Skirts And Women Quotes & Sayings

An Islamic writer recalls her joy in the clothes she wore as a young girl at a wedding: They were always in beautiful bright colors: crimson, pink, turquoise, purple, and embroidered with sparkling crystals, sequins and beads ... The older girls and women would wear glamorous heavily-beaded silk blouses and long, princess-like skirts. I wanted to wear those fairy-tale clothes too. I longed even more to wear a sari which the women wore so elegantly and which flattered their curves. — Shelina Zahra Janmohamed

Why do women want to dress like men when they're fortunate enough to be women? Why lose femininity, which is one of our greatest charms? We get more accomplished by being charming than we would be flaunting around in pants and smoking. I'm very fond of men. I think they are wonderful creatures. I love them dearly. But I don't want to look like one. When women gave up their long skirts, they made a grave error ... — Tasha Tudor

Yet skirts are getting shorter, and more women can be seen in Pyongyang now with high heels. The change must be shocking to people in the more conservative countryside, where high heels continue to be associated with prostitution. — Felix Abt

Before I found Minerva, I'd passed nights with more than my share of women."
Thorne groaned. Don't. Just don't.
"I've passed time with duchesses and farm girls, and it doesn't matter whether their skirts are silk or homespun. Once you get them bare
"
Thorne drew up short. "If you start in on rivers of silk and alabaster orbs, I will have to hit you. — Tessa Dare

Michael saw Northampton Castle being built by Normans and their labourers, while being pulled down in accordance with the will of Charles the Second fifteen hundred years thereafter. A few centuries of grass and ruins coexisted with the bubbling growth and fluctuations of the railway station. 1920s porters, speeded up into a silent comedy, pushed luggage-laden trolleys through a Saxon hunting party. Women in ridiculously tiny skirts superimposed themselves unwittingly on Roundhead puritans, briefly becoming composites with fishnet tights and pikestaffs. Horses' heads grew from the roofs of cars and all the while the castle was constructed and demolished, rising, falling, rising, falling, like a great grey lung of history that breathed crusades, saints, revolutions and electric trains. — Alan Moore

Don't worry about him. He's an old curmudgeon who hates women. I've heard tell it's because he can't satisfy one in bed, if you know what I mean. Some sort of old war injury." Barnaby cast Louisa an ingratiating smile that showed fine white teeth. "If it's a husband you're looking for, you'd be better off with me. All my parts are in fine working order." A chilly smile touched Louisa's lips as she snatched her arm away. "Are they, indeed? Then I suggest you find a wife who'd be happy to oil and pamper them and keep them in good working order. I'm afraid I'd be more likely to smash them to bits." With that, she lifted her skirts and hurried after Silas, leaving Barnaby to gape after her as he instinctively jerked his legs together. — Sabrina Jeffries

SEPTIMUS: My lady, I was alone with my thoughts in the gazebo, when Mrs Chater ran me to ground, and I being in such a passion, in an agony of unrelieved desire
LADY CROOM: Oh ... !
SEPTIMUS:
I thought in my madness that the Chater with her skirts over her head would give me the momentary illusion of the happiness to which I dared not put a face.
(Pause.)
LADY CROOM: I do not know when I have received a more unusual compliment, Mr Hodge. I hope I am more than a match for Mrs Chater with her head in a bucket. Does she wear drawers?
SEPTIMUS: She does.
LADY CROOM: Yes, I have heard that drawers are being worn now. It is unnatural for women to be got up like jockeys. I cannot approve. — Tom Stoppard

Gerald's sharp blue eyes noticed how efficiently his neighbors' houses were run and with what ease the smooth-haired wives in rustling skirts managed their servants. He had no knowledge of the dawn-till-midnight activities of these women, chained to supervision of cooking, nursing, sewing and laundering. He only saw the outward results, and those results impressed him. The urgent need of a wife became clear to him one morning when he was dressing to ride to town for Court Day. Pork brought forth his favorite ruffled shirt, so inexpertly mended by the chambermaid as to be unwearable by anyone except his valet. — Margaret Mitchell

Looking for you, ye wee fool! And what in the name of all holy are you doing here? And dressed like that, God damn you!" He'd had the briefest look at her in her breeches and shirt, but it was enough. In her own time, the clothes would have been so baggy as to be sexless. After months of seeing women in long skirts and arisaids, though, the blatant division of her legs, the sheer bloody length of thigh and curve of calf, seemed so outrageous that he wanted to wrap a sheet around her. — Diana Gabaldon

Dress suitably in short skirts and sitting boots, leave your jewels and gold wands in the bank, and buy a revolver. — Constance Markievicz

This is the best thing to wear for today, you understand. Because I don't like women in skirts and the best thing is to wear pantyhose or some pants under a short skirt, I think. Then you have the pants under the skirt and then you can pull the stockings up over the pants underneath the skirt. And you can always take off the skirt and use it as a cape. So I think this is the best costume for today. — Edith Bouvier Beale

In my opinion, the best time to be alive is always right now. People are aways whining about how they were born in the wrong century, but they really haven't thought things through. They picture the old castle they wish they could live in, but they don't think about the drafts in the winter or the pitch darkness at night, or all the spiders and the lice. They can't imagine the everyday pain of a life without movies or recorded music or... or... Interet videos about cats. And don't even get me started on women who idealize the past. Do you have any idea what it was like to be a woman even a hundred years ago? Horrible! And a hundred years before that, the situation practically defies description. We might as well have been slaves. Trussed up in hoop skirts and corsets, married off like racehorses. Good riddance to history, I say! — Tommy Wallach

When women take off their corsets and heighten their skirts it always means high inflation and low morals. — James Laver

The notion that Playboy turns women into sex objects is ridiculous. Women are sex objects. If women weren't sex objects, there wouldn't be another generation. It's the attraction between the sexes that makes the world go 'round. That's why women wear lipstick and short skirts. — Hugh Hefner

She was tall and well-made, on an ample scale; her skin looked as if it had the flavour of fresh cream which it resembled, her childlike mouth that of strawberries. Under a mass of raven hair, curling in gentle waves, her green eyes gleamed motionless as those of statues, and like them a little cruel. She was moving slowly, making her wide white skirt rotate around her, and emanating from her whole person the invincible calm of a woman sure of her own beauty. — Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

Attractive women in the early stages of disrepair, fighting to keep age at bay with facials, compression undergarments, and aggressively fashionable skirts bought off the rack at Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom. They run on treadmills, these women, work out with personal trainers and play tennis at the club, but still their hips widen, their legs thicken, their breasts sag. Genetics help some more than others, but they are all like melting ice cream bars, slowly sliding down the stick as they come apart. — Jonathan Tropper

It was exactly the sort of person, like Joan of Arc, who did know why women wore skirts, who was most justified in not wearing one; it was exactly the sort of person, like St. Francis, who did sympathise with the feast and the fireside, who was most entitled to become a beggar on the open road. And when, in the general emancipation of modern society, the Duchess says she does not see why she shouldn't play leapfrog, or the Dean declares that he sees no valid canonical reason why he should not stand on his head, we may say to these persons with patient benevolence: "Defer, therefore, the operation you contemplate until you have realised by ripe reflection what principle or prejudice you are violating. Then play leapfrog and stand on your head and the Lord be with you." Among — G.K. Chesterton

Today, most women are surrounded by ingenious gadgets. They don't grow the peas or raise the chicken that they serve for dinner; instead they hunt and gather in the grocery store. They go through catalogs or department stores to buy clothes instead of shearing sheep, carding wool, and weaving cloth for skirts and coats and blankets. — Helen Fisher

For the jihadists, Muslim women who embrace Western mores, and wear tight jeans or mini skirts, are hated symbols of corruption that need to be eradicated. For the ideological mentors of Breivik, a similar disturbance comes from the burqa, which is banned in France and Belgium, partly thanks to their efforts. — Mustafa Akyol

No wonder male religious leaders so often say that humans were born in sin - because we were born to female creatures. Only by obeying the rules of the patriarchy can we be reborn through men. No wonder priests and ministers in skirts sprinkle imitation birth fluid over our heads, give us new names, and promise rebirth into everlasting life. — Gloria Steinem

Does a rake deserve to possess anything of worth, since he chases everything in skirts and then imagines he can successfully hide his shame by slandering [women in general]? — Christine De Pizan

I'm drawn to intergenerational tension, and it must have been strong in the 1920s: I wondered how Louise's [Brooks] generation of flappers appeared to the women who came of age at the beginning of the century - wearing corsets, long skirts, and high collars. — Laura Moriarty

If you look back at British history, women being allowed to play sport in schools meant they had to change their clothing. They couldn't be running around in their long skirts and corsets, because you can't. — Clare Balding

Oh, I wish it were in my power to put men in the place of fashionable women for one six months! They should curl their hair, consult the milliner, make spongecake, do a little embroidery, wear long skirts, and dress so tightly that they could scarcely breathe. — Lucy Stone

I decide that if I ever get to come back here under different, nonstressful circumstances, I will stay at this hotel and drink fruity drinks and lay in the sand until my skin looks like it had a makeout session with the sun. But today, I'm looking for an inconspicuous way into the water.
We head out of the lobby and get waylaid by hula dancers in grass skirts handing out necklaces of flowers. Apparently Toraf doesn't like necklaces of flowers; as one of the women raises it above his head, he slaps her hand away. I show him, as I accept the gift around my neck, that the woman with the coconut boobs was just trying to be his friend. Just like all the women he's come across so far.
"Humans are too weird," he whispers, unconvinced. I wonder what Toraf would think of Disney World.
Our hotel is right on the water, so we pass through the lobby to the back. The beach is lined with lounge chairs and umbrellas and people scantily clad and people who shouldn't be scantily clad. — Anna Banks

We are not going to confine women to the home, cover their heads, lengthen their skirts, or beat up gay people, prohibit alcohol, censure film, theater, and literature, and codify tolerance in order to respect the overly sensitive whims of a few sanctimonious persons. — Pascal Bruckner

[Women] ... is nothin' but little girls in long skirts, and their hair done up. — Edna Ferber

Beatrix," Amelia said over her shoulder as they proceeded through the hallway. "Perhaps you should reconsider your attire. Poor Captain Phelan may find it somewhat shocking."
"But he's already seen me like this," came Beatrix's voice from behind Christopher, "and I've already shocked him. What is the point in changing clothes? Captain, would you feel more comfortable if I took my breeches off?"
"No," he said hastily.
"Good, I'll keep them on. Really, I don't see why women shouldn't dress like this all the time. One can walk freely and even leap. How is one to chase after a goat in skirts? — Lisa Kleypas

Women were more concerned about their skirts getting caught up in the wheels, and sat astride wearing Bloomers which turned them into Lesbians. — Jacky Fleming

Generally the men always tried to appear strong; they walked tall, heads upright, arms steady at the sides, and feet firmly planted like trees. Solid, Jericho walls of men. But when they went out in the bush to relieve themselves and nobody was looking, the fell apart like crumbling towers and wept with the wretched grief of forgotten concubines.
And when they returned to the presence of their women and children and everybody else, they stuck hands deep inside torn pockets until they felt their dry thighs, kicked little stones out of the way, and erected themselves like walls again, but then the women, who knew all the ways of weeping and all there was to know about falling apart, would not be deceived; they gently rose from the hearths, beat dust off their skirts, and planted themselves like rocks in front of their men and children and shacks, and only then did all appear almost tolerable. — NoViolet Bulawayo

She wasn't dressed like a student. She wore an elaborate burgundy dress with long skirts, a tight waist, and matching burgundy gloves that rose all the way to her elbows.
Moving deliberately, she managed to get down off the stool without tangling her feet and made her way over to stand nest to my table. Her blond hair was artfully curled, and her lips were a deeply painted red. I couldn't help wondering what she was doing in a place like Anker's. — Patrick Rothfuss

That day, instead, I saw clearly the mothers of the old neighbourhood. They were nervous, they were acquiescent. They were silent, with tight lips and stooping shoulders, or they yelled terrible insults at the children who harassed them. Extremely thin, with hollow eyes and cheeks, or with broad behinds, swallen ankles, heavy chests, they lugged shopping bags and small children who clung to their skirts ( ... ) they appeared to have lost those feminine qualities that were so important to us girls ( ... ) They had been consumed by the bodies of husbands, fathers, brothers, whom they ultimately came to resemble, because of their labors or the arrival of old age, of illness. When did that transformation begin? With housework? With pregnancies? With beatings? — Elena Ferrante

Strange how close the darkness is, even when things seem brightest. Even in the glare of a summer noon, when the sidewalk bakes and iron fences are hot to the touch, the shadows are still with us. They congregate in doorways and porches, and under bridges, and beneath the brims of gentlemen's hats so you cannot see their eyes. There is darkness in our mouths and ears; in our bags and wallets; within the swing of men's jackets and beneath the flare of women's skirts. We carry it around with us, the dark, and its influence stains us deep. — Jonathan Stroud

All the time she's silent. All the women were silent except the white one talking to Trent. If it wasn't for the red, green and gold and that the skirts are often denim, I'd think I was surrounded by Muslim women. — Marlon James

All sorts of articles and letters appear in the papers about women. Profound questions are raised concerning them. Should they smoke? Should they work? Vote? Marry? Exist? Are not their skirts too short, or their sleeves? Have they a sense of humor, of honor, of direction? Are spinsters superfluous? But how seldom similar inquiries are propounded about men. — Rose Macaulay

There were about thirty of them, I think - all women; all seated at tables, bearing drinks and books and papers. You might have passed any one of them upon the street, and thought nothing; but the effect of their appearance all combined was rather queer. They were dressed, not strangely, but somehow distinctly. They wore skirts - but the kind of skirts a tailor might design if he were set, for a dare, to sew a bustle for a gent. Many seemed clad in walking-suits or riding-habits. Many wore pince-nez, or carried monocles on ribbons. There were one or two rather startling coiffures; and there were more neckties than I had ever seen brought together at any exclusively female ensemble. — Sarah Waters

Sweet heaven." She swallowed back a lump in her throat. "You must do this all the time. Night after night, you tell women your tale of woe . . ." "Not really. The tale of woe precedes me." " . . . and then they just open their arms and lift their skirts for you. 'Come, you poor, sweet man, let me hold you' and so forth. Don't they?" He hedged. "Sometimes. — Tessa Dare

Women show off their personality and character through accessories more than with low-cut shirts and skirts with huge slits. — Sarah Lafleur

Susan B. Anthony said that the bicycle did more to emancipate women than any other single thing. The bicycle was linked in the psyches of women at that time as a symbol of practical emancipation. Women could go places, wear their skirts shorter to manage the bicycle, and be independent. — Susan Vreeland

The airport in Sofia was a tiny place; I'd expected a palace of modern communism, but we descended to a modest area of tarmac and strolled across it with the other travelers. Nearly all of them were Bulgarian,
I decided, trying to catch something of their conversations. They were
handsome people, some of them strikingly so, and their faces varied
from the dark-eyed pale Slav to a Middle-Eastern bronze, a kaleidoscope
of rich hues and shaggy black eyebrows, noses long and flaring, or
aquiline, or deeply hooked, young women with curly black hair and noble
foreheads, and energetic old men with few teeth. They smiled or laughed and talked eagerly with one another; one tall man gesticulated to his companion with a folded newspaper. Their clothes were distinctly not Western, although I would have been hard put to say what it was about the cuts of suits and skirts, the heavy shoes and dark hats, that was unfamiliar to me. — Elizabeth Kostova

The reaction of the people below to this fantastic sight and sound was one of wild excitement. Details could be seen vividly from aloft. An elderly man and woman fell to their knees and prayed. People in the villages stood still and gaped upward. Most of them still had their Sunday finery on. "You could see people going to church...man, wife, and child walking along the country roads." Bombardier Herbert Light, through his binoculars, saw an open-air festival in progress, with the women dressed in colorful skirts and blouses. One of them threw her apron over her head in panic.
As they roared over the wheat fields, the first unfriendly acts occurred: farmers threw stones and pitchforks at them. One farmer leading two horses was startled by the advancing planes and leaped into a nearby stream. A girl swimming in another river was reported by ten separate crews. — Leon Wolff

[I]n America,
wrongs can be righted,
warriors can wear skirts and blouses,
and the bravest hearts
may beat in girls
only five feet tall. — Michelle Markel

priests dressed in skirts try to trump women's birth-giving power by baptizing with imitation birth fluid, calling us reborn, and going women one better by promising everlasting life. Indeed, — Gloria Steinem

I ran from them. Nights, yellow lights
scoured sand. What was ever found
but women in skirts folded around the men
they loved that Friday? No one found me.
And how could that have been, here, where
even botanical names were recorded
and small roads mapped in red?
Night, the sky is black paper pecked with pinholes. — Deborah Ager

Finally I grinned and said, "I won't eat meat if it's been overcooked." She (Amarinda) glanced up at me, confused, and I added, "I thought you should know that, since we're going to be friends now."
Amarinda's smile widened. "I think it's unfair that women aren't allowed to wear trousers. They seem far more comfortable than dresses."
I chuckled. "They're not. Every year I think fashion invents one more piece I have to add to my wardrobe."
"And one more layer to my skirts." She thought for a moment, then said, "I think it's funny when you're rude to the cook. I shouldn't admit that, but his face turns all sorts of colors when you are and there's nothing he can do about it."
"He can overcook my meat. — Jennifer A. Nielsen

For yes, being a woman, even one with a penis and for the purposes of drama, really made me feel that women have been coerced into a way of presenting themselves that is basically a form of bondage. Their shoes, their skirts, even their nails seem designed to stop them from being able to escape whilst at the same time drawing attention to their sexual and secondary sexual characteristics.
And I think that has happened so that men feel they can ogle them and protect them in equal measure. — Alan Cumming

A modern world, with so many choices for women, yet still very much a man's world, with little

place for compassion or community or flowery skirts. No, it was a world of business suits and

lawsuits, of committees and careful conversations. — Debotri Dhar

When I was at university, the policemen used to measure how short the women's mini-skirts were and how long guys' hair was. We were living under a government that considers people to be soldiers. — Kim Hyesoon

After so many years of fighting to pour herself into skintight, low-rise jeans and binding pencil skirts and slacks that always felt like a vise around her waist, she found leggings were God's apology to women everywhere. For the first time, something that was in style actually flattered her figure perfectly by hiding her less-than-stellar mid- and rear section while accentuating her reasonably shapely legs. Every day she pulled a pair on she offered a silent thank-you to their inventor and a quiet prayer that they'd remain in fashion just a little bit longer. — Lauren Weisberger

It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamourous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stairs to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Her skirts, sleeves, collar, and hat saw to it that none of the young ruffians of the Leased Territories would have the opportunity to invade her body space with their eyes, and lest her distinctive face prove too much of a temptation, she wore a veil too ...
The veil offered Nell protection from unwanted scrutiny. Many New Atlantis career women also used the veil as a way of meeting the world on their own terms, ensuring that they were judged on their own merits and not on their appearance. It served a protective function as well, bouncing back the harmful rays of the sun and intercepting many deleterious nanosites that might otherwise slip unhindered into the nose and mouth. — Neal Stephenson

The Highland men and women certainly dress differently than we do, even when we're out in the country. Why do you think the Scotti9sh men wear those ridiculous skirts, George?"
Enough was enough. Fagan approached the table and gave her a roguish grin. "'Tisnae a skirt, lass. If I wore something under it, then it would be called a skirt. — Victoria Roberts

We were emerging from the period of war, of uniforms, of women-soldiers built like boxers. I drew women-flowers, soft shoulders, fine waists like liana and wide skirts like corolla. — Christian Dior

The world is falling down around our ears, and all these people care for is talking about fucking to women in short skirts and men with their shirts hanging open — Stephen King

As long as you are forced to be a woman first instead of a person, by default, you need to be a feminist. That's it. Men are people, women are women? Screw that. Screw that. I am sick of having words aimed to shut me up. I am sick of having to be anything other than a person first. Zounds! I enjoy being a girl, whatever that means. For me, that meant Star Wars figurines, mounds of books, skirts and flats. It meant Civil War reenacting and best girlfriends I'd give a kidney to and best guy friends I'd ruin a liver with and making messes and cleaning up some of them and still not knowing how to apply eye shadow. That's being a girl. That's being a person. It's the same damn thing. I wish Rush had just called me an idiot. I'm happy to be called an idiot! On the day when someone on the Internet calls me an idiot first and ugly second, I will set down my feminist battle flag and heave a great sigh. Then I will pick it back up and keep climbing. There are many more mountains to overcome. — Alexandra Petri

We spoke of ourselves as "emancipated" when we got the vote. Yet we are still slaves to the superficial and the superfluous. We are concerned with the length of our skirts, with the latest lipstick, with the newest thrill in hats. We are impressed by advertisements that insist we must be alluring; we must adopt a time-consuming coiffure, we must spend hours with the "beautician," we must attend fashion shows. As long as women are preoccupied with nonessentials we shall be afflicted with infantilism, passivity, and the eventual disillusionment that results from trivial, unproductive lives. — Mary Barnett Gilson

[in the context of 1881] "Don't you want to get married and have babies? Mrs. Bergman used to say that women need-" "What women need is more exercise, shorter skirts, and their own way once in a while. — Karen Cushman