Womanish Quotes & Sayings

Where I live, everything is very small. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

It's better to be a dog in peace, than a man in war. — John Scalzi

He loved three things alone:
White peacocks, evensong,
old maps of America.
He hated children crying,
and raspberry jam with his tea,
and womanish hysteria.
...And then he married me.


1911 — Anna Akhmatova

Some men make a womanish complaint that it is a great misfortune to die before our time. I would ask what time? Is it that of Nature? But she, indeed, has lent us life, as we do a sum of money, only no certain day is fixed for payment. What reason then to complain if she demands it at pleasure, since it was on this condition that you received it. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

For them it's out-of-date and outmoded to perform miracles; teaching the people is too like hard work, interpreting the holy scriptures is for schoolmen and praying is a waste of time; to shed tears is weak and womanish, to be needy is degrading; to suffer defeat is a disgrace and hardly fitting for one who scarcely permits the greatest of kings to kiss the toes of his sacred feet; and finally, death is an unattractive prospect, and dying on a cross would be an ignominious end. — Desiderius Erasmus

Every civilizing step in history has been ridiculed as 'sentimental', 'impractical', or 'womanish', etc., by those whose fun, profit or convenience was at stake — Joan Gilbert

When I was young and miserable and pretty
And poor, I'd wish
What all girls wish: to have a husband,
A house and children. Now that I'm old, my wish
Is womanish:
That the boy putting groceries in my car
See me. — Randall Jarrell

We will pursue them until they lose their nerves ... Now that they have indulged in their evil and crimes, they will suffer a defeat. — Saddam Hussein

Cowardly thoughts, anxious hesitation, Womanish timidity, timorous complaints Won't keep misery away from you And will not set you free. — Edith Hahn Beer

It came to him that he had turned away from the buffalo not because of a womanish nausea at blood and stench and spilling gut; it came to him that he had sickened and turned away because of his shock at seeing the buffalo, a few moments before proud and noble and full of the dignity of life, now stark and helpless, a length of inert meat, divested of itself, or his notion of its self, swinging grotesquely, mockingly, before him. It was not itself; or it was not that self that he had imagined it to be. That self was murdered; and in that murder he had felt the destruction of something within him, and he had not been able to face it. So he had turned away. — John Edward Williams

ORIGEN. For if in an earthly kingdom they are thought to be in honour who sit with the king, no wonder if a woman with womanish simplicity or want of experience conceived that she might ask such things, and that the brethren themselves being not perfect, and having no more lofty thoughts concerning Christ's kingdom, conceived such things concerning those who shall sit with Jesus. — Thomas Aquinas

I do feel it's crucial that women's opinions be taken equally with men's. But still'I have not been accepted by the American white feminist writers and activists, and frankly I don't care to be, so I am a womanist. I am feisty and I am given to womanish behavior. — Kola Boof

My husband says my toes are like Wall's cocktail sausages. He feels peckish whenever he sees them. — Amanda Holden

We are all born like Catholics, aren't we - in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God? — Yann Martel

The Expulsion from Eden is an act of vindictive womanish spite; the Fall of Man, as recounted in the Bible, comes nearer to the Fall of God. — Cyril Connolly

Not by vows nor by womanish prayers is the help of the
gods obtained; success comes through vigilance, energy,
wise counsel. — Sallust

I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, 'black feminist' does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it's just ... womanish. — Alice Walker

Thus it is brought prominently before us, that superstition's chief victims are those persons who greedily covet temporal advantages; they it is, who (especially when they are in danger, and cannot help themselves) are wont with prayers and womanish tears to implore help from God: upbraiding Reason as blind, because she cannot show a sure path to the shadows they pursue, and rejecting human wisdom as vain; but believing the phantoms of imagination, dreams, and other childish absurdities, to be the very oracles of Heaven. As though God had turned away from the wise, and written His decrees, not in the mind of man but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the inspiration and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. Such is the unreason to which terror can drive mankind! Superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear. — Christopher Hitchens

Do not mistake me, Inrithi. In this much Conphas is right. You are all staggering drunks to me. Boys who would play at war when you should kennel with your mothers. You know nothing of war. War is dark. Black as pitch. It is not a God. It does not laugh or weep. It rewards neither skill not daring. It is not a trial of souls, nor the measure of wills. Even less is it a tool, a means to some womanish end. It is merely the place where the iron bones of the earth meet the hollow bones of men and break them.
You have offered me war, and I have accepted. Nothing more. I will not regret your losses. I will not bow my head before your funeral pyres. I will not rejoice at your triumphs. But I have taken the wager. I will suffer with you. I will put Fanim to the sword, and drive their wives and children to the slaughter. And when I sleep, I will dream of their lamentations and be glad of heart. — R. Scott Bakker

But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters. — Pat Conroy

Love, anger, depression, joy and dreams ... And Zeppelin. Totally. — Jeff Buckley

Whether you call my heart affectionate, or you call it womanish: I confess, that to my misfortune, it is soft. — Ovid

If any sensual weakness arise, we are to yield all our sound forces to the overthrowing of so unnatural a rebellion; wherein how can we want courage, since we are to deal against so feeble an adversary, that in itself is nothing but weakness? Nay, we are to resolve that if reason direct it, we must do it, and if we must do it, we will do it; for to say "I cannot" is childish, and "I will not" is womanish. — Philip Sidney

An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, for speech is itself a critique of life: it names, it characterizes, it passes judgment, in that it creates. — Thomas Mann

The man who fears war and squats opposing
My words for stour, hath no blood of crimson
But is fit only to rot in womanish peace — Ezra Pound

You know nothing of war. War is dark. Black as pitch. It is not a God. It does not laugh or weep. It rewards neither skill nor daring. It is not a trial of souls, not the measure of wills. Even less is it a tool, a means to some womanish end. It is merely the place where the iron bones of the earth meet the hollow bones of men and break them. — R. Scott Bakker

Dread is a womanish debility in which freedom swoons. Psychologically speaking, the fall into sin always occurs in impotence. But dread is at the same time the most egotistic thing. — Soren Kierkegaard