A Woman S Burden Quotes & Sayings

In two of your poems you called that central
Passage of womanhood a wound,
Instead of a curtain guarding a silken
Trail of sighs. How many men,
Upon regarding such beauty, helplessly
Touching it, recklessly needing
To enter its warmth again and again,
Have assumed it embodies their own ache
Of absence, the personal
Gash that has punished their lives.
So endowed of anatomy, any woman
Who has been loved
Knows that her tenderest blush
Of tissue is a luxe burden of have.
Although it bleeds, this is only to cleanse,
To prepare yet another nesting for love.
It is not a wound, friend.
It is a home for you.
It is a way into the world. — Michele Wolf

The story of Carol's transformation evoked complicated feelings in Rose. It appalled her, of course. The idea of an educated, metropolitan woman voluntarily casting off every vestige of modernity in order to make herself over as a medieval ghetto-dweller was unconscionable - but it also inspired a sneaking envy. By submitting to the restraints of Orthodoxy, Carol had not only performed an impressive act of self-denial - an act guaranteed to appeal to Rosa's ascetic sensibility - but also freed herself from the burden of trying to improvise her own moral code. These days, she always knew what the right thing to do was - or if she didn't, she knew a rabbi who did. Every aspect of her daily life was consonant with her convictions. — Zoe Heller

One more point. The aspect of Venus is most favorable and potentially dominant over that of Mars. Venus symbolizes yourself, of course, but Mars is both your husband and young Smith - as a result of the unique circumstances of his birth. This throws a double burden on you and you must rise to the challenge; you must demonstrate those qualities calm wisdom and restraint which are peculiarly those of woman. — Robert A. Heinlein

The Old Testament records the sage words of an old woman in addressing two younger ones: 'The Lord grant', said Naomi, 'that ye may find rest, each of you, in the house of her husband!' Who ever heard of a woman finding rest in the house of her husband?
And yet, and yet ! The restless hearts are not
the hearts of wives and of mothers, as many a lonely woman knows. There is no more crushing load than the load of a loveless life. It is a burden that is often beautifully and graciously borne, but its weight is a very real one. The mother may have a bent form, a furrowed brow, and worn, thin hands ; but her heart found its rest for all that. Naomi was an old woman; she knew the world very well, and her words are worth weighing. Heavy luggage is Christ's strange cure for weary hearts. — F.W. Boreham

He saw a figure in white robes near the bridge entrance and turned the tape over in his hand. He approached the woman and said, his tone respectful, "Your Highness. The transmission we received..."
The woman looked toward him. He'd seen her face many times before, knew it well. She was young, seemed younger every day, even as her responsibilities grew and grew.
He held out his hand. Childlike fingers took the tape.
"What is it they've sent us?" he asked.
Prince Leia Organa looked at him as if he'd placed another burden on her shoulders - another responsibility to add to a count of thousands - and she was proud to bear it.
"Hope," she said.
Raymus believed her. — Alexander Freed

He carries no burden, he feels no pain. What man, like woman, lies down in the darkness and gets up with child? The gentle, smiling ones own the good secret. Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. — Ray Bradbury

We talk a bit, until Tess is sufficiently calm, and then I take her upstairs and see her snuggled back into bed with Cyclops and one of Maura's romance novels. Strange bedfellows, but both seem to comfort her, and it serves to remind me again that she is a strange mix of woman and child, carrying a burden far too heavy for her. — Jessica Spotswood

It is not a woman's duty to disclose that she's trans to every person she meets. This is not safe for a myriad of reasons. We must shift the burden of coming out from trans women, and accusing them of hiding or lying, and focus on why it is unsafe for women to be trans. — Janet Mock

For many people, the shock of sexual abuse pales before the shock of this mother's statement, "I wish the fuck I never had her." So thoroughly is motherhood sentimentalized that the mother who wishes to be rid of her child is considered a monster. In reality, women have always greeted the burden of motherhood ambivalently, even in the best of circumstances, and many women bear children involuntarily. But the approbrium which attaches to any woman who willing gives up her child is so great that some mothers will keep and mistreat their children rather than admit that they cannot care for them. Sometimes, the revelation of maternal neglect constitutes a plea for outside intervention, signaling the fact that a mother wants to be relieved of the duty to care for her child. — Judith Lewis Herman

There is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness and far more dangerous. It takes much luck and integrity to survive the gift of perfect beauty, and its impermanence is its most cunning betrayal. — Pat Conroy

The burdens of a woman are more than the average man could ever endure. — Honore Daumier

What's happened? A very remarkable thing, Scarlett. I've been thinking. I don't believe I really thought from the time of the surrender until you went away from here. I was in a state of suspended animation and it was enough that I had something to eat and a bed to lie on. But when you went to Atlanta, shouldering a man's burden, I saw myself as much less than a man
much less, indeed, than a
woman. Such thoughts aren't pleasant to live with, and I do not intend to live with them any longer. Other men came out of the war with less than I had, and look at them now. — Margaret Mitchell

He leaned his head in his hands, as if the burden he bore were too great for endurance. 'You are wise', he said, then raised his head and stared at her with unflinching hatred. 'I wish you were a foolish woman I could despise, damn you! — Marion Zimmer Bradley

Just looking at her mother made Cami think about how having another mouth to feed in the house would be a huge burden. She was working her butt off at two jobs already as a registered nurse and a waitress. With a mortgage payment, student loan debt, credit card debt, and loads of other bills that she once did not think about twice, her mother was forced to work longer hours after her now ex-husband abandoned his family for another woman. — Valenciya Lyons

I cannot understand any woman's wanting to be the first woman to do anything ... It is a devastating burden and I could not take it, could not be a pioneer, a Symbol of Something Greater. — Nora Ephron

Her final night in the quarters was sleepless, even though she needed her strength. The other Hob women dozed beside her in the loft. She listened to their breathing: That is Nag; that is Rida with her one ragged exhalation every other minute. This time tomorrow she would be loose in the night. Is this what her mother felt when she decided? Cora's image of her was remote. What she remembered now was her sadness. Her mother was a Hob woman before there was a Hob. With the same reluctance to mix, the burden that bent her at all times and set her apart. Cora couldn't put her together in her mind. Who was she? Where was she now? Why had she left her? Without a special kiss to say, When you remember this moment later you will understand that I was saying goodbye even if you did not know it. — Colson Whitehead

To man, faith; to woman, doubt. She bears the heavier burden. Does not woman invariably suffer for two? — Honore De Balzac

James's general position on the difference between the sexes, which was that woman is "by nature inferior to man. She is man's inferior in passion, his inferior in intellect, and his inferior in physical strength"; she is, very properly, her husband's "patient and unrepining drudge, his beast of burden, his toilsome ox, his dejected ass, his cook, his tailor, his own cheerful nurse and the sleepless guardian of his children." But their inferiority, James thought, is precisely what makes women attractive to men, so that any "great development of passion or intellect in woman is sure to prejudice" male attention. "Would any man fancy a woman after the pattern of Daniel Webster?"33 He consequently opposed serious education for women, a doctrine that had disastrous consequences in the case of his youngest child and only daughter, Alice. — Louis Menand

The old woman dies, the burden is lifted. — Arthur Schopenhauer

I love you too much to lie to you, Lisey. I love you with all that passes for my heart. I suspect that kind of all-out love becomes a burden to a woman in time, but it's the only kind I have to give. I think we're going to be quite a wealthy couple in terms of money, but I'll almost certainly be an emotional pauper all my life. I've got the money coming, but as for the rest I've got just enough for you, and I won't ever dirty or dilute it with lies. Not with the words I say, not with the ones I hold back. — Stephen King

It must be sheer hell for you to be cursed with such a pretty boy's face," he drawled. "The agony of finding a different woman in your bed every night must wear you thin. I don't know where you get your stamina with this terrible burden you bear."
The muscle in Ramsey's jaw flexed, which pleased Brodick considerably.
"We know you've had as many women in your bed as I have," Ramsey snapped. "But I meant what I said. There are more important matters to discuss. — Julie Garwood

The day I bought my cane, I realized
I was through with the burden of feet. Instead,
I am going to become a mermaid.
I have always liked the ocean, the promise
of depth. I am tired of this dry world,
all of this dust and sickness, these barren fields.
I want to dive without drowning. I want to kiss sharks.
I want men to carve me into the bows of their ships
like a prayer, before I lure them into the depths
with my fishnet mouth. I want the beauty,
the gorgeous mutation, the fairytale of half body.
All the wisdom of a woman, without the failures of sex.
I am plunging. I am not coming up for air.
I do not want all this human,
my legs move like they resent being legs,
my body is wrecked by all this gravity.
I cannot face another morning waking up
with no hope of a fairytale. Here on land,
I am always drowning. Here on land,
I cannot move. — Clementine Von Radics

If I wrote at all, I must throw myself headlong into the great political maelstrom, and would of course be swallowed up like a fishing-boat in the great Norway horror which decorated our school geographies; for no woman had ever done such a thing, and I could never again hold up my head under the burden of shame and disgrace which would be heaped upon me. But what matter? I had no children to dishonor; all save one who had ever loved me were dead, and she no longer needed me, and if the Lord wanted some one to throw into that gulf, no one could be better spared than I. — Jane Swisshelm

I am made of cobweb that tears at a touch. But you, Bess, have fiber like the great seines that seldom break no matter their burden,yet if they do they can be mended again and again. — Anya Seton

What kind of man reads Playboy? He is fastidious about his appearance, his home and his possessions. He wants as much sex as possible and chooses sexual partners mostly on the basis of appearance. He is self-absorbed and doesn't want emotional involvement or commitment. He thinks a woman and children would be a burden. — Henry Makow

Because, dear, trouble comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn't God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing; the people we love are taken from us, and we can joy in nothing because they are not with us; sickness comes, and we faint under the burden of our feeble bodies; we go astray and do wrong, and bring ourselves into trouble with our fellow men. There is no man or woman born into this world to whom some of these trials do not fall, and so I feel that some of them must happen to you; and I desire for you, that while you are young you should seek for the strength from your Heavenly Father, that you may have a support which will not fail you in the evil day. — George Eliot

It is difficult to exaggerate the adverse influence of the precepts and practices of religion upon the status and happiness of woman. Owing to the fact that upon women devolves the burden of motherhood, with all its accompanying disabilities, they always have been, and always must be, at a natural disadvantage in the struggle of life as compared with men ...
With certain exceptions, women all the world over have been relegated to a position of inferiority in the community, greater or less according to the religion and the social organisation of the people; the more religious the people the lower the status of the women ... — Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner

He [Brian Fraser] told me that a man must be responsible for any see he sows, for it's his duty to take care of a woman and protect her. And if I wasna prepared to do that, then I'd no right to burden a woman with the consequences of my own actions. — Diana Gabaldon

But she would learn. Every woman was a prisoner for life; it was not some burden that she bore uniquely. She would have all the company she could ever need. * — Suzette Haden Elgin

I walked, floated, lighter - forty miles, my biggest day yet. I'd lifted the burden of guilt and shame off my body. I held my new hard-won wisdom, the gift three months of walking in the wilderness had carried me to: compassion for my younger self - forgiveness for my innocence. — Aspen Matis

He can't understand that what I've done was to ensure his safety. He thinks I'm a monster. A burden that he has to endure. A danger to the family. He wants nothing to do with me and avoids me. When he can't avoid me he has a look in his eye that I know well, and the look says, 'Why won't she die? Why won't she just die?' I'm like that room upstairs; he just wants to close the door and forget any of it happened. He wants to close the door so eventually, like our mother, I'll become the beautiful woman that died too young and nothing more. All my sins will be forgotten and hidden, locked away never to be spoken of again — Angelique Jones

Here is another query: is it the duty of Society to burden itself permanently with every vicious woman who becomes a mother? And is it possible to make such an establishment of male and female loafers, even with the best management, anything useful to them or the world? - NEW-YORK DAILY TRIBUNE, AUGUST 11, 1847 — Lyndsay Faye

She is a woman who deserves some respect. She's the one who'll bear the belligerent burden of birthing your kids. She's a woman, not an ass, or a breast or something else that could be sexually caressed. Appreciate the woman that she is because she and your mother are one in the same. She will be a wife someday; should't she get treated like more of a gain? — Jasmine Sandozz

I knew love was a burden to her. But it was an agreeable burden. She was very delicate. Sometimes I wondered whether she realized to what extent love was an adventure. To her it seemed to be a refuge against the bitterness of the world; to me it wasn't a destination but a stop exposed to winds, to thunders, a stop exposed to storms, a stop among other stops between the first day and the last day in the life of every man and woman. I wished Therese could realize that we were only friends. — Mbella Sonne Dipoko

The specific character of [women's] oppression cannot be explained away by equating different situations through superficial and childish simplifications[:]

It is true that both the woman and the male worker are condemned to silence by their exploitation. But under the current system, the worker's wife is also condemned to silence by her worker-husband. In other words, in addition to the class exploitation common to both of them, women must confront a particular set of relations that exist between them and men, relations of conflict and violence that use physical differences as their pretext. — Thomas Sankara

I love you with all that passes for my heart. I suspect that kind of all-out love becomes a burden to a woman in time, but it's the only kind I have to give. — Stephen King

Overeating is the addiction of choice of carers, and that's why it's come to be regarded as the lowest-ranking of all the addictions. It's a way of fucking yourself up while still remaining fully functional, because you have to. Fat people aren't indulging in the "luxury" of their addiction making them useless, chaotic, or a burden. Instead, they are slowly self-destructing in a way that doesn't inconvenience anyone. And that's why it's so often a woman's addiction of choice. All the quietly eating mums. All the KitKats in office drawers. All the unhappy moments, late at night, caught only in the fridge light. — Caitlin Moran

Heaven grant that the burden you carry may have as easy an exit as it had an entrance. Prayer To A Pregnant Woman — Desiderius Erasmus

Ivan tells Anna: I used to imagine that being embraced by a woman ... as something so wonderful that it would make me forget everthing ... [But] happiness, it turns out, will be to share with you the burden I can't share with anyone else. — Vasily Grossman

In my opinion the misappropriation of the longing for God has caused a lot of people a great deal of pain. In fact, I wondered if some of my early mistakes in relationships weren't partly because I sought to find resolution for the longing through a woman, a burden no romantic partner should have to bear. How many relationships have been ruined by two people attempting to squeeze the Jesus out of each other? — Donald Miller

Laila watches Mariam glue strands of yarn onto her doll's head. In a few years, this little girl will be a woman who will make small demands on life, who will never burden others, who will never let on that she too had sorrows, disappointments, dreams that have been ridiculed. A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her. Already Laila sees something behind this young girl's eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone. Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila's salvation.
The little girl looks up. Puts the doll down. Smiles. — Khaled Hosseini

The Samoan puts the burden of amatory success upon the man and believes that women need more initiating, more time for maturing of sexual feeling. A man who fails to satisfy a woman is looked upon as a clumsy, inept blunderer. — Margaret Mead

I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love. — Edward VIII

I think there's just an inherent burden of being alive and being a woman. No man would ever admit that, but I think women know it, which is: You know more than men, you know more than most people you're dealing with every day, and you know that's it up to you to make things move forward, and you get paid half as much, but you just do it. — Rashida Jones

The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness? — Milan Kundera

As she slipped back into the house, Travis mumbled, "It's about time." Everett Hayes had the gall to wink at him. "Better get used to it, Archer. Things are never the same after you install a woman in your house." "That is true," the parson said as he pushed up out of his chair, his expression slightly censorious as he glanced at Everett. "But if the Lord is installed, as well, the changes can bring blessing to a man." He shifted his attention and peered at Travis. "Marriage is a sacred union, son, and not something to dread. As Ecclesiastes says, 'Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. . . . A threefold cord is not quickly broken.' Keep God woven into your relationship and this union will make you stronger. But if you treat it as a burden, it will become one. — Karen Witemeyer

Most women, I think, though they may complain a little about this, would agree that meeting the needs of others is not a real burden; it is what makes life worth living. It is probably the deepest satisfaction a woman has. — Eleanor Roosevelt

But I hope you will
use your brains. Use your brains. Don't be distracted. Once you make that mistake, of being
distracted, over a man, your life will never be your own. You will get the burden, a woman always does. — Alice Munro

In New York, the average total state and local tax burden is $5,260 for every man, woman and child. That's by far the highest in the country. — Tom Golisano

His mind and his flesh had separated, his brain had sat high and frightened above the mule of his body, a beast of burden that hopefully would make it alone over the treacherous mountain pass of Prison 33. But now as a woman ran a warm washcloth along the arch of his foot, the sensation was allowed to rise up, up into his brain , and it was okay to perceive again, to recognize forgotten parts of his body as they hailed him. His lungs were more than air bellows. His heart, he believed now, could do more than move blood. — Adam Johnson

There is no protection. To be female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal. Even if scars form, the festering is ever below. — Toni Morrison

While journalists cannot right every wrong, champion every cause or fix every problem, they can - through the written word - lift someone's burden for a day, make some elderly woman on a bus smile or let them know they are noticed by someone. — Regina Brett