Brilliant Women Quotes & Sayings

I can't tell you how may beautiful women have broken up with me because they were bored. I can't tell you because it never happened. They all adored me."
"It was your humility, wasn't it? — Derek Landy

My mother was one of the most dynamic and brilliant women I have ever known. She was also mercurial and unfocused. — Christina Baker Kline

What must it be like to live in Rush Limbaughs world? A world where when anyone other than conservative, white men attempts to do anything or enter any profession, be it business, politics, art or sports, the only reason theyre allowed entry or, incredibly, attain excellence is because the standard was lowered. Be they liberals, people of color, women, the poor or anyone with an accent ... Edgy, controversial, brilliant. What a way to shake up intelligent sports commentary. Hitler would have killed in talk radio. He was edgy, too. — Nancy Giles

... trying to extinguish the brilliant hopes that blazed up a word of encouragement. — Louisa May Alcott

Women are brilliant. Every woman knows how to do the weirdest thing right out of the bucket. Every woman knows how to do that Hindu head wrap with the towel out of the shower. A typhoon couldn't blow that thing off their heads. Ever try to do that? You look like a drunk Iraqi soldier. — Tim Allen

Your hard-won triumphs can be wholly negated if you live in a climate where your victories are seen as threatening, incorrect, distasteful, or
most crucially of all, for a teenage girl
simply uncool. Few girls would choose to be right
right, down into their clever, brilliant bones
but lonely. — Caitlin Moran

Gloria had lulled his mind to sleep. She, who seemed of all women the wisest and the finest, hung like a brilliant curtain across his doorways, shutting out the light of the sun. In those first years what he believed bore invariably the stamp of Gloria; he saw the sun always through the pattern of the curtain. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I think it's really rare to see women on television who are brilliant, selfish, vain, fallible - and I feel like I have all those capacities in myself, so it's good to see people in the media representing all of those things. — Kerry Bishe

Stacy Schiff is that rare combination: a first-rate historian and a brilliant storyteller. Using a wide range of sources, she spins straw into gold, conjuring the world of Ptolemaic Egypt in full vibrant color, and returning the voice of one of the most powerful, fascinating, and maligned women in history. Cleopatra is impossible to put down. — Rick Riordan

Barbara did the selecting and that's probably the most brilliant thing was she put together a group of women, different backgrounds, different experiences. — Star Jones

Every time an actress is celebrated for her great work, I cheer. For the more brilliant their performance, the more the audience demands stories about women ... And as we all know: a great year for women in film, is just a great year for film. — Jessica Chastain

As someone who has spent many years marveling at the brilliant and painstaking work of the doctors, scientists and researchers at St. Jude, I can attest firsthand to the bone-deep commitment these men and women have made in their fight against disease. They are at it around the clock - every hour of the day, every day of the year. — Marlo Thomas

These are things that only dogs and women understand because we tap into the pain directly, we connect to pain directly from its source, and so it is at once brilliant and brutal and clear, like white-hot metal spraying out of a fire hose, we can appreciate the aesthetic while taking the worst of it straight in the face. Men, on the other hand, are all filters and deflectors and timed release. — Garth Stein

When the Lord is your confidence you will never find yourself at all deceived by the ways and speech of men and women, though they be very brilliant, if they speak outside of the Principle that demonstrates healing and goodness and life. — Emma Curtis Hopkins

Inez, I'm sorry," Thomas said quietly, his expression earnest. "I had no choice. You were dying, and besides you agreed to the turn the night before. Didn't you?" He frowned and muttered, "Of course, it was right after you'd nearly drowned and you might not have really understood what was going on at the time. Do you even love me? You nodded to that too, but ... " He raised his head and said solemnly, "I'm sorry if you're upset about being turned, but I'm not sorry for doing it. Because whether you love me or not, Inez, I love you. You're strong, and brilliant and sweet and have a strength I've never seen in other women. This last week you've done whatever was required of you to help find Marguerite without complaint or allowing fear to stop you, even going so far as being the bait in the trap." He scowled and then admitted, "Though I have to say I thought that was rather foolish. I was really pissed at you for putting your life at risk like that. — Lynsay Sands

Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat, speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women, narrowly escaping Sardinian bandits - the usual stuff that newspaper dreams are made of. — Russell Baker

Marry me, Lou," Nietzsche bent down on one knee, his knees creaked. He peered over top of his glasses with a gaze of pitiful defeat. He had met his match with Lou. She was brilliant, shrewd, and brave. Taking risks that other women dare not.

"Get up, Friedrich," she responded, "You know that I won't marry you or anyone else. — Dylan Callens

I want to do roles that take women a step farther. I don't want to be slotted into anything. But if I get a brilliant role which requires me to be a mother, then I will do it. But I want people to see that a woman could be anything at whatever age, even if she is married or has two kids. — Madhuri Dixit

In the old days, before I was married, or knew a lot of women, I would just pull down all the shades and go to bed for three or four days. I'd get up to shit. I'd eat a can of beans, go back to bed, just stay there for three or four days. Then I'd put on my clothes and I'd walk outside, and the sunlight was brilliant, and the sounds were great. I felt powerful, like a recharged battery. But you know the first bring-down? The first human face I saw on the sidewalk, I lost half my charge right there. — Charles Bukowski

I've been so amazed at the number of really professional top-of-their-game women who I know to be intelligent, well educated and brilliant who have said, 'What was it like to snog Matt LeBlanc?' — Tamsin Greig

Woke up this morning to the incredible news that I was nominated for an Emmy, and a shower full of dog poop. Apparently my dog is so excited, she has explosive diarrhea. I truly could not be more thankful to the Emmy voters for including me in this brilliant company of extraordinary women. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go clean up an enormous amount of dog poop out of my shower. Yay! — Martha Plimpton

The surest path to success is to surround yourself with brilliant women — Barack Obama

I really don't like women who try to be men. All these politicians, I think they're horrendous. We could have a brilliant future, but we have this terrible male vision of destroying everything. They'd better sort themselves out and become more womanly. — Vivienne Westwood

I love a lot of comedy actors and actresses like Kristen Wiig and Tina Fey and all those women who are really brilliant and funny. — Saoirse Ronan

I am going to make you what you may perhaps consider rather a singular proposition. It is this, that if you don't like me, say so at once, and we will part now, before we have time to know anything more of each other, and I will endeavour not to cross your path again unless you seek me out. But if on the contrary, you do like me, - if you find something in my humour or turn of mind congenial to your own disposition, give me your promise that you will be my friend and comrade for a while, say for a few months at any rate. I can take you into the best society, and introduce you to the prettiest women in Europe as well as the most brilliant men. I know them all, and I believe I can be useful to you. But if there is the smallest aversion to me lurking in the depths of your nature" - here he paused, - then resumed with extraordinary solemnity - "in God's name give it full way and let me go, - because I swear to you in all sober earnest that I am not what I seem! — Marie Corelli

Whether ... a change from the supremacy of natural science to a new social science will take place ... depends on one factor: how many brilliant, learned, disciplined, and caring men and women are attracted by the new challenge ... — Erich Fromm

The woman poet must be either a sexless, reclusive eccentric, with nothing to say specifically to women, or a brilliant, tragic, tortured suicide. — Marilyn Hacker

It isn't about the looks; gorgeous women get dumped every day. It isn't about intelligence. Women of all types, from brilliant women to women with the IQ equivalent of plant life, pull it off every day. It's about mystery and learning how to create intrigue. — Sherry Argov

I stopped glorifying women as beautiful only if they were also thin. In fact, beautiful was the very last thing I decided I would tell Gigi she was each day, after brilliant, hilarious, curious, creative, and daring. There are so many important things to be in this world, it's unfair to devote so much of what describes us to our body size. — Brittany Gibbons

There's such an array of brilliant roles for young women. You read all these amazing young women going through different stages in their life - different stages, different fascinations, different textualities, different friendships. — Juno Temple

Lipstick is really magical. It holds more than a waxy bit of color - it holds the promise of a brilliant smile, a brilliant day, both literally and figuratively. — Roberta Gately

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

Archer tries not to think of his own state of purity, physically unsullied, yet now spiritually beyond redemption, his thoughts plagued by lithe limbs and brilliant blue eyes. Doctor Archer has never really understood women, nor has he ever had time for courtship; this is a sacrifice he has willingly made for his career. He thought - believed - for most of his adult life that his vocation was to tend the sick of mind. Romance was a frivolity, carnal urges something he successfully sublimated, resisting the drive to spoil himself. Now, in the overbearing loneliness of his 4am bed he touches himself in secret, panting and hungry and stunned by shame — John T. Fuller

I feel very angry when I think of brilliant, or even interesting, women whose minds are wasted on a home. Better have an affair. It isn't permanent and you keep your job. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Finding The Man. Keeping The Man. Not scaring The Man, building up The Man, following The Man, soothing The Man, flattering The Man, deferring to The Man, changing your judgement for The Man, changing your decisions for The Man, polishing floors for The Man, being perpetually conscious of your appearance for The Man, being romantic for The Man, hinting to The Man, losing yourself in The Man. 'I never had a thought that wasn't yours.' Sob, sob. Whenever I act like a human being, they say, 'What are you getting upset about?' They say: of course you'll get married. They say: of course you're brilliant. They say: of course you'll get a PhD and then sacrifice it to have babies. They say: if you don't, you're the one who'll have two jobs and you can make a go of it if you're exceptional, which very few women are, and if you find a very understanding man. As long as you don't make more money than he does. How do they expect me to live all this junk? — Joanna Russ

Until such time as one has put to oneself a certain number of questions about an author, and has answered them, be it only to oneself alone and under one's breath, one cannot be sure of having grasped him completely, even though the questions may seem quite foreign to the nature of his writings: What were his religious ideas? How did the spectacle of nature affect him? How did he behave in the matter of women, of money? Was he rich, poor; what was his diet, his daily routine? What was his vice or his weakness? None of the answers to these questions is irrelevant. Even so, the answers tend to be surprising. However brilliant, however wise the work, it seems that the lives of artists can be relied upon to exhibit an extraordinary, incongruous range of turmoil, misery, and stupidity. — Alain De Botton

Women are more balanced than men. Where the most brilliant minds have so far have mostly belonged to men, no women has ever been as stupid as a man can be. — John Smith

Boy or girl? I had never thought about that. The men who work at the palace, they use words to govern the country and use strength to protect it. Bringing all kinds of brilliant men from the kingdom, and they all have amazing talents.
But ... how are they different from me?
The women inside the palace, they had white skin and beautiful hair. And their clothes were fashionable, their hearts were gentle and ever changing like the snow in the wind.
But ... how am I anything like them? — Da Xia

What's amazing to me is how many of the issues facing women in the ancient world still linger today. Take Odysseus' wife, Penelope, a brilliant, resourceful woman who ends up in a terrible situation: in her husband's absence, she is being held hostage in her own home by men who claim to be courting her. She tries to make them leave, but because she's a woman they refuse, blaming their bad behavior on her desirability. — Madeline Miller

As his people positioned themselves in and around the pass, Arin though that he might have misunderstood the Valorian addiction to war. He had assumed it was spurred by greed. By a savage sense of superiority. It had never occurred to him that Valorians also went to war because of love.
Arin loved those hours of waiting. The silent, brilliant tension, like scribbles of heat lightning. His city far below and behind him, his hand on a cannon's curve, ears open to the acoustics of the pass. He stared into it, and even though he smelled the reek of fear from men and women around him, he was caught in a kind of wonder.He felt so vibrant. As if his life was fresh, translucent, thin-skinned fruit. It could be sliced apart and he wouldn't care. Nothing felt like this. — Marie Rutkoski

True education seeks to make men and women not only good mathematicians, proficient linguists, profound scientists, or brilliant literary lights, but also honest men and women with virtue, temperance, and brotherly love. — David O. McKay

He recommended I read the book Words That Work, written by Republican political strategist Frank Luntz. It's brilliant. Matt added, "If someone likes that book, then I might point them to George Lakoff. He has a great seminal work from the 1980s called Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things." He loves books about framing and language. — Timothy Ferriss

It's not racism per se but the tyranny of normalcy - no: the tyranny of attractive normalcy. Which leads to loveable white models who are supposed to be playing ordinary, adorably flawed professionals just like you and me with their brilliant minority friends (with vastly less camera time) who are surgeons. But it's not just ethnicity. That narrow vision also extends to, say, things like women leads. Women leads have to be good-hearted and nice, with a Slutty Best Friend. The main character can't be slutty. Because that's not attractively normal etc — Sandra Tsing Loh

[Writing in the voice of female characters] is scary. You get more cautious as you get older. I probably wouldn't write as an American either. I'd find a reason to make them half British.
I'm aware that female writers have been writing brilliant female characters for hundreds of years. I could make a terrible fool of myself unless I work out what the traps are, find bad female characters by male writers, work out why they're bad and give my wife every single book to read. — David Mitchell

She, Laura, likes to imagine (it's one of her most closely held secrets) that she has a touch of brilliance herself, just a hint of it, though she knows most people probably walk around with similar hopeful suspicions curled up like tiny fists inside them, never divulged. She wonders, while she pushes a cart through the supermarket or has her hair done, it the other women aren't all thinking, to some degree or other, the same thing: Here is the brilliant spirit, the woman of sorrows, the woman of transcendent joys, who would rather be elsewhere, who has consented to perform simple and essentially foolish tasks, to examine tomatoes, to sit under a hair dryer, because it is her art and her duty. — Michael Cunningham

When you come from a privileged household, we've been able to buy monthly feminine products since the first day that we got our periods. A lot of women out there have absolutely no means to be able to afford something that seems as simple and as much of a no-brainer as a feminine product. I think Monthly Gift has a really brilliant cause - giving underprivileged girls free feminine products every month. — Chloe Grace Moretz

And this is your close friend, Drew?" he asked looking at Mark...

"Good buddy... Just hanging out here. Doing guy stuff."

"Talking about women. And sports. And beer. And uh..." Mark added.

"Condoms," Drew added and I rolled my eyes. Brilliant. — N.M. Silber

Louis Brandeis actually changes his mind about women's suffrage because he works with these brilliant women in the women's suffrage movement like Josephine Goldmark, his sister-in-law, where he writes a Brandeis brief which convinced the court to uphold maximum hour laws for women by collecting all these facts and empirical evidence. — Jeffrey Rosen

Oh, I simply can't think. When I really want to depress myself, I think of all the brilliant men I know, married to their stupid wives. Enough to break your heart, it really is — Doris Lessing

Young people seldom turn out as one predicts, so it is of little use to expect anything,' said Mrs. Meg with a sigh. 'If our children are good and useful men and women, we should be satisfied; yet it's very natural to wish them to be brilliant and successful. — Louisa May Alcott

The twenty-first-century successful black woman is brilliant and tenacious and not afraid to flex her intellectual, spiritual, or financial muscles. She has accomplished, earned, and owned more than black women of any other generation in American history. — Sophia Nelson

We arrive with our ... 'baggage' and for a while they're brilliant, they're 'Baggage Handlers.' We say, 'Where's your baggage?' They deny all knowledge of it ... 'They're in love' ... they have none. Then ... just as you're relaxing ... a Great Big Juggernaut arrives ... with their baggage. It Got Held Up. One of the greatest myths men have about women is that we overpack. — Patrick Marber

Some are born brilliant, some have brilliance thrust upon them
and others cower in the dark crying, It burns! It burns! — K.A. Laity

Women's marches are a clever progressive divide and conquer strategy that not only turns women against men, but also turns women against each other in the guise of peace and solidarity. It is a brilliant tactic to employ media propaganda to make privileged women feel oppressed and then program them to think that vulgarity, exhibitionism and emasculation is empowering. — Dawn Perlmutter

There are no important differences between men and women, but the unimportant ones are sometimes very interesting. — Ashleigh Brilliant

Someone who butts in when you're talking and smugly provides the ending herself. Indeed anyone who butts in, be they child or adult, is most infuriating. — Sei Shonagon

[She] knew there were women who worked successfully out of the home. They ran businesses, created empires and managed to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted children who went on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard or became world-renowned concert pianists. Possibly both.
These women accomplished all this while cooking gourmet meals, furnishing their homes with Italian antiques, giving clever, intelligent interviews with Money magazine and People, and maintaining a brilliant marriage with an active enviable sex life and never tipping the scale at an ounce over their ideal weight ...
She knew those women were out there. If she'd had a gun, she'd have hunted every last one of them down and shot them like rabid dogs for the good of womankind. — Nora Roberts

Women are so strong and knowledgeable. You know, instead of competing with each other, I would love to complete each other. Take away that wall of competition and say, 'Hey, let's just all get together and help each other be brilliant.' — Marie Osmond

Time and again, racist ideas have not been cooked up from the boiling pot of ignorance and hate. Time and again, powerful and brilliant men and women have produced racist ideas in order to justify the racist policies of their era, in order to redirect the blame for their era's racial disparities away from those policies and onto Black people. — Ibram X. Kendi

I got the opportunity to meet people all over the world. Brilliant women, tall women, short women, slim women, thick women, you name it. But, I don't meet them. I have the opportunities to and it's a little bit - I'm a little shy, so I don't meet them and I don't know who's right for me. — Nas

I've just finished a series of Olivia Manning novels. She's best known for two trilogies: Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy. The six novels are continuous and contain the same set of characters. They are based on Manning's experiences in Eastern Europe and Egypt during the Second World War. Each novel is a wonderful picture of the peculiar British expatriate culture and what was happening during the war. She's one of those brilliant women who write very well about domestic relationships. All the books are slim, and it's easy to gallop through them. — Sarah Waters

Lack of courage or means often deters the European woman from more independent business activity, and this in spite of increasing freedom to choose her occupation, in spite of brilliant examples of successful undertakings of women, in photography, hotel or boarding-house management, dress-making, etc. — Ellen Key

I cannot step into any day without help. I have a fantastically engaged husband who is very present for his children and our family life. We've got a brilliant nanny, other help from parents-in-law, godparents, friends. Also, I've had incredible women around me in the business. — Tamsin Greig

To say it for those who know how to explain a thing: women have the intelligence, men the heart and passion. This is not contradicted by the fact that men actually get so much farther with their intelligence: they have the deeper, more powerful drives; these take their intelligence, which is in itself something passive, forward. Women are often privately amazed at the great honor men pay to their hearts. When men look especially for a profound, warm-hearted being, in choosing their spouse, and women for a clever, alert, and brilliant being, one sees very clearly how a man is looking for an idealized man, and a woman for an idealized woman--that is, not for a complement, but for the perfection of their own merits. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Ma'am is yet another horrible-sounding word in the lexicon of words that women are stuck with to describe various aspects of their body/life/mental state/hair. Vagina. Moist. Fallopian tubes. Yeast infection. Clitoris. Frizz. These are all terrible words, and yet they are our assigned descriptors. Who made up these words? Women certainly didn't. If, at the beginning of time, right after making vaginas, God had asked me, 'What would you like your most intimate and enjoyable part of yourself to be called?',' I most certainly wouldn't have said, 'Vagina.' No woman would, because vagina sounds like a First World War term that was invented to describe a trench that has been mostly blown apart but is still in use. Even off the very top of my head I feel like I could have come up with something better, like for instance the word papoose, which actually as I'm typing it feels like an incredibly brilliant word for vagina. — Jessi Klein

Sir," Adam started - Blue's eyebrows spiked - "I think maybe your mama didn't teach you how to talk to women."

The old man shook his head at Adam, like in pity.

Adam added, "And she's not my girlfriend."

Blue flashed him a brilliant look of approval, and then she got into the car with a dramatic door slam Ronan would have approved of. — Maggie Stiefvater

It's well-known that men and women are different but it keeps being re-discovered with great excitement. — Ashleigh Brilliant

You are lovely, brilliant, witty ... the incredible words which would relieve her of any need to repay him or refuse his gifts; loveliness and wit were priced higher than any gift he offered, while if a girl were loved, even old women of hard experience would admit her right to take and never give. — Graham Greene

Leadership in the church is not entrusted to successful fund raisers, brilliant biblical scholars, administrative geniuses, or spellbinding preachers ... but to those who have been laid waste by a consuming passion for Christ - passionate men and women for whom privilege and power are trivial compared to knowing and loving Jesus. — Brennan Manning

We hear about every other kind of women- beautiful women, smart women, sophisticated women, career women, talented women, divorced women. But so seldom do we hear of a godly woman - or of a godly man for that matter ... It is a much nobler thing to be a good wife than to be Miss America ... it is a far, far better thing in the realms of morals to be old-fashioned than to be ultra modern. The world has enough women who know how to hold their cocktails, who have lost all their illusions and their faith ... the world has enough woman who know how to be brilliant. It needs some who will be brave. The World had enough woman who are popular. It needs more who are pure. We need women, and men, too, who would rather be morally right than socially correct. Quote from Peter Marshall in the book Un Compromising — Hannah Farver

Men can be brilliant and strong, they whispered to one another. But men can be mad, as well. And the mad ones can ruin the world.
Women, you must judge them ...
Never again can things be allowed to reach this pass, they said to one another as they thought of the sacrifice the Scouts had made.
Never again can we let the age-old fight go on between good and bad men alone.
Women, you must share responsibility ... and bring your own talents into the
struggle ...
And always remember, the moral concluded: Even the best men
the heroes
will sometimes neglect to do their jobs.
Women, you must remind them, from time to time ... — David Brin

There are so many brilliant women on television right now. — Martha Plimpton

I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say my mom. Apart from the fact that she's my mother, she's a brilliant comedian and a force as a producer. She paved the way for women to produce and star in their own films, and to balance that with being the matriarch of our family is really inspiring. — Kate Hudson

You're greedy, her mother had said to her quietly, that last night in New York, as she had packed her things. Greedy and selfish. It's not the knowledge you want, you can have that from your journals. you want to be in the newspapers, you want to be Marie Curie, you wat to think you're different from all of us. That all other women are silly and complacent and conventional, except you, brilliant you. — Beatriz Williams

I am penitent," says Vohannes. "I am penitent for all the relationships this shame has ruined. I am penitent that I've allowed my shame and unhappiness to spread to others. I've fucked men and I've fucked women, Father Kolkan. I have sucked numerous pricks, and I have had my prick sucked my numerous people. I have fucked and been fucked. And it was lovely, really lovely. I had an excellent time doing it, and I would gladly do it again. I really would." He laughs. "I have been lucky enough to find and meet and come to hold beautiful people in my arms - honestly, some beautiful, lovely, brilliant people - and I am filled with regret that my awful self-hate drove them away. — Robert Jackson Bennett

You can forgive a young cunt anything. A young cunt doesn't have to have brains. They're better without brains. But an old cunt, even if she's brilliant, even if she's the most charming woman in the world, nothing makes any difference. A young cunt is an investment; an old cunt is a dead loss. All they can do for you is buy you things. But that doesn't put meat on their arms or juice between their legs. — Henry Miller

Many of the religious apologists out there are not stupid people, they are often brilliant. People working in the field of theology and philosophy smart people everywhere. What they are those religious apologists are smart poeple who can build these amazingly intricate rationalizations for whatever weird practice they favor. Whether it's ritual cannibalism, or praying to spirits, or treating women as chattel. And they always building this on terrible shaky foundation of false premises. — PZ Myers

The world has enough women who know how to be smart. It needs women who are willing to be simple. The world has enough women who know how to be brilliant. It needs some who will be brave. The world has enough women who are popular. It needs more who are pure. We need women, and men, too, who would rather be morally right than socially correct. — Peter Marshall

Yes, it's unfortunate that we have been conditioned to see an alternative to motherhood as not normal. But you do all realise that some of the most brilliant women in the world don't have kids, right? Oprah, Gloria Steinem, Helen Mirren, Dolly Parton? Do you think their lives carry an air of tragedy because they never had children? I don't. I'm sure they all had different reasons for not doing it, some maybe couldn't, some didn't want to, but these women's lives are not empty because of that. I think it's important we take the lead from our heroes and for everyone to stop valuing women on whether they do, or do not, become mothers. The irony of yours and your listeners' opinions is that it is you boxing women in to these roles, not men. It's highly un-feminist of you.' She — Dawn O'Porter

He was neither rich nor great, young nor handsome, - in no respect what is called fascinating, imposing or brilliant; and yet he was as attractive as a genial fire, and people seemed to gather about him as naturally as about a warm hearth. — Louisa May Alcott

The lady in the latrine, Julie DuBois, and I were on our first date after three weeks of shameless flirting. I'm about forty, Julie's about thirty - a PhD in English lit, a professor at American University, learned, tenured, brilliant, blonde, blue-eyed - and, not that it matters, also quite attractive. I had been looking forward to this date for a week; I really wanted to get Julie's take on Marcel Proust's persistent use of subordinate clauses, a literary mystery I can never seem to get out of my mind - and yes, Julie was having trouble believing that, too. But men who date women for their looks alone are pigs. — Brian Haig

Women can do anything men can do, but often have more sense than even to be interested. — Ashleigh Brilliant

Young Sathian was flirtatious, titillating, quick-witted, and brilliant. He left a trail of broken hearts across the land as he teased and taunted his victims with his beauty and charm. Both women and men succumbed to his joie de vivre and panache as he was an untypical Ange'el that carried the sunshine in his smile and in his eyes. — Jamie Le Fay

Yet this perhaps is what love does, or the memory of it; it sucks the life from the living, glorying body and leaves it, when love has gone, a shred, a simulacrum - dross, to be swept up from the factory floor, pitiful and dusty, useless ... Do all men and women feel love before they die? This force, this source of light, that lies before the sun; glances off mountains and lakes, blinding and dazzling, on a Sunday afternoon; so brilliant you have to guard your soul, fold your arms to shield your heart from the very memory of it. — Fay Weldon

If you talk about yourself, he'll think you're boring. If you talk about others, he'll think you're a gossip. If you talk about him, he'll think you're a brilliant conversationalist. — Linda Sunshine