Female Gaze Quotes & Sayings

Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of it - but we lose the dignity of being real men and women. Power corrupts; attracts the worst and corrupts the best ... Refuse to participate in evil; insist on taking part in what is healthy, generous, and responsible. Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back. Get down off the fence and lend a hand, grab a-hold, be a citizen - not a subject. — Edward Abbey

And we have not yet heard enough, if anything, about the female gaze. About the scorch of it, with the eyes staying in the head. — Maggie Nelson

A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty of fifty thousand revolutionary committees all over the land; a law of the Suspected, which struck away all security for liberty or life, and delivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain no hearing; these things became the established order and nature of appointed things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they were many weeks old. Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world- the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine. — Charles Dickens

You seem to be the one for firsts," his breath caught, "and lasts and always. — Aleksandr Voinov

And she would pray for guidance, but she wouldn't ask the Lord forgiveness for swearing at her husband. That was gonna stand for now. — J. Ryan Stradal

It was Dolana, at the salt farm, who first told me about the gaze of men: that look of temporary possession that some men pressed against female flesh. About its dangers and possibilities. It can be used to survive, Dolana had said softly, showing me the power that lay in reflecting a man's desire. And even at twelve years old, the knowledge of it was already in the way I moved my head, my hands, my shoulders. But Dolana had whispered her secrets to a girl. And I had to become a boy. I had to stop being alert to the turn of a man's head towards me. Stop glancing up to meet his gaze in fleeting connection. Stop falsely veiling my eyes from his momentary interest. It was hard to train out of my body, but I practised and learned to cloak myself in the skin and gaze of a boy. — Alison Goodman

Female competition is when you are with a guy you like and you look around, see that you're the prettiest girl in the vicinity and feel a huge sense of relief that there's no one to take the attention away from you. (Female competition is a result of women feeling like their greatest sense of self worth , identity and influence comes from their sexual appeal to men. Many women don't even realise they are feeling this way and it's a subconscious thing, but they notice themselves getting jealous when they see other women who they think men would find sexually appealing.) — Miya Yamanouchi

The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within - strength, courage, dignity. — Ruby Dee

I'm over a thousand years old. I've seen it all. You, sweetcheeks, are nothing new." At what must have been an outraged expression on her face, he laughed again. "Come on. Surely you can't think you are the only female out there who's had a rough life, had her heart walked on, been kept in a dungeon for three centuries, blah, blah, pick your trauma, and are now stomping around with all this pent-up anger you spill like acid on everyone who gets to know you." He narrowed his gaze at her. "How close am I?"
Sin's mouth worked, but nothing came out. She finally snapped it shut to avoid looking like a fish gasping on the bank of a river.
"That's what I thought." He made a shooing gesture with his hand. "No, run along and go be caustic with someone who cares. Oh, wait, no one cares, do they? Because you won't let them
— Larissa Ione

Flora had also learned the degraded art of 'tasting' unread books, and now, whenever her skimming eye lit on a phrase about heavy shapes, or sweat, or howls or bedposts, she just put the book back on the shelf, unread. — Stella Gibbons

Fear is born from ignorance. We think that the other person is trying to take away something from us. But if we look deeply, we see that the desire of the other person is exactly our own desire - to have peace, to be able to have a chance to live. — Nhat Hanh

When I was eight, I found my best friend. Then, one day, I came home and she'd changed. During my absence, she'd become the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen in my life and I fell in love with her so completely that the very idea of ever being without her became an impossibility I couldn't stand. That same girl has always been the only one to ever hold my heart in her hands. She's the only one who can both build me and destroy me if she wishes and I wouldn't change that for anything. I can't live without her." ~ Isaiah — Airicka Phoenix

The acceptance of woman as object of the desiring male gaze in the visual arts is so universal that for a woman to question or draw attention to this fact is to invite derision, to reveal herself as one who does not understand the sophisticated strategies of high culture and takes art "too literally," and is therefore unable to respond to aesthetic discourses. This is of course maintained within a world - a cultural and academic world - which is dominated by male power and, often unconscious, patriarchal attitudes. In Utopia - that is to say, in a world in which the power structure was such that both men and women equally could be represented clothed or unclothed in a variety of poses and positions without any subconscious implications of dominance or submission - in a world of total and, so to speak, unconscious equality, the female nude would not be problematic. In our world, it is. — Linda Nochlin

From the depths of her mind Stella's thoughts erupted with jealousy as the men nearby averted their gaze that had been focused on her to this new female attraction, her mind was pricked with feelings of inadequacy as it somersaulted through her body and she jolted in shock at the size of her breasts which were significantly larger than Stella's. — Jill Thrussell

Can I be honest with you?" he asked.
"Aren't you always? And brutally so?"
"I never realized you were a woman."
She choked on a laugh of surprise. "Excuse me?"
"Inside my head ... " he pointed, just in case she didn't know what a head looked like. "Inside my memories? You were always a little girl, like Izzy. Just a girl, skipping around, getting into trouble, and mouthing off. I never noticed you'd turned into a woman."
Though the comprehension of the way he viewed her stung like the burn on her hand, she gave his broad chest beneath that worn-out gray Marines T-shirt an understanding pat with her unburned hand. "I know. It happens to the best of us female types."
His big hand came up and captured hers against his chest.
"Annie?"
"yeah?"
His gaze slowly traveled over her face, down to her lips, then back to her eyes. "I'm noticing now. — Candis Terry

Let me try," he said, and he took the ends and positioned
himself in front of her mirror.
She watched him for about two seconds before declaring,
"You're going to have to go home."
His eyes did not leave the reflection of his neckcloth in the
mirror. "I haven't even got past the first knot."
"And you're not going to."
He gave her a supercilious look, brow quirked and all.
"You're never going to get it right," she pronounced. "I must
say, between this and your boots, I am revising my opinion on the
impracticalities of couture, male versus female."
"Really?"
Her gaze dropped to his boots, polished to a perfect shine. "No
one has ever had to take a knife to my footwear."
"I wear nothing that buttons up the back," he countered.
"True, but I may choose a dress that buttons in the front,
whereas you cannot go out and about without a neckcloth. — Julia Quinn

Hell of a sight. She let out a scream and just fell to pieces. Can't say I blame her. Like I said, this sort of thing is not for the female temperament." He directed that last sentiment at me, making eye contact for the first time.

"I dare say you're right, sir," I conceded, meeting his gaze. "Out of curiosity, though, is there someone whose temperament you do find suited to this sort of thing? I think I would be most unnerved to meet a man who found it pleasant. — William Ritter

Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world - the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.
It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented hair from turning gray, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack. — Charles Dickens

Xavier leaned forward. "Sarcasm aside, you don't need a guy like that, Elena. Maybe you think you do - only female werewolf and all that - but hell, I've seen what you can do - tied to a chair, up against a male werewolf. You can do that, you don't need some fucking psychopath like Clayton Danvers-"
He stopped, noticing my gaze.
"He's standing right behind me, isn't he?" Xavier muttered.
"Uh-huh."
Xaview tilted his head back, saw Clay, and disappeared. He reappeared on the opposite bench, pressed up against me. I looked over at him, eyebrow raised. He swore under his breath and teleported to the far end of the other bench. Then he stood and turned to Clay.
"You must be-"
"The fucking psychopath," Clay said.
"Er, right, but I meant that in the most respectful way. Believe me, I have the utmost regard for, uh ... "
"Raging lunatics," I said.
Xavier shot me a glare.
"Oh sit down," I said. "He didn't bring his chain saw. — Kelley Armstrong

Regardless of the business aspect of things, is there a reason that there isn't a female Hitchcock or a female Scorsese or a female Spielberg? I don't know. I think it's a medium that really is built for the male gaze and for a male sensibility. — Bret Easton Ellis

We were pulling into the next station, when the woman suddenly got to her feet and made a move to squeeze past me. As her knees made contact with mine, she turned towards me. Her eyes locked straight onto mine, her eyelids pinned back, with a look I could only describe as sheer dread. In the next second, deep tram-lines formed between her eyebrows and her expression shifted. It was as if she was silently imploring me, entreating me. To do what? I had no idea. I was immobile, her gaze pressing me into my seat by some centrifugal force and I held her stare, unsure of how to react. Just as swiftly, she dropped her eyes and the moment passed. With one final glance behind her, she was swallowed up in the bodies at the door.
She was getting off. Something wasn't right. — A.J. Waines

He pulled Dancer to the side. "Can I ask a huge favor?" Dancer scowled. "What?" "You know where we're headed. Find Talyn's female and bring her to the Porturnum station to stay with him. I think he'll like that." Dancer's gaze softened. "You sure?" He nodded. "Families shouldn't be separated. And while you're at it, why don't you bring Sumi and the kids, too? I know you don't want to be away from them, either." A strange shadow appeared in Dancer's red eyes. "Who are you and what have you done with my I-don't-give-a-shit-about-anything brother?" Fain snorted at his mock sarcasm. "Shut the fuck up and do what I said." "Now there's the familiar asshole I know so well and love for reasons still unknown." Fain — Sherrilyn Kenyon

She felt utterly crushed and betrayed. Science had betrayed her. She had always believed deep down that science would not judge her, even if people did. Her father's books had opened to her touch easily enough. His journals had not flinched from her all too female gaze. But it seemed that science had weighed her, labelled her and found her wanting. Science had decreed that she could not be clever ... and that if by some miracle she was clever, it meant that there was something terribly wrong with her. — Frances Hardinge

I'm compared to Kerouac, I suppose, because he traveled and rejected middle-class values, but the similarities end there. — Poe Ballantine

that'd be High." I stared up at my husband, the sharpest man I knew, wondering how, at least with one thing, he could be so dumb. "Uh, I don't think so." His gaze cut back to me. "Come again?" "The woman we just saw was the female adult equivalent of a six-year-old who just learned there's no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny, and she was adopted." He looked to the heavens and muttered, "Fuck." "Seriously," I snapped. — Kristen Ashley

I should not have to prove my ethnicity to anyone. I know who I am. — Christina Aguilera

Everything starts as somebody's daydream. — Larry Niven

You will never again threaten Magdelegna, or any other Demon, with your ignorance and avarice. Your death is too easy a punishment, necromancer. Be grateful for that.
A last breath rattled out of the necromancer, and Gideon released him with an absent shaking of his hand, as if flinging off some vile contaminant as the body fell to the floor. He turned his back on it without the slightest regret.
His mercury gaze sought out Legna, settling on her just as she rose from her position over the female necromancer. She threw back her head and shoulders, taking the deep, cleansing breath of a female predator satisfied with her kill. She'd always been the most beautiful female he'd ever seen, but now, in this victorious moment, she was utterly stunning. Gideon felt a savage response within himself, an urge so vital that it took nearly every ounce of his formidable control to tamp it down and lock it out of his thoughts so she wouldn't become aware of it. — Jacquelyn Frank

If you have conflicts, everything breaks down in society. Kids can't go to school. Basic health can't be looked after. Every aspect of society falls apart. — Richard Branson

At once i knew i was not magnificent. — Justin Vernon

We have not yet heard enough, if anything, about the female gaze. About the scorch of it. — Maggie Nelson

Holiday's eyes pooled with tears. And that pretty much made it a cry fest. Even Della joined in the tear party.
Right then, Burnett walked in the office. His gaze went from one female to the other. Kylie could almost hear him groaning inwardly.
"I ... I'll be ... right out there." Obviously even a hard-bodied vampire trained by the FRU wasn't capable of dealing with four crying women. — C.C. Hunter

His mother took pride in the fact that Phyr debauched his way from galaxy to galaxy. The only thing she didn't approve of was his lack of interest in settling down with a female and providing her with progeny she could corrupt. "I deserve grandchildren." "Isn't having me enough?" A cold gaze perused him. "No. — Eve Langlais

Although scholars such as Butler have debated such approaches as reinforcing problematic identity models and creating an either/or distinction, Lather is referring to the power of using the discouraged discourse as an act of transgression. Thus, embodiment and reflexivity are tools used to disrupt current language and assumptions about the value of female bodies through a voluptuous validity. The term "voluptuous" is not used as an objectification of a sexualised body, as seen through the male gaze, but rather as an ownership of the body through a somantic fullness. Characteristics associated with female, body, fluids, excess, undisciplined, and out of order aspects are purposively used as an act of rebellion against patriarchal taboos. — Jill Green

I'm uninterested in superheroes. I am only interested in real stories, real people, real connection. — Jamie Lee Curtis

Sheer male interest filled his gaze which was entirely focused on her. She'd never before felt so female, so utterly desirable, so wanton. — Jo Grafford

Lower your gaze because you become less of a human every time you stare at a woman and you stare at her like she's a piece of meat, like she's an animal. That just means you've lost respect for a fellow human being. You're looking at her like an ape looks at a female ape, like a dog looks at a female dog.That's all, you've turned into an animal. Regain your humanity. Lower your gaze. — Nouman Ali Khan