A Respectable Woman Quotes & Sayings

The thing was, I forgot that Valentine's Day when you were single was completely different from when you were in a relationship. If you were shacked up with someone and said you didn't celebrate, no biggie. But when you were single, you got the LOOK. And you got the comments about how you would find someone some day.

After about six hours of that, well, even I was starting to feel a deep sense of unhappiness crushing down on me. I literally felt weighted by it, like there was something trying to drag me down to the floor where I was expected to cry and bemoan my singledom like any respectable woman steadily heading past acceptable marriageable age. — Jessica Gadziala

I think we ought to decide that man-hating is not only respectable but honorable. To be a misandrist a woman needs considerable ingenuity, originality, and resilience. A misogynist requires no such resources. — Joanna Russ

Being as I am both a woman and working-class, choice don't come into it, much, for me. I do what I must." Charles/Karl wanted to say he was sorry, and couldn't.
"I imagine you don't talk to many of us, as against studying us in bulk. The dangerous masses. To be put in camps, and set to work on projects."
"You are being unfair," said Charles/Karl. "You are mocking me."
"We can do that, at least, if we dare."
"Miss Warren," said Charles/Karl, "I wish you would not talk as though you were a group, or a class, or a committee. I should like to be talking to you as a person."
"Can you?"
"Why should I not?"
"For every reason. I am both working-class and not respectable. I am a Fallen Woman. I have a daughter. You don't want to be talking to me as if I were a person, Mr. Wellwood. — A.S. Byatt

Masturbation is not the happiest form of sexuality, but the most advisable for him who wants to be alone and think. I detect the aroma of this pleasant vice in most philosophers, and a happily married logicians is almost a contradiction in terms. So many sages have regarded Woman as temptress because fornication often leads to marriage, which usually leads to children, which always leads to a respectable job and pretending to believe the idiocies your neighbors believe. The hypocrisy of the sages has been to conceal their timid onanism and call it celibacy. — Robert Anton Wilson

Fitz did not censor her mail but, as the head of the family, he had the right to read any letter addressed to a female relative living in his house. No respectable woman would object. — Ken Follett

I'm a thoroughly respectable woman."
"You don't kiss like one. — Ruthie Knox

I try to make my comments like a woman's skirt: long enough to be respectable and short enough to be interesting. — Adam Clayton Powell III

If any-one accosts young girls who are dressed in the clothes of slaves, his offence will be seen as minor, and even more so if the women are dressed as prostitutes, and not as [respectable] mothers of families. Therefore, if a woman is not dressed as a matron and some-one calls out to her or entices away her attendant, he will not be liable to the action for injury — Alexandra Croom

The best part? Probably being able to portray such a respectable, ethical, intelligent, strong woman. That's still pretty rare in our business, unfortunately. — Catherine Bell

You didn't want children?' I don't remember who said this, Susan or I or both of us together. 'Oh God, no. I saw what children do. They turn a good respectable woman into a mudd-dha. I didn't want to be a mudh-dha. I didn't want to be turned inside out. I didn't want to have my world shifted so that I was no longer the centre of it. This is what you have to be careful about, Lao-Tsu. It never happens to men. They just sow the seed and hand out the cigars when you've pushed a football through your vadge. For the next hundred years of your life, you're stuck with being someone whose definition isn't even herself. You're now someone's mudd-dha!' She — Jerry Pinto

He'd never expected to have a marriage like his parents' - few people on earth ever had. But at the very least Gabriel had hoped to marry an accomplished and respectable woman who would run his household efficiently and raise well-behaved children. Instead, it seemed he was going to marry a forest sprite. With an original mind. — Lisa Kleypas

Two hundred years ago, the mothers of the books we take for granted were lumped together in the same lowly category as factory workers, governesses, and prostitutes. A respectable woman didn't write, she took care of her household: if she were rich, she oversaw a staff of servants and entertained for a living; if she were poor, she carried out endless labors punctuated by births and deaths. Jane Austen had to publish her books anonymously at a time when women were lucky to be taught to read. — Erin Blakemore

They often say woman cannot keep a secret, but every woman in the world, like every man, has a hundred secrets in her own soul which she hides from even herself. The more respectable she is, the more certain it is the secrets exist. — Austin O'Malley

Parts of rural China are seeing a burgeoning market for female corpses, the result of the reappearance of a strange custom called "ghost marriages." Chinese tradition demands that husbands and wives always share a grave. Sometimes, when a man died unmarried, his parents would procure the body of a woman, hold a "wedding," and bury the couple together... A black market has sprung up to supply corpse brides. Marriage brokers - usually respectable folk who find brides for village men - account for most of the middlemen. At the bottom of the supply chain come hospital mortuaries, funeral parlors, body snatchers - and now murderers.
- "China's Corpse Brides: Wet Goods and Dry Goods" The Economist, July 26, 2007 — Danica Novgorodoff

The truth is ... that the great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom ever ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man - that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense - has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman. — H.L. Mencken

I received her sewing kit and pins and brooches; a blank diary purchased especially for me; "Advice to a Young Married Woman", by a minister, which she asked me not to read till I was older----; "Exemplary Letters for Sundry Occasions"; "The Whole Duty of Woman"; and some volumes of Walter Scott's novels, which I might enjoy when my reading had improved. With a glance at Rev. Fowler, whose advice she had sought in this matter, she said that, for a sensible girl such as she knew me to be, novels by respectable authors could provide harmless amusement, but I must remember not to neglect my duties for them, not to demand that my life be a romance, or over strain myself with too much reading. — Phillip Margulies

The responsibility for men's behavior, indeed for civilization itself rests entirely with women here, and in how they dress and behave. Men's animalistic impulses are presumed to be overwhelming and uncontrollable. And as men are brutal, brainless savages, women must hide their bodies to avoid being assaulted. In most societies, a respectable woman, to varying degrees, is expected to cover up. If she doesn't she is inviting assault. — Jenny Nordberg

No, I'm saying those Yankees are messing things up again. No respectable Southern woman would ever say a girl was Rosewell's 'power mower.' For heaven's sake. That's ridiculous. But those Yankees have tin ears. On language alone we should have won the war." She looked at us. "The woman called that floozy his paramour. But some Yankee messed it up. Paramour. Power mower. You hear the difference?" Wally glanced at me. She was — Sibella Giorello

If he could not restore her to the status of a respectable woman, then Sohrab would make her into something else entirely, something hitherto unknown in their entire extended family, an educated woman, a professional woman. — Jasmin Darznik

DON'T LOOK LIKE a midwife," Brother Gregory interrupted, as he blew on a page to make it dry. His face was averted to conceal his distaste. It is one thing to describe, say, the Virgin with angel attendants, but this woman had no discretion at all. "I'm not one anymore," replied Margaret, looking at him coldly. "That is self-evident; it's not an art practiced by women in respectable circumstances," said Brother Gregory, looking around. "It ought to be the most respected profession in the world - midwives witness how God makes the world new," said Margaret; — Judith Merkle Riley

It became clear to her that all men, however respectable in appearance and however elevated their position in society, were utter weaklings in front of a beautiful woman. - The Yacoubian Building, p. 42 — Alaa Al Aswany

Your little r changes the status of a single lady 'Ms' into a respectable lady 'Mrs'. Man, you make the difference! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Even the most respectable woman has a complete set of clothes in her wardrobe ready for a possible abduction. — Sacha Guitry

What do we want from our mothers when we are children? Complete submission. Oh, it's very nice and rational and respectable to say that a woman has every right to her life, to her ambitions, to her needs, and so on--it's what I've always demanded myself--but as a child, no, the truth is it's a war of attrition, rationality doesn't come into it, not one bit, all you want from your mother is that she once and for all admit that she is your mother and only your mother, and that her battle with the rest of life is over. She has to lay down arms and come to you. And if she doesn't do it, then it's really a war, and it was a war between my mother and me. Only as an adult did I come to truly admire her--especially in the last, painful years of her life--for all that she had done to claw some space in this world for herself. — Zadie Smith

Because of the generation in which I came into the world, there were expectations. Of course there were expectations. It was something having to do with being a respectable Negro woman who would make the people in Baltimore proud. — Anna Deavere Smith

...While many who have debated the image of female sexuality have put "explicit" and "self-objectifying" on one side and "respectable" and "covered-up" on the other, I find this a flawed means of categorization. [...] There is a creative possibility for liberatory explicitness because it may expand the confines of what women are allowed to say and do. We just need to refer to the history of blues music - one full of raunchy, irreverent, and transgressive women artists - for examples. Yet the overwhelming prevalence of the Madonna/whore dichotomy in American culture means that any woman who uses explicit language or images in her creative expression is in danger of being symbolically cast into the role of whore regardless of what liberatory intentions she may have. — Imani Perry

Tall and thin, Mademoiselle Baptistine was a pale and gentle person. She was the incarnation of the word 'respectable,' whereas to be 'venerable,' a woman should lso be a mother. — Victor Hugo

The extraordinary deference paid to physicians and their judgment preserved the idea that the woman's desire to end a pregnancy was not enough in itself, it had to be approved by a respectable authority figure, at the time almost always a man. — Katha Pollitt

He smiled at her, and Sophie's emotions went to war. She had always admired Banallt's intellect and his easy manner with her. He never had condescended to her or made her feel unworthy or insignificant. But how could she forget him arriving at Rider Hall with Tommy, drunk and with a woman who was not respectable? All the times he'd watched her with his unsettling eyes and
then left with Tommy. The night he'd admitted he was unfaithful to his marriage and saw no reason to change. — Carolyn Jewel

It appears to me that our sex is only discussed publicly in a derogatory manner. The respectable woman is doomed to anonymity. — Karen Essex

You're a respectable woman, dearie, and her reputation is a woman's wealth."
"Her wealth," Tenar repeated in the same blank way; then she said it again: "Her wealth. Her treasure. Her hoard. Her value ... — Ursula K. Le Guin

You know that deep down, a tiny part of that proper, respectable woman you are, wants to visit that reckless, sexy, uninhibited place inside you that's begging to get out. A place I can undoubtedly help you find. — K. Bromberg

Lainie, of course, would never turn gray. No respectable woman from Texas ever would."
~ A Woman of Fortune — Kellie Coates Gilbert

She might have made just as good a woman of consequence as Lady Bertram, but Mrs. Norris would have been a more respectable mother of nine children on a small income. — Jane Austen

A raped girl is bad for the family: it shows that they can't protect their women; that they have little social standing; and that they're not respectable. It's worse for the victim because once a woman, or a girl - or a boy - is known as the target of a rape she becomes so despised, so shamed, so worthless that she turns into public property. No one is raped only once. — Louise Brown

Every woman, even the most respectable, had roses blooming under glass; lips cut with a knife; curls of Indian ink; there was design, art, everywhere; a change of some sort had undoubtedly taken place. — Virginia Woolf

A country where women are not free has no chance ever to be something good and respectable! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Mr Merriot cocked an eyebrow at Kate, and said: - "Well, my dear, and did you kiss her good-night?"
Miss Merriot kicked off her shoes, and replied in kind. "What, are you parted from the large gentleman already?"
Mr Merriot looked into the fire, and a slow smile came, and the suspicion of a blush.
"Lord, child!" said Miss Merriot. "Are you for the mammoth? It's a most respectable gentleman, my dear."
Mr Merriot raised his eyes. "I believe I would not choose to cross him," he remarked inconsequently. "But I would trust him."
Miss Merriot began to laugh. "Be a man, my Peter, I implore you."
"Alack!" sighed Mr Merriot, "I feel all a woman. — Georgette Heyer

A single woman with a very narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid - the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman of good fortune is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else. — Jane Austen

The essence of being a gentleman is to understand the way you're supposed to treat a respectable woman. — Ne-Yo

When she lives at his palace, the maiden niece of a bishop can pass for a respectable woman because, if she has a love affair, she is obliged to hoodwink her uncle. — Honore De Balzac