One Woman Spectacle Quotes

Her seductive power, however, did not lie in her looks [ ... ]. In reality, Cleopatra was physically unexceptional and had no political power, yet both Caesar and Antony, brave and clever men, saw none of this. What they saw was a woman who constantly transformed herself before their eyes, a one-woman spectacle.
Her dress and makeup changed from day to day, but always gave her a heightened, goddesslike appearance. Her words could be banal enough, but were spoken so sweetly that listeners would find themselves remembering not what she said but how she said it. ~ Robert Greene

If God is an author and the universe is the biggest novel ever written, I may feel as if I'm the lead character in the story, but like every man and woman on Earth, I am a suporting player in one of billions of subplots. You know what happens to supporting players. Too often they are killed off in chapter 3, or in chapter 10, or in chapter 35. A supporting player always has to be looking over his shoulder. ~ Dean Koontz

Once this bubble of self-deception is burst and the mask that shielded her and others from what she wished to ignore is lifted, it is difficult for the woman to return to her life as it was. It has been said that "the discovery of a deceiving principle, a lying activity within us, can furnish an absolutely new view of all conscious life." This reawakened awareness changes the upscale abused woman's life forever. Suddenly, new choices stand before her. This can be a frightening and sad phase in therapy, a moment when the woman is grappling with a kaleidoscope of loss and potential future gain. Some women experience this period as the dark night of the soul. It can be sickening to face the truths one has chosen to ignore in hopes of maintaining the status quo. Even if the woman wishes to stay married, she will never perceive her life in the same way again. ~ Susan Weitzman

The scenario where the sprawling anti-hero gets his comeuppance and the champion walks off into the sunset with his arm around the prize, usually a woman, is a pleasing one. This media personification of what a hero is all about used to be the common norm. Examining past events can confirm this convoluted outlook that sees the baddie being portrayed as some sort of evil manifestation sent to cause havoc by any means possible. ~ Stephen Richards

Recently returned from Boston, where she was staying with her Aunt, to broaden her education. She has turned out a charming young woman, everything one might wish for, and displayed a courtesy and gentle kindness many would admire, and which is worth so much ~ Margaret Atwood

It was early in my career, and I had been seeing Mary, a shy, lonely, and physically collapsed young woman, for about three months in weekly psychotherapy, dealing with the ravages of her terrible history of early abuse. One day I opened the door to my waiting room and saw her standing there provocatively, dressed in a miniskirt, her hair dyed flaming red, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a snarl on her face. "You must be Dr. van der Kolk," she said. "My name is Jane, and I came to warn you not to believe any the lies that Mary has been telling you. Can I come in and tell you about her?" I was stunned but fortunately kept myself from confronting "Jane" and instead heard her out. Over the course of our session I met not only Jane but also a hurt little girl and an angry male adolescent. That was the beginning of a long and productive treatment. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Power within
A wiser woman kin
I cannot give her
The proper word
She is worth so much more
She is the one that should be adored ~ Maddy Kobar

I'm here to see Evelyn."
"Sure," one of them says. "Because we just let anyone in who wants to see her."
"I have a message from the people outside," I say. "One I'm sure she would like to hear."
"Tobias?" a factionless woman says. I recognize her, but not from a factionless warehouse
from the Abnegation sector. She was my neighbor. Grace is her name.
"Hello, Grace," I say. "I just want to talk to my mom."
She bites the inside of her cheek and considers me. Her grip on her pistol falters. "Well, we're still not supposed to let anyone in."
"For God's sake," Peter says. "Go tell her we're here and see what she says, then! We can wait. ~ Veronica Roth

Colin decided then and there that the female mind was a strange and incomprehensible organ - one which no man should even attempt to understand. There wasn't a woman alive who could go from point A to B without stopping at C, D, X, and 12 along the way. ~ Julia Quinn

But even in Gavle I went on digging into the case."

"I don't suppose that Henrik would ever let up."

"That's true, but that's not the reason. The puzzle about Harriet still fascinates me to this day. I mean... it's like this: every police officer has his own unsolved mystery. I remember from my days in Hedestad how older colleagues would talk in the canteen about the case of Rebecka. There was one officer in particular, a man named Torstensson - he's been dead for years - who year after year kept returning to that case. In his free time and when he was on holiday. Whenever there was a period of calm among the local hooligans he would take out those folders and study them."

"Was that also a case about a missing girl?"

Morell looked surprised. Then he smiled when he realised that Blomkvist was looking for some sort of connection.

"No, that's not why I mentioned it. I'm talking about the soul of a policeman. The Rebecka case was something that happened before Harriet Vanger was even born, and the statute of limitations has long since run out. Sometime in the forties a woman was assaulted in Hedestad, raped, and murdered. That's not altogether uncommon. Every officer, at some point in his career, has to investigate that kind of crime, but what I'm talking about are those cases that stay with you and get under your skin during the investigation. This girl was killed in the most brutal way. The killer tied her up and stuck ~ Stieg Larsson

I'm so sorry we were late," she was apologizing in her Lauren Bacall gracious woman mode, the one that always made people accept her apology. "John wasn't sure until the last minute whether he felt like coming or not. But I did so want to meet Aurora's new neighbors, and it was so kind of you to invite us ... ~ Charlaine Harris

In white neighborhoods, only 1 in 41 properties that could have received a nuisance citation actually did receive one. In black neighborhoods, 1 in 16 eligible properties received a citation. A woman reporting domestic violence was far more likely to land her landlord a nuisance citation if she lived in the inner city.

In the vast majority of cases (83 percent), landlords who received a nuisance citation for domestic violence responded by either evicting the tenants or by threatening to evict them for future police calls. Sometimes, this meant evicting a couple, but most of the time landlords evicted women abused by men who did not live with them. ~ Matthew Desmond

We are mammals who need sex, need companionship, who seek the protective enclave of the family for reasons of survival and reproduction. We select a so-called loved one for the most primitive reason - my hero's preference for a pear-shaped woman is self-explanatory, I think. The loved one laughs or smells like the parent who gave one youthful succor and all else is projected, all else is invented ~ Robert Galbraith

She drummed her fingers on the arms of the throne, looking out at the empty room. She was not stupid enough to think men would stop trying to take it from her. They would always be there, waiting for weakness, waiting for her to fall. They wanted what she had because she had it. And one day, eventually, someone would defeat her. But until that day she would fight with tooth and nail, with all the fire and blood that had formed her into who she was. She was a dragon. She was a prince. She was a woman. It was the last that scared them most of all. ~ Kiersten White

I really cannot understand the point of what you're saying. Really,' said Clotilde, looking at her. 'What a very extraordinary person you are. What sort of a woman are you? Why are you talking like this? Who are you?'
Miss Marple pulled down the mass of pink wool that encircled her head, a pink wool scarf of the same kind that she had once worn in the West Indies.
'One of my names,' she said, 'is Nemesis.'
'Nemesis? And what does that mean?'
'I think you know,' said Miss Marple. 'You are a very well educated woman. Nemesis is long delayed sometimes, but it comes in the end. ~ Agatha Christie

The family were wild," she said suddenly. "They tried to marry me off. And then when I'd begun to feel that after all life was scarcely worth living I found something" - her eyes went skyward exultantly - "I found something!"

Carlyle waited and her words came with a rush.

"Courage - just that; courage as a rule of life, and something to cling to always. I began to build up this enormous faith in myself. I began to see that in all my idols in the past some manifestation of courage had unconsciously been the thing that attracted me. I began separating courage from the other things of life. All sorts of courage - the beaten, bloody prize-fighter coming up for more - I used to make men take me to prize-fights; the déclassé woman sailing through a nest of cats and looking at them as if they were mud under her feet; the liking what you like always; the utter disregard for other people's opinions - just to live as I liked always and to die in my own way - Did you bring up the cigarettes?"

He handed one over and held a match for her silently.

"Still," Ardita continued, "the men kept gathering - old men and young men, my mental and physical inferiors, most of them, but all intensely desiring to have me - to own this rather magnificent proud tradition I'd built up round me. Do you see?"

"Sort of. You never were beaten and you never apologized."

"Never!"

She sprang to the edge, poised or a moment like a c ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Nowhere in the known world, it seemed to her, could she live as she'd been created: at once a creature of body and of mind. It was a precept so universal as to seem a law of nature: one aspect of a woman's existence must dominate the other. And a woman like Ester must choose, always, between desires: between fealty to her own self, or to the lives she might bring forth and nurture. ~ Rachel Kadish

Everybody wants friends. Everybody needs friends. No one wishes to be without them. But never lose sight of the fact that it is your friends who will lead you along the paths that you will follow. While you should be friendly with all people, select with great care those whom you wish to have close to you. They will be your safeguards in situations where you may vacillate between choices, and you in turn may save them. . . .

Be Grateful.
Be Smart.
Be Involved.
Be Clean.
Be True.
Be Positive.
Be Humble.
Be Still.
Be Prayerful.

There they are, nine Be's which, if observed, will bring handsome dividends to any young man or woman. They will add sparkle to your days and peace to your nights. They will save you from heartache and pain. They will bring purpose into your life and give direction to your energies.

They will bring you friends of your own kind. They will protect you from associations that would pull you down and deflect you from your course. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

I found a great woman in Keely Shaye. Not if I searched a million times over would I find one as good. ~ Pierce Brosnan

Beth summoned the courage to look straight into Hart's golden eyes. "Can you not consider that perhaps I fell in love with him?"
Deeply, dramatically, foolishly in love.
"No."
"Why not?"
art drew a breath but didn't speak. A muscle twitched in his jaw.
"I see," Beth said softly. "You believe he's mad, and you don't think any woman could love that."
"Ian is mad. The commission of lunacy proved it. I was there. I saw."
"Then why not leave him in the asylum if you think he's insane?"
"Because I know what they did to him." In the gentle twilight the powerful Duke of Kilmorgan looked suddenly haunted. "I saw what the damn quacks did. If he hadn't been mad when he went in, the place would have driven him so.".........Hart flicked his gaze away, but not before Beth saw the moisture in his eyes. .....
The breeze of the dying afternoon stirred his hair, tugged at the curls on Beth's forehead. She watched as one of the highest dukes in the land blinked away tears. ~ Jennifer Ashley

Speaking is the one trait in which woman is superior to man. Consider what happens when a couple argues. The man tries to talk to the woman. The stupid fool - he can never win. ~ Harry Harlow

I'm going to go out on a limb here. I've thought a lot about this one, as a feminist, and as an author. How should traditional roles be portrayed? In fantasy literature there is a school of thought that holds that women must be treated precisely like men. Only the traditional male sphere of power and means of wielding power count. If a woman is shown in a traditionally female role, then she must be being shown as inferior.
After a lot of thought, and some real-life stabs at those traditional roles, I've come to firmly disagree with this idea. For an author to show that only traditional male power and place matter is to discount and belittle the hard and complex lives of our peers and our ancestresses. ~ Sarah Zettel

Madame de Merteuil, though indeed a woman highly regarded, has perhaps only one fault: she overestimates her ability; she's a skilful driver who enjoys guiding her chariot between rocks and precipices and whose sole justification is that she remains unscathed. We can certainly praise but it would be unwise to follow her; she agrees with that view and condemns herself for it. ~ Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos

It's right around this time that her Grandmother Hall dies. And Eleanor Roosevelt is responsible for making all the funeral arrangements. And there are a couple of things that she really understands, as she contemplates her grandmother's life and makes the funeral arrangements. One, she's really talented, an organizational woman. She knows how to do things. She begins to compare her life to her grandmother's life. And it's very clear to her that being a devoted wife and a devoted mother is not enough. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

A friendship has but one chief adversary and that is envy. It is sired by resentment with the potential consequence of unresolved estrangement." She looked at the woman in conflict and said, "Do not envy her but imagine what it took for her to have what you resent her for. Would you want to embark upon her journey instead of your own to procure it? You notice her abundance but overlook her losses; do not envy her because she would rather have your friendship than your envy." The woman looked at her and nodded in accord, "And how do you do that?" she asked. The woman sighed in reflective thought. "By changing the way you think. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

They say, "Why do you call God 'She'?"
Eve says, "God is neither woman nor man but both these things. But now She has come to show us a new side to Her face, one we have ignored for too long."
They say, "But what about Jesus?"
Eve says, "Jesus is the son. But the son comes from the mother. Consider this: which is greater, God or the world?"
They say, for they have learned this already from the nuns, "God is greater, because God created the world."
Eve says, "So the one who creates is greater than the thing created?"
They say, "It must be so."
Then Eve says, "So which must be greater, the Mother or the Son? ~ Naomi Alderman

In 1989 when I switched from Democrat to Republican, with God as my witness, not one thing changed about what I believed about one man and one woman in a marriage or about diversity of color. That's a good thing. ~ J. C. Watts

Myron was just getting comfortable when he heard a toilet flush. He looked a question at Win. "I am not alone," Win said. "Oh." Myron adjusted himself on the couch. "A woman?" "Your gifts," Win said. "They never cease to amaze." "Anybody I know?" Myron asked. Win shook his head. "Not even somebody I know." The norm. Myron looked steadily at his friend. "You want to talk about this?" "No." "I'm here if you do." "Yes, I see that." Win swished around the drink in the snifter. He finished it in one gulp and reached for the crystal decanter. There was a slight slur in his speech. Myron tried to remember the last time he had seen Win the vegetarian, the master of several martial arts, the transcendental meditator, the man so at ease and in focus with his surroundings, have too much to drink. It had been a very long time. "I have a golf question for you," Myron said. Win nodded for him to proceed. ~ Harlan Coben

One can't help thinking, Daddy, what a colourless life a man is forced to lead, when one reflects that chiffon and Venetian point and hand embroidery and Irish crochet are to him mere empty words. Whereas a woman- whether she is interested in babies or microbes or husbands or poetry or servants or parallelograms or gardens or Plato or bridge- is fundamentally and always interested in clothes. ~ Jean Webster

A woman wears many hats in one lifetime -- why shouldn't one of them be a crown? ~ Annie Jones

If men's wages too have been depressed, if there literally aren't enough jobs, or enough money to pay for them (what with the dire need to pay CEOs so many more times more than anyone else, not to mention the precious shareholders), then the category 'woman' remains a useful one for the 'first fired, last hired' policy that has characterized the employment market for much of the last hundred years or so. ~ Nina Power

Why love the boy in a March field with his kite braving the sky? Because our fingers burn with the hot string singeing our hands. Why love some girl viewed from a train bent to a country well? The tongue remembers iron water cool on some long lost noon. Why weep at strangers dead by the road? They resemble friends unseen in forty years. Why laugh when clowns are hot by pies? We taste custard we taste life. Why love the woman who is your wife? Her nose breathes the air of a world that I know; therefore I love that nose. Her ears hear music I might sing half the night through; therefore I love her ears. Her eyes delight in seasons of the land; and so I love those eyes. Her tongue knows quince, peach, chokeberry, mint and lime; I love to hear it speaking. Because her flesh knows heat, cold, affliction, I know fire, snow, and pain. Shared and once again shared experience. Billions of prickling textures. Cut one sense away, cut part of life away. Cut two senses; life halves itself on the instant. We love what we know, we love what we are. Common cause, common cause, common cause of mouth, eye, ear, tongue, hand, nose, flesh, heart, and soul. ~ Ray Bradbury

It is the right and duty of every woman to employ the power of organization and agitation in order to gain those advantages which are given to the one sex and unjustly withheld from the other. ~ Catharine Beecher

Dexter Blake liked a woman with some junk in her trunk. And the tall, curvy chick on the sidelines was packing a whole lot of booty.

She had one of those itty-bitty waists, too. And her cups floweth'd over.

Staring at her chest was practically a religious experience. ~ Amy Andrews

I would have found you earlier, before whatever happened that filled you with this rage. I would not have raised you to be a great man. There is no peace for great men. I would have had you be a decent one. I would have given you the quiet strength to grow old with the woman you love. ~ Pierce Brown

All I know is that every time I've been faced with a tough decision, there's only one thing that outweighs every other concern. One thing that will make you give up on everything you thought you knew, every instinct, every rational calculation. Love.
No matter what happens, you gotta forget about all the other stuff. You gotta forget about logic and fear and doubt. You just gotta do everything you can to get to the one woman who's gonna make all this worth it. At the end of the day, you gotta jump. ~ Jim Halpert

Gonna pretend to be a deaf mute who knows no sign one day, meet a woman, and we'll write for the rest of our lives. ~ Darnell Lamont Walker

Motherhood is the one thing in all the world which most truly exemplifies the God-given virtues of creating and sacrificing. Though it carries the woman close to the brink of death, motherhood also leads her into the very realm of the fountains of life and makes her co-partner with the Creator in bestowing upon eternal spirits mortal life. ~ David O. McKay

Of course a woman who decides to work full time as a mother in the home can be happy and deserves full respect from us. Motherhood is one of the most challenging and creative jobs anyone can do. The goal is to remake the world so that our choices are not so stark. ~ Naomi Wolf

She was an intelligent and honest woman who knew what she was... and she was no beauty. Her attractions were moderate at best, and that was only if one completely discounted the current feminine ideal. She was short, and while on some days she could be described as voluptuous, on others she was most definitely plump. Her hair was a reddish-brown, wildly chaotic mass of curls- hateful curls that successfully defied any substance or implement used to straighten them. Oh, she had nice skin with no pockmarks or blemishes, and her eyes had once been described as "fine" by some well-meaning friend of the family. But they were plain gray eyes, with no shade of green or blue to enliven them. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I try to write about a woman finding her self-respect, valuing herself, and liking herself again. But what one desperately wants now is to write a proper novel. ~ Kate O'Mara

His sexual movements were smoother than warm butter, creative, musical, and right away he became a conductor who directed the performance and moans of his one-woman orchestra with his dick. I sang like a choir. ~ Eric Jerome Dickey

A modern woman sees a piece of linen, but the mediaeval woman saw through it to the flax fields, she smelt the reek of the retting ponds, she felt the hard rasp of the hackling, and she saw the soft sheen of the glossy flax. Man did not see 'just leather', he saw the beast - perhaps one of his own - and knew the effort of slaughtering, liming and curing.
Communities were smaller and whether our man lived on the outskirts of some feudal system, had escaped from it, or was entirely isolated, he would work alone, or daily with the same fellow-workers - conversation would soon languish.
But THINK he must. ~ Dorothy Hartley

At some point in your adult life, you've probably walked into a party and felt a frisson of relief upon discovering at least one woman there who was fatter, uglier, and/or dressed more inappropriately than you. We sure have. But if you want to have any hope of making peace with your own body, you need to knock that shit off.

We're not even telling you to stop just because it's nasty, petty, and beneath you to judge other women so harshly; it is, but because you're not a saint, and neither are we. We're telling you to stop because it's actually in your own self-interest to stop being such a bitch. 'Cause you know what happens when you quit saying that crap about other women? You magically stop saying it about yourself so much, too.

Judging other women negatively creates a constant stream of nasty thoughts in your head. It is inevitable that you will end up applying those same standards to yourself. We think we're building ourselves up when we do this but, really, we're just tearing other people down to our level. And we hate to go all Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood on you, but tearing other people down isn't really productive. It leaves you in the same place you started, which is full of loathing for your own body. ~ Marianne Kirby