Girlish Quotes & Sayings

Gone were my girlish ideas about romantic love and my later ideas about sexual love. From Yi, I learned to appreciate deep-heart love. — Lisa See

Like all of my important memories, it has a potency that has influenced the pocket of time that holds it, so I can remember that particular Saturday afternoon, even though in many ways it was no different from any other. I can remember, for example, what van der Glick was wearing as she stepped out of the elevator, which was a dress covered with clownish polka dots. Rainie would make these heartbreaking stabs at femininity; indeed, she still does. It's not that she doesn't possess a woman's body now, and didn't posses a girl's body then. But clothes never seemed to fit her correctly, and the more girlish they were, the worse they would hang. — Paul Quarrington

I looked back to see Holmes mincing within my footsteps, his skirt drawn up to reveal the trousers below. Were it not for the threat hanging over us, I would have given out with a girlish giggle at the sight, but I refrained. I passed the gates with the revolver in my hand, but there was no human there, only a scurry in the dustbins. — Laurie R. King

Squee." 1 (verb): To emit an onomatopoetic girlish swooning sound out of pure fanboy adulation. 2 (noun): the sound itself. — Neil Patrick Harris

Before I began research for this book I was not consciously aware that women were aggressive in indirect ways, that they gossiped and ostracized each other incessantly, and did not acknowledge their own envious and competitive feelings. I now understand that, in order to survive as a woman, among women, one must speak carefully, cautiously, neutrally, indirectly; one must pay careful attention to what more socially powerful women have to say before one speaks; one must learn how to flatter, manipulate, aree with, and appease them. And, if one is hurt or offended by another woman, one does not say so outright; one expresses it indirectly, by turning others against her.
Of course, I refuse to learn these "girlish" lessons. — Phyllis Chesler

She had a girlish fullness to her face, which made a provocative contrast to the self-possession of her bearing as she opened her eyes and smiled at him. She'd known he was looking at her. She'd let the moment draw out, for some private feminine reason. The knowledge brushed over him like fingertips - stealing away his breath. — Meredith Duran

We make a good team, Mackenzie Bishop."
"We do." We do, and that is the thing that tempers the heat beneath my skin, checks the flutter of girlish nerves. This is Wesley. My friend. My partner. Maybe one day my Crew. The fear of losing that keeps me in check. — Victoria Schwab

I object to murder. It's just a silly girlish prejudice. — Elizabeth Peters

The charm of your writing," Evelyn Waugh once wrote to Mitford, "depends on your refusal to recognize a distinction between girlish chatter and literary language. — Nancy Mitford

I'm tempting you with fine gifts until your girlish ideals are quite worn away and you are at my mercy. — Margaret Mitchell

Neighbors would pass, and when they honked I'd remember that I was in my Speedo. Then I'd wrap my towel like a skirt around my waist and remind my sisters that this was not girlish but Egyptian, thank you very much. — David Sedaris

Being an actor gives you a chance to play all kinds of roles, very moving and dramatic on one project, silly and girlish on another. That's the most interesting thing out this business, you get to keep reinventing yourself. — Sarah Michelle Gellar

April, April
Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears. — William Watson

Her letters were bubbly and girlish. Her handwriting made her seem happier than she actually was. — Jennifer Mathieu

I love life and I love that about people ... I adore the human experience, I really adore the ... I love the contradictions of people ... I don't mind being sexy and girlish and womanly, and all those things at the same time ... smart and very — Jewel

Grief had refined her girlish prettiness, she had the clear decided looks of a woman who had seen her hopes destroyed. — Philippa Gregory

You talk to them. And look at their faces. Cows have very expressive faces.
I knew her well enough at that point not to be surprised by this. The first few months we'd worked together, I'd found her distant and intimidating, not just because she was Professor Preston's girlfriend, but also because she'd cultivated a very adult reserve that made her seem years older than the rest of us. She was all business at our editorial-board meetings, holding herself conspicuously aloof from the atmosphere of manic jocularity that dominated the proceedings. The more time we spent together, though, the more I'd come to realize that her reserve was rooted as much in shyness as in confidence, and that her quiet sophistication masked a powerful streak of girlish sincerity. — Tom Perrotta

I wasn't the demonstrative type. I didn't say I love you all the time, and I wasn't girlish or giggly. I hated shopping in pairs and preferred staying home with a good romance novel than a girls' night out. But I figured sometimes you have to meet someone halfway. — C.D. Reiss

Each hand held a shoe and a handful of skirt, the hem of her pale blue polonaise gown raised above the knee, exposing satin ribbons which held up her white stockings. The ribbons were a bold cerise, like her lips, which were pulled wide in a girlish grin - inviting and ripe with unspent kisses - a hot-sweet ring of nubile, innocent fire. High cheeks, pink with natural rouge, gave — Samantha Kaye

When stripped and shiny in the mist of the bath house, his bold virilia contrasted harshly with his girlish grace. He was a regular faunlet. — Vladimir Nabokov

She was bold, and yet she was reserved. She was sensual and girlish, but she was never coy. So I think that what she projected was a vitality and freshness that for many people came to stand for American womanhood. It's what made American women attractive: that outdoor complexion, that wonderful figure, and yet that carriage, that demureness, that suggested that she was in charge of herself and not to be had. — Paul Fees

I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I'm walking down the street. — Angelina Jolie

That poem was not by me. It is among the things which quite overpower me; I have never been able to read it without tears coming to my eyes; it sounds like a voice for which I have been waiting and waiting since childhood. The poem is by my friend Lou ... She is as shrewd as an eagle and brave as a lion, and yet still a very girlish child, who perhaps will not live long. — Friedrich Nietzsche

What bothered me most about chick lit, frankly, was how the term was used to dismiss a huge chunk of the bookstore as silly, girlish prattle. — Rachel Sklar

He looked at her an instant, for the effect of the graceful girlish figure with pale, passionate face and dark eyes full of sorrow, pride and resolution was wonderfully enhanced by the gloom of the great room, and glimpses of a gathering storm in the red autumn sky. — Louisa May Alcott

She didn't give her girlish attire a second thought as she jumped for the first branch and pulled herself off the ground. It was funny how adrenaline helped you do the unthinkable when fear ran through your blood. — Tory Richards

With ye, I don't want your land or money. I don't need power or prestige. I just want ye. I love ye, Aella. I love it when you're angry
and outspoken and killing things. I love ye when ye claw my back to
ribbons and scream to wake the dead. I love that ye are not meek or
mild, or willing to let others make your decisions." "Even if it does
drive you mental and I need to have the last word?" "Because ye do those
things." "So we're stuck together forever?" "And ever." "Seal it with a
kiss?" she asked with a sensuous smile. Her Scot did better than that.
He made short work of their clothes, his powerful hands ripping them
from their bodies while she laughed, a young, girlish sound, carefree
and wanton. — Eve Langlais

only had eyes for Hayden, who was wearing her blond hair pinned up in elaborate braids. In her light blue summer dress, she looked as fresh and alluring as apple pie. Even as a boy, he could have stared at her for hours when she did her hair in such a beautifully girlish fashion. And as a young man, after he'd discovered the joy of exploring the soft skin of his girlfriend, he could never look away from her pretty face when she offered him a smile. Even now, he couldn't think of anything he'd rather do than scrutinize her soft curves under that dress, to trace her delicate features with his gaze and stare into her sky-blue eyes. But that was no longer possible. He — Poppy J. Anderson

Can I say of her face - altered as I have reason to remember it, perished as I know it is - that it is gone, when here it comes before me at this instant, as distinct as any face that I may choose to look on in a crowded street? Can I say of her innocent and girlish beauty, that it faded, and was no more, when its breath falls on my cheek now, as it fell that night? Can I say she ever changed, when my remembrance brings her back to life, thus only; and, truer to its loving youth than I have been, or man ever is, still holds fast what it cherished then? — Charles Dickens

She regarded her grandchildren as if we were savings bonds, something certain to multiply in value through the majesty of arithmetic. Ya Ya and her husband had produced one child, who in turn had yielded five, a wealth of hearty field hands destined to return to the village, where we might crush olives or stucco windmills or whatever it was they did in her hometown. She was always pushing up our sleeves to examine our muscles, frowning at the sight of our girlish, uncallused hands. — David Sedaris

When he thought of her, he could call up a vivid picture of her to himself, especially the charm of that little fair head, so freely set on the shapely girlish shoulders, and so full of childish brightness and good humor. The childishness of her expression, together with the delicate beauty of her figure, made up her special charm, and that he fully realised. But what always struck him in her as something unlooked for, was the expression of her eyes, soft, serene, and truthful, and above all, her smile, which always transported Levin to an enchanted world, where he felt himself softened and tender, as he remembered himself in some days of his early childhood. — Leo Tolstoy

I'm not myself," she offered, guiltily. She softened around Tik Tok, and when she did she was, for those rare moments, girlish.
He smiled. "You can never say that. You're just a piece of yourself right now that you don't like. — Jodi Lynn Anderson

Do you have a first name, Mr. Spenser'?" Jill said. She had a soft girlish voice with just a hint of huskiness at the edges.

I told her my first name. — Robert B. Parker

Jubilation knows and Longing grants
only Lament still learns; with girlish hands
she counts the ancient evil through the nights.
But suddenly, unpracticed and askant,
she lifts one of our voice's constellations
Into the sky unclouded by her breath. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Alexa realized she'd always confessed everything to Maggie except for one event. The first time Nick kissed her. She'd known she loved him back then. Friendship turned to rivalry and then to a girlish crush. That first kiss twisted emotions so pure within her she believed it was love. Her heart beat for him, full of joy at the possibility of them being together, so she uttered the words, her voice echoing through the trees.
I love you. — Jennifer Probst

We have more patience for girls who act like boys than boys who act like girls. A tomboy is considered cute. One day she'll shuck her muddy jeans and put on a dress, and everyone will gasp at her beauty. They'll all laugh about her tree-climbing, frog-catching days.
But there's no such tolerance for the boy who puts on a dress, who wants a toy kitchen or a baby doll to love. Jung would say that this is because, even culturally, our anima is repressed, hated, derided. We hate our female selves. A boyish girl is perfectly acceptable. A girlish boy? Not so much. In certain places, you'd get your ass kicked, find yourself "gay-bashed." You might even get yourself killed. That's how much we hate our anima. — Lisa Unger

Camille?" Her voice quiet and girlish and unsure. "You know how people sometimes say they have to hurt because if they don't, they're so numb they won't feel anything?"
"Mmm."
"What if it's the opposite?" Amma whispered. "What if you hurt because it feels so good? Like you have a tingling, like someone left a switch on in your body. And nothing can turn that switch off except hurting? What does that mean?"
I pretended to be asleep. I pretended not to feel her fingers tracing vanish over and over on the back of my neck. — Gillian Flynn

Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him from his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such gladhearted visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air. More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile. — Herman Melville

It is a giggle full of high spirits and merry mischief, proof that we never lose our girlish selves, no matter what sort of women we become. — Libba Bray

Alice looked at the sky and sniffed at the heavens. Night seemed to swallow her. It was true, then, her ancient, girlish understanding. Grief is like space walking. It is nothing terrestrial. Laws of gravity alter, and bodies tilt and float away. — Gail Jones

You are full of cruelty and mockery," Kami said. "My heart breaks to think of the day I entrusted you with the fragile flower of my girlish friendship. — Sarah Rees Brennan

She wished a silly, girlish wish: that she'd had a chance to really fly on the carpet when it was still a carpet. With Aladdin. Zooming through the night air like she was doing now, but with his warm arms to hold on to and the entire world at their feet. They could have gone anywhere they wanted. They would have been completely free. — Liz Braswell

A few flat clouds folded themselves like crepes over fillings of apricot sky. Pompadours of supper-time smoke billowed from chimneys, separating into girlish pigtails as the breeze combed them out, above the slate rooftops. Chestnut blossoms, weary from having been admired all day, wore faint smiles of anticipation. — Tom Robbins

I needed to get a handle on this girlish exhilaration. This girlish exhilaration needed a reality check. Maybe even a bitch-slap. — L. H. Cosway

The disappointment he felt in his daughters sifted down on them like ash, dulling their buttery complexions and choking the lilt out of what should have been girlish voices. — Toni Morrison

As Wendy watched them they burst into a chord of tinkling, girlish laughter. She felt a smile touch her own lips; not one of them could be under sixty. — Stephen King

The intensity of her religious disposition, the coercion it exercised over her life, was but one aspect of a nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and intellectually consequent: and with such a nature struggling in the bands of a narrow teaching, hemmed in by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth of petty courses, a walled-in maze of small paths that led no whither, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once exaggeration and inconsistency. The thing which seemed to her best, she wanted to justify by the completest knowledge; and not to live in a pretended admission of rules which were never acted on. Into this soul-hunger as yet all her youthful passion was poured; the union which attracted her was one that would deliver her from her girlish subjection to her own ignorance, and give her the freedom of voluntary submission to a guide who would take her along the grandest path. — George Eliot

Women diet to retain their girlish figures or their boyish husbands. — Evan Esar

It might seem singular that Nancy - with her religious theory pieced together out of narrow social traditions, fragments of church doctrine imperfectly understood, and girlish reasonings on her small experience - should have arrived by herself at a way of thinking so nearly akin to that of many devout people, whose beliefs are held in the shape of a system quite remote from her knowledge - singular, if we did not know that human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barriers of system. — George Eliot

As Jax went to knock on the door, she nearly stopped him. But the opportunity was eliminated as his knocks faded into silence. "Who?" A sleep-hazy voice called. "Your blushing princess," Jax called in a girlish falsetto. "Go away, Jax. — Elise Kova

Astra is a beauty. ( ... ) Astra is so beautiful that I have no wish to describe her beauty. I will say only that her beauty is the expression of her soul. Her beauty lives in her quiet walk, in her shy movements, in her always-lowered eyelids, in her barely perceptible smile, in the soft outline of her girlish shoulders, in the chastity of her poor, almost beggarly clothing, in her thoughtful grey eyes. She is a white water lily in a pond shadowed by the branches of trees, born amid still, contemplative water. ( ... ) The world of modest female beauty finds its expression in Astra. As for what may lie hidden in the depths of these waters, no-one can say unless he breaks the water's smooth surface, walks barefoot through the cutting sedge and treads the silty, sucking mud - now cold, now strangely warm. But I only stand on the shore, admiring the lily from a distance — Vasily Grossman

Mrs. Allan's face was not the face of the girlbride whom the minister had brought to Avonlea five years before. It had lost some of its bloom and youthful curves, and there were fine, patient lines about eyes and mouth. A tiny grave in that very cemetery accounted for some of them; and some new ones had come during the recent illness, now happily over, of her little son. But Mrs. Allan's dimples were as sweet and sudden as ever, her eyes as clear and bright and true; and what her face lacked of girlish beauty was now more than atoned for in added tenderness and strength. — L.M. Montgomery

People think I'm girlish and flippant, but I was an honours student. I was voted Girl Most Likely To Succeed at North Mesquite High in Texas. My best subject was science. I won a scholarship. — Jerry Hall

The Kiss to End All Kisses
There's supposed to be 'a moment' that every girl dreams about her whole life. You know, the one;some guy on bended knee offering you his heart. Well, I was never that kind of girl. — Ali Harris

And just as it is common to hear how, when one is in love, anything one sees reminds one of that love - our feelings remake the world in a secular equivalent of the faith that sees the hand of God in everything - so I began to find that when one is thinking on a theme, everything seems to reflect on it. Suddenly, everything I saw or read, in this girlish city of temples, seemed to take me back to the theme of the lady and the monk. — Pico Iyer

But I am not the sea nor the red sun,
I am not the wind with girlish laughter,
Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes,
Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death,
But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,
Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land,
Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings,
And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant,
Aloft there flapping and flapping. — Walt Whitman

It didn't help that Norma had all the girlish charm of a boulder — Amy Stewart

My vocal style I haven't tried to copy from anyone. It just developed until it became the girlish whine it is today. — Robert Plant

Love is a kind of dementia with very precise and oft-repeated clinical symptoms. You blush in each other's presence, you both hover in places where you expect the other to pass, you are both a little tongue-tied, you both laugh inexplicably and too long, you become quite nauseatingly girlish, and he becomes quite ridiculously gallant. You have also grown a little stupid. — Louis De Bernieres

defiant, and her words have rough, girlish hope. The — Kathleen Glasgow

Thought is pleasing. Her room is small, neat, and girlish: all whites, creams, and baby blues, and bathed in the soft glow of her bedside lamp. It's also a little empty, but I spy — E.L. James

You are so beautiful," he sighed into her hair.
She tried to check her girlish giggle, unsuccessfully. "Gray, it's dark as
pitch. You can't even see me."
"Even in the dark," he murmured against her skin. "You are the most
beautiful woman I've ever known, even in the dark. — Tessa Dare

It was fascinating to watch her spin the tale. She'd adjusted her accent yet again, adding just a twitch of country. She looked up at him with just the right amount of girlish adoration. As if they were deeply in love and barely beginning to discover one another.
He couldn't help looking back with the same expression. He wasn't dissembling. — Courtney Milan

If we want to give our children what they need to thrive, we must honor their basic nature- boyish or girlish, introverted or extroverted, wild or mellow. — Wendy Mogel

Now, unless someone's, like, 50 or older, they're meant to behave like girls. And it's a broad stroke: It's not just a moment of being vulnerable and girlish. — Lisa Kudrow

I can't believe I got a major-label record deal. My music was quirky, and my voice was so odd and high and girlish, it was like a weird novelty act. — Juliana Hatfield

Peter leaned forward, put his arms round the beast and kissed the furry head: it wasn't a girlish thing for him to do, because he was the High King. — C.S. Lewis

I regretted what a serious teenager I'd been: There were no posters of pop stars or favorite movies, no girlish collection of photos or corsages. Instead there were paintings of sailboats, proper pastel pastorals, a portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt. The latter was particularly strange, since I'd known little about Mrs. Roosevelt, except that she was good, which at the time I suppose was enough. Given my druthers now, I'd prefer a snapshot of Warren Harding's wife, "the Duchess," who recorded the smallest offenses in a little red notebook and avenged herself accordingly. Today I like my first ladies with a little bite. — Gillian Flynn

I like to keep my girlish figure — Billie Joe Armstrong

A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane's and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the white fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's, soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face. — James Joyce

How can you manage all alone, Mr. Young?" His large, almost girlish eyes rested on her for a moment before he replied, and then it was in the softest and gentlest of voices. "Oh, I get along pretty well with them. — Jack London

I'm not looking for a boyish girl. I'm looking for a boy. And I'm not looking for a girlish boy either. — Harry Hay

Eleanor was charming. That is to say, her manner seemed designed to merit that description: she displayed towards us a sort of girlish archness, such as a doting father might have found captivating in an only daughter at the age of eight. The effect was as of attempting to camouflage an armored tank by icing it with pink sugar: stratagem doomed to failure. — Sarah Caudwell

It's spring! Farewell To chills and colds! The blushing, girlish World unfolds Each flower, leaf And blade of sod - Small letters sent To her from God. — John Updike

She had the swagger of a girl. She blushed like a boy. She had a girl's toughness. She has a boy's gentleness. She was as meaty as a girl. She was as graceful as a boy. She was as brave and handsome and rough as a girl. She was as pretty and delicate and dainty as a boy. She turned boys' heads like a girl. She turned girls' heads like a boy. She made love like a boy. She made love like a girl. She was so boyish it was girlish, so girlish it was boyish, she made me want to rove the world writing our names on every tree. I had simply never found someone so right. Sometimes this shocked me so much that I was unable to speak. — Ali Smith

I had the girlish, round face that would have passed for a German World War II poster of an Aryan Hitler youth had I worn braided pigtails. — Maggie Young

Honestly, I like everything, boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. — Angelina Jolie

The "feminine" woman is forever static and childlike. She is like the ballerina in an old-fashioned music box, her unchanging features tiny and girlish, her voice tinkly, her body stuck on a pin, rotating in a spiral that will never grow. — Susan Faludi

Everytime I say "sure" when I mean "no," everytime I smile brightly when I'm exploding with rage, every time I imagine my man's achievement is my own, I know the cheerleader never really died. I feel her shaking her ass inside me and I hear her breathless, girlish voice mutter "T-E-A-M, Yea, Team. — Louise Bernikow

What was it about my obsession with romance that always made me feel embarrassed? Like it was a silly, girlish thing to obsess about. In reality, it was what we all wanted, right? — L. H. Cosway

They are afraid to read out loud, fearful of being thought stupid or foolish or - what? I ask them. Girlish? Boring, says one Megan. (Which Megan? I can't remember.) This is a terrible fear, I know - this fear of not being interesting - of being trivial, not special. It is almost as great, I think, as their fear of standing out and being special. — Sallie Tisdale

'Princess' is a good word, as is 'girlish', 'pixie-like' and all these other things. I personally find it a bit boring, it's all been done before. The amount of times you read reviews of bands and it's an all-girl four-piece, and they talk about what the women are wearing ... you'll never read a review that's like: "Male singer Thom Yorke, who was dressed in a white t-shirt and jeans ... " You would never read that about a man. — Lauren Mayberry