Wise Women Quotes

Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists. They were abortionists, nurses and counselors. They were the pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs, and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were midwives, traveling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other, and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called "wise women" by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Your action has nothing to do with your abundance! Your abundance is a response to your vibration. Of course, your belief is part of your vibration. So if you believe that action is part of what brings your abundance, then you've got to unravel that. ~ Esther Hicks

Words are like spices. Too many is worse than too few. ~ Joan Aiken

Being single isn't the cause of loneliness, and marriage is not necessarily the cure. There are many lonely married people as well. ~ Renee Jones

We are wise, wise women. We are giggling girls. ~ Ani DiFranco

At the Unitarian Universalist Christmas pageant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it didn't matter that Mary insisted on keeping her nails painted black or that Joseph had come out of the closet. On December 25 at seven and nine p.m., three wise women would follow the men down the aisle -- one wearing a kimono and another, African garb; instead of myrrh they would bring chicken soup, instead of frankincense they'd play lullabies. The shepherds had a line on protecting the environment and the innkeeper held a foreclosure sign. No one quite believed in God and no one quite didn't -- so they made it about the songs and the candles and the pressing together of bodies on lacquered wooden pews. ~ Marina Keegan

The only way you can be the best at something is to be the best you can be. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

There is no gown or garment that worse becomes a woman than when she will be wise. ~ Martin Luther

The worst disease in the world is hate. And the cure for hate is love. ~ India.Arie

If someone doesn't fit in your company, you have an obligation to get rid of them, because you're holding them back from excelling elsewhere. ~ Barbara Corcoran

If our democracy worked as it should, we would elect wise women and men who made laws for the good of the people and enforced those laws.
That, though, is not the way things work. Greedy, power–mad billionaires spend money so that politicians such as George W. Bush can buy elections. Corrupt corporations such as Enron defraud old ladies and commit crimes. And they get away with it. They get away with it because most of us are so afraid of losing the security of our nice, normal lives that we are not willing to risk anything about those lives. We are either afraid to fight or we don't know how. Or we believe that bad things won't happen to us.
And so, in the end, too many people lose their lives anyway. In Nazi Germany, millions of men who acquiesced to Hitler's murderous rise to power wound up marching into Russia's icy wasteland - into the Soviet Army's machine guns and cannon - to themselves be murdered. In America after 9–11, trusting teenagers who had joined the National Guard found themselves sent to Iraq on extended and additional tours. Our enemy killed many of them because we, citizens of the richest country in the world, did not provide them with body armor.
Grieving mothers protested the wasting of their sons' lives. Nadia McCaffrey defied Bush's shameful ban on the filming of U.S. soldiers' coffins returning home from Iraq. She knew, as we all did, that this tyrannical dictum of Bush dishonored our soldiers' sacrifice. And so she invited the press to ~ David Zindell

A beauty is a woman you notice; a charmer is one who notices you. ~ Adlai E. Stevenson

And they need not cause you grief. As my Highland grandmother said - and she had the Sight - "Tis not the dead ye have to be concerned about! Beware of the Living!" And she was a wise woman. The dead are beyond your help or mine, poor things. But the living need us. Thirty souls at the least, Phryne, are still on that island to praise God who might now be angels - or devils. ~ Kerry Greenwood

You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it. ~ Oprah Winfrey

As long as she is wise and good, a girl has sufficient dowry. ~ Plautus

I do not think that I will ever reach a stage when I will say, "This is what I believe. Finished." What I believe is alive ... and open to growth ~ Madeleine L'Engle

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. ~ Virginia Woolf

You will curse your blessings by not being grateful for what is already yours. ~ Germany Kent

Silence is the best answer to a fool. ~ Nnedi Okorafor

Follow your pain as if it were a candle in the night, leading you to a place of decision. ~ Caroline Myss

When you reach the top, you should remember to send the elevator back down for the others. ~ Edith Piaf

I think scars are like battle wounds - beautiful, in a way. They show what you've been through and how strong you are for coming out of it. ~ Demi Lovato

We know that for mankind to move forward, changes must be made. However, if an old man is wise only by his gray hair, yet it is inevitable that this wisdom will also become impaired by age, then it can be deduced that we cannot expect the very old or very young to make progressive strides to better society, it must be up to the men and women still in the prime of their lives to re-learn and teach the changes needed to be made. ~ Suzy Kassem

Be like a servant waiting for the return of the master, says Jesus. The servant does not know at what hour the master is going to come. So he stays awake, alert, poised, still, lest he miss the master's arrival. In another parable, Jesus speaks of the five careless (unconscious) women who do not have enough oil (consciousness) to keep their lamps burning (stay present) and so miss the bridegroom (the Now) and don't get to the wedding feast (enlightenment). These five stand in contrast to the five wise women who have enough oil (stay conscious). ~ Eckhart Tolle

Over the years I have photographed thousands of people. I have never stopped being curious and trying to discover new worlds. I have used my camera as a mirror for my subjects as well. I remember photographing a woman in her 80s for my book, Wise Women, who told me it had been a long time since anyone had really been interested in "seeing" or photographing her. When she saw the picture, she burst into tears. She saw something in the photograph, an inner beauty and soul, she felt had long ago vanished. ~ Joyce Tenneson

It is chilling to think that the same people who persecuted the wise women and men of Europe, its midwives and healers, then crossed the oceans to Africa and the Americas and tortured and enslaved, raped, impoverished, and eradicated the peaceful, Christ-like people they found. And that the blueprint from which they worked, and still work, was the Bible. ~ Alice Walker

People kill what they fear. They burned, and drowned, and hanged those they saw as witches, the devil's servants: the wise women and the cunning men, the unfortunate, the lost and the strange ~ Neil Gaiman

Beauty attracts beauty. If you want to know what you are, look at what you are drawn to. ~ Yasmin Mogahed

To see a candle's light one must take it into a dark place. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I see my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament. ~ Alanis Morissette

Take care with your words, Jacquetta, especially in cursing. Only say the things you mean, make sure you lay your curse on the right man. For be very sure that when you put such words out in the world they can overshoot-like an arrow, a curse can go beyond your target and harm another. A wise woman curses very sparingly. ~ Philippa Gregory

Women's liberation is one thing, but the permeation of anti-male sentiment in post-modern popular culture - from our mocking sitcom plots to degrading commercial story lines - stands testament to the ignorance of society. Fair or not, as the lead gender that never requested such a role, the historical male reputation is quite balanced.
For all of their perceived wrongs, over centuries they've moved entire civilizations forward, nurtured the human quest for discovery and industry, and led humankind from inconvenient darkness to convenient modernity. Navigating the chessboard that is human existence is quite a feat, yet one rarely acknowledged in modern academia or media. And yet for those monumental achievements, I love and admire the balanced creation that is man for all his strengths and weaknesses, his gifts and his curses. I would venture to say that most wise women do. ~ Tiffany Madison

In ancient times, coming-of-age girls sought guidance from the wise women in their communities, but girls today are most often guided by their peers, the media, and a culture that does not honor or support them. It is a time in which girls often disconnect from themselves and start to separate from their mothers. As we begin to create more meaningful and authentic lives for ourselves, we have an opportunity for parallel journeys of growth with our daughters, journeys that would allow us to share our wisdom with them. ~ Terri Allison

The one who knows himself isn't deceived by either praise or criticism. ~ Yasmin Mogahed

Since love is folly, a foolish woman is more dangerous than a wise one. ~ Franz Grillparzer

Real women have children, wise women choose for themselves. ~ Karin Rahbek

I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life. ~ Ayn Rand

Almost every time I speak to teenagers, particularly young female students who want to talk to me about feminism, I find myself staggered by how much they have read, how creatively they think and how curiously bullshit-resistant they are. Because of the subjects I write about, I am often contacted by young people and I see it as a part of my job to reply to all of them - and doing so has confirmed a suspicions I've had for some time. I think that the generation about to hit adulthood is going to be rather brilliant.
Young people getting older is not, in itself, a fascinating new cultural trend. Nonetheless the encroaching adulthood and the people who grew up in a world where expanding technological access collided with the collapse of the neoliberal economic consensus is worth paying attention to. Because these kids are smart, cynical and resilient, and I don't mind saying that they scare me a little. ~ Laurie Penny

no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine -- not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations of the maladies of those organs. This simple thought could not occur to the doctors (as it cannot occur to a wizard that he is unable to work his charms) because the business of their lives was to cure, and they received money for it and had spent the best years of their lives on that business. But above all that thought was kept out of their minds by the fact that they saw they were really useful [...] Their usefulness did not depend on making the patient swallow substances for the most part harmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible because they were given in small doses) but they were useful, necessary, and indispensable because they satisfied a mental need of the invalid and those who loved her -- and that is why there are, and always will be, pseudo-healers, wise women, homoeopaths, and allopaths. They satisfied that eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy, and that something should be done, which is felt by those who are suffering. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Believe in yourself, Zoey Redbird. I have Marked you as my own. You will be my first true U-we-tsi a-ge-hu-tsa v-hna-i Sv-no-yi . . . Daughter of Night . . . in this age. You are special. Accept that about yourself, and you will begin to understand there is true power in your uniqueness. Within you is combined the magic blood of ancient Wise Women and Elders, as well as insight into and understanding of the modern world. The ~ P.C. Cast

A culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiate d masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men. ~ Ayn Rand

To my grandmother, chagrin was a genuine physical disease. Like a hurt leg or a broken arm. To treat chagrin, you drank tea from leaves that only my grandmother and other old wise women could recognize. ~ Edwidge Danticat

Alice Gray saved my life, not just once but many times. When I itched, she brought me plants to rub on my skin. When I was sick, she made me tinctures. She kept me company when I was at my lowest. She planted a garden for my health.'
'Sounds like a witch to me, Richard said bitterly. 'How else would she know those things?'
'She is a midwife, like her mother before her. Are you like the king now, thinking all wise women and poor women and midwives are carrying out the Devil's work? Why, he must be the largest employer in Lancashire. ~ Stacey Halls

How do you react when you think you need people's love? Do you become a slave for their approval? Do you live an inauthentic life because you can't bear the thought that they might disapprove of you? Do you try to figure out how they would like you to be, and then try to become that, like a chameleon? In fact, you never really get their love. You turn into someone you aren't, and then when they say "I love you," you can't believe it, because they're loving a facade. They're loving someone who doesn't even exist, the person you're pretending to be. It's difficult to seek other people's love. It's deadly. In seeking it, you lose what is genuine. This is the prison we create for ourselves as we seek what we already have. ~ Byron Katie

Man pays deference to woman instinctively, involuntarily, not because she is beautiful or truthful or wise or foolish or proper, but because she is a woman, and he cannot help it. If she descends, he will lower to her level; if she rises, he will rise to her height. ~ Mary Abigail Dodge

You are more powerful when you're sensual than when you're factual. Wise women know how to make sensuality their power base. ~ Lebo Grand

We are wise women, we are giggling girls. We both carry a smile to show when we're pleased, we both carry a switchblade in our sleeves. ~ Ani DiFranco

We are wise women," Abuela liked to say. "Not because we are wise, but because we seek wisdom. ~ Charles De Lint

As planned The Three Wise Women meet at 3WW HQ for debriefing. Angelina extracted the small camera from her lapel and downloaded it onto a laptop. She then expertly digitally scanned the Polaroid into her electronic file on James. Ava had just missed Sean who had given his camcorder and photographs of himself and Patrick to Angelina. It had been digitally downloaded and formatted onto Patrick's pc file. A back-up of all data was done on the Company server but it was heavily encrypted and written in Angelina's own program Borrow and used her own software Gotya, so only the very best could break her code and that would take months ~ Annette J. Dunlea

I had to live in the desert before I could understand the full value of grass in a green ditch. ~ Ella Maillart

A wise woman puts a grain of sugar in everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her. ~ Helen Rowland

You will meet plenty of people who are pretty but haven't yet learned how to be beautiful. They will have the right look for the times but they will not glow. Beautiful women glow. When you are with a beautiful women you might not notice her hair or skin or body or clothes, because you'll be distracted by the way she makes you feel. She will be so full of beauty that you will feel some of it overflow onto you. You'll feel warm and safe and curious around her. Her eyes will twinkle a little and she'll look at you really closely, because beautiful wise women know that the quickest way to fill up with beauty is to soak in another human being. Women who are concerned with being pretty think about what they look like, but women who are concerned with being beautiful think about what they're looking at. ~ Glennon Doyle Melton

educated beyond the point considered wise for females ~ Charles Frazier

Women who pay their own rent don't have to be nice. ~ Katherine Dunn

Ser Loras lusts for glory as real men lust for women, the least the gods can do is grant him a death worthy of a song. ~ George R R Martin

I saw a group of women standing by a station wagon. There were seven of them, pushing cartons and shopping bags over the open tailgate into the rear of the car. Celery stalks and boxes of Gleem stuck out of the bags. I took the camera from my lap, raised it to my eye, leaned out the window a bit, and trained it on the ladies as if I were shooting. One of them saw me and immediately nudged her companion but without taking her eyes off the camera. They waved. One by one the others reacted. They all smiled and waved. They seemed supremely happy. Maybe they sensed that they were waving at themselves, waving in the hope that someday if evidence is demanded of their passage through time, demanded by their own doubts, a moment might be recalled when they stood in a dazzling plaza in the sun and were registered on the transparent plastic ribbon; and thirty years away, on that day when proof is needed, it could be hoped that their film is being projected on a screen somewhere, and there they stand, verified, in chemical reincarnation, waving at their own old age, smiling their reassurance to the decades, a race of eternal pilgrims in a marketplace in the dusty sunlight, seven arms extended in a fabulous salute to the forgetfulness of being. What better proof (if proof is ever needed) that they have truly been alive? Their happiness, I think, was made of this, the anticipation of incontestable evidence, and had nothing to do with the present moment, which would pass with all the others ~ Don DeLillo

You always hear about fashion's success stories. How a starlet lost an earring one night and by the next morning, the entire country was wearing one earring. Or how sweaters made a comeback in a drugstore, or a First Lady influenced how we dressed during her reign. But what about the losers? The fashions that came and went out the same day? The hopes and dreams of designers that were shattered by the sound of fifty million women ... laughing themselves to death. ~ Erma Bombeck

It has always been like that with changes. In 1913, we established divorce as a right for women in Uruguay. You know what they were saying back then? That families would dissolve. That it was the end of good manners and society. There has always been a conservative and traditional opinion out there that's afraid of change. When I was young and would go dancing at balls, we'd have to wear suits and ties. Otherwise they wouldn't let us in. I don't think anyone dresses up for dancing parties nowadays. ~ Jose Mujica

You can't tell any kind of a story without having some kind of a theme, something to say between the lines. ~ Robert Wise

I don't get this whole super-skinny obsession. I really think women look more beautiful when they let their curves show. ~ Vanessa Marcil

Americans have gotten to know Sarah Palin. They know that she's a role model to women and other - and reformers all over America. She's a reformer. ~ John McCain

All my main characters are people I'd love to sit around having coffee with. They are people who will tell you honestly about the things that scare them and worry them and trouble them. Because those moments of connection between women-when they really decide to be honest with each other about their lives-are some of the best things in life. ~ Katherine Center

I dislike Tolkien, another Oxonian Old Norse obsessive, with his war games and made-up language in a world without women. ~ Sarah Moss

A wise man will always allow a fool to rob him of ideas without yelling "Thief."
If he is wise he has not been impoverished.
Nor has the fool been enriched.
The thief flatters us by stealing.
We flatter him by complaining. ~ Ben Hecht

When people speak admiringly of a butch, what I see is someone who has taken on the best gendered characteristics of both woman and man, left a lot of the stuff born of misogyny and heterosexism behind, and walked forward into the world without apology. ~ S. Bear Bergman

There's this issue you're not allowed to discuss: that women are needy. Men can go for longer, more happily, without women. That's the truth. We don't, as little boys, play at being married - we try to avoid it for as long as possible. Meanwhile women are out there hunting for husbands. ~ Steven Moffat

No human being can be more human than another human being. I liberate you from my ignorance. ~ Maya Angelou

I was not that man: I didn't hate and fear all women. I was a one-woman misogynist. If I despised only Amy, focused all my fury and rage and venom on the one woman who deserved it, that didn't make me my father. That made me sane. ~ Gillian Flynn

To reaffirm the statement on the choosing of my identity, I come from two beautiful cultures which I have embraced, bridged, balanced, and identify with. I am proud to be who I am as a Dine' (Navajo) and Nahilii (African American) woman. Hozho', , & blessings ~ Radmilla Cody

We ask for peace and freedom for the many men and women subject to old and new forms of enslavement on the part of criminal individuals and groups. ~ Pope Francis

(This was long after hairdressers; in truth, ever since there have been women, there have been hairdressers, Adam being the first, though the King James scholars do their very best to muddy this point.) ~ William Goldman

All who are genuinely committed to the advancement of women can and must offer a woman or a girl who is pregnant, frightened, and alone a better alternative than the destruction of her own unborn child ~ Mary Ann Glendon

I surround myself with women who inspire me to be more ambitious, and who constantly astonish me with their magnetism, style, and smarts. ~ Heidi Julavits

There is just something about women who spend hours and hours knitting a sweater with mind-blowingly expensive yarn, when they could just buy a sweater for a fraction of the price - not to mention the time saved doing so - that lends itself to acceptance and patience for the human condition. ~ Penny Reid

Imagine a man besottedly in love: he won't waste time speculating whether other women equally merit his affection. ~ Huston Smith

She was tired of everyone deciding her life for her. She was ready to figure out who she really was--not what anyone else told her to be. ~ Marissa Meyer

Knowledge and book learning are not wisdom," said the captain.
"Is this book wisdom?" asked Lucy, putting the manuscript back on the table.
"It has some elements of wisdom in it, me dear," replied the captain. "I did not lead a very wise life myself but it was a full one and a grown-up one. You come to age very often through shipwreck and disaster, and at the heart of the whirlpool some men find God. ~ R.A. Dick

People's reaction to me is sometimes "Uch, I just don't like her. I hate how she thinks she is so great." But it's not that I think I'm so great. I just don't hate myself. I do idiotic things all the time and I say crazy stuff I regret, but I don't let everything traumatize me. And the scary thing I have noticed is that some people really feel uncomfortable around women who don't hate themselves. So that's why you need to be a little bit brave. ~ Mindy Kaling

In Indonesia, where I am from, the Dutch-imposed Civil Code dating back to the colonial 1870s prevailed until the 1974 Law on Marriage granted married women greater rights, including the ability to open individual bank accounts. ~ Sri Mulyani Indrawati

When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking. ~ Elayne Boosler

I hate women who complain about being fat when they're like a size 5. Anything under size 5 isn't a woman. It's a boy with breasts. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

I'm constantly pitching one episode where we see life through Castle's eyes. I think Castle's just a little off as far as his perception goes. A very, very clever man, but I want to see the world as Castle sees it - kind of a rose-colored glasses, all the women find him irresistible, all the guys find him super cool and do whatever he says. ~ Nathan Fillion

It triggered the same ache in both women. Without a word they left the tub and rolled onto the bed nearby. ~ Shane K.P. O'Neill

I can take a joke," she tells me, sounding insulted.
"Yeah? When?"
"When it's not being delivered by a childish jackass who thinks he's God's gift to women."
"I am not childish." God's gift on the other hand? My record speaks for itself.
"Oh, bite me."
I wish. ~ Emma Chase

Our nation today needs men and women who are bold enough to play on the field and passionate to change the status quo ! ~ Osunsakin Adewale

Love ain't got no business happenin' to the young. Only the old be wise enough to treat it right. ~ Leila Meacham

The single most important way to encourage women and girls to stand up for their rights is education, and we can do far more to promote universal education in poor countries. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

Ah Fate, cannot a man Be wise without a beard? East, West, from Beer to Dan, Say, was it never heard That wisdom might in youth be gotten, Or wit be ripe before 't was rotten? ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

To protest free speech in the name of protecting women is dangerous and wrong. ~ Betty Friedan

I think masculinity is bravado against the mystery of the universe of women. It's just a fear of not knowing what women have that's so powerful. It's this shield they put up to try to get closer. ~ K.d. Lang

Creation is scientific. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

If you try to save wisdom until the world is wise, Father, the world will never have it. ~ Walter M. Miller Jr.

It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, "never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith." ~ Thomas Jefferson

A journey into the celestial cosmos! ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The measure in the budget in relation to parental leave pay is based on a simple proposition. Most women across Australia have access to one scheme funded by the taxpayer. Some women have access to two schemes and that's great. ~ Tony Abbott