauguin

Any woman who'd ever lost a child knew of the hollowness that remained within the soul. ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

I must court her now,' said the Prince. 'Leave us alone for a minute.' He rode the white expertly down the hill.
Buttercup had never seen such a giant beast. Or such a rider.
'I am your Prince and you will marry me,' Humperdinck said.
Buttercup whispered, 'I am your servant and I refuse.'
'I am your Prince and you cannot refuse.'
'I am your loyal servant and I just did.'
'Refusal means death.'
'Kill me then.'
'I am your Prince and I'm not that bad - how could you rather be dead than married to me?'
'Because,' Buttercup said, 'marriage involves love, and that is not a pastime at which I excel. I tried once, and it went badly, and I am sworn never to love another.'
'Love?' said Prince Humperdinck. 'Who mentioned love? Not me, I can tell you. Look: there must always be a male heir to the throne of Florin. That's me. Once my father dies, there won't be an heir, just a king. That's me again. When that happens, I'll marry and have children until there is a son. So you can either marry me and be the richest and most powerful woman in a thousand miles and give turkeys away at Christmas and provide me a son, or you can die in terrible pain in the very near future. Make up your own mind.'
'I'll never love you.'
'I wouldn't want it if I had it.'
'Then by all means let us marry. ~ William Goldman

She came to this California university for one reason, she reminds herself: the paycheck. Although every time the paycheck arrives the amount taken out in taxes for a single woman with no dependents is so huge it stuns her. The money starts to feel like an insult: For this, she thinks, I've uprooted my life? Whatever money she might save, moreover, she usually spends trying to console herself. And it is hard to make any job financially worth its difficulties, she realizes, when you're constantly running out to J. C. Penney's to buy bathmats. ~ Lorrie Moore

like the big bed it was enclosed in a permanent canopy of heavy netting. Mosquitoes were the least of the creatures this net was intended to exclude; its absence, at any time, night or day, would have been an invitation for snakes and scorpions to make their way between the sheets. In a hut by the pond a woman was even said to have found a large dead fish in her bed. This was a koimachh, or tree perch, a species known to be able to manipulate its spiny fins in such a way as to drag itself overland for short distances. It had found its way into the bed only to suffocate on the mattress. ~ Amitav Ghosh

I've yet to be on a campus where most women weren't worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children, and a career. I've yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing. ~ Gloria Steinem

Every woman likes her own way, but no woman can endure to see another woman master even over a man who does not concern her. ~ Richard Jefferies

You don't love me," she said slowly. "You've looked at me the same way from the instant we met."
His grip tightened on her waist. He leaned into her on a hiss. "Don't tell me I don't love you. Don't you dare tell me that, Margaret. I have loved you since the moment you read my brother's book to me. I love that you are the one woman I can trust with my weakness, that you know all the dark parts of me and do not turn away. I love the fierceness with which you protect the ones you love, even when they don't deserve it. I love every last inch of you, and I want you for my own." His words were hot, fiercely possessive, and yet he leaned his forehead against hers gently. "Although God knows, I don't deserve you. ~ Courtney Milan

If the change be not from outward circumstances, it must be from within; it must be nature, man's nature, which has done the business for Captain Benwick.'

'No, no, it is not man's nature. I will not allow it to be more man's nature than woman's to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bearing most rough usage, and riding out the heaviest weather.'

'Your feelings may be the strongest,' replied Anne, 'but the same spirit of analogy will authorise me to assert that ours are the most tender. Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer-lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments. ~ Jane Austen

As a woman, you walk into all kinds of unknown situations that cause you to fall in love, put someone else's needs before your own, and make unbelievable sacrifices. As time goes by, falling in love has its consequences. You fall in love with your mate, children, family, and job. However, you do not receive a fraction of what you have given in return. Sadly, nobody sees you are beyond exhausted. They want you to go, go and go without complaining.
If they carefully pay attention and think about it; when was the last time they saw you smile, truly smile? When was the last time they saw you happy, truly happy? When was the last time they offered to help you, as opposed to asking could you do this or that? When was the last time they gave you a moment to breathe? ~ Charlena E. Jackson

It's hard to see. There are only the shadows of things. She feels along the fridge to the wall and the phone, touching first her uncle's keys, then her dead aunt's, a woman Devon can feel judging her from the grave even though she's only borrowing something, not stealing it. She has never stolen anything in her life, and she never will. She steps into the cool, still air of the closed garage and she sees Sick's face. The way he looked at her as she let him in, the only one. His hair hung down and his lips were parted and as he moved inside her his eyes seemed to shine with a sweet sadness, the kind that only comes when you know something good can never, ever last. But you keep going anyway. All you can do is keep going and never quit. ~ Andre Dubus III

Lleu is a hard lord," said Huw, "He is killing Gronw without anger, without love, without mercy. He is hurt too much by the woman and the spear. Yet what is there when it is done? His pride. No spear. No friend."
Roger started at Huw. "You're not so green as you're grass-looking, are you?" he said. "Now you mention it, I have been thinking - That bloke Gronw was the only one with any real guts at the end."
"But none of them is all to blame," said Huw. "It is only together they are destroying each other."
"That Blod-woman was pretty poor," said Roger, "however you look at it."
"No," said Huw. "She was made for her lord. Nobody is asking her if she wants him. It is bitter twisting to be shut up with a person you are not liking very much. I think she was longing for the time when she was flowers on the mountain, and it is making her cruel, as the rose is growing thorns. ~ Alan Garner

Quite natural for men, of course, who have worked so hard and put so much into their prized jobs, to want to maintain a balance and not allow new fatherhood to derail a promotion or an ascending career path. But for a woman to voice the same priorities? Cold. Hard. Selfish. ~ Laura Bates