Southern Women Quotes

I don't know how it is up North, of course, but down South there are times when Southern women feel a need for privacy. ~ John Lee Mahin

Today, it is the scent of honeysuckle that takes me back in time and lays me down near a barn. I pick a honeysuckle blossom, touch the trumpet to my nose and inhale. With sticky filthy fingers, I pinch the base of its delicate well then lick the drop of nectar. The sweet liquid makes me thirst for more, and I reach for another and another, the same hands that reach again and again for tobacco as I string. I separate honeysuckle blossoms and taste. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

A little eccentricity is a help to a general. It helps with the newspapers. The women love it too. Southern women like their men religious and a little mad. That's why the fall in love with preachers. ~ Michael Shaara

Southern girls are God's gift to the entire male population. There is absolutely no woman finer than one raised below the mason-dixon line and once you go southern may the good Lord help you - you never go back ~ Kenny Chesney

It was the kind ... of Southern women ... who believe ... that it is impossible to arrive in a new place without a pair of shoes to match every possible change of clothes. ~ Rebecca Wells

She was sick and when she was sick she was sick as Southern women are sick. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Sex and racism have always been tied together. Look at the thousands of black men who got lynched and castrated. The reason the Klan came into being was to protect white southern women. ~ Spike Lee

Southern Mamas are known for being subtle, like a freight train. ~ Shellie Rushing Tomlinson

It's not the impression you make, it's the impression you leave.

-A Tennessee woman remembering her Old Southern grandmother ~ Maryln Schwartz

Mrs. Flint, like many southern women, was totally deficient in energy. She had not strength to superintend her household affairs; but her nerves were so strong, that she could sit in her easy chair and see a woman whipped, till the blood trickled from every stroke of the lash. She was a member of the church; but partaking of the Lord's supper did not seem to ~ Harriet Jacobs

The most beautiful voice in the world is that of an educated Southern woman. ~ Winston Churchill

Now, now. Southern ladies don't French-kiss and tell. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Well, honey, it is the south. These debutantes know how to verbally kick anyone's ass. They learned it from their mamas in the womb. ~ Magan Vernon

In the beginning of the war, Southern women wanted their men to leave - in droves, and as quickly as possible. They were the Confederate Army's most persuasive and effective recruitment officers, shaming anyone who shirked his duty to fight. ~ Karen Abbott

With time, grief has a way of slipping down in the crevices of your heart. It never really leaves; it just makes room for more. ~ Nancy B. Brewer

One thing about Southern women, they were tough. No one said no and got away with it. Especially not when it came to a loved one. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I don't know which hurt more: his rejection, his punch, or my own elder siblings laughing at my pain. ~ Dorothy Hampton Marcus

Writing is an act of faith. One must believe and see people who are invisible to others and be faithful to tell half formed stories. It's like being on the trail of an apparition who's repeatedly just out of reach.
K. Youngblood ~ Katherine Imogene Youngblood

We stared at each other in silence until she looked away. I won. I always won, because I had my daddy's eyes and she could only stare for so long, without looking away. I had my own ways of getting to Baby-Sweet. ~ Jaguar Jonez

Children are often like hostages under the care of authority, with spankings and groundings nudging them like guns pointed at their skulls, threatening to shoot if the wrong words are uttered. ~ Maggie Young

Okay, let's pretend to be friends. Just two friends having dinner." "That doesn't work in the South. A male friend cannot have dinner with a female friend if the male friend has a wife. It just doesn't work down here." "Why not?" "Because men don't have female friends. No way. I don't know of a single man in the entire South who is married and has a female friend. I think it goes back to the Civil War." "I think it goes back to the Dark Ages. Why are Southern women so jealous?" "Because that's the way we've trained them. They learned from us. If my wife met a male friend for lunch or dinner, I'd tear his head off and file for divorce. She learned it from me." "That makes absolutely no sense." "Of course it doesn't." "Your wife has no male friends?" "None that I know of. If you learn of any, let me know." "And you have no female friends?" "Why would I want female friends? They can't talk about football, or duck hunting, or politics, or lawsuits, or anything that I want to talk about. They talk about kids, clothes, recipes, coupons, furniture, stuff I know nothing about. No, I don't have any female friends. Don't want any." "That's what I love about the South. The people are so tolerant." "Thank you. ~ John Grisham

What southern whites further sought, and in a sense demanded, was respect. This the North provided after 1876 in paeans to the courage and dedication of soldiers on both sides. Resentment of northern power, the war's destruction, and Reconstruction continued to be strong in the South, and the work of white-supremacist politicians, army veterans, and southern women turned that resentment into a long-lasting ideology of the Lost Cause. Northerners, for their part, congratulated themselves on winning the war and freeing the slaves; they also took pleasure in feeling superior to the South for many generations, while industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and other social changes diverted much of their attention from wartime issues [184]. ~ Paul D. Escott

She was a southern girl, which is the same as saying she was insane. ~ Bill Hicks

Now all white Southern women keep as a weapon against uncouth world a certain smile that can be whipped out of storage and tacked up, in an instant, covering over a multitude of too-candid moments. My mother's face, whose upturned mouth never moved, registered confusion, then fear-then landed where I expected that steely doggedly cheerful resolve of a smile. ~ Joy Jordan-Lake

Scarlet O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin-that skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns. ~ Margaret Mitchell

Oh, all southern women say they're sorry. You could do almost anything, bump into some one, don't spread the jam right, you're always sorry. I've had people tell me to stop saying it so much! ~ Andie MacDowell

Jane: Missy was not so subtly reminding me that she had done something nice for me and here i was being rude when all she was asking me to do was attend a nice party. This was the way southern women worked all peaches & cream laced with arsenic. ~ Molly Harper

It's the process of being minimized, invalidated, silenced. It's the process of being subjected to whatever someone else thinks I owe them. It's the process of being used, examined, explored, and thrown away. It's the process of being convinced to comply with the orders of someone who does not see me as their equal, someone who sees nothing wrong with the notion that I'm somehow lesser than they are. Rape isn't about sex; it's about all those other things. It's about power. ~ Agnostic Zetetic

When I got off the train back home, I saw the WHITE and COLORED signs that had been there all along, as it it was the first time. ~ Dorothy Hampton Marcus

Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it. ~ Harriet Ann Jacobs

What Melanie did was no more than all Southern girls were taught to do: to make those about them feel at ease and pleased with themselves. It was this happy feminine conspiracy which made Southern society so pleasant. Women knew that a land in which men were contented, uncontradicted, and safe in possession of unpunctured vanity was likely to be a very pleasant place for women to live. So from the cradle to the grave, women strove to make men pleased with themselves, and the satisfied men repaid lavishly with gallantry and adoration. In fact, men willingly gave the ladies everything in the world, except credit for having intelligence.
Scarlett exercised the same charms as Melanie but with a studied artistry and consummate skill. The difference between the two girls lay in the fact that Melanie spoke kind and flattering words from a desire to make people happy, if only temporarily, and Scarlett never did it except to further her own aims. ~ Margaret Mitchell

I have myself known two southern wives who exhorted their husbands to free those slaves towards whom they stood in a "parental relation;" and their request was granted. These husbands blushed before the superior nobleness of their wives' natures. Though they had only counseled them to do that which was their duty to do, it commanded their respect, and rendered their conduct more exemplary. Concealment was at an end, and confidence took the place of distrust. ~ Harriet Ann Jacobs

There's something about Southern women that is so unique yet so universal. Strong southern women are allowed to be soft and feminine and have a sense of humor. But what I love about Southern women in particular is their universality. ~ Connie Britton

Southern women are unique; there is no disputing that. We are women born of conflict, our pasts littered with battles and chaos, self-preservation, and protection. We've run plantations during wars, served Union soldiers tea before watching them burn our homes, hidden slaves from prosecution, and endured centuries of watching and learning from our men's mistakes. It is not easy to survive life in the South. It is even more difficult to do it with a smile on your face. We have held these states together, held our dignity and graciousness, held our head high when it was smeared with blood and soot. We are strong. We are Southern. We have secrets and lives you will never imagine. ~ Alessandra Torre

She was so Southern that she cried tears that came straight from the Mississippi, and she always smelled faintly of cottonwood and peaches. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

To be born a Southern woman is to be made aware of your distinctiveness. And with it, the rules. The expectations. These vary some, but all follow the same basic template, which is, fundamentally, no matter what the circumstance, Southern women make the effort. Which is why even the girls in the trailer parks paint their nails. And why overstressed working moms still bake three dozen homemade cookies for the school fund-raiser. And why you will never see Reese Witherspoon wearing sweatpants. Or Oprah take a nap. ~ Allison Glock

I am often asked: "What are Southern women like?" That is a question that many people feel entitled to an answer to. But I cannot speak with authority - not with authority as it is known in the South - about Southern women. I am acquainted with no more than two-thirds of them, and several of those I haven't seen in some time. ~ Roy Blount, Jr.

Hold it right there. The only agreement we ever had was that you intended to make me as miserable as possible, and I intended to courageously make the best of an intolerable situation like valiant Southern women have always done. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

When a Southern woman offers you a homecooked meal, you're only rude if you refuse. That goes for seconds and thirds too, by the way." -Ruby Watts ~ Brandy Heineman

Why, she's as mild as a flower! She ain't hurt nobody! Now git in the kitchen and git some chicory! ~ Toni Orrill

I don't do drugs. Because my grandmother raised me. I think like an old, black, Southern woman. If I'd have done coke, I'd probably be cooking pancakes. ~ Paul Mooney

Oh that's right, you never lie unless your mouth is open and words are coming out of it ~ Joshilyn Jackson

Perspective and perseverance are carved by time and constructed by wisdom. ~ A.D. Sams

When men fear work or fear righteous war, when women fear motherhood, they tremble on the brink of doom; and well it is that they should vanish from the earth, where they are fit subjects for the scorn of all men and women who are themselves strong and brave and high-minded. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I think actually under scrutiny, Hillary's [Clinton] promotion of equal wages at poverty level and of healthcare for children but not for their families, of childcare when there are no jobs, it just doesn't cut it. I think women need a real agenda of justice because women are care-givers, because women are instruments of justice for our families and for our communities. ~ Jill Stein

If there were a Mount Rushmore of American humor, Terry Southern would be the mountain they'd carve it from ~ Michael O'Donoghue

Marvelously entertaining, Gabrielle Donnellys The Little Women Letters evokes the spirit of Louisa May Alcotts Little Women with warmth and affection. I thoroughly enjoyed every word of this wonderful book. ~ Jennifer Chiaverini

Men who are afraid to feel must keep women around to do their feeling for them while dismissing us for the same supposedly "inferior" capacity to feel deeply. But in this way also, men deny themselves their own essential humanity, becoming trapped in dependency and fear. ~ Audre Lorde

Even today there still exists in the South
and in certain areas of the North
the license that our society allows to unjust officials who implement their authority in the name of justice to practice injustice against minorities. Where, in the days of slavery, social license and custom placed the unbridled power of the whip in the hands of overseers and masters, today
especially in the southern half of the nation
armies of officials are clothed in uniform, invested with authority, armed with the instruments of violence and death and conditioned to believe that they can intimidate, main or kill Negroes with the same recklessness that once motivated the slaveowner. If one doubts this conclusion, let him search the records and find how rarely in any southern state a police officer has been punished for abusing a Negro. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

But I don't doubt it will be essentially the same type of crime. The details may be different, but the essentials underlying them will be the same. It's odd, but a criminal gives himself away every time by that. Man is an unoriginal animal," said Hercule Poirot.
"Women," said Mrs. Oliver, " are capable of infinite variation. I should never commit the same type of murder twice running."
"Don't you ever write the same plot twice running?" asked Battle. ~ Agatha Christie

For girls and women, storytelling has a double and triple importance. Because the stories of our lives have been marginalized and ignored by history, and often dismissed and treated as 'gossip' within our own cultures and families, female human beings are more likely to be discouraged from telling our stories and from listening to each other with seriousness. ~ Gloria Steinem

A materialist feminist approach to women's oppression destroys the idea that women are a 'natural group' ... What the analysis accomplishes on the level of ideas, practice makes actual at the level of facts: by its very existence, lesbian society destroys the artificial (social) fact constituting women as a 'natural group.' A lesbian society pragmatically reveals that the division from men of which women have been the object is a political one ... ~ Monique Wittig

I WILL FOLLOW ANYONE... AND DEMONSTRATE TO EVERYONE... THAT THEIR FEAR IS GENUINE ~ Widad Akreyi

We're told all the time to give up everything for love. That's the Western notion of what love is - love conquers all, all you need is love. And there are so many different kinds of outside, conflicting pressures on women. ~ Rachel Bloom

The sad thing about our society is that women are put in one of two categories. You're either in the beautiful category and you're seen as sexy and beautiful, or some version of that, or you're put into another category.The latter category affords women the opportunity to be smart, funny, independent, mean, strong, intelligent and opinionated. We take them seriously as politicians, if they fit into that latter category. We respect their opinions more and give them higher expectations. That latter category is what allows female actors to be characters. ~ Amber Heard

Despite the experiences that put me in the spotlight as the co-creator of my wisdom, the human part of me keeps burning, like an alchemical process that I both accept and want to refuse. You see, it's hard when I notice women falling in love with me, and then destroying everything at the same time. And so, I'm changing the world as much as this world is changing me. The two things are inseparable. ~ Robin Sacredfire

I want to make something that's respectful and respected. And I think you can make something for women that is respected on television. ~ Callie Khouri

Women prefer emotions to reasoning. ~ Stendhal

May this colloquium be an inspiration to all who seek to support and strengthen the union of man and woman in marriage as a unique, natural, fundamental and beautiful good for persons, families, communities, and whole societies. ~ Pope Francis

Women don't have dicks and they don't want dicks. That amateur psychology crap that women want penises. And they certainly don't want testicles. Because you know no women in her right mind is going to carry around a bag that she can't put stuff in. ~ Bobby Slayton

Because sometimes women cry when there's good news. Tears of relief. You know, catharsis." His expression was utterly blank. "Haven't you ever cried when you, I don't know, you get a new batch of that fancy stationery you like with the watermarks on it?" He looked bewildered. "That's what you think I'd cry tears of relief about?" "You do like your office supplies. ~ Chloe Neill

As the French say, there are three sexes - men, women, and clergymen. ~ Sydney Smith

Silence. Her eyes on mine. But unlike Kitsey - who was always at least partly somewhere else, who loathed serious talk, who at a similar turn would be looking around for the waitress or making whatever light and/or comic remark she could think of to keep the moment from getting too intense - she was listening, she was right with me, and I could see only too well how saddened she was at my condition, a sadness only worsened by the fact she truly liked me: we had a lot in common, a mental connection and an emotional one too, she enjoyed my company, she trusted me, she wished me well, she wanted above all to be my friend; and whereas some women might have preened themselves and taken pleasure at my misery, it was not amusing to her to see how torn-up I was over her. ~ Donna Tartt

Women are for procreation, not recreation; they will only distract you. ~ Malcolm Archibald

Despite their macabre imaginations, they don't believe the things they say, all those things about magic and fantômes. But I do. I know he lingers. I've heard his voice, soft as a lover's whisper. ~ Sara Stark

And once more given to inaction,
Empty in spirit and alone,
He settled down – to the distraction
Of making other minds his own;
Collecting books, he stacked a shelfful,
Read, read, not even one was helpful:
Here, there was dullness, there pretence;
This one lacked conscience, that one sense;
All were by different shackles fettered;
And, past times having lost their hold,
The new still raved about the old.
Like women, books he now deserted,
And mourning taffeta he drew
Across the bookshelf's dusty crew. ~ Alexander Pushkin

There is a world, in a far-flung corner of our galaxy, where women have no nipples and motor cars, though legally capable of 70 mph never trundle a smidgen over thirty. A world where alcohol never makes people drunk and is only ever consumed in moderation by responsible adults who appear to be at least 25 years old! ~ Trevor Beattie

When a woman weeps, it is a man's shame. ~ Leonid Andreyev

Full employment does not mean literally no unemployment; that is to say, it does not mean that every man and woman in the country who is fit and free for work is employed productively every day of his or her working life ... Full employment means that unemployment is reduced to short intervals of standing by, with the certainty that very soon one will be wanted in one's old job again or will be wanted in a new job that is within one's powers. ~ William Beveridge

Nothing changes the gender equation more significantly than women's economic freedom. ~ Gloria Steinem

More troubling than this oddly timed debate about birth control is the vehemence with which women need to justify or explain why they take birth control - health reasons, to regulate periods, you know, as if there's anything wrong with taking birth control simply because you want to have sex without that sex resulting in pregnancy. ~ Roxane Gay

There are hundreds and hundreds of women who are married to footballers, and we get to see a very small handful of them. They are all different individuals, and they choose the way they want to live their life or look, and I don't think it is really fair on anyone else to judge. ~ Louise Nurding

If you must, go and frolic with a herdsman under a starry, sky, but do not attempt to share his daylight. For the sun works on men as an elixir- it blears their eyes to the worth of women and makes them dare to think they should rule over us. ~ Anne Fortier

Southern people are bigger-hearted and kinder than I had any right to expect. ~ John Oliver

The idea behind the tuxedo is the woman's point of view that men are all the same; so we might as well dress them that way. That's why a wedding is like the joining together of a beautiful, glowing bride and some guy. The tuxedo is a wedding safety device, created by women because they know that men are undependable. So in case the groom chickens out, everybody just takes one step over, and she marries the next guy. ~ Jerry Seinfeld

Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. ~ Audre Lorde

I don't mean to sound sexist, but as far as women have come over the last 40 years, you don't really see a lot of women hunters. They're still in the minority in the military, and there's not a lot of female construction workers. I hope that's not taken the wrong way. I think women are as smart, resourceful, and capable in most things as any man could be ... but they are generally physically weaker. That's science. ~ Robert Kirkman

A woman cannot do the thing she ought, which means whatever perfect thing she can, in life, in art, in science, but she fears to let the perfect action take her part and rest there: she must prove what she can do before she does it,
prate of woman's rights, of woman's mission, woman's function, till the men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry, A woman's function plainly is ... to talk. Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed! ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Saints, it has been said, are the sinners who go on trying. So free men and women are the oppressed who go on trying and who in the process make themselves fit to bear the responsibilities and uphold the disciplines which will maintain a free society. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

A nation is not conquered,
Until the hearts of it's women
Are on the ground.
then it is done, no matter
How brave it's warriors,
Or how strong it's weapons. ~ Rosemary Agonito

The more we refuse to buy into our inner critics - and our external ones too - the easier it will get to have confidence in our choices, and to feel comfortable with who we are - as women and as mothers. ~ Arianna Huffington

We are fortified by exemplary lives, especially those who have earned the right to be respected by their character, sacrifice, patience, and ability to press on in spite of hardship, injustice, pain, and failure. Our heroes do not have to be perfect. They must, however be courageous, authentic, clear-minded, and determined to endure no matter the sacrifice or cost. We need heroes of integrity and consistency, admirable men and women we can admire, not because they exemplify a quick burst of bravery, but because they represent the stuff of greatness and stay at it to the end. ~ Charles R. Swindoll

Poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don't know you know. ~ Adrienne Rich

What is the fire of inspiration that resides within, if not something to follow along a path? ~ Claire Fullerton

A woman sacrifices more than she is given, and nobody is willing to take any of the pain that they have caused. Yet she is running at full speed without a break, and her world is crumbling from carrying everyone else's problems. Where are the extended hands? They are nowhere to be found. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

Like Neanderthals, men prefer to hunt alone or, if in a pack, at the head of it. Women, whether in the field or in a campfire, are collaborative, and when they hunt ... they work together. ~ Russell Banks