Spinster Quotes & Sayings

Money began talking to Ben again
not big money this time, but little money. It niggled and nagged and carped and whined at him, as full of fears and bitterness as a spinster witch.
Money Talks — Kurt Vonnegut

Emily Dickinson has haunted my life - her poems, her persona, all the tales about her solitude. Ever since I discovered her in the seventh grade, I've had a crush on that spinster in white, who had such a heroic and startling inner landscape of her own. — Jerome Charyn

But the saints are never the kind of killjoy spinster aunts who go in for faultfinding and lack all sense of humor. (Nor should the Karl Barth who so loved and understood Mozart be regarded as such.)For humor is a mysterious but unmistakable charism inseparable from Catholic faith, and neither the "progressives" nor the "integralists" seem to possess it - the latter even less than the former. — Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Miss Climpson's active mind quickly conjured up a picture of the rabbit-fair-haired and a little paunchy, with a habit of saying, "I'll ask the wife." Miss Climpson wondered why Providence saw fit to create such men. For Miss Climpson, men were intended to be masterful, even though wicked or foolish. She was a spinster made and not born- a perfectly womanly woman. — Dorothy L. Sayers

I know sometimes I can come off like a lonely spinster in a tower. That's not me at all. — Daphne Guinness

After all, if spinster chaperons required their own spinster chaperons there simply wouldn't be enough to go around. — Anne Stuart

Not me, of course, as I am now officially a spinster librarian and must stay home with my cat and drink tea. — Eleanor Brown

For the first time, she enjoyed the freedom of being a thirty-year-old spinster. This was a distinctly compromising situation that no schoolroom virgin would ever have been allowed to witness. However, she could do as she liked by sheer virtue of her age.
"I took care of my father during the last two years of his life," she said in response to Devlin's comment. "He was an invalid, and required assistance with his clothes. I served as valet, cook, and nurse for him, especially toward the end."
Devlin's face seemed to change, his annoyance vanishing. "What a capable woman you are," he said softly, with no trace of irony. — Lisa Kleypas

I am not beautiful and I am sarcastic and I believe I am better than most in this town and that is why I am a thirty-six-year-old orphan with no husband and why no man in Spring City has ever even held my hand. — Kaitlyn Greenidge

If I was an eccentric old spinster in a Merchant Ivory movie, I'd want to share my lovely cottage with Holly and that's the truth. I'd do the cooking and leave the decorating to her, and we'd be inseparable. — Lisa Samson

I would sooner become a spinster than spend a lifetime with a boring, unimaginative man. — Lynn Austin

Good day to you, Sister," Gannon grunted, gritting his teeth and clenching the reins in a white-knuckled grip. "May you live to see your great-grandchildren, and may your eyes never grow dim!" Rolin stifled a snicker. His spinster aunt was childless, and her eyesight was poor from years of needlework. — William D. Burt

Alexia suspected Lord Maccon's handling was a tad more than was strictly called for under the circumstances, but she secretly enjoyed the sensation. After all, how often did a spinster of her shelf life get manhandled by an earl of Lord Maccon's peerage? She had better take advantage of the situation. — Gail Carriger

Fellow almost damn'd in a fair wife; That never set a squadron in the field, Nor the division of a battle knows More than a spinster; unless the bookish theoric, Wherein the toged consuls can propose As masterly as he: mere — William Shakespeare

I shouldn't like to monopolize your time- surely you should be receiving your guests."
Devlin took her to a corner of the drawing room, taking a glass of wine from the tray of a passing servant. He gave the glass to Amanda and lowered his head to murmur in her ear. "There's only one guest who matters to me."
Amanda felt a prickling blush rise in her cheeks. She felt as if she were in a dream. This couldn't be happening to Amanda Briars, the spinster from Windsor... the sweet music, the lovely surroundings, the handsome man whispering seductive nonsense in her ear. — Lisa Kleypas

Miss Tarabotti felt such rules did not entirely apply to her, as she was a spinster. Had been a spinster for as long as she could remember. In her more acerbic moments, she felt she had been born a spinster. — Gail Carriger

At heart I am a librarian, a bird-watcher, a transcendentalist, a gardener, a spinster, a monk. — Juliana Hatfield

She sat on her porch those first nights, wrapped in the brackish tidal air. The future's breeze split across her face and joined up again behind her. She felt herself a spinster whose sudden new suitor must be either sadistic, blind, or a confused fortune hunter. She'd read all the cautionary fairy tales and knew the one inevitable outcome. Still, she consented to this courtship, and even decided to court it back. — Richard Powers

Aunt Jettie: "yes, i'm wandering the earth seeking revenge on ben & jerry for giving me the fat a$$ and coronary & I give out love advice to the tragically lonely."
jane: "Is that an ironic eternal punishment for the lady who died an eighty-one year old spinster."
jettie: "single by choice you twirp."
jane: "banshee."
jettie: "bloodsucker. — Molly Harper

Here is the full list of the banned words I used: active homosexual; career women; Third World; blacks; Asians; Australasia; Bangalore; primitive African tribes; crippled; in a wheelchair; hare lip; ethnic minorities; handicapped; spinster; committed suicide; gypsies; Bombay; illegitimate daughter; air hostess; Siamese twins; Calcutta; deaf ears; illegal asylum seeker; province of Northern Ireland; grandmother; bachelor. — Rod Liddle

I need you to be my foil!" she wailed. "I need someone to disagree with him, so I can agree with him and support him like a good wife should! Please, Evelyn! I cannot become a ruined spinster! — Tarun Shanker

He is a young man with a future of power and opportunity and we are young women destined to be either wives and mothers at the very best, or spinster parasites at the worst. — Philippa Gregory

You have got a sharp tongue, haven't you honey? You'll have to watch it or you'll go to a lonely spinster's grave. — Margaret Way

I would rather be a spinster than sold off, traded in, whatever they may call it. — Sara Sheridan

I particularly want you to meet Miss Bucholtz."
The very idea made him uneasy. "Why is that,
Ma'am?" he bluntly asked.
Mrs. Morgan hesitated. "Keep this under your hat, mind you."
"Yes, Ma'am."
She let out a tired sigh. "I've brought Miss Bucholtz to replace Mr. Gabellini."
Howie pictured a dried up old spinster with the same commanding presence as Mrs. Morgan, a real battle-axe.
"Fireworks are coming. Are you sure a woman is the right, uh, person for the job?"
"Bertha Bucholz is one of the best cooks I know. I guarantee by this time next month, you men will all be sporting five extra pounds. — Debra Holland

Judith Brigham expected her daughter to remain a spinster the rest of her life. In the more pungent phraseology of her soon-to-be stepfather, "Margaret had a face like the ass end of a gasoline truck and a body to match." He — Stephen King

A life passed amid gangsters, thieves, smugglers, and gamblers had granted Amelia an unerring nose for greed, vanity, and other assorted venal characteristics, and in Miss Sparrow, she smelled rancid pride combined with the bitter char of unrequited love. She smelled the lemon tang of loneliness mingling with despair. Just under Priscilla Sparrow's skin, Amelia could tell, a rosemary blast of judiciousness rippled, followed by the must decay of jealousy and a lingering note of envy - in short (and in spite of all of Miss Sparrow's better attempts with Dick Crane), the odors of a lifelong spinster. — Tiffany Baker

You have never been married? You are a spinster?" Diana laughed. "Why, she can't be above seventeen or eighteen years old, St. John," said she. "I am near nineteen: but I am not married. No. — Charlotte Bronte

My body was a reststop for the lonely and I was the spinster innkeeper. — Lena Dunham

The word 'barren' tells you everything you need to know. The word 'spinster' tells you everything you need to know about our attitude of women who choose not to marry ... Imagine if you saw George Clooney on the cover of a magazine every week with: 'Is George broody? Is George gonna adopt a baby? When is George gonna have another kid?' It would just seem weird. We'd seem demented, yet it's totally valid for women. — Caitlin Moran

If a man is unmarried, he is called a bachelor. If a woman is unmarried, she is called a spinster or an old maid. What is it about an unmarried woman that poses such a threat to the patriarchal order? Mainly, it is that women are no one's property when we're unmarried. We're under no one's control, and neither are our children. There is no telling what we might do or say. — Marianne Williamson

Which are you? Are you the single woman who is just barely getting by who will become an insignificant spinster one day? Or are you the kind that's more dangerous, leading the lost further into their lostness? Or is your singleness fueled by the power of the Spirit so that you are one who uses it for good, leaving a legacy of lives changed? — Dannah Gresh

So Laura is placed for us: mushrooms, crushed flowers, country matters. In London she will miss the greenhouse with its glossy tank, the appleroom, everything "earthy and warm." Laura is an anomaly in the world of easy literary symbolism: she is a spinster, completely uninterested in men. Nevertheless she belongs irrevocably to the sources of life: to earth, seeds, bulbs. — Sylvia Townsend Warner

People talk about confidence without ever bringing up hard work. That's a mistake. I know I sound like some dour older spinster on Downton Abbey who has never felt a man's touch and whose heart has turned to stone, but I don't understand how you could have self-confidence if you don't do the work ... I have never, ever, ever, met a high confident person and successful person who is not what a movie would call a 'workaholic.' Because confidence is like respect; you have to earn it. — Mindy Kaling

I would rather die a spinster - poor, ruined, scorned, and alone - than suffer that heartbreak daily. — Tessa Dare

Of course, these were only dreams. How could a sensible woman leave a happy marriage? All the same, a seductive voice from afar kept breaking into her conjugal peace: it was the voice of solitude. — Milan Kundera

You think,' she said, 'because you've identified one purpose of mine, that you know what I'm doing. But this inquiry among printers was something of a discovered attack.'
[...]
'What do you mean, a discovered attack?'
'A tactical term.' She touched her fingertips together. 'When you make a move, you do two things. First, you move forward - and the space you now occupy has value. But you also vacate the spot where you once were, exposing your enemy's flank to longer-ranged attacks. Be aware of where you are, and the space you'll leave behind.'
'That's not a sense of tactics you have,' he said, blinking down at her. 'That sounds like actual tactical training. Where would a half-blind near-spinster acquire that? — Courtney Milan

dull - she did not, with equal longing, wish to be a part of the whispering spinster chorus at the edge of other, more interesting lives. She — Alice McDermott

Was this some new level of depravity? Had he developed a spinster fetish? — Lisa Kleypas

Isn't that how falling in love so often works? Some stranger appears out of nowhere and becomes a fixed star in your universe. — Kate Bolick

And she's certainly a good cook." Miss Betts sighed. "The epitaph of the spinster. — Annie Barrows

Jem was safe from her, and he would ride away with a song on his lips and a laugh at her expense, forgetful of her, and of his brother, and of God; while she dragged through the years, sullen and bitter, the stain of silence marking her, coming in the end to ridicule as a soured spinster who had been kissed once in her life and could not forget it. — Daphne Du Maurier

She had told the truth: she did not like to dance. Men assumed that a spinster wanted for excitement. Dried-up. They made a point of spinning her wildly across the floor. Once she had fallen, and thereafter she'd declined all invitations. — Meredith Duran

There is perhaps no more rewarding romance heroine than she who is not expected to find love. The archetype comes in many disguises - the wallflower, the spinster, the governess, the single mom - but always with one sad claim: Love is not in her cards. — Sarah MacLean

I'd rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe. — Louisa May Alcott

[T]he clouds the miller saw as bags of flour, the draper as unironed calico, the confectioner as baked meringue, old Katina the spinster as a bridal veil and Madame Nana as an extension of her climbing rose, while Savvas admired them fulsomely as just clouds. — Ioanna Karystiani

I hate when a man feels I'm obligated to disclose my marital status to somebody I don't even know. Even this bullshit about status itself as if married and spinster are the only two choices for defining myself. Or because I'm a woman I'm supposed to have a status at all. — Marlon James

Man is potentially a son, and woman is potentially a mother; woman depends on the dependence of man. The spinster, if pathetic at all, is pathetic because she has no one to look after, not because there is no one to look after her. Bear in mind that the conventional spinster keeps a canaary as a substitute for a husband. — Stella Benson

A female may be poor or delicate or a spinster, but it does seem ill-advised of Miss Liddiard to combine all three. — Zen Cho

The word "autistic" is accurate. But so are other words that we no longer use to describe people: spinster (unmarried woman), hobo (migrant worker), cripple (person with a physical handicap), and so on. The fact that a person is unmarried or has sustained a mobility-reducing injury or birth defect certainly figures into their life experiences, but it does not define their character - unless they or we let it. — Ellen Notbohm

I was born to be a spinster, and, by God, I'm going to spin. — Winifred Holtby

There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands. — Agatha Christie

When a gently born spinster has little money, her choices are few. She might receive an offer of marriage, but it's unlikely to be from a wealthy man, so she'll have a hard life trying to make ends meet for her growing family. — Jo Beverley

It was easy, terribly easy, to become with time a middle-aged spinster with a sharp tongue. She would have to guard against this. — Alexander McCall Smith

You're so pretty, Elizabeth,... Why, I'd never have taken you for a spinster. — Debra Holland

If only others knew that Lady Calpurnia Hartwell, proper, well-behaved spinster, entertained deep-seated and certainly unladylike thoughts about fictional heroes. — Sarah MacLean

I could no more marry a man about whom I could not make a fool of myself than I could marry one who made a fool of himself about me. Else had I long ceased to be a spinster. — Max Beerbohm

Choosing to do things your way may doom me to be a penniless spinster."
"If Christ called you to be penniless, would you not become so willingly? — Melissa Jagears

Every time she allowed her gaze to wander to the group at the piano, she found Lord Wentworth's eyes on her. In the end it was easier to study the patterns in the ornate rug on which her chair sat. She was glad when the evening ended. — Susan Leona Fisher

He blinked. He had the sense that he was lost in those quiet gray eyes, unable to look away from her. He was a duke. She was a - what had she called herself? A half-blind near-spinster. It shouldn't even have been a fair fight. — Courtney Milan

The saints are never the kind of killjoy spinster aunts who go in for faultfinding and lack all sense of humor. — Hans Urs Von Balthasar

It was quite settled by now. She was born to be a spinster. — Laura Kinsale

People think the painting is a portrait, but it isn't. Not really. He wasn't even in the field; he conjured it from a room in the house, an entirely different angle. He removed rocks and trees and outbuildings. The scale of the barn is wrong. And I am not that frail young thing, but a middle-aged spinster. It's not my body, really, and maybe not even my head. He — Christina Baker Kline

The Dean of St Pauls talks absolute balls, The Dean of Westminster showed his to a spinster The Dean of Oswestry frisks girls in the vestry The Bishop of Birmingham buggers boys while confirming 'em, The Bishop of Norwich makes them come in his porridge, The Dean of West Ham smears their bottoms with jam. — Jean Findlay

The word 'spinster' tells you everything you need to know about our attitude of women who choose not to marry. — Caitlin Moran

Without a doubt ... the worst part of being a single woman was having to take care of your own car. — Lisa Kleypas

The word spinster hid behind it a blazing freedom. — Lauren Groff

The duke contents himself mainly with attempting to rule the world and other suchlike nonsense. When one is guiding the patterns of the social universe, a single spinster preternatural is unlikely to cause one undue distress. — Gail Carriger

The 1947 best-seller Modern Woman: The Lost Sex urged that spinsters be barred from teaching children on the grounds of "emotional incompetence." It was the ultimate example of the pendulum swinging - instead of prohibiting the employment of married women as teachers, society now wanted marriage to be mandatory. "A great many children have unquestionably been damaged psychologically by the spinster teacher who cannot be an adequate model of a complete woman either for boys or girls," the authors argued. — Gail Collins

This explains so much," she said, clucking her tongue in mother-hen fashion. "You're compensating for this withered appendage."
Withered appendage? What the devil was she talking about? He shook his head, trying to clear it. Colin's dire predictions of shriveled twigs and dried currants rattled in his skull. Wide awake now, he fought to sit up, wrestling the sheets.
"Listen, you. I don't know what sort of liberties you've taken while I was insensible, or just what your spinster imagination prepared you to see. But I'll have you know, that water was damned cold."
She blinked at him. "I'm referring to your leg."
"Oh." His leg. That withered appendage — Tessa Dare

In the New World, "spinster" gained a more precise meaning: in colonial parlance, it indicated an unmarried woman over the age of twenty-three and under the age of twenty-six. At twenty-six, women without spouses became thornbacks, a reference to a sea-skate with sharp spines covering its back and tail. It was not a compliment — Rebecca Traister

The cat required far less attendance than a human child, which is one of the reasons why spinster ladies prefer felines to babies. — Elizabeth Peters

First, her father had a minor stroke, giving Claire a glimpse of his mortality and, by extension, her own. And then she had a vision of herself thirty years in the future: a spinster librarian in an apartment full of cats named after New Wave directors. (Godard, leave Rivette's chew toy alone - ) — Jess Walter

No, she'd spent the last five years begging the Lord to help her find contentment in her spinster status. And he'd been faithful. She had her library, her Ladies Aid work, the children's reading hour. She could come and go as she pleased, spend her money as she deemed fit, all without the hassle of first gaining a man's permission. And if the loneliness sometimes ate away at her like water poured on a sugarloaf ... ? Well, God had seen her through the last five years. She figured he could be depended upon to see her through the next fifty. — Karen Witemeyer

It took nearly a year to finish the ever-changing [marriage candidates] list, with the assistance of his sister and his aging spinster aunt, who lorded over their affairs as the self-appointed voice of cultivated reason. During this time, Gabriel struggled to convince straight-from-Oxford Tristan that he must marry, produce heirs, and maintain the family dukedom for Gabriel himself wouldn't marry. He knew he simply did not have the compulsion to inflict that sort of aggravation on a woman. — Olivia Parker

The way she told it, the English counties are littered with aging spinsters who accidentally displayed a spark of intelligence at a debutante dance and were banished forever from civilized society — Michelle Cooper

And there's nothing wrong with spinsters, anyway. They have nice cats and little bowls full of candy. Mrs. Bailey and Mrs. Newitz are the kindest ladies you'll ever meet, and they have nips of whiskey in their tea like cowboys. — Catherynne M Valente

Miss Alexia Tarabotti was not enjoying her evening. Private balls were never more than middling amusements for spinsters, and Miss Tarabotti was not the kind of spinster who could garner even that much pleasure from the event. To put the pudding in the puff: she had retreated to the library, her favorite sanctuary in any house, only to happen upon an unexpected vampire. She — Gail Carriger

Dwayne's real mother was a spinster school teacher who wrote sentimental poetry and claimed to be descended from Richard the Lion-Hearted, who was a king. His real father was an itinerant typesetter, who seduced his mother by setting her poems in type. He didn't sneak them into a newspaper or anything. It was enough for her that they were set in type. — Kurt Vonnegut

Many a housewife staring at the back of her husband's newspaper, or listening to his breathing in bed is lonelier than any spinster in a rented room. — Germaine Greer

How precisely, had a arrived at this? He was taking orders from a spinster, willingly submitting himself to her medieval torture devices. And she wasn't even naked.
-Bram's thoughts — Tessa Dare

I truly hate being a guest in someone's home ... Worst of all, you have to 'make nice' at all hours. I don't want someone across the table from me while I'm eating my breakfast. I don't want to share the newspaper and I don't want to talk to anyone at the end of the day. If I were interested in that shit, I'd be married again by now and put a permanent end to all the peace and quiet. — Sue Grafton

I think female solitude is a mental condition as well as a physical state. You can be married and a spinster. I think spinster is an identity every woman can claim, if she will ... I feel like a lot of women, or a lot of feminists, joke about taking to the sea or living alone in a cottage as this kind of fun freedom. — Mallory Ortberg

The deceits which her spinster's sentimentality has practiced on her original good judgment are legendary and colossal; she has this way of speaking of children's hearts as if they were something holy; it is hard for a parent to know what to say. — Alice Munro

Quin took on the air of someone who has just realized it's time for the yearly visit to the spinster great-aunt in a desperate attempt to woo her inheritance away from her thirty-eight cats. — Amy Fecteau

An old maid, that's what I'm to be. A literary spinster, with a pen for a spouse, a family of stories for children, and twenty years hence a morsel of fame, perhaps ... — Louisa May Alcott

My life has always been geared towards my career. If my life is complete in other ways then I don't mind being a 65-year-old spinster. But I don't discount love when I'm talking about not getting married. I could ... it's just something I haven't wanted to do yet. — Kylie Minogue

Don't look so stunned," she teased. "I want you, Bram. So much. All the time. When it comes to you, this buttoned-up spinster is just seething with wild, insatiable passion." She kissed him, teasing her tongue over his lips. "It should hardly come as any surprise. You've been telling me so since the very beginning."
"I know," he said wonderingly. "I know. The surprise is that you listened." He cradled her neck in one hand and claimed her mouth in a deep, masterful kiss.

-Susanna & Bram — Tessa Dare

I always thought I was going to end up an old spinster, with my cats and fur coats. — Gemma Arterton

unopened. When her son stands in the night outside her house, she goes to bed early. In the morning, she looks at his photograph, writes adoring letters to a long-defunct address. A spinster sees the face of the young man who loved her in the mirror of her bedroom, on the ceiling of the bakery, on the surface of the lake, in the sky. The — Alan Lightman

The respectable family that supports worthless relatives or covers up their crimes in order to "protect the family name"(as if the moral stature of one man could be damaged by the actions of another)
-the bum who boasts that his great-grandfather was an empire-builder, or the small-town spinster who boasts that her maternal great-uncle was a state senator and her third cousin gave a concert at carnegie hall (as if the achievement of one man could rub off on the mediocrity of another)
-the parents who search geneological trees in order to evaluate their prospective son-in-law.
-the celebrity who starts his autobiography with a detailed account of his family history
-All these are samples of racism. — Ayn Rand

Always be civil to the girls, you never know who they may marry' is a aphorism which has saved many an English spinster from being treated like an Indian widow. — Nancy Mitford

In our time, Universalism as such, like a spinster lady late in life, took a husband, and although they agreed to hyphenate their married name, by now the offspring of that union often simply call themselves by the husband's name, and in time may not recognize her name at all. — Max Coots

Cormac's eyes eyes narrow. "She wasn't half the Spinster you are, Adelice."
"I'm half the person she was," I say with a shrug, barely keeping my voice steady. "So I guess it evens out. — Gennifer Albin

She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Even Alexia, spinster that she was, was given an allowance large enough to dress her to the height of fashion - although she did tend to stick to trends a little too precisely. The poor thing could not help it. Her choice of clothing simply lacked soul. — Gail Carriger

It was a business that engaged a significant part of the nation; the wool was given to village women to comb and to spin before being sent to the weaver; to this day, an unmarried woman is known as a spinster. — Peter Ackroyd

Her chances of a decent marriage were about to be dashed-and all because of a ferret. — Lisa Kleypas

All this time she'd thought it God's will that she be a spinster. She had grown content with that expectation, taking satisfaction in the wisdom she'd gained through her experience with Stephen. No man would dupe her again. But what if living alone was never part of God's plan for her? What if she chose that life because it was safe - because she was afraid? — Karen Witemeyer

It is possible for a spinster to be disappointed in lovers, but only the married are ever disappointed in love. — Myrtle Reed