Quotes & Sayings About Man Without Woman

A tramp, therefore, is a celibate from the moment when he takes to the road. He is absolutely without hope of getting a wife, a mistress, or any kind of woman except - very rarely, when he can raise a few shillings - a prostitute.
It is obvious what the results of this must be: homosexuality, for instance, and occasional rape cases. But deeper than these there is the degradation worked in a man who knows that he is not even considered fit for marriage. The sexual impulse, not to put it any higher, is a fundamental impulse, and starvation of it can be almost as demoralizing as physical hunger. The evil of poverty is not so much that it makes a man suffer as that it rots him physically and spiritually. And there can be no doubt that sexual starvation contributes to this rotting process. Cut off from the whole race of women, a tramp feels himself degraded to the rank of a cripple or a lunatic. No humiliation could do more damage to a man's self-respect. — George Orwell

The personal inevitably trumps the political, and the erotic trumps all: We will remember that Cleopatra slept with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony long after we have forgotten what she accomplished in doing so, that she sustained a vast, rich, densely populated empire in its troubled twilight in the name of a proud and cultivated dynasty. She remains on the map for having seduced two of the greatest men of her time, while her crime was to have entered into those same "wily and suspicious" marital partnerships that every man in power enjoyed. She did so in reverse and in her own name; this made her a deviant, socially disruptive, an unnatural woman. To these she added a few other offenses. She made Rome feel uncouth, insecure, and poor, sufficient cause for anxiety without adding sexuality into the mix. — Stacy Schiff

I don't want all these germs all over my kid. "What's her name?" the woman asks. "Jamie." I stare steadily at the crosswalk signal, willing the little green man to pop up before the chick starts flirting. "And what's her daddy's name?" Too late. "Tucker, but my wife calls me Tuck." That shuts her up fast. Normally I'm not this rude during these random street pick-ups, but I really don't like the way she touched my child without permission. Fuck that. — Elle Kennedy

And she came to the monk wearing cosmetics, much gold jewelry, and an elaborate silk dress. The monk admonished her gently; 'By supposing your body to require [all this],' he said,'you condemn the Creator for deficiency.' It is a remark that might be interpreted as misogyny, but in the context of the story
the monk pleads that he is only a man with the same nature as hers, and has no special access to God
it is clear that the monk believes the woman to be made in the image of God, good as she is, without unnecessary adornment. — Kathleen Norris

How does a woman gain such wisdom in only twenty-nine years?" Gordon asked, escorting her across the lawns toward the mansion.
"The same way a man does."
"Which is?"
Lady Keely cast him an ambiguous smile. "Either you are born with wisdom, my lord, or you make do
without it ... — Patricia Grasso

Good crews are good blends of personalities: someone to lead the charge, someone to hold something in reserve; someone to pick a fight, someone to make peace; someone to think things through, someone to charge ahead without thinking. Somehow all this must mesh. That's the steepest challenge. Even after the right mixture is found, each man or woman in the boat must recognize his or her place in the fabric of the crew, accept it, and accept the others as they are. It is an exquisite thing when it all comes together in just the right way. The intense bonding and the sense of exhilaration that results from it are what many oarsmen row for, far more than for trophies or accolades. But it takes young men or women of extraordinary character as well as extraordinary physical ability to pull it off. — Daniel James Brown

I sat in the gradually chilling room, thinking of my whole past the way a drowning man is supposed to, and it seemed part of the present, part of the gray cold and the beggar woman without a face and the moulting birds frozen to their own filth in the Orangerie. I know now I was in the throes of some small glandular crisis, a sublimated bilious attack, a flick from the whip of melancholia, but then it was terrifying ... nameless ... — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

If I were a modern writing about a modern young woman I would have to do her wedding night in grisly detail. The custom of the country and the times would demand a description, preferable "comic," of foreplay, lubrication, penetration, and climax and in deference to the accepted opinions about Victorian love, I would have to abort the climax and end the wedding night in tears and desolate comfortings. But I don't know. I have a good deal of confidence in both Susan Burling and the man she married. I imagine they worked it out without the need of any scientific lubricity and with even less need to make their privacies public. — Wallace Stegner

Don't!" cried Jamie. "Don't be bitter, Margaret. We don't know why, we never can know why things happen in this world exactly as they do; but this we know: We know that God is in His Heaven, that He is merciful to the extent of ordaining mercy; we know that if we disobey and take our own way and run contrary to His commandments, we are bitterly punished. And it is the most pitiful of laws that no man or woman can take their punishment alone in this world. It is the law that none of us can suffer without making someone else suffer, but in some way it must be that everything works out for the best, even if we can't possibly see how that could be when things are happening that hurt us so. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Men and women are made for each other, but their mutual dependence differs in degrees; man is dependent on woman through his desires; woman is dependent on man through her desires and also through her needs; he could do without her better than she can do without him. She cannot fulfill her purpose in life without his aid, without his goodwill, without his respect ... Nature herself has decreed that woman, both for herself and her children, should be at the mercy of man s judgment. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

You will then. Listen here ... I've always got this to look forward to: I'll settle down by that man's side. I'll be as virtuous as any woman. I've made up my mind to it and I'll be it. And I'll be bored stiff for the rest of my life. Except for one thing. I can torment that man. And I'll do it. Do you understand how I'll do it? There are many ways. But if the worst comes to the worst I can always drive him silly ... by corrupting the child!' She was panting a little, and round her brown eyes the whites showed. 'I'll get even with him. I can. I know how, you see. And with you, through him, for tormenting me. I've come all the way from Brittany without stopping. I haven't slept ... But I can ... — Ford Madox Ford

There are endless ways to amuse oneself and be idle, and most of them lie outside the woods. I assume that when a man goes to the woods he goes because he needs to. I think he is drawn to the wilderness much as he is drawn to a woman: it is, in its way, his opposite. It is as far as possible unlike his home or his work or anything he will ever manufacture. For that reason he can take from it a solace-an understanding of himself, of what he needs and what he can do without-such as he can find nowhere else. — Wendell Berry

Man who treat Woman without respect
and see Woman ONLY as a public toilett
forget where they spend their first 9
months of their Life! — Lily Amis

Every man's dream is to be able to sink into the arms of a woman without also falling into her hands — Jerry Lewis

That old man over there
Is selling trinkets made of stones
That old woman the entire world
In a map without any hole! — Avijeet Das

Splendid, replied the man by the well. But the first man pronounced the word as a young man might say it about a woman, and the second as an old man might say it about the weather, not without sincerity, but certainly without fervor. — G.K. Chesterton

Colin decided then and there that the female mind was a strange and incomprehensible organ - one which no man should even attempt to understand. There wasn't a woman alive who could go from point A to B without stopping at C, D, X, and 12 along the way. — Julia Quinn

... Mrs. Warren allowed her book to fall closed upon her lap, and her attractive face awakened to an expression of agreeable expectation, in itself denoting the existence of interesting and desirable qualities in the husband at the moment inserting his latch-key in the front door preparatory to mounting the stairs and joining her. The man who, after twenty-five years of marriage, can call, by his return to her side, this expression to the countenance of an intelligent woman is, without question or argument, an individual whose life and occupations are as interesting as his character and points of view. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

You think you know what is just and what is not. I understand. We all think we know." I had no doubt, myself, then, that at each moment each one of us, man, woman, child, perhaps even the poor old horse turning the mill-wheel, knew what was just: all creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. "But we live in a world of laws," I said to my poor prisoner, "a world of the second-best. There is nothing we can do about that. We are fallen creatures. All we can do is to uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade. — J.M. Coetzee

One more royal trait properly belongs to the poet. I mean his cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet,
for beauty is his aim. He loves virtue, not for its obligation, but for its grace; he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the universe. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A ridiculous fear pursued me, in fact: one could not die without having confessed all one's lies. Not to God or to one of his representatives; I was above that, as you well imagine. No, it was a matter of confessing to men, to a friend, to a beloved woman, for example. Otherwise, were there but one lie hidden in life, death made it definitive. No one, ever again, would know the truth at this point, since the only one to know it was precisely the dead man sleeping on his secret. The absolute murder of truth used to make me dizzy. — Albert Camus

Those who scorn you taunt only themselves
I knew this without reading one word; because in reading one is reminded of the truth man is given at birth
by man I mean man and woman. — David Adams Richards

She saw how he was staring at it, the bright red hue beneath her bonnet. She could not bear to see the way he was looking at her - right through her - without seeing her. He did not see a woman. He did not see Jane, the woman he had been so passionate with two days before. He saw ... Jane swallowed hard and looked
away, hating the weakness of her spirit. She was more than this, a wilting flower. She was stronger than this. But damn it, this hurt.
It hurt because he was the man responsible for making her burn. For making her feel like a woman. It hurt because it had been a trick. An illusion. And it hurt most of all because he did not see her, the woman she was behind the unfashionable spectacles and garish hair. — Charlotte Featherstone

I got down off the stool and stood waiting. She might or might not blow me down. I didn't particularly care. Once in a while in this much too sex-conscious country a man and a woman can meet and talk without dragging bedrooms into it. This could be it, or she could just think I was on the make. If so, the hell with her. — Raymond Chandler

Neither man nor woman is perfect or complete without the other. Thus, no marriage or family, no ward or stake is likely to reach its full potential until husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, men and women work together in unity of purpose, respecting and relying upon each other's strengths. — Sheri L. Dew

He lay before God as a woman opens herself to a man, with legs apart, stomach exposed, arms open. But unlike some women, he did not have the inner strength that allowed them to do such a thing without fear. There was no woman's strength in Mellas at all. — Karl Marlantes

A woman's long hair symbolizes that she submits to God's plan and to the family leadership of her husband. It is her glory. It is a sign to the angels of her commitment to God and her power with God. It is a covering so that she can pray and prophesy publicly without being ashamed. Similarly, a man's short hair symbolizes that he submits to God's plan and accepts the family leadership position. For both married and unmarried, this symbol indicates obedience to God's will. — David K. Bernard

By healing our internal divisions and fully accepting ourselves as we are, we learn to accept and empower our sexual core, and we learn to honor our unique expression of Masculine and Feminine gifts. We fully incarnate in our bodies, at home and at ease in a man's body or a woman's body. And we learn to love with complete abandon, as free men and women, without rules or roles or guarded hearts. — David Deida

All women should feel as Sex Subjects if they want and choose so without fear of repressions, condemnations and put down and without the need to pay them for that.

Being freely a sexy and seductive woman is allowed only for few privileged professions: actresses, dancers, models, singers, prostitutes. They all do it for work. You can pay for them being sexy.

If a sexy woman is openly adored by a man, the woman remains as a woman, she is not turning into a table, a cup or a bill of money. She is still the Subject who knows her power. — Mai Loog

Well, the story is that when a woman found out her husband had fallen in love with a girl from West Stave and planned to leave her, she came to the bridge and, rather than live without him, hurled herself into the canal." "Over a man with so little honor?" "You'd never be tempted? All the fruits and flesh of West Stave before you?" "Would you throw yourself off a bridge for a man who was?" "I wouldn't throw myself off a bridge for the king of Ravka." "It's a terrible story," said Matthias. "I doubt it's true. It's just what happens when you let men name the bridges. — Leigh Bardugo

It's the truth. I'm sorry to be blunt about it, but girls don't like guys who are doormats. Especially pretty girls, because there's no novelty in it. Guys are hitting on them all of the time. They can't walk down the street or order a coffee or stand on a corner without some idiot making a comment about how attractive they are. And the women smile because it's easier than telling them to go fuck themselves. And less dangerous, because if a man rejects a woman, she goes home and cries for a few days. If a woman rejects a man, he can rape and kill her. — Karin Slaughter

Words have divided man from woman,
one from another, this from that,
until only sages know how to put things together.
Without words, without even understanding,
lovers find each other.
The moment of finding is always a surprise,
like meeting an old friend never before known. — Laozi

A woman isn't complete without a man. But where do you find a man - a real man - these days? — Lauren Bacall

I'm not going anywhere." Gently, he stroked her back, cradled her head. Was there anything more astounding or more frightening to a man, he wondered, than a strong woman in tears?
"I've been right here all along. I love you, Eve, almost more than I can stand."
"I need you. I can't help it. I don't want to."
"I know." He eased back, tucking a hand under her chin to lift her face to his.
"We're going to have to deal with it." He kissed one wet cheek, then the other. "I really can't do without you. — J.D. Robb

I'd felt that a man without a woman was like a neck without a pain. — Kinky Friedman

When you make sex to a person, woman or man, you think it unites you. For a moment it gives you the illusion of unity, and then a vast division suddenly comes in. That's why after every sex act, a frustration, a depression sets in. One feels that one is so far away from the beloved. Sex divides, and when love goes deeper and deeper and unites more and more, there is no need for sex. Your inner energies can meet without sex, and you live in such a unity. — Rajneesh

It means that every man, woman, and child over the age, let us say, of twentyone or thirty, at the very outside, should never do anything extremely important or crucial in their life without first consulting a list of persons in the world, living or dead, whom he loves. — J.D. Salinger

A man can be a parent without knowing it: a woman cannot. — Willa Holland

Something that's of common interest to every man, woman and child on the planet must surely be the notion of 'Peace'. Without 'Peace' we cannot survive. Valentine's Day is on the 14 February. Christmas Day is on the 25 December. Peace Day has been established by the United Nations on the 21 September, and the whole world is invited to participate. — Annie Lennox

A woman without a man cannot meet a man, any man, of any age, without thinking, even if it's for a half-second, 'Perhaps this is THE man. — Doris Lessing

In our dreams every man and woman are amazingly perfect, but in reality they have imperfections, so accept it without judgement. — Debasish Mridha

A woman can do anything a man can do today and then some. She can even have a child without a man. — Tony Robbins

Here is the difference between Oscar Wilde and me. For all the tortures he suffered, for all the ugliness of being punished for loving men, nobody read his lines and asked him: What does your husband think of that? Jail, exile
these were his lot. But never, What does your husband think?
Women may have the vote, but they are not free as long as that reaction erupts. Even those without husbands are judged as if they had offended them merely by writing the truth.
So immovable is the wall around a woman's freedom that she can't do a things without being asked to think of its effect upon some man who is presumed to be more important than she. — Erica Jong

By nature man without woman can feel no joy. She is his mother, his sister, his loving friend. She is seldom his enemy. — Christine De Pizan

No woman has the right to marry a man if she has to bend herself out of shape for him. She might wish to, but she could never be to him with all her passionate endeavor what the other woman could be to him without trying. Character will dominate over all and will come out at last. — Olive Schreiner

I send out thoughts of love and peace and healing to the whole universe: to all trees and plants and growing things, to all beasts and birds and fishes, and to every man, woman and child on earth, without any distinction. — Emmet Fox

I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag, aye. I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings. I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open, oh, I woke from terror. All this I dreamt, and more. — George R R Martin

Why do you want to do this?" he asked curiously. "Why is this woman so important to you?"
Saint-Germain blinked in surprise. "Have you ever loved anyone?" he asked.
"Yes," Tamnuz said cautiously, "I had a consort once, Inanna ... "
"But did you love her? Truly love her?"
The Green Man remained silent.
"Did she mean more to you than life itself?" Saint-Germain persisted.
"They do not love that do not show their love," Shakespeare murmured very softly.
The French immortal stepped closer to the Elder. "I love my Jeanne," he said simply. "I must go to her."
"Even though it will cost you everything?" Tamnuz persisted, as if the idea was incomprehensible.
"Yes. Without Joan, everything I have is worthless."
"Even your immortality?"
"Especially my immortality." Gone were the banter and the jokes. This was a Saint-Germain whom neither Shakespeare nor Palamedes had ever seen before. "I love her," he said, — Michael Scott

As she observed him, she briefly frowned, it was one of the quandaries a woman sometimes faces, not just a woman, but all of us: she entrances one man without effort, a man who is undesired, who follows her around like a dog, however much he is whipped or abused, while all her efforts to attract and then ensnare another man, the truly desired man, come to naught. Charm is not universal, desire is too often unreciprocated, it gathers and pools in the wrong places, slowly becoming toxic. — Katie Kitamura

Since in the world you imagines, a world without power and money, with no prohibitions, with no pain or death, each man would be God, and God therefore would not be possible. He would be a lie, because His attributes would be those of every man, woman and child: grace, immortality and supreme good. — Carlos Fuentes

I believe it is conceded that, notwithstanding the fabled blue laws of New England, a man may, without impropriety, kiss his wife on Sunday and possibly, if he have a chance, some other sweet-faced woman. — David Josiah Brewer

A democracy without faith is just a machine without power. Nothing can make it function except faith in itself, in the ordinary man and woman. — Eleanor Dark

I remember only a day
that was perhaps never intended for me,
it was an incessant day,
without origins, Thursday.
I was a man transported by chance
with a woman vaguely found,
we undressed
as if to die or swim or grow old
and we thrust ourselves one inside the other,
she surrounding me like a hole,
I cracking her like a bell,
for she was the sound that wounded me
and the hard dome determined to tremble. — Pablo Neruda

My heart told me incontrovertibly that neither gender could go far without the other. So, in my story, neither the woman nor the man can get free without the other. — Ursula K. Le Guin

After a few years of marriage a man can look right at a woman without seeing her and a woman can see right through a man without looking at him. — Helen Rowland

I am the one who needs rescuing. Save me ( ... ) Save me from going back to being the man I was before I came here. Save me from all the years of loneliness I'll have to endure without you in my arms. Save me from spending the rest of my life longing for a woman I can never have. — Teresa Medeiros

Married, divorced or single here, it's one family that mingles here. Conservative or liberal here, we've all gotta give a little here. Big or small here, there's room for us all here. Doubt or believe here, we all can receive here. Gay or straight here, there's no hate here. Woman or man here, everyone can serve here. Whatever your race here, for all of us grace here. In imitation of the ridiculous love Almighty God has for each of us and all of us, let us live and love without labels. — Philip Yancey

There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it's almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed ... These things are so ancient within us ... that they're ground into each separate cell of our bodies ... It's as easy to be overwhelmed by giving as by taking. — Frank Herbert

If a boy is not trained to endure and to bear trouble, he will grow up a girl; and a boy that is a girl has all a girl's weakness without any of her regal qualities. A woman made out of a woman is God's noblest work; a woman made out of a man is His meanest. — Henry Ward Beecher

Unless a man or woman has experienced the darkness of the soul he or she can know nothing of that transforming laughter without which no hint of the ultimate reality of the opposites can be faintly intuited. — Luke The Evangelist

Women always said things like that, and it made him crazy. It's as if every conversation with a woman was a test, and men always failed it, because they always lacked the key to the code and so they never quite understood what the conversation was really about. If, just once, the man could understand, really comprehend the whole of the conversation, then the perfect union between male and female would be possible. But instead men and women continue to cohabit, even to love each other, without ever quite crossing over the chasm of misunderstanding between them. — Orson Scott Card

A woman without a man
a condition of 'manlessness'
is defined as alone. But a single mother is less alone than the average housewife. — Barbara Kingsolver

Show me a woman without guilt and I'll show you a man — Marie Wilson

And suddenly the miracle happens. I look across at the woman who has just made some coffee and is now reading the newspaper, whose eyes look tired and desperate, who is her usual silent self, who does not always show her affection in gestures, the woman who made me say yes when i wanted to say no, who forced me to fight for what she, quiet rightly, believed was my reason for living, who let me set off alone because her love for me was greater even than her love for herself, who made me go in serch of my dream,; and suddenly, seeing that small, quiet woman, whose eyes said more than words, who was often terrified inside, but always courageous in her actions, who could love someone without humbling herself and who never ever apologized for fighting for her man - suddenly. my fingers press down on the keys. — Paulo Coelho

Place the crosshairs over his heart. It would be a mercy killing. A man who goes to sleep without satisfying his woman deserves punishment. He sleeps through her self-pleasure? Death is too kind. — Jessica Clare

Man without religion is a diseased creature, who would persuade himself he is well and needs not a physician; but woman without religion is raging and monstrous. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

By the by ... " He glances at Jeb's back and leans closer, murmuring low. "Tumtum juice alters a person's inhibitions, magnifies their hunger. But it's not hunger for food. It's experiences they crave. Had it been me instead of your toy soldier, I would've found a means to slake your ravenous hunger without resorting to berries." His arrogance simmers my blood. "You don't have the equipment to satisfy anything. Moth. Remember?" He laughs, dark and soft, under his breath. "I am a man in every way that counts. Just like you are a woman, even if some people believe you're nothing more than a scared little girl in constant need of saving. — A.G. Howard

I read recently in an article by G.K. Chesterton, that sex without gestation and parturition is like blowing the trumpets and waving the flags without doing any of the fighting. From a woman such words, though displaying inexperience, might come with dignity; from a man they are an unforgivable, intolerable insult. What is man's part in sex but a perpetual waving of flags and blowing of trumpets and avoidance of the fighting? — Dora Russell

Since I'm a man of my word, I don't show up at her door. I do end up driving over to the trailer park with my SUV. Parking, I crawl into the backseat, play tunes on my phone, and doze as close to my woman as I can manage without breaking my promise. — Bijou Hunter

A man would create another man if one did not already exist, but a woman might live an eternity without even thinking of reproducing her own sex. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

If a man has to make a woman the center of his love, why should he integrate animality into this sacred human emotion? ... Is love incompelete without it? ... Is love the name of physical excersize ? — Saadat Hasan Manto

A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments, her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly. She is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight. She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be thankful. — Daniel Defoe

The man or woman who enjoys the spirit of our religion has no trials; but the man or woman who tries to live according to the gospel of the Son of God, and at the same times clings to the spirit of the world, has trials and sorrows acute and keen, and that too, continually. This is the deciding point, the dividing line. They who love and serve God with all their hearts rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks; but they who try to serve God and still cling to the spirit of the world have got on two yokes
the yoke of Jesus and the yoke of the devil, and they will have plenty to do. They will have a warfare inside and outside, and the labor will be very galling, for they are directly in opposition one to the other. — Brigham Young

My own husband was divorced when we met, but without kids. I don't know what I would have done if he'd had them. I got the message very early on that the worst mistake a woman can make is marrying a man with children. — Ayelet Waldman

Man's and woman's bodies lay without souls
Dully gaping, foolishly staring, inert
On the flowers of Eden.
God pondered.

The problem was so great, it dragged him asleep.

Crow laughed.

He bit the Worm, God's only son,
Into two writhing halves.

He stuffed into man the tail half
With the wounded end hanging out.

He stuffed the head half headfirst into woman
And it crept in deeper and up
To peer out through her eyes
Calling it's tail-half to join up quickly, quickly
Because O it was painful.

Man awoke being dragged across the grass.
Woman awoke to see him coming.
Neither knew what had happened.

God went on sleeping.

Crow went on laughing.

- A Childish Prank — Ted Hughes

Nature gives all, without reservation, and loses nothing; man or woman, grasping all, loses everything. — James Allen

Any woman may act the part of a coquette successfully who has the reputation without the scruples of modesty. If a woman passes the bounds of propriety for our sakes, and throws herself unblushingly at our heads, we conclude it is either from a sudden and violent liking, or from extraordinary merit on our parts, either of which is enough to turn any man's head who has a single spark of gallantry or vanity in his composition. — William Hazlitt

Incarceration is when nobody writes a happy ending for a woman without a man. — Maggie Young

When people speak admiringly of a butch, what I see is someone who has taken on the best gendered characteristics of both woman and man, left a lot of the stuff born of misogyny and heterosexism behind, and walked forward into the world without apology. — S. Bear Bergman

A fighting man will die without something to fight for."
"And a woman?" I asked her.
She drew in a slow breath. "Everyone needs something - someone - to fight for, Marian. — A.C. Gaughen

She done mellowed plenty since this marriage. Soft around the edges without getting too soft at the center. You fear that sometimes for women, that they would just fold up and melt away. She'd seen it happen so much in her time, too much for her to head on into it without thinking. Yes, that one time when she was way, way young. But after that, looking at all the beating, the badgering, the shriveling away from a lack of true touching was enough to give her pause. Not that she mighta hooked up with one of those. And not that any man - even if he tried - coulda ever soaked up the best in her. But who needed to wake up each morning cussing the day just to be sure you still had your voice? A woman shouldn't have to fight her man to be what she was; he should be fighting that battle for her. — Gloria Naylor

Every man wants a woman who can smile upon him without exception. — Anyaele Sam Chiyson

Let us have wine and woman, mirth and laughter,
Sermons and soda water the day after.
Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;
The best of life is but intoxication:
Glory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunk
The hopes of all men, and of every nation;
Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk
Of life's strange tree, so fruitful on occasion:
But to return
Get very drunk; and when
You wake with head-ache, you shall see what then. — George Gordon Byron

These days everyone was insisting on their identity, coming out as a man, woman, gay, black, Jew - brandishing whichever features they could claim, as if without a tag they wouldn't be human. — Hanif Kureishi

Still adore me?" he said into that kiss, his tone husky. A tone between lovers, between mates, between a man and the only woman he had ever wanted.

"Too much," was her response. "I only feel whole when I'm with you. Does that make me weak?"

The cat stretched out inside him as she pressed kisses along his jawline, down his neck. "If you're weak, then so am I." He could function without her but in the way a machine functions. His heart, his soul, he had given to her a long time ago. — Nalini Singh

[T]he young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands. — William Faulkner

Without religion, man is an atheist, woman is a monster. As daughter, sister, wife and mother, she holds in her hands, under God, the destinies of humanity. In the hours of gloom and sorrow we look to her for sympathy and comfort. Where shall she find strength for trial, comfort for sorrow, save in that gospel which has given a new meaning to the name of "mother," since it rested on the lips of the child Jesus? — Henry Benjamin Whipple

Is it possible that evil is never total, that its victory, no matter how overwhelming, is never absolute?
Consider this fallen man. He sought without remorse to shatter the mind of a fellow human being; and exploited, to do so, an entirely blameless woman, at least partly owing to his own impossible and voyeuristic desire for her. Yet this same man has risked death, with scarcely any hesitation, in a foolhardy rescue attempt. — Salman Rushdie

Marcel was from Louisiana, so for four years Emily had been southern by association. She insisted on Lynchburg Lemonades. She scheduled interviews around the Gators. She championed gentility. Anyone at a dinner party who thought they could tell a joke making fun of the region encountered a faceful of Emily, quick and ferocious as a convert, as a woman who loved a man.
Emily now had no claim to the South. The region and its interests would proceed without her. — Marie-Helene Bertino

He reaches forward slowly, to lift the pen from my lax grip. Wearily I regard the faltering trail of ink it has tracked down my page. I have seen that shape before, I think, but it was not ink then. A trickle of drying blood on the deck of a Red-Ship, and mine the hand that spilled it? Or was it a tendril of smoke rising black against a blue sky as I rode too late to warn a village of a Red-Ship raid? Or poison swirling and unfurling yellowly in a simple glass of water, poison I had handed someone, smiling all the while? The artless curl of a strand of woman's hair left upon my pillow? Or the trail of a man's heels left in the sand as we dragged the bodies from the smoldering tower at Sealbay? The track of a tear down a mother's cheek as she clutched her Forged infant to her despite his angry cries? Like Red-Ships, the memories come without warning, without mercy. — Robin Hobb

Meditation is enjoying oneself, just sitting silently doing nothing: happy, joyous without any reason, because all reasons come from outside. You meet a beautiful woman and you are happy, or you meet a beautiful man and you are happy - but the meditator is simply happy. His happiness has no reason from the outside world; his happiness wells up within himself. — Rajneesh

Darlin', a man can put pressure on a woman to change without saying a word, Ham contradicted and that rocked me — Kristen Ashley

The terms masculine and feminine are
used symmetrically only as a matter of form, as on legal
papers. In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not quite
like that of two electrical poles, for man represents both the
positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of
man to designate human beings in general ; whereas woman
represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without
reciprocity. — Simone De Beauvoir

Rebellions tend to be negative, to denounce and expose the enemy without providing a positive vision of a new future ... A revolution is not just for the purpose of correcting past injustices, a revolution involves a projection of man/woman into the future ... It begins with projecting the notion of a more human human being, i.e. a human being who is more advanced in the specific qualities which only human beings have - creativity, consciousness and self-consciousness, a sense of political and social responsibility. — Grace Lee Boggs

It is a woman, and only a woman, - a woman all by herself, if she likes, and without any man to help her, - who can turn a house into a home. — Frances Power Cobbe

Oh yes", said the old woman, "but I've heard these so-called stoves are by no means all they are supposed to be. I never saw a stove in my day, and yet never ailed a thing, at least as long as I could really be called alive, except for nettle rash one night when I was in my fifteenth year.. It was caused by some fresh fish that the boys used to catch in the lakes thereabouts."
The man did not answer for a while, but lay pondering the medical history of this incredible old creature who, without ever setting eyes on a stove, had suffered almost no ailments in the past sixty-five years. — Halldor Laxness

Sophie dear,' I said. 'Are you in love with him - with this spider-man?'
'Oh, don't call him that - please - we can't any of us help being what we are. His name's Gordon. He's kind to me, David. He's fond of me. You've got to have as little as I have to know how much that means. You've never known loneliness. You can't understand the awful emptiness that's waiting all round us here. I'd have given him babies gladly, if I could ... I - oh, why do they do that to us? Why didn't they kill me? It would have been kinder than this ... '
She sat without a sound. The tears squeezed out from under the closed lids and ran down her face. I took her hand between my own.
I remembered watching. The man with his arm linked in the woman's, the small figure on top of the pack-horse waving back to me as they disappeared into the trees. Myself desolate, a kiss still damp on my
cheek, a lock tied with a yellow ribbon in my hand. I looked at her now, and my heart ached. — John Wyndham

In other spheres of Victorian Society the appeal of a young woman dressed in black from head to toe was acknowledged. In Victorian popular culture, widows had two manifestations: the battleaxe and the man-eater, preying upon husbands and bachelors alike. Even today, an attractive, dark-haired person dressed in all black has vampiric connotations, as the novelist Alison Lurie has noted, 'so archetypally terrifying and thrilling, that any black-haired, pale-complexioned man or woman who appears clad in all black formal clothes projects a destructive eroticism, sometimes without concious intention. — Catharine Arnold

Beauty without wit offers love nothing but the material enjoyment of its physical charms, whilst witty ugliness captivates by the charms of the mind, and at last fulfills all the desires of the man it has captivated ...
Let anyone ask a beautiful woman without wit whether she would be willing to exchange a small portion of her beauty for a sufficient dose of wit. If she speaks the truth, she will say, "No, I am satisfied to be as I am." But why is she satisfied? Because she is not aware of her own deficiency. Let an ugly but witty woman be asked if she would change her wit against beauty, and she will not hesitate in saying no. Why? Because, knowing the value of her wit, she is well aware that it is sufficient by itself to make her a queen in any society. — Giacomo Casanova

That was what stuck in the craws of all the good women of Deptford: Mrs Dempster had not been raped, as a decent woman would have been - no, she had yielded because a man wanted her. The subject was not one that could be freely discussed even among intimates, but it was understood without saying that if women began to yield for such reasons as that, marriage and society would not last long. Any man who spoke up for Mrs Dempster probably believed in Free Love. Certainly he associated sex with pleasure, and that put him in a class with filthy thinkers like Cece Athelstan. — Robertson Davies