If A Man Wants A Woman Quotes & Sayings

But no one wants to listen to our sad stories unless they are smoothed over with a joke or nice melody. And even then, not always. No one wants to hear a woman talking or writing about pain in a way that suggests that it doesn't end. Without a pat solution, silver lining, or happy ending we're just complainers -- downers who don't realize how good we actually have it.

Men's pain and existential angst are the stuff of myth and legends and narratives that shape everything we do, but women's pain is a backdrop- a plot development to push the story along for the real protagonists. Disrupting that story means we're needy or shellfish, or worst of all, man-haters - as if after all men have done to women over the ages the mere act of not liking them for it is most offensive. — Jessica Valenti

This catch-22 happens a lot to men. A man can sense that a woman wants to know if he loves her. He doesn't want to share those feelings because, if he does, she will expect him to marry her and be greatly hurt if he doesn't. In romantic movies, loving someone meant that you wanted to marry her. In real life, it is not always the case. — John N. Gray

All women like men to be strong and decided and following out their careers. A woman wants to be motherly to a man and protect his weak side, but he must have a strong side too, which she can respect ... If you ever care for a woman, I don't advise you to let her see that you've got no ambition. Otherwise she'll get to despise you. — Christopher Isherwood

I have the honour to be quite of your Lordship's opinion," said Mr. Lovel, looking maliciously at Mrs. Selwyn, "for I have an insuperable aversion to strength, either of body or mind, in a female."
"Faith, and so have I," said Mr. Coverley; "for egad I'd as soon see a woman chop wood, as hear her chop logic."
"So would every man in his senses," said Lord Merton; "for a woman wants nothing to recommend her but beauty and good nature; in every thing else she is either impertinent or unnatural. For my part, deuce take me if ever I wish to hear a word of sense from a woman as long as I live!"
"It has always been agreed," said Mrs. Selwyn, looking round her with the utmost contempt, "that no man ought to be connected with a woman whose understanding is superior to his own. Now I very much fear, that to accommodate all this good company, according to such a rule, would be utterly impracticable, unless we should chuse subjects from Swift's hospital of idiots. — Fanny Burney

I'm here because you're here. When a man loves a woman, he wants to spend time with her. Even if that means he has to put on a suit and tie. He wants to hold her tight and smell her hair. — Rachel Gibson

The Problem is: many terrific women have made themselves overqualified for the job of wife, because many men are looking for a woman with 'receptionist-level wife skills', not 'CEO-level wife skills'. Meaning: If a woman doesn't hang on a man's every word, is too independent, challenges his leadership, wants to create her own hours, demands emotional raises, then there won't be as many openings for the kind of wife position she is seeking. One of the big problems with marriages in the nineties: no room for two husbands. — Karen Salmansohn

Any woman can fool a man if she wants to and if he's in love with her. — Agatha Christie

Now I have a theory that if a woman wants to keep a man she only needs to say two things: She believes in him and he's got a big a cock. That's all it takes. It doesn't even have to be true. — Ethan Hawke

Contrary to popular opinion, a man can shut love out if he wants to. But to do so, he must free himself not only from the woman who has bewitched him but also from the third person in the story, the ghost who has put temptation in his way. — Orhan Pamuk

Let a man who wants to find abundance of employment procure a woman and a ship: for no two things do produce more trouble if you begin to equip them; neither are these two things ever equipped enough. — Plautus

The only way marriage can work is if a man respects the woman and she is a thinking woman and he wants to work on the marriage. — Al Goldstein

Femininity doesn't always relate to being a woman and masculinity doesn't always relate to being a man; it's a quality of being-ness. Women have to portray the quality of masculinity; society wants it to be like a man; not necessarily male, but like a man. If that makes sense ... In nature itself, there's yin and yang, there's masculine and feminine. — Hamid Drake

If a woman love you, truly loves you, baby, she lets you be the man you have to be. She doesn't change you into the man she wants you to be. — Kristen Ashley

A young woman, if she fall into bad gands, may be teazed, and kept at a distance from those she wants to be with; but one cannot comprehend a young man's being under such restraint, as not to be able to spend a week with his father, if he likes it. — Jane Austen

Whenever a man encounters a woman in a mood he doesn't understand, he wants to know if she's tired. — George Jean Nathan

Abel wanted a traditional marriage with a traditional wife. For a long time I wondered why he ever married a woman like my mom in the first place, as she was the opposite of that in every way. If he wanted a woman to bow to him, there were plenty of girls back in Tzaneen being raised solely for that purpose. The way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with subservient women. He's attracted to independent women. "He's like an exotic bird collector," she said. "He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage. — Trevor Noah

I think people sometimes get the wrong impression when they're like, Oh, well, so-and-so was straight and then she was gay, and now she's straight again, you know? But it's like, how many times do I have to kiss a woman before I'm gay? Everybody wants to label people. Sometimes you just fall in love with somebody, and you're really not thinking about what gender or whatever they happen to be. It think that if I happen to fall in love with a woman, everyone's going to make a big deal out of it. But if I happen to fall in love with a man, nobody cares. — Lucy Liu

I wasn't ever going to play Carnegie Hall, or arenas with the E Street Band, but I did still play - plenty - and had work I liked and was good at. If a man or woman wants more, I often told myself, that man or woman is tempting the gods. — Stephen King

I've always been timid. I wait for the mating signal, yet I want to show my interest, but I'm too goddamn bashful to go for it! I have no sympathy for wolves. Why can't a man wait and see if there is any interest in them? Every woman wants to be pursued, it's a courting dance, a mating game and it should be that way, played out. The world is full of creeps. — Anton Szandor LaVey

A man will teach his wife what is needed to arouse his desires. And there is no reason for a woman to know any more than what her husband is prepared to teach her. If she gets married knowing far too much about what she wants and doesn't want then she will be ready to find fault with her husband. — Barbara Cartland

I have an image of a woman with a romantic kind of beauty and an orderly, logical mind." "Hunter - " "Wait, I'm just fleshing her out. She's ambitious, full of nerves, highly sensuous without being fully aware of it." He could see her eyes change, growing as dark as the sky above them. "She's caught in the middle of something she can't explain or understand. Things happen around her and she's finding it more and more difficult to distance herself from it. And there's a man, a man she desires but can't quite trust. He doesn't offer her the logical explanations she wants, but the illogic he offers seems terrifyingly close to the truth. If she puts her trust in him, she has to turn her back on most of what she believes is fact. If she doesn't, she'll be alone. — Nora Roberts

I cant take it like this much longer, Milt," Karen said muffledly into the big CKC shirt with its male smell, allowing herself the luxury of letting the bars all the way down for once, enjoying for just this moment the eternal degradation of being a woman.
"I cant take it much longer," she whimpered, tasting it, the eternally caught and held hard in the grasp of some man, the forever humiliated heavy weight it was impossible to squirm out from under, the forever helpless except for the mercy of him who always takes what he wants without any, and that all women learn instinctively not to expect [ ... ] That was all they wanted. That was all any of them wanted. You give them the greatest thing you possess, the most intimate secret, and they
just take it. Well, let them have it. Let them all have some of it. Let them root and rut and rowel, as if it was no more important than that why were they all so anxious to keep it away from each other? — James Jones

A man who wants to gain power over a woman must follow the example of women and condition his sex drive. If he succeeds in becoming as cold as she, she can no longer bait him with sex into the role of provider. At most she could offer herself as an equal sex partner, as dependent on him as he is on her. If men could abstain from sex at judicious intervals they might even succeed in normalizing the female sex drive - even make women desire them more than the other way around. — Esther Vilar

Oh my God," I huffed. "You were so well-behaved during dinner. I actually thought we could be friends."
"No such thing, babe."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean when a man wants a woman like I want you, there's no 'friends' about it. Tell yourself whatever you want, but men and woman can't be friends after they've fucked. Or if they want to fuck." Ch.3 — Adriane Leigh

You see, Ross, in every right marriage, in every good marriage a woman has to be three things, don't she? She's got to be a wife and look after a man's comforts in the way a man should be looked after. Then she's got to bear his children and get all swelled up like a summer pumpkin and then often-times feed them after and smell of babies and have them crawling all about her...But then, third, she has also to try and be his mistress at the same time; someone he is still interested in; someone he wants, not just the person who happens to be there and convenient; someone a bit mysterious...someone whose knee or -- or shoulder he wouldn't instantly recognize if he saw it beside him in bed. It's -- it's impossible. — Winston Graham

A man is commanding - a woman is demanding. A man is forceful - a woman is pushy. A man is uncompromising - a woman is a ball-breaker. A man is a perfectionist - a woman's a pain in the ass. He's assertive - she's aggressive. He strategizes - she manipulates. He shows leadership - she's controlling. He's committed - she's obsessed. He's persevering - she's relentless. He sticks to his guns - she's stubborn. If a man wants to get it right, he's looked up to and respected. If a woman wants to get it right, she's difficult and impossible. — Barbra Streisand

Single Ladies Tip: No man is too busy to go after a woman that he really wants, he will make time even if it is 2 minutes. #NoMoreCrumbs — Samantha Gregory

He knew very well that the great majority of human conversation is meaningless. A man can get through most of his days on stock answers to stock questions, he thought. Once he catches onto the game, he can manage with an assortment of grunts. This would not be so if people listened to each other, but they don't. They know that no one is going to say anything moving and important to them at that very moment. Anything important will be announced in the newspapers and reprinted for those who missed it. No one really wants to know how his neighbor is feeling, but he asks him anyway, because it is polite, and because he knows that his neighbor certainly will not tell him how he feels. What this woman and I say to each other is not important. It is the simple making of sounds that pleases us. — Peter S. Beagle

If anybody studying psychology wants a concrete example of what a narcissist looks like, I advise them to consider any man who cheats on his wife. These guys are the textbook me-firsters, the ones who think the rules don't apply to them, the ones who tell themselves as long as she doesn't know, there's no harm done. No woman needs to sleep with these guys. There are so many single self-absorbed narcissists who will fuck you poorly. — Julie Klausner

Being a childless woman of childbearing age, I am a walking target for people's concerned analysis. No one looks at a single man with a Labrador retriever and says, "Will you look at the way he throws the tennis ball to that dog? Now there's a guy who wants to have a son." A dog, after all, is man's best friend, a comrade, a pal. But give a dog to a woman and people will say she is sublimating. If she says that she, in fact, doesn't want children, they will nod understandingly and say, "You just wait." For the record, I do not speak to my dog in baby talk, nor when calling her do I say, "Come to Mama. — Ann Patchett

If you're being the woman God wants you to be and a man still doesn't respect you, surely that isn't the man God has for you. Always hold to the standard of respect you deserve and a great man will easily recognize the caliber of woman you are and treat you accordingly. — Stephan Labossiere

If a woman wants to hold a man she has merely to appeal to what is worst in him. — Oscar Wilde

If a woman-in-a-man's body goes after a man, is she attracted to the same or the opposite sex? If a man-in-a -woman's body wants a woman, is he a lesbian or straight? Prejudice is only cowardice in the face of complexity. — Jay Lemke

Christine: There's something really romantic about that. Every woman wants a man who'll fall in love with her soul as well as her body. But what if you meet her, and you don't think she's attractive?
Lincoln: I don't think I care what she looks like. — Rainbow Rowell

If a young man gets married, and starts a family and spends the rest of his life working at a soul-destroying job, he is held up as an example of virtue and responsibility. The other type of man, living only for himself, working only for himself, doing first one thing and then another simply because he enjoys it and because he has to keep only himself, sleeping where and when he wants, and facing woman when he meets her on equal terms and not as one of a million slaves, is rejected by society. The free, unshackled man has no place in its midst. — Esther Vilar

But seriously, I believe I'm a sort of Ideal Woman, if you know what I mean. I'm the sort of woman who can take men away from their wives, but I could never keep anybody for long. And that's because I'm the type which every man imagines he wants, until he gets me; and then he finds he doesn't really, after all. — Christopher Isherwood

And not one of you is to use the N-word that horrid woman said tonight to Sal. I swear I wish people were forced to make a list of names and recite them every time they use that word. "A list of the names of every black man, woman, and child hated,beaten, killed for the color of their flesh. It should be law - by God, it should be law - that if you say that word, you must then say their names. "No one wants to say one word and then realize it means so many more. — Tiffany McDaniel

Do you want to kill his love for you? What sort of existence will he have if you rob him of the fruits of his ambition, if you take him from the splendour of a great political career, if you close the doors of public life against him, if you condemn him to sterile failure, he who was made for triumph and success? Women are not meant to judge us but to forgive us when we need forgiveness. Pardon, not punishment, is their mission. Why should you scourge him with rods for a sin done in his youth, before he knew you, before he knew himself? A man's life is of more value than a woman's. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. A women's life revolves around curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that man's life progresses. Don't make any terrible mistake, Lady Chiltern. A woman who can keep a man's love, and love him in return, has done all the world wants of women, or should want of them. — Oscar Wilde

If we change in different directions, then we don't have any future anyway, do we? I think it's possible for two people to change together, to grow together and enrich instead of diminish each other. The sum of one and one, if they're the right ones, can be infinity! But so often one person drags the other down; one person wants to go up like a balloon and the other's a dead weight. I've always wondered what it would be like if both people, if a woman and a man both wanted to go up like balloons! — Richard Bach

You know, any man can get any woman he wants if he tries hard enough, there's nothing in that, but once he's got her, only a man who thinks the world of women can get rid of her without humiliating her. — W. Somerset Maugham

Its time we woke up," pursued Gerald, still inwardly urged to unfamiliar speech. "Women are pretty much people, seems to me. I know they dress like fools - but who's to blame for that? We invent all those idiotic hats of theirs, and design their crazy fashions, and what's more, if a woman is courageous enough to wear common-sense clothes - and shoes - which of us wants to dance with her? — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Not infrequently, when a man asks a woman to marry him, he means that he wants her to help him love himself, and if, blinded by her own feeling, she takes him for her captain, her pleasure craft becomes a pirate ship, the colours change to a black flag with a sinister sign, and her inevitable destiny is the coral reef. — Myrtle Reed

I can't imagine it, what would make a man who has the love of a woman, a woman who wants nothing but to live a life loving him and the babies they make, strive to turn that to hate. If I could stand the sight of you, I'd be interested in you explaining that to me. But I can't stand the sight of you. So that will remain a mystery. — Kristen Ashley

I'm in love with a man who can't be honest with his family or anyone in his life outside of this penthouse. I desire a woman I barely know but crave more than I can understand. On top of that, the man I love wants her too, and it makes me want her more, if possible. How is any of this practical? — Amelia LeFay

If a man wants to get it right, he's looked up to and respected. If a woman wants to get it right, she's difficult or impossible. If he acts, produces and directs, he's called multitalented. If she does the same thing, she's called vain and egotistical. — Barbra Streisand

A woman will be inclined to repeat a request that doesn't get a response because she is convinced that her husband would do what she asks, if he only understood that she really wants him to do it. But a man who wants to avoid feeling that he is following orders may instinctively wait before doing what she asked, in order to imagine that he is doing it of his own free will. — Deborah Tannen

At that time a psychologist appeared in Oslo, and wrote interesting articles in the paper about how to cure homosexuality. ... This man is a pervert. He wants to change nature. He wants to change the natural growth of love between a woman and a woman, or between a man and a man. If society itself wasn't hostile to love, he would never have been allowed to do that. Can't you see? Why can't you ever get it out of your head that love is against nature? Because that's what you're saying when you say homosexuality is against nature. Didn't nature make me? Or was I the result of some mysterious embryonic experiment, conceived on another planet, and planted in my mother's womb? Because I can assure you: I was born a lesbian. I was a lesbian the moment I came out and said, Boooooo. — Gerd Brantenberg

We are afraid that Heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that the mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man's love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object. — C.S. Lewis

There's something really romantic about that. Every woman wants a man who'll fall in love with her soul as well as her body. But what if you meet her, and you don't think she's attractive?"
"I don't think I care what she looks like," Lincoln said. Not that he hadn't thought about it. Not that it wasn't exciting in a weird way, not to know, to imagine. — Rainbow Rowell