Quotes & Sayings About Being A Woman With Class

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

A woman may achieve greatness, or at any rate great renown, by merely being a wonderful wife and mother, like the mother of the Gracchi; whereas the men who have achieved great renown by being devoted husbands and fathers might be counted on the fingers of one hand. Charles I was an unfortunate king, but an admirable family man. Still, you would scarcely class him as one of the world's great fathers, and his children were not an unqualified success. Dear me! Being a great father is either a very difficult or a very sadly unrewarded profession. Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him - or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them. — Dorothy L. Sayers

He admitted but four elementary principles, or more strictly, conditions of bliss. That which he considered chief was (strange to say!) the simple and purely physical one of free exercise in the open air. "The health," he said, "attainable by other means is scarcely worth the name." He instanced the ecstasies of the fox hunter, and pointed to the tillers of the earth, the only people who, as a class, can be fairly considered happier than others. His second condition was love of woman. His third, and most difficult of realization, was the contempt of ambition. His fourth was an object of unceasing pursuit; and he held that, other things being equal, the extent of attainable happiness was in proportion to the spirituality of this object. — Edgar Allan Poe

What does it mean to be cultured? Who is the cultured person? The cultured individual is not defined nor determined by status in society nor by wealth; but the cultured individual is determined and defined by his or her sense for the art of life. And what is the art of life? The art of life is the reflection of the mind and the soul upon the world, upon other people, upon the respect and understanding of other people and upon the things that are in this world and beyond. There is a joy that is always sought in beautiful things. Being cultured is being conscious, reflective, understanding, feeling, aware. Knowing how to feel, to listen, to understand. A desire to find or to create joy in many things - that is the art of life. And these things define a cultured person. — C. JoyBell C.

Is it not the interest of the human race, that every one should be so taught and placed, that he would find his highest enjoyment to arise from the continued practice of doing all in his power to promote the well-being, and happiness, of every man, woman, and child, without regard to their class, sect, party, country or colour — Robert Owen

I came from a white middle class neighborhood. Was I expected to go back there and teach the woman next door about Renaissance sonnets? The embarrassing truth of the matter was that I was being chosen because Yale University had some peculiar idea about what my skin color or ethnicity signified. — Richard Rodriguez

I know women are taught by other women that they must never admit the full truth to a man. But the highest form of affection is based on full sincerity on both sides. Not being men, these women don't know that in looking back on those he has had tender relations with, a man's heart returns closest to her who was the soul of truth in her conduct. The better class of man, even if caught by airy affectations of dodging and parrying, is not retained by them. A Nemesis attends the woman who plays the game of elusiveness too often, in the utter contempt for her that, sooner or later, her old admirers feel; under which they allow her to go unlamented to her grave. — Thomas Hardy

A woman must be nursed into subsistence by love, where a man can become stronger by being hated. - from 'Cows in Art Class — Charles Bukowski

This principle - that your spouse should be capable of becoming your best friend - is a game changer when you address the question of compatibility in a prospective spouse. If you think of marriage largely in terms of erotic love, then compatibility means sexual chemistry and appeal. If you think of marriage largely as a way to move into the kind of social status in life you desire, then compatibility means being part of the desired social class, and perhaps common tastes and aspirations for lifestyle. The problem with these factors is that they are not durable. Physical attractivess will wane, no matter how hard you work to delay its departure. And socio-economic status unfortunately can change almost overnight. When people think they have found compatibility based on these things, they often make the painful discovery that they have built their relationship on unstable ground. A woman "lets herself go" or a man loses his job, and the compatibility foundation falls apart. — Timothy Keller

The first time I taught a writing class in graduate school, I was worried. Not about the teaching material, because I was well prepared and I was teaching what I enjoyed. Instead I was worried about what to wear. I wanted to be taken seriously. I knew that because I was female, I would automatically have to prove my worth. And I was worried that if I looked too feminine, I would not be taken seriously. I really wanted to wear my shiny lip gloss and my girly skirt, but I decided not to. I wore a very serious, very manly, and very ugly suit. The sad truth of the matter is that when it comes to appearance, we start off with men as the standard, as the norm. Many of us think that the less feminine a woman appears, the more likely she is to be taken seriously. A man going to a business meeting doesn't wonder about being taken seriously based on what he is wearing - but a woman does. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I just like ladies who have class ... just be yourself and let your personality shine and let your individuality show. To me, that's sexier. A confident woman is a sexy woman, in my opinion — Queen Latifah

I decided that if I want to write about a female hero in the 1920s, I'm going to have to give her all the advantages I can because she has serious disadvantages in being a woman. I wasn't going to have her cowed or overawed by class, so she had to be titled. — Kerry Greenwood

The American Dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class. — James Truslow Adams

The liberal wing of the feminist movement may have improved the lives of its middle- and upper-class constituency
indeed, 1992 was the Year of the White Middle Class Woman
but since the leadership of this faction of the feminist movement has singled out black men as the meta-enemy of women, these women represent one of the most serious threats to black male well-being since the Klan. — Ishmael Reed

In reaction against the age-old slogan, "woman is the weaker vessel," or the still more offensive, "woman is a divine creature," we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that "a woman is as good as a man," without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is something so obvious that it is apt to escape attention altogether, viz: ( ... ) that a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual. What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person. — Dorothy L. Sayers

As soon as you opened your mouth and said the word woman, you were beaten down with the argument that you were betraying the class struggle. There are many poignant writings in which feminists first write pages about their class standpoint before getting to their actual issue. What was then known as class warfare is today called anti-racism. The threat of being accused of racism gave birth to false tolerance. — Alice Schwarzer

I'm very worried about the depiction of women on the screen. It's gotten worse than ever and it's related to their being either high- or low-class concubines, and the only question is when or where they will go to bed, with whom, and how many. There's nothing to do with the dreams of women, or of woman as the dream, nothing to do with the quirky part of her, the wonder of her. — John Cassavetes