Quotes & Sayings About The Modern Woman

The mass depiction of the modern woman as a "beauty" is a contradiction: Where modern women are growing, moving, and expressing their individuality, as the myth has it, "beauty" is by definition inert, timeless, and generic. That this hallucination is necessary and deliberate is evident in the way "beauty" so directly contradicts women's real situation. — Naomi Wolf

Wonder Woman represented modern America as leader of
the free world, and champion of the downtrodden. She forsook her kingdom and immortality to make the whole world a better place and, most of all, to fight for the rights of females. Just as America emerged as a global peacekeeper, Wonder Woman's adventures took her wherever women were in peril and their freedom was threatened, like the planet Venus with its butterfly-winged women, or the subterranean paradise Eveland.'Ihe "loving ways of the Amazons" that she was sent to teach the world were presumably the wisdom of the matrilineal society that predated the Greeks. "I can make bad men good and weak woman strong!" she says, as she spreads her message of empowerment across "man's world. — Mike Madrid

How to get and keep men interested in you (A Guide for the Modern Woman): Put them in the "friend" or "fuck" zone. Leave them there. — Alice Walsh

A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages; she must be well trained in the fighting styles of the Kyoto masters and the modern tactics and weaponry of Europe. And besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half-deserved. All this she must possess, and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading, meditation, and Oriental discipline. — Seth Grahame-Smith

By putting the spotlight on the female child and framing her as the ideal of beauty, he condemns the mature woman to invisibility. In fact, the modern Western man enforces Immanuel Kant's nineteenth-century theories: To be beautiful, women have to appear childish and brainless. When a woman looks mature and self-assertive, or allows her hips to expand, she is condemned ugly. Thus, the walls of the European harem separate youthful beauty from ugly maturity. — Fatema Mernissi

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

Many of our troubles in the world today arise from an over-emphasis of the masculine, and a neglect of the feminine. This modern world is an aggressive, hyperactive, competitive, masculine world, and it needs the woman's touch as never before. — Eva Burrows

The Modern Day Black Woman, an Outcast of American Society — Delano Johnson

This extreme treatment was among the proliferating regimens developed in response to the stunning increase in nervous disorders diagnosed around the turn of the century. Commentators and clinicians cited a number of factors related to the stresses of modern civilization: the increased speed of communication facilitated by the telegraph and railroad; the "unmelodious" clamor of city life replacing the "rhythmical" sounds of nature; and the rise of the tabloid press that exploded "local horrors" into national news. These nervous diseases became an epidemic among "the ultracompetitive businessman and the socially active woman. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

I used to think if I could be free I should be the happiest woman," a young Mississippi woman recalled. "But when my master come to me, and says 'Lizzie, you is free!' it seems like I was in a kind of daze. And when I would wake up in the morning I would think to myself, Is I free? Hasn't I got to get up before daylight and go into the field and work? — Leon F. Litwack

The wise woman patterns her life on the theory and practice of modern banking. She never gives her love, but only lends it on the best security and at the highest rate of interest. — Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec

The problem with being a modern woman, I thought, as the front door swung wide, is that you have to pretend to be stronger than you are. — Darcey Steinke

I adore the challenge of creating truly modern clothes, where a woman's personality and sense of self are revealed. I want people to see the dress, but focus on the woman. — Vera Wang

I went to Concord, a young woman from the backwoods, firm in belief that Emerson was the first of living men. He was the modern Moses who had talked with God apart and could interpret Him to us. — Rebecca Harding Davis

As a woman, for example, I live and work very much like a man. I take a lot of things from the man's world and I have to do that if I want to survive modern life. Conversely, men have to take things from the woman's world to survive. It's a very beautiful thing that you have to mold your own gender nowadays. But it's a very stressful thing for us. — Pernille Fischer Christensen

A modern woman sees a piece of linen, but the mediaeval woman saw through it to the flax fields, she smelt the reek of the retting ponds, she felt the hard rasp of the hackling, and she saw the soft sheen of the glossy flax. Man did not see 'just leather', he saw the beast - perhaps one of his own - and knew the effort of slaughtering, liming and curing.
Communities were smaller and whether our man lived on the outskirts of some feudal system, had escaped from it, or was entirely isolated, he would work alone, or daily with the same fellow-workers - conversation would soon languish.
But THINK he must. — Dorothy Hartley

The modern age has been characterized by a Promethean spirit, a restless energy that preys on speed records and shortcuts, unmindful of the past, uncaring of the future, existing only for the moment and the quick fix. The earthly rhythms that characterize a more pastoral way of life have been shunted aside to make room for the fast track of an urbanized existence. Lost in a sea of perpetual technological transition, modern man and woman find themselves increasingly alienated from the ecological choreography of the planet. — Jeremy Rifkin

The enemy of the modern woman is not women who like fashion or are writing about it. The enemy is stereotypes that come from all places and that tell you to be one way or the other. The enemy is really real sexist people, like Todd Akin, and people who are violent against women physically or sexually. — Megan Amram

Don't be afraid of books, even the most dissident, seemingly 'immoral' ones. Culture is a sure bet in life, whether high, low, eclectic, pop, ancient or modern. And I am convinced that reading is one of the most important tools of liberation that any human being, and a contemporary Arab woman in particular, can exploit. I am not saying it is the ONLY tool, especially with all the new alternative - more visual, interactive and hasty - ways of knowledge, learning and growth. But how could I not be convinced of literature's power, when it has been my original emancipator? — Joumana Haddad

Having had that experience ... I think, what modern culture wants to see is the relationship with the woman. I don't think you can tell a story on film nowadays where the woman simply is there for the man when he decides to settle down. — Tom Selleck

I never feel like I am "using" a voice, rather I am listening to a voice and recording it as faithfully as it comes to me and as I can. I think that the female sex is much maligned, even in our supposedly sexually "open" society. It is the site of a woman's pleasure, and the source of (most) children's entry into the world, and an ancient symbol of power and fecundity, and we are directly or indirectly told in modern times that it's dirty, shameful, ugly, odorous, and to be hidden away. — Micheline Aharonian Marcom

When I design a collection I strive to make a woman feel as special as the delicate creation she is wearing; take her to an enchanted time and place where women are princesses and magnificent goddesses. In today's modern world we need to pause and indulge in beauty. — Claire Pettibone

The modern fairy tale ending is the reverse of the traditional one: A woman does not wait for Prince Charming to bring her happiness; she lives happily ever after only by refusing to wait for him
or by actually rejecting him. It is those who persist in hoping for a Prince Charming who are setting themselves up for disillusionment and unhappiness. — Susan Faludi

They had heroes for companions, beautiful youths to
dream of, rose-marble-fingered
Women shed light down the great lines;
But you have invoked the slime in the skull,
The lymph in the vessels. They have shown men Gods
like racial dreams, the woman's desire,
The man's fear, the hawk-faced prophet's; but nothing
Human seems happy at the feet of yours.
Therefore though not forgotten, not loved, in the gray old
years in the evening leaning
Over the gray stones of the tower-top,
You shall be called heartless and blind. — Robinson Jeffers

Islam has a total organization of life that is completely different from ours; it embraces simply everything, ... There is a very marked subordination of woman to man; there is a very tightly knit criminal law, indeed, a law regulating all areas of life, that is opposed to our modern ideas about society. One has to have a clear understanding that it is not simply a denomination that can be included in the free realm of a pluralistic society. — Pope Benedict XVI

I am the modern, intelligent, independent-type woman. In other words, a girl who can not get a man. — Shelley Winters

What kind of a modern woman was she, if she didn't reach for her own dream? Maybe it was time to sweep the man off his feet, for a change. — Tessa Dare

We ought not to speak only about the economics of globalization, but about the psychology of globalization. It's like the psychology of a battered woman being faced with her husband again and being asked to trust him again. That's what is happening. We are being asked by the countries that invented nuclear weapons and chemical weapons and apartheid and modern slavery and racism - countries that have perfected the gentle art of genocide, that colonized other people for centuries - to trust them when they say that they believe in a level playing field and the equitable distribution of resources and in a better world. It seems comical that we should even consider that they really mean what they say. — Arundhati Roy

The most far-reaching social development of modern times is the revolt of woman against sex servitude. The most important force in the remaking of the world is a free motherhood ... — Margaret Sanger

She hadn't ascribed to this modern notion of equality between the sexes. Woman were patently superior. — Laura Kinsale

There are many female gods recognized and honored by the tribes and Nations. Femaleness was highly valued, both respected and feared, and all social institutions reflected this attitude. Even modern sayings, such as the Cheyenne statement that a people is not conquered until the hearts of the women are on the ground, express the Indians understanding that without the power of woman the people will not live, but with it, they will endure and prosper. — Paula Gunn Allen

The modern man needs to catch on to the fact that women want to be treated as equals, but only when it suits us. the modern woman's fierce need for independence doesn't mean we want to pay for our half of a meal, or that we don't want a man to hold a door open for us. We still want to be looked after, but on our terms. — Jodi Ellen Malpas

Emily supposed the modern world was fortunate in the progress of science. But she could not help but feel at this moment the impropriety of male invasiveness. She knew he was working to save this poor woman, but in her mind, too, was a sense of Wrede's science as adding to the abuse committed by his fellow soldiers. He said not a word. It was as if the girl were no more than the surgical challenge she offered. — E.L. Doctorow

85% of modern music doesn't have a damn thing to do with music. It has to do with looking good. Name me one woman on the top ten right now who isn't absolutely smoking hot. You think that's a coincidence? — Patrick Rothfuss

A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. A book that does nothing to you is dead. A baby, whether it does anything to you, represents life. If a bad fire should break out in this house and I had my choice of saving the library or the babies, I would save what is alive. Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby. The finest of our precision watches, the most super-colossal of our supercargo plants, don't compare with a newborn baby in the number and ingenuity of coils and springs, in the flow and change of chemical solutions, in timing devices and interrelated parts that are irreplaceable. A baby is very modern. Yet it is also the oldest of the ancients. A baby doesn't know he is a hoary and venerable antique - but he is. Before man learned how to make an alphabet, how to make a wheel, how to make a fire, he knew how to make a baby - with the great help of woman, and his God and Maker. — Carl Sandburg

Keeping it all together as a modern woman means multitasking, especially when you work. I think you always need to try your best, but at the same time you can only do what you can do, and you don't need to beat yourself up about it. I'm not white-picket-fence perfect. — Heidi Klum

Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry? — Woodrow Wilson

Since the days of cave civilization to the modern day microprocessor civilization, the relation between man and woman remained the same. Then it was at a carnal level. And, today it is still at carnal level. — Girdhar Joshi

I like that people can just look at you and know that you are taken, that you are mine." He closed his eyes and laughed. "And yes, I know that sentiment is at the top of the Women's Liberation Movement's list of things not to say to a modern woman. — Patricia Briggs

Simple femininity is the most important thing about a woman, and it is a quality a great many women are in jeopardy of losing. Women are being emancipated out of their femininity in this modern age. — Yul Brynner

Here we come to that aspect of initiation which acquaints man with woman and woman with man in such a way as to correct some sort of original male-female opposition. Man's knowledge (Logos) then encounters women's relatedness (Eros) and their union is represented as that symbolic ritual of a sacred marriage which has been at the heart of initiation since its origins in the mystery-religions of antiquity. But this is exceedingly difficult for modern people to grasp, and it frequently takes a special crisis in their lives to make them understand it. — C. G. Jung

From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the representation of time itself changed; it moved away from allegorical human figures - an old man, a blind youth holding an hourglass, a woman with bared breasts representing Fate - to the impersonal language of numbers: railroad schedules, the bottom line of industrial progress. Time was no longer shifting sand; time was money. Yet the modern era also allowed for multiple conceptions of time and made the experience of time more individual and creative. — Svetlana Boym

The uselessness and expensiveness of modern women multiply bachelors. — Samuel Richardson

We are all seeking the steady beauty of the One who made us, we are all desperate for His breath on our skin, His lips on ours to ease the crushing weight of the world we feel pressing in on that deep, empty place in our hearts. Where matters of faith are concerned, everything is remedial.

Carlson, Angela Doll (2014-09-09). Nearly Orthodox: On being a modern woman in an ancient tradition (Kindle Locations 119-121). Ancient Faith Publishing. Kindle Edition. — Angela Doll Carlson

Modern married women do not fare better in life than their single counterparts. Married women in America do not live longer than single women; married women do not accumulate as much wealth as single women (you take a 7 percent pay cut, on average, just for getting hitched); married women do not thrive in their careers to the extent single women do; married women are significantly less healthy than single women; married women are more likely to suffer from depression than single women; and married women are more likely to die a violent death than single women - usually at the hands of a husband, which raises the grim reality that, statistically speaking, the most dangerous person in the average woman's life is her own man. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Jay's mom was a lot of great things that Violet admired, technologically savvy was definitely not one of them. She was one of those people who were loath to move into the twenty-first century and embrace all things modern. She was the only adult woman that Violet knew of who didn't own a cell phone, and she refused to buckle beneath the pressure to pay good money for high-speed internet, so Jay was forced to plug his secondhand laptop into the phone line and use dial-up. Not because they couldn't afford such luxuries, but because Ann Heaton wasn't going down without a fight. — Kimberly Derting

A woman with super long platinum blonde hair, a fake tan, injected bubble gum pink lips, and a large boob job came in. Phoebe showed her where to set up in front of us and we all sat patiently.
"Hello, I'm Tandy" I almost rolled my eyes at her name, given her appearance. She placed a case on the coffee table in front of us, opened it, and pulled out rubber penises. I almost shot my drink out of my nose, again. "I will be instructing you on proper blow job technique."
"Oh my God, Phoebe." I shouted at her.
"Yeah," Viola clapped her hands and reached out to be the first to get a rubber practice penis. — Sadie Grubor

Authentic and free. The Gucci guilty woman is about living in the moment. She's a modern woman, someone who really owns herself and her sensuality. It's supposed to be a very empowering and sensual fragrance. — Evan Rachel Wood

Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother. — Susan B. Anthony

For me accessories create and define a woman's personal style. The bag she carries, the watch on her wrist, her jewelry, her sunglasses, her shoes all define a look that is her signature. For Spring 2014, my accessory collections are about a clean, graphic boldness creating a new dimension redefining modern classics. — Ralph Lauren

In the jungle of modern permissiveness the meaning and purpose of sex is missed, and its glory is lost. Our benighted society urgently needs recalling to the noble and ennobling view of sex that Scripture implies and the seventh commandment assumes: namely, that sex is for fully and permanently committed relationships that, by being the blend of affection, loyalty, and biology that they are, prepare us for and help us into that which is their archetype - "the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united" to God, men, and angels "in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water" (C. S. Lewis). — Anonymous

The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, I love you madly, because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly. — Umberto Eco

We hear about every other kind of women- beautiful women, smart women, sophisticated women, career women, talented women, divorced women. But so seldom do we hear of a godly woman - or of a godly man for that matter ... It is a much nobler thing to be a good wife than to be Miss America ... it is a far, far better thing in the realms of morals to be old-fashioned than to be ultra modern. The world has enough women who know how to hold their cocktails, who have lost all their illusions and their faith ... the world has enough woman who know how to be brilliant. It needs some who will be brave. The World had enough woman who are popular. It needs more who are pure. We need women, and men, too, who would rather be morally right than socially correct. Quote from Peter Marshall in the book Un Compromising — Hannah Farver

In my own opinion (key word), the foundation of feminism is this: being able to choose. The core of anti-feminism is, conversely, telling a woman she can't do something solely because she's a woman - taking any choice away from her specifically because of her gender ... One of the weird things about modern feminism is that some feminists seem to be putting their own limits on women's choices. That feels backward to me. It's as if you can't choose a family on your own terms and still be considered a strong woman. How is that empowering? Are there rules about if, when, and how we love or marry and if, when, and how we have kids? Are there jobs we can and can't have in order to be a "real" feminist? To me, those limitations seem anti-feminist in basic principle. — Stephenie Meyer

Driven to design by what she refers to as the lack of glamour in the industry, Bar Or creates for the modern woman who is a fashion risk-taker, one who is confident and, perhaps, has a larger than life personality. — Aslaug Magnusdottir

For the male who dominates and writes, or by writing dominates, the woman has always been portrayed with hostility from the earliest times. Let us not be deceived by angelic descriptions of women. On the contrary, precisely because great literature is dominated by sweet, gentle creatures, the world of satire - which is that of the popular imagination - continually demonizes the woman, from antiquity, through the Middle Ages, and up to modern times. — Umberto Eco

As I get older I think, contrary to modern assumption but in line with the old Lerner and Lowe song, that it would actually benefit both them and society if - to quote Professor Higgins - a woman could be more like a man. — Julie Burchill

Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: But a woman who fears the Lord,
She shall be praised.
(Proverbs 31:30 Modern King James Version) — Anonymous

Consumer culture is best supported by markets made up of sexual clones, men who want objects and women who want to be objects, and the object desired ever-changing, disposable, and dictated by the market. The beautiful object of consumer pornography has a built-in obsolescence, to ensure that as few men as possible will form a bond with one woman for years or for a lifetime, and to ensure that women's dissatisfaction with themselves will grow rather than diminish over time. Emotionally unstable relationships, high divorce rates, and a large population cast out into the sexual marketplace are good for business in a consumer economy. Beauty pornography is intent on making modern sex brutal and boring and only as deep as a mirror's mercury, anti-erotic for both men and women. — Naomi Wolf

The new Ann Taylor is for modern women who want to take on the world in style. — Demi Moore

I have a responsibility to the woman of today - to make her feel confident, modern and above all else beautiful. — Carolina Herrera

This was how the modern working girl behaved. She didn't hide her femininity or apologize for it, as they did in the old days. She flaunted it and, having been given more than any woman before her, demanded even more than that. — J. Courtney Sullivan

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

Any woman who has devoted herself to raising children has experienced the hollow praise that only thinly conceals smug dismissal. In a culture that measures worth and achievement almost solely in terms of money, the intensive work of rearing responsible adults counts for little. One of the most intriguing questions in economic history is how this came to be; how mothers came to be excluded from the ranks of productive citizens. How did the demanding job of rearing a modern child come to be termed baby-sitting? When did caring for children become a 'labor of love,;' smothered under a blanket of sentimentality that hides its economic importance? — Ann Crittenden

The modern woman's a mess of contradictions that they lay on themselves that drives them nuts. — David Foster Wallace

And so of course we won't define 'biblical womanhood' well using a list of chores or a job description, a schedule or income level. After all, healthy God-glorifying homes look as different as the image bearers that entered into the covenant, biblical doesn't mean a baptized version of any culture, ancient or modern.
No, I am a biblical woman because I live and move and have my being in the daily reality of being a follower of Jesus, living in the reality of being loved, in full trust of my Abba. I am a biblical woman because I follow in the footsteps of all the biblical women who cam before me.
Biblical womanhood isn't so different from biblical personhood. Biblical personhood becomes a dead list of rules when it becomes a law to keep. If we have a long list of rules - Put others first! Be generous! Give money! Believe this! Do that! - it's a dead religion from a glorified rule book. — Sarah Bessey

Despite all of the social advances in women's rights and the push for gender equality in the workplace, it seems like modern men still want a woman that they can take care of at home. — Shannon Mullen

Come now, Tichy. For half a century civilization hasn't been left to its own devices. A hundred years ago a certain Dior was dictating fashions in clothing. Today this sort of regulating has embraced all walks of life. If prostheticism is voted in, I assure you, in a couple of years everyone will consider the possession of a soft, hairy, sweating body to be shameful and indecent. A body needs washing, deodorizing, caring for, and even then it breaks down, while in a prostheticized society you can snap on the loveliest creations of modern engineering. What woman doesn't want to have silver iodide instead of eyes, telescoping breasts, angel's wings, iridescent legs, and feet that sing with every step? — Stanislaw Lem

Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free. — Emma Goldman

The solitude, bravery, and uncertain path of the modern-day single woman is something to be applauded as bold and courageous and unique, not lauded as sad or pathetic or weak. As — Mandy Hale

The modern woman has a modern life, and most of us work. There's no time to change before we go out in the evening, so a dress should always look appropriate for day and night. — L'Wren Scott

Everyone assumed it had to be some sort of biography, because if you are a woman and use yourself as a character, it has to be some sort of confessional, whereas if you're a man, you're actually doing some post-modern play on the novel, some critique on identity with lots of references to Foucault. — Jeanette Winterson

Concert pianists get to be quite chummy with dead composers. They can't help it. Classical music isn't just music. It's a personal diary. An uncensored confession in the dead of night. A baring of the soul. Take a modern example. Florence and the Machine? In the song 'Cosmic Love,' she catalogs the way in which the world has gone dark, distorting her, when she, a rather intense young woman, was left bereft by a love affair. 'The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out. — Marisha Pessl

The commodification of beauty is an economic trap designed to enslave the modern woman. — Mira Jacob

So long as I confine my activities to social service and the blind, they compliment me extravagantly, calling me 'arch priestess of the sightless,' 'wonder woman,' and a 'modern miracle.' But when it comes to a discussion of poverty, and I maintain that it is the result of wrong economics - that the industrial system under which we live is at the root of much of the physical deafness and blindness in the world - that is a different matter! It is laudable to give aid to the handicapped. Superficial charities make smooth the way of the prosperous; but to advocate that all human beings should have leisure and comfort, the decencies and refinements of life, is a Utopian dream, and one who seriously contemplates its realization indeed must be deaf, dumb, and blind. — Helen Keller

Grief that is dazed and speechless is out of fashion: the modern woman mourns her husband loudly and tells you the whole story of his death, which distresses her so much that she forgets not the slightest detail about it. — Jean De La Bruyere

The Middle Eastern woman is sophisticated; she is modern. She knows fashion more than anyone else, and she is really sexy, and she does know how to live fashion, and I think we can all learn from each other. — Reem Acra

One current of continuity runs underneath all the abortive phases of my life. From childhood on I have been obliged to drop anything I was doing to run after any man who seemed to know a little more than I did about God ... I most want to write about: how a modern woman has sought the face of God-not the name nor the fame but the face [ital] of God-and what adventures came to meet her on this ancient human path. — Mary Antin

It's very rare to see an undisturbed birth in a modern U.S. teaching hospital, but when you see a woman who isn't frightened, who's giving birth without interference, you stand back in awe and realize how little needed you are except in the rare circumstance. — Ina May Gaskin

Over and over again I have said that there is no way out of the present impasse. If we were wide awake we would be instantly struck by the horrors which surround us ... We would drop our tools, quit our jobs, deny our obligations, pay no taxes, observe no laws, and so on. Could the man or woman who is thoroughly awakened possibly do the crazy things which are now expected of him or her every moment of the day? — Henry Miller

The modern rule is that every woman should be her own chaperone. — Amy Vanderbilt

If people are like plants, what are the conditions we need to flourish? In the happiness formula from chapter 5, H(appiness) = S(etpoint) + C(onditions) + V(oluntary activities), what exactly is C? The biggest part of C, as I said in chapter 6, is love. No man, woman, or child is an island. We are ultrasocial creatures, and we can't be happy without having friends and secure attachments to other people. The second most important part of C is having and pursuing the right goals, in order to create states of flow and engagement. In the modern world, people can find goals and flow in many settings, but most people find most of their flow at work. — Jonathan Haidt

Another good image for the slight edge is Lady Justice, the blindfolded statue. The statue itself, of the woman holding the scales and sword to represent the idea of justice, has been around since the days of ancient Rome, but in those days it didn't wear a blindfold. That part wasn't added until the sixteenth century, during the renaissance in thinking that eventually gave birth to our modern ideas of representative democracy and universal human rights. The blindfold doesn't imply that justice is "blind," as people sometimes assume; its point is that true justice is impervious to external influence. — Jeff Olson

Modern woman is no longer satisfied to be the beloved of a man; she looks for understanding, comradeship; she wants to be treated as a human being and not simply as an object for sexual gratification. — Emma Goldman

To the old saying that man built the house but woman made of it a 'home' might be added the modern supplement that woman accepted cooking as a chore but man has made of it a recreation. — Emily Post

Stahl trailed him upstairs, across a mezzanine, and out into the darkness of the sloping balcony. Tom gave the aisle his torch so his guest could see. On the screen below a woman's head was wavering, two or three times larger than life. A metallic voice clanged out, echoing sepulchrally all over the house, like a modern Delphic Oracle. 'Go back, go back!' she said. 'This is no place for you!'
Her big luminous eyes seemed to be looking right at Lew Stahl as she spoke. Her finger came out and pointed, and it seemed to aim straight at him and him alone. It was weird; he almost stopped in his tracks, then went on again. He hadn't eaten all day; he figured he must be woozy, to think things like that. ("Dusk To Dawn") — Cornell Woolrich

Then, there's the modern mother-in-law. In her mid 40s, she is the compact car of her breed: efficient, trim, attractive and in harmony with her times. She's pretty stiff competition for the plain young matron who's overweight and under-financed. If there is going to be friction in this relationship, it could start from envy and resentment in the younger woman. But Father Time is on her side, even if Mother Nature played her a dirty trick — Abigail Van Buren

So, the word wild here is not used in its modern pejorative sense, meaning out of control, but in its original sense, which means to live a natural life, one in which the criatura, creature, has innate integrity and healthy boundaries. These words, wild and woman, cause women to remember who they are and what they are about. They create a metaphor to describe the force which funds all females. They personify a force that women cannot live without. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The Hillary Clinton story basically is this. And see how similar this sounds to the old days before the modern era of feminism raised its head. You're a girl, you're a young woman, what do you do? You go off to college. That's what she did. Why do you go? To meet your husband. That's what she did. She wouldn't be where she is if it weren't for her husband. — Rush Limbaugh

The entrance of the woman with equal rights into practical modern life, her new freedom, her finding herself side by side with men in the streets, offices, professions, factories, sports, and now even in political and military life, is one of those dissolutive phenomena in which, in most cases, it is difficult to perceive anything positive. In essence, all this is simply the renunciation of the woman's right to be a woman. — Julius Evola

In fact, in recent years I have become more and more didactic about pubic hair - to the point where I now believe that there are only four things a grown, modern woman should have: a pair of yellow shoes (they unexpectedly go with everything), a friend who will come and post bail at 4 a.m., a fail-safe pie recipe, and a proper muff. A big, hairy minge. A lovely furry moof that looks - when she sits, naked - as if she has a marmoset sitting in her lap. A tame marmoset, that she can send of to pickpocket things, should she so need it - like that trained monkey in Raiders of the Lost Ark. — Caitlin Moran

I have noticed a curious bifurcation in outcome in the way romances are written by women et written by men - Love Story, The Bridges of Madison County, every James Bond tale ever penned, even the film named above - end with the woman either lost or dead. And the man free to love, or at least to have sex, again. Romances (in the modern genre sense) written by women end with the couple alive, together, and in a committed and at least potentially fertile relationship, ready to turn to the work of their world. In other words, men's romances are about love and death; women's romances are about love and life. — Lois McMaster Bujold

The modern woman is the curse of the universe. A disaster, that's what. She thinks that before her arrival on the scene no woman ever did anything worthwhile before, no woman was ever liberated until her time, no woman really ever amounted to anything. — Adela Rogers St. Johns

The effect of scent is really interesting. It can create a mood and change a feeling immediately. I wanted to create a modern wardrobe of fragrances ... fragrances that can be very personal to the woman who's wearing them. — Aerin Lauder

As a modern woman, there are things I take for granted, and that shows up in the way I sit, the way I walk, the way I think, and what I know to be possible. — Lorraine Toussaint

I adore simple pleasures, they are the last refuge of the complex.
- A Woman of No Importance
45. Detachment is the prerogative of an elite; and as the dandy is the 19th century's surrogate for the aristocrat in matters of culture, so Camp is the modern dandyism. Camp is the answer to the problem: how to be a dandy in the age of mass culture. — Susan Sontag

Who today reflects that in the Battle of the Somme alone, where every man was an eager volunteer of 'Kitchener's Army', more British lives were lost than in the whole of the Second World War? Or that in the first day's fighting of any major attack on the Western Front, more men were killed than the Americans lost in eight years fighting in Vietnam? - 31,000 at the time these words are written. The average man and woman of today is not interested in such profitless comparisons. Modern life does not want to hear about these inconceivable calamities of the past. — Arthur Stanley Gould Lee

For he did not, he would have said, care for women; he never felt at home or at ease with them; and that monstrous creature beginning to be talked about, the New Woman of the nineties, filled him with horror. He was a quiet, conventional person, and the world, viewed from the haven of Brookfield, seemed to him full of distasteful innovations; there was a fellow named Bernard Shaw who had the strangest and most reprehensible opinions; there was Ibsen, too, with his disturbing plays; and there was this new craze for bicycles which was being taken up by women equally with men. Chips did not hold with all this modern newness and freedom. He had a vague notion, if he ever formulated it, that nice women were weak, timid, and delicate, and that nice men treated them with a polite but rather distant chivalry. — James Hilton

Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories. Literacy is a platform for democratization, and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity. Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition. For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right ... Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential. — Kofi Annan

The messages a woman receives from modern North American culture are contradictory; she needs a job for fulfillment but should be home with her children; she is more than her looks, but she had better wear makeup and stay thin; she has every opportunity men have but only on men's terms. — Janell L. Carroll