Womanhood Quotes

Once young girls used to play with baby dolls, seeing themselves in the role of the nurturing mother; now they can be seen playing with Barbie dolls, seeing themselves in the place of the doll. And of course, the doll is both pretty and stacked. The pressure is on and stays on. ~ Douglas Wilson

Becoming is the action that births our womanhood, rather than passive act of being born (an act none of us has a choice in). This short, powerful statement assured me that I have the freedom, in spite of and because of my birth, body, race, gender expectations, and economic resources, to define myself for myself and for others. ~ Janet Mock

Every woman needs at least one of each of these friends (and all in one works): Someone who will drink and/or eat cookie dough in times of stress, someone who will take off her earrings and do battle, someone who will listen to all of your secrets, no matter how dark and NOT TELL, someone with the courage to tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and someone who will play the role of fool to lift your spirits. ~ Susan Thatcher

Whatever glory belongs to the race for a development unprecedented in history for the given length of time, a full share belongs to the womanhood of the race. ~ Mary McLeod Bethune

Young women you will be the ones who will provide the example of virtuous womanhood and motherhood. You will continue to be virtuous lovely praiseworthy and of good report. You will also be the ones to provide an example of family life in a time when families are under attack, being redefined and disintegrating. You will understand your roles and your responsibilities and thus will see no need to lobby for rights. ~ Elaine S. Dalton

The mass of people who are Bible-taught never get free from the erroneous impressions stamped on their minds in their infancy, so that their manhood or womanhood can have no intellectual fulfillment, and millions of them only attain mentally to a sort of second childhood ~ Gerald Massey

While railing against the manufactured prerequisites of womanhood or manhood, we need to avoid manufacturing our own prerequisites. The non-operative journey and the objection to it illustrate just one area in which we need to open our thinking to other journeys while expecting that others respect our own. - Mercedes Allen ~ Kate Bornstein

A woman's mission centered on home and family - vital spheres of ministry to be sure, but only a slice of the vast mission God originally cast by calling women to rule and subdue the earth. ~ Carolyn Custis James

I have never seen anyone bothering to play at putting heavy women's markup on a pit-bull, now, looking at this specimen of womanhood, I could surely understand why. ~ Gary Edward Gedall

I always feel this pressure of being a strong and independent icon of womanhood, and without making it look my whole life is revolving around some guy. But loving someone, and being loved means so much to me. We always make fun of it and stuff. But isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more? ~ Julie Delpy

Females between sixteen and twenty-four years old face a higher risk of being sexually assaulted than any other age group. Most victims of campus rape are preyed upon when they are in their first or second year of college, usually by someone they know. And it's during the initial days and weeks of a student's freshman year, when she is in the midst of negotiating the fraught transition from girlhood to womanhood, that she is probably in the greatest danger. ~ Jon Krakauer

For Marianne, however - in spite of his incivility in surviving her loss - he always retained that decided regard which interested him in every thing that befell her, and made her his secret standard of perfection in woman; - and many a rising beauty would be slighted by him in after-days as bearing no comparison with Mrs. Brandon. ~ Jane Austen

If there is a word that should be retired from use in the service of women's expression, health, well-being, and equality, it is appropriate - a sloppy, mushy word that purports to convey some important moral essence but in reality is just a policing term used to regulate our language, appearance and demands. It's a control word.

We are done with control. ~ Soraya Chemaly

Womanhood is the great fact in her life; wifehood and motherhood are but incidental relations. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I'm very proud of being a woman, and as a woman, I don't even like the word 'feminism' because when I hear that word, I associate it with women trying to pretend to be men, and I'm not interested in trying to pretend to be a man. I don't want to embrace manhood; I want to embrace my womanhood. ~ Evangeline Lilly

Women piece together their lives from the scraps left over for them. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

She is the force, that you end up
reading about in thick novels. She is
the kind of woman, you adore,
for being so content with messy hair.
She is the kind, who would
decline whatever the mankind would exalt-
and redesign everything that is
inclined to remind her
of how strongly, the society wants her confined.
To this girl, on a romantic date,
he asked the question inaccurate-
"Honey, why do you always take the road
that is so untold, hard and loathed?"
She thought of giving him a second chance,
and resisting any anger-loaded advance,
She replied, "Why do you speculate,
that I choose my fate,
imagining there are two roads? ~ Jasleen Kaur Gumber

TO understand the meaning of womanhood we have to start with God. If He is indeed "Creator of all things visible and invisible" He is certainly in charge of all things, visible and invisible, stupendous and miniscule, magnificent and trivial. God has to be in charge of details if He is going to be in charge of the overall design. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

People talk of the pathos and failure of plain women; but it is a more terrible thing that a beautiful woman may succeed in everything but womanhood. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I never wanted to live in that place again, but if for some reason I was forced to live there again, I would never accept the harsh judgments made against me by people whose only power to do so was that they had known me from the moment I was born. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

Every woman whether rich or poor, married or single, has a circle of influence within which, according to her character, she is exerting a certain amount of power for good or harm. Every woman, by her virtue or her vice, by her folly or her wisdom, by her levity or her dignity, is adding something to our national elevation or degradation. A community is not likely to be overthrown where woman fulfills her mission, for by the power of her noble heart over the hearts of others, she will raise that community from its ruins and restore it again to prosperity and joy. ~ John Angell James

The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption. ~ Honore De Balzac

I started to see the bigger picture of things: Islam was not relegated to the tiny, sometimes frustrating and seemingly arbitrary details of practice, but rather entered the larger picture of spirituality and worship that contextualized my womanhood. In order to be able to derive these logical conclusions about my religion, I had to go back to the basics and understand the very fundamental principles upon which it was founded: justice, social equality, racial equality, financial equality, and, possibly most important of all, gender equality. Thus began my lifelong love affair with Islamic feminism. ~ Amani Al-Khatahtbeh

It is against womanhood to be forward in their own wishes. ~ Philip Sidney

Men can go to hell! I'll meet them there. ~ Ljupka Cvetanova

God has a global dream for his daughters and his sons, and it is bigger than our narrow interpretations or small box constructions of "biblical manhood and womanhood" or feminism; ~ Sarah Bessey

No system of education is complete that does not harden the hands and toughen muscles, while it is also develops the intellect and enlarges the heart ... only through work do we attain the true symmetry, strength, and glory of godly manhood and womanhood. ~ Alexander Clark

The highest aim of womanhood is not motherhood; the highest aim of womanhood is being conformed to the image of Christ. ~ Gloria Furman

Finding violence against women means opening to the great power of women, the mystery of women, the heart of women, the wild unending sexuality and creativity of women – and not being afraid. ~ Eve Ensler

Birth is, without a doubt, one of the greatest self -expressive and creative processes we can embark upon in womanhood. I believe that a part of a woman's birthing heart centre resides within the pelvis and hip area. ~ Maha Al Musa

Just being a woman is God's gift. The origin of a child is a mother, a woman. She shows a man what sharing, caring, and loving is all about. That is the essence of a woman. ~ Sushmita Sen

I have started looking into the mirror more often. I have pigmentation, a few blemishes. My body never looked like this, never felt like this- heavy, tired, exhausted, swollen, achy, weak. There are a million reasons to not like myself right now. But one reason that outgrows all these emotions- I am the first home to my baby. A woman can dislike her body, can she really dislike her baby's abode? Therefore, I love the way it's swelling- it gives my baby's tiny arms and legs more space. I love the way it's pigmenting, it gives my baby better protection from the sun. I love the way it's exhausted, it prioritises baby's nutritional requirements over mine. And I would love all the stretch marks in the end too. That's my baby's name plate at his first home. ~ Jasleen Kaur Gumber

Womanhood is something you don't consider until it hits you. ~ Laura Marling

A woman whose heart is not touched by the sickness of sorrow and whose hands do not go out in relief where it is in her power to help, lacks one of the elements which make the glory of womanhood. ~ J.R. Miller

Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad's message made a whole lot of people feel whole again, human being again. Some of them came out and found a new meaning to their manhood and their womanhood. ~ John Henrik Clarke

A real woman is a work of fiction a real man is a short report ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Even in her casual white shirt and cotton pants, she was clearly an independent woman in charge of her destiny. She was so ... He paused, searching for words. So sophisticated, so self-assured. ~ Jan Moran

Interestingly, in terms of shame triggers for women, motherhood is a close second. And (bonus!) you don't have to be a mother to experience mother shame. Society views womanhood and motherhood as inextricably bound; therefore our value as women is often determined by where we are in relation to our roles as mothers or potential mothers. Women are constantly asked why they haven't married or, if they're married, why they haven't had children. Even women who are married and have one child are often asked why they haven't had a second child. ~ Brene Brown

Most of our addictions [shopping, food, bad relationships] as women flare up when we feel that we are not loved or sought after. ~ John Eldredge

Most religious scriptures are all about three apparently glorifying elements, -man, man and man. ~ Abhijit Naskar

A woman's rank
Lies in the fulness of her womanhood:
Therein alone she is royal. ~ George Eliot

I have passed out of childhood into old age. I have had no youth - no womanhood; the hopes of womanhood have closed for me - for I shall never marry; and I anticipate cares and sorrows just as if I were an old woman, and with the same fearful spirit. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Forget what I said about a woman who won't listen. The worst thing is a woman who knows what she wants. ~ Shobha Rao

It is only a woman who can make a man feel like a 'superhero' or 'inadequate'.
Its her attention and admiration that a man desperately seeks! ~ Sanjai Velayudhan

Some people get along beautifully, for half a lifetime, perhaps, while everything goes smoothly. While they are accumulating property and gaining friends and reputation, their characters seem to be strong and well-balanced; but the moment there is friction anywhere, - the moment trouble comes, a failure in business, a panic, or a great crisis in which they lose their all, - they are overwhelmed. They despair, lose heart, courage, faith, hope, and power to try again, - everything. Their very manhood or womanhood is swallowed up by a mere material loss. ~ Orison Swett Marden

Among other things, drag queens are living testimony to the way women used to want to be, the way some people still want them to be, and the way some women still actually want to be. Drags are ambulatory archives of ideal moviestar womanhood. They perform a documentary service, usually consecrating their lives to keeping the glittering alternative alive and available for (not-too-close) inspection. ~ Andy Warhol

He never spoke a word; yet my entire body was aflame. With shameful joy in my heart, I trembled as I moved against his hands, seeking more of the delicious rapture he was giving me. He played me like a stringed instrument, awakening within me a harmony that I had never known existed, producing profound and unimagined tunes.
When I felt him enter me I clung to him, pressing him ever closer, our two bodies fused as one. As he moved with me towards the brink of ecstasy, I was overwhelmed by an intense need that until that moment had never been recognized. All at once, just as I heard his own fevered exclamation, I felt the core of my womanhood explode with pleasure, as if my body had splintered into a thousand brilliant fragments of sensation and light. ~ Syrie James

Responsibility is the thing people dread the most of all. Yet it is the one thing in the world that develops us, gives us manhood or womanhood fiber. ~ Frank Crane

For Hitschmann and Bergler, 'frigidity' had a single criterion: 'absence of the vaginal orgasm.' The standard was unqualified and absolute. A woman who did not enjoy intercourse: frigid. Women who derived sexual pleasure from acts other than intecourse were frigid too. Nothing else mattered, only whether a woman had an orgasm because a man's penis was inside her vagina. Sexually agressive women were labeled 'frigid' because of the association between masculinity and aggressiveness. Womanhood that was not passive was not properly womanly. "Frigidity," as Jane Gerhardt points out, "thus became a label and a diagnosis that defined how much sexual desire a woman must have and in what kinds of sexual behavior she must engage to be 'healthy'. ~ Hanne Blank

When you are born as a man, you live as a man. When you born as a woman however, you have two choices; to live like a slave, or as a woman. I love the fact that I was born as a woman because I got to make my choices. Who did you chose to be? ~ Shahla Khan

Both man and woman have their own parts to play in bringing faith to the next generation, and the woman's role is particularly important. How can we ever think that the female sex is inferior when we see the essential responsibility God has given women in this world? Their sensitivity to spiritual concerns seems to be farm more innate and natural than a man's. Mothers and wives often are the medium for our intercourse with the heavenly world, the faithful repositories of spiritual knowledge and wisdom. We should all be careful to avail ourselves of the benefits they have to offer both the present generation and the one that will follow us. ~ William Wilberforce

All women are born dancers in the sense that natural movement becomes their body and grows out of their instinctive feeling for womanhood, motherhood and tenderness. ~ Nelly Mazloum

What fools we all are. We girls. Afraid of the wrong things, at the wrong times. Afraid of a burdened face, when outside, outside waiting for you are fires you cannot imagine. Men, holding matches up to your gasoline eyes. Flames, flames all around you, licking at your just-born breasts, your just-bled body. And infernos. Infernos as wide as the world. Waiting to impoverish you, make you ash, and even the wind, even the wind. Even the wind, my dear, she thought, watching you burn, willing it, passing over you, and through you. Scattering you, because you are a girl, and because you are ash. ~ Shobha Rao

She is the woman that contradicts Simone de Beauvoir's saying "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." She is the woman that makes your tooth pain seem like a trivial matter in comparison to the heartaches she causes as she deliberately passes by your side. She is the woman that makes your throat feel swollen and your tie to suddenly seem too tight. She is the woman that is able to take you to the seven heavens with a whisper; straight to cloud number nine.. She is the woman that erases all other women unintentionally and becomes without demanding the despot of your heart. She is the woman that sends you back and forth to purgatory and resurrects you with each unintended touch. She is the woman that will ask of you to burn Rome just to collect for her a handful of dust. ~ Malak El Halabi

Woman in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

When you love a woman, what do you really love in her? It will be different with different people and it will be different at different times. If love really grows, this is the way: first you fall in love with the woman because her body is beautiful. That is the first available beauty - her face, her eyes, her proportion, her elegance, her dancing, pulsating energy. Her body is beautiful. That is the first approach. You fall in love.

Then after a few days you start going deeper into the woman. You start loving her heart. Now a far more beautiful revelation is coming to you. The body becomes secondary; the heart becomes primary. A new vision has arisen, a new peak. If you go on loving the woman, sooner or later you will find there are peaks beyond peaks, depths beyond depths. Then you start loving the soul of the woman. Then it is not only her heart - now that has become secondary. Now it is the very person, the very presence, the very radiance, the aliveness, that unknown phenomenon of her being - that she is. The body is very far away, the heart has also gone away - now the being is.

And then one day this particular woman's being becomes far away. Now you start loving womanhood in her, the femininity, the feminineness, that receptivity. Now she is not a particular woman at all, she simply reflects womanhood, a particular form of womanhood. Now it is no longer individual, it is becoming more and more universal. And one day that womanhood has also disappe ~ Osho

After all those years as a woman hearing 'not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,' almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, 'I'm enough.' ~ Anna Quindlen

The divine light which you carry within your soul is inherited from God because you are His daughter. Part of the light which makes you so magnificent is the blessing of womanhood. ~ Margaret D. Nadauld

I am the essence of magic, its mysteriousness, its beauty and its ability to make things happen when people couldn't see how! ~ Jenaitre Farquharson

The sun began to set on her adolescent days,
as the dawn of her womanhood beckoned. ~ Krystle Kotara

Prostitution requires for its diminution not only laws, well enforced, to abolish the traffic in womanhood; not only better social protection against harpies who seduce young girls seeking an honest livelihood; not only better chaperonage of young girls in exposed occupations; not only better opportunities for natural enjoyment of youthful pleasure under morally safe conditions; not only these - but most of all, greater power on the part of the average young girl to earn her own support under right conditions and for a living wage. ~ Anna Garlin Spencer

But there is a beauty every girl has - a
gift from God, as pure as the sunlight,
and as sacred as life. It is a beauty that all men love, a virtue that wins all men's souls. That beauty is chastity. Chastity without skin beauty may enkindle the soul; skin beauty without chastity can kindle only the eye. Chastity enshrined in the mold of true womanhood will hold true love
eternally. ~ David O. McKay

It takes a lot of time, focus and energy to realize the enormity of being the ocean with your very own tide every month. However, by honoring the demands of bleeding, our blood gives something in return. The crazed bitch from irritation hell recedes. In her place arises a side of ourselves with whom we may not - at first - be comfortable. She is a vulnerable, highly perceptive genius who can ponder a given issue and take her world by storm. When we're quiet and bleeding, we stumble upon the solutions to dilemmas that've been bugging us all month. Inspiration hits and moments of epiphany rumba 'across de tundra of our senses. In this mode of existence one does not feel antipathy towards a bodily ritual so profoundly and routinely reinforces our cuntpower. ~ Inga Muscio

Let me tell you the truth: You are enough. You are more than enough. God made you, and God does not make junk. "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb." (Ps. 139:13) You are not just a body; you are a body and a soul. You have an inmost being that does not come from your parents, from the physical DNA that they gave you, but from God Almighty who breathed life specially and intentionally into your very self. Not only did God create you, He continues to care for you and watch over you. "Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid." (Luke 12:7) ~ Leah Darrow

Women are in bondage; their clothes are a great hindrance to their engaging in any business which will make them pecuniarily independent, and since the soul of womanhood never can be queenly and noble so long as it must beg bread for its body, is it not better, even at the expense of a vast deal of annoyance, that they whose lives deserve respect and are greater than their garments should give an example by which woman may more easily work out her own emancipation? ~ Lucy Stone

These hips are mighty hips.
These hips are magic hips.
I have known them
to put a spell on a man
and spin him like a top ~ Carol Shields

No genuine equality, no real freedom, no true manhood or womanhood can exist on any foundation save that of pecuniary independence. As a right over a man's subsistence is a power over his moral being, so a right over a woman's subsistence enslaves her will, degrades her pride and vitiates her whole moral nature. ~ Susan B. Anthony

1) Leopardskin is always a neutral.
2) You can get away with nearly anything if you wear the thing with black opaque tights and boots.
3) Contrary to popular opinion, a belt is often not a good friend to a lady. Indeed, in many circumstances, it acts merely as a visual aid to help the onlooker settle the question: "Which half is fatter - the bottom or the top?"
4) Bright red is a neutral.
5) Sellotape is NOT strong enough to mend a hole in the crotch of a pair of tights.
6) You should NOT buy an outfit if you have to strike a sexy pose in the changing-room mirror to make it look good. On the other hand, if you immediately start dancing the minute you put it on, buy it, however much it costs: unless it's lots, in which case, you can't, so don't. Fashion magazines will NEVER say, "Actually, don't buy it if you can't afford it." Neither will your friends. I am probably the only person who will EVER say it to you. You're welcome. ~ Caitlin Moran

How it irks me to have to take her hand, allow her to pull my dress over my head, undo my corsets and strip them off my, and have her see my blue veined swollen flesh and the hairy triangle that still proclaims with lunatic insistence a non-existent womanhood. ~ Margaret Laurence

Like Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, I saw the effortless grace and elegance of the women around me and realized that "there was some skill involved in being a girl," and I knew I didn't just want to grow up and be a woman. I wanted to grow up and be a lady. ~ Sophie Hudson

No wonder men did not want women to wear bloomers. What could women accomplish if they did not have to continually mind their skirts, keep them from dragging in the mud or getting trampled on the steps of an omnibus? If they had pockets! With pockets, women could conquer the world! ~ Theodora Goss

So long as we refuse to accept that "woman" is a holistic concept, one that includes all people who experience themselves as women, our concept of womanhood will remain a mere reflection of our own personal experiences and biases rather than something based in the truly diverse world that surrounds us. ~ Julia Serano

Mankind, not womankind, has slaughtered more humans in the name of God and Religion than for any other reason. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The first woman you need to make friends with is yourself. ~ Helen Edwards

Know Deeply, Know Thyself More Deeply"

Go deeper than love, for the soul has greater depths,
love is like the grass, but the heart is deep wild rock
molten, yet dense and permanent.

Go down to your deep old heart, woman, and lose sight of yourself.
And lose sight of me, the me whom you turbulently loved.

Let us lose sight of ourselves, and break the mirrors.
For the fierce curve of our lives is moving again to the depths
out of sight, in the deep dark living heart.

But say, in the dark wild metal of your heart
is there a gem, which came into being between us?
is there a sapphire of mutual trust, a blue spark?
Is there a ruby of fused being, mine and yours, an inward glint?

If there is not, O then leave me, go away.
For I cannot be bullied back into the appearances of love,
any more than August can be bullied to look like March.

Love out of season, especially at the end of the season
is merely ridiculous.
If you insist on it, I insist on departure.

Have you no deep old heart of wild womanhood
self-forgetful, and gemmed with experience,
and swinging in a strange union of power
with the heart of the man you are supposed to have loved?

If you have not, go away.
If you can only sit with a mirror in your hand, an ageing woman
posing on and on as a lover,
in love with a self that now is shallow and withered, ~ D.H. Lawrence

Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation. ~ Virginia Woolf

What would people in their old lives be saying about these girls? Would they be called missing? Would some documentary program on the ABC that nobody watched, or one of those thin newspapers nobody read, somehow connect their cases, find the thread to make them a story? The Lost Girls, they could be called. Would it be said, they 'disappeared', 'were lost'? Would it be said that they were abandoned or taken, the way people said a girl was attacked, a woman was raped, this femaleness always at the centre, as if womanhood itself were the cause of these things? As if the girls somehow, through the natural way of things, did it to themselves. They lured abduction and abandonment to themselves, they marshalled themselves into this prison where they had made their beds, and now, once more, were lying in them. ~ Charlotte Wood

At first, it must be remembered, that [women] can never accomplish anything until they put womanhood ahead of wifehood, and make motherhood the highest office on the social scale. ~ Herbert Croly

Here in Africa mankind was born. And it was a woman ~ Carlos José Pérez Sámano

If we can't have comedy books written about aspects of womanhood without going into a panic attack about it, then we haven't got very far at being equal. ~ Helen Fielding

You were formed inside a borrowed womb - a nourishing safe haven for months - then delivered through painful effort and sacrifice by a woman willing to give you the precious gift of life. That truth alone deserves your gratitude and respect. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

For a man, the optimal evolutionary strategy is to disseminate his genes as widely as possible, given his few minutes (or, alas, seconds) of investment in each encounter. It all makes simple evolutionary sense, since a woman invests a good deal of time and effort -a nine month long, risky, strenuous pregnancy, in each offspring. Naturally she has to be very discerning in her choice of sexual partners. ~ Abhijit Naskar

There are two ways to define manhood. One way is to say that manhood is the opposite of womanhood. The other way is is to say that manhood is the opposite of childhood. ~ Brett McKay

Woman! Get To The Throne Room, Shun The Phone Booth...The Solution Is In The Throne Room! ~ Jaachynma N.E. Agu

When I was just a cute little caterpillar, you loved me. So I became a butterfly so you would never leave. ~ Crystal Woods

It's no wonder we have such mixed feelings about these women: they're constant reminders of the chasm between what we think we believe and how we actually behave. ~ Anne Helen Petersen

I was a woman who loved a woman, chief among the womanly sins, like barreness and thinking. ~ Sara Collins

Do not use your energy except for a cause more noble than yourself. Such a cause cannot be found except in Almighty God Himself: to preach the truth, to defend womanhood, to repel humiliation which your Creator has not imposed upon you, to help the oppressed. Anyone who uses his energy for the sake of the vanities of the world is like someone who exchanges gemstones for gravel. There is no nobility in anyone who lacks faith. The wise man knows that the only fitting price for his soul is a place in Paradise ... ~ Ibn Hazm

You want to know what a woman is thinking, ask a woman. Simple! ~ Nishta Kochar

We have different experiences, but trans women have experiences that do parallel with the whole fabric of what womanhood is. Embracing trans women, listening to their stories, enriches what womanhood is. It expands it and makes it even better. ~ Janet Mock

Lavinia has seen this happen, seen how, one day, a girl will raise her head to listen, as if for the first time, to the crying of a child, to the sound of an oar being hauled in, to a man's voice, to the screech of a saw pulling through wood, to some comment one of the women might make. Within a week, the girl will be able to tell at any minute of the day or night, precisely where every soul in the place is. Then - or so Lavinia imagines, for it has never happened to her - one morning before light, before the girl has awakened, a map, new and totally different, will be imprinted behind her closed eyelids. ~ Bernice Morgan

- Bill - that was it; Bill, the Chauffeur. That was his name. He was a wretched, primitive man, wholly devoid of the finer instincts and chivalrous promptings of a cultured soul. No, there is no absolute justice, for to him fell that wonder of womanhood, Vesta Van Warden. The grievous-ness of this you will never understand, my grandsons; for you are yourselves primitive little savages, unaware of aught else but savagery. Why ~ Jack London

She was my mirror image, slightly distorted, flipped, older, larger, more able to coexist with a pack of men. I'd be their pawn. She was their queen. ~ Aspen Matis

In the car inching its way down Fifth Avenue, toward Bergdorf Goodman and this glamorous party, I looked back on my past with a new understanding. This sickness, the "endo-whatever," had stained so much - my sense of self, my womanhood, my marriage, my ability to be present. I had effectively missed one week of each month every year of my life since I was thirteen, because of the chronic pain and hormonal fluctuations I suffered during my period. I had lain in bed, with heating pads and hot-water bottles, using acupuncture, drinking teas, taking various pain medications and suffering the collateral effects of them. I thought of all the many tests I missed in various classes throughout my education, the school dances, the jobs I knew I couldn't take as a model, because of the bleeding and bloating as well as the pain (especially the bathing suit and lingerie shoots, which paid the most). How many family occasions was I absent from? How many second or third dates did I not go on? How many times had I not been able to be there for others or for myself? How many of my reactions to stress or emotional strife had been colored through the lens of chronic pain? My sense of self was defined by this handicap. The impediment of expected pain would shackle my days and any plans I made.

I did not see my own womanhood as something positive or to be celebrated, but as a curse that I had to constantly make room for and muddle through. Like the scar on my arm, my reproductive syst ~ Padma Lakshmi

She was simply Asha, a woman on her own. Had the situation been otherwise, she might not have come to know her own brain. ~ Katherine Boo

Any young man, who makes dowry a condition to marriage, discredits his education and his country and dishonours womanhood. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I can't decide whether I'm a good girl wrapped up in a bad girl, or if I'm a bad girl wrapped up in a good girl. And that's how I know I'm a woman! ~ C. JoyBell C.

No matter how much the woman is beautiful, she will lose her womanhood if she is dumb, arrogant or liar. ~ Eyden I.

It's one thing to be young, cherub-faced, straight woman doing and saying things that make people uncomfortable. It's quite another – and far riskier – to do those same things in a body that is not white, straight, not slender, not young, or not American. ~ Anne Helen Petersen

Let us rise in the moral power of womanhood; and give utterance to the voice of outraged mercy, and insulted justice, and eternal truth, and mighty love and holy freedom. ~ Maria Weston Chapman