Inspiration can be found in various places, but there's something uniquely powerful about words of wisdom from women who have shaped history, culture, and society. Their voices resonate, offering insights and motivation that transcend time. In this carefully curated collection, you’ll find 48 inspiring quotes by women who have left an indelible mark on the world. Whether you're seeking guidance, empowerment, or simply a fresh perspective, these quotes offer a wellspring of encouragement and strength to draw from. Let their words inspire you to embrace challenges, foster resilience, and ignite the fire within to achieve your dreams.
1. “I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. “The most beautiful makeup of a woman is passion. But cosmetics are easier to buy.” - Yves Saint Laurent
3. “The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance.” - Jane Austen
4. “It's called civilization. Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again.” - Orson Scott Card
5. “Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life. ” - Erica Jong
6. “Ladies who play with fire must remember that smoke gets in their eyes.” - Mae West
7. “A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.” - Rudyard Kipling
8. “Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.” - Virginia Woolf
9. “...to speak of them out loud, to speak of their hunger and pain and loneliness and humour, to make them visible so that can not be ravaged in the dark without great consequence.” - Eve Ensler
10. “Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.” - Virginia Woolf
11. “Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.” - Oscar Wilde
12. “Most women are more into real estate than sex. They want to own you.” - Stephen Dobyns
13. “I had an interview once with some German journalist—some horrible, ugly woman. It was in the early days after the communists—maybe a week after—and she wore a yellow sweater that was kind of see-through. She had huge tits and a huge black bra, and she said to me, ‘It’s impolite; remove your glasses.’ I said, ‘Do I ask you to remove your bra?” - Karl Lagerfeld
14. “Last year, when Zora was a freshman, sophomores had seemed altogether a different kind of human: so very definite in their tastes and opinions, in ther loves and ideas. Zora woke up this morning hopeful that a transformation of this kind might have visited her in the night, but, finding it hadn't, she did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead.” - zadie smith
15. “I drove in last night,' he said. 'I couldn't sleep, it was too hot. So I went outside. I was feeling melancholy. Then I danced with a beautiful girl, and I felt better. What's your story?” - Judy Blundell
16. “Ida was a natural historian who knew how to throw in enough fiction to keep up dramtic tension. And she was replete with details, like a big fat colorful nineteenth-century historical novel, inching forward slowly....Ida's narrative line, like her waistline, was ample.” - Marissa Piesman
17. “There are so many men, all endlessly attempting to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me, lest I fall.” - Patrick Rothfuss
18. “I was seducing shepherdesses when you weren't a twinkle in your great-grandcestor's eyes. I think I know what I'm doing.” - Jim Butcher
19. “To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?"[To the Women of India (Young India, Oct. 4, 1930)]” - Mahatma Gandhi
20. “Women, oh, women! They'll find the baddest meanin' in your words an' hold it up, sayin', Look what you attacked me with!” - David Mitchell
21. “I wondered if emotions were like menstrual cycles, if you get enough women together. Give it time, and everyone was crying.” - Sarah Dessen
22. “Waiting turns men into bears in a barn, and women into cats in a sack.” - Robert Jordan
23. “Where some one else's welfare is concerned, a young girl becomes as ingenious as a thief. Guileless where she herself is in question, and full of foresight for me,--she is like a heavenly angel forgiving the strange incomprehensible sins of earth.” - Honoré de Balzac
24. “Men didn't understand that you couldn't let yourself be consumed with passion when there were so many people needing your attention, when there was so much work to do. Men didn't understand that there was nothing big enough to exempt you from your obligations, which began as soon as the sun rose over the paper company and ended only after you'd finished the day's chores and fell exhausted into sleep against the background noise of I-94.” - Bonnie Jo Campbell
25. “We've come a long way from the time when the crowning achievement in a woman's life was her youthful marriage. And many would agree that this represents progress for women. But when did the search for someone to marry become self-absorbed and pathetic? This absence of social sympathy for women's ambitions to marry is all the more striking because the social world has cared so deeply about virtually every other aspect of these privileged young women's inner and outer lives. (...) The achievement of a good marriage is the one area of life where the most privileged, accomplished, and high achieving young women in society face a loss of support and sympathy for their ambitions and where the social expectations are for disappointment and failure, not success.” - Barbara Dafoe Whitehead
26. “Jesus waited three days to come back to life. It was perfect! If he had only waited one day, a lot of people wouldn't have even heard he died. They'd be all, "Hey Jesus, what up?" and Jesus would probably be like, "What up? I died yesterday!" and they'd be all, "Uh, you look pretty alive to me, dude..." and then Jesus would have to explain how he was resurrected, and how it was a miracle, and the dude'd be like "Uhh okay, whatever you say, bro..." And he's not gonna come back on a Saturday. Everybody's busy, doing chores, workin' the loom, trimmin' the beard, NO. He waited the perfect number of days, three. Plus it's Sunday, so everyone's in church already, and they're all in there like "Oh no, Jesus is dead", and then BAM! He bursts in the back door, runnin' up the aisle, everyone's totally psyched, and FYI, that's when he invented the high five. That's why we wait three days to call a woman, because that's how long Jesus wants us to wait.... True story.” - Barney Stinson
27. “The disobedience if Eve in the Genesis story has been used to justify women's inequality and suffering in many Christian traditions. Thus, what is understood as women's complicity in evil leads much traditional theological reflection on suffering to offer the "consequent admonition to 'grin and bear it' because such is the deserved place of women." Similarly, when Jesus is seen as a divine co-sufferer, the potentially liberating narratives of Jesus as a revolutionary leader who takes the side of the poor and dispossessed can be ignored in favor of religious beliefs more interested in Jesus as a stoic victim. Christ's suffering is inverted and used to justify women's continued suffering in systems of injustice by framing it as redemptive.” - Melissa V. Harris-Perry
28. “I can't over-emphasize how important an exquisite perfume is, to be wrapped and cradled in an enchanting scent upon your skin is a magic all on its own! The notes in that precious liquid will remind you that you love yourself and will tell other people that they ought to love you because you know that you're worth it. The love affair created by a good perfume between you and other people, you and nature, you and yourself, you and your memories and anticipations and hopes and dreams; it is all too beautiful a thing!” - C. JoyBell C.
29. “Ah, lust. It makes us forget anything we want to. The greatest relaxant, the greatest stimulant.” - James Lusarde
30. “I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan't make the mistakes I've made. When I look back upon the girl I was I hate myself. But I never had a chance. I'm going to bring up my daughter so that she's free and can stand on her own feet. I´m not going to bring a child into the world, and love her, and bring her up, just so that some man may want to sleep with her so much that he's willing to provide her with board and lodging for the rest of her life.” - W. Somerset Maugham
31. “Wanderess, Wanderess, weave us a story of seduction and ruse. Heroic be the Wanderess, the world be her muse.” - Roman Payne
32. “Sam Littleton was a beautiful woman who would try to play women's games. That meant that if he asked her if she was upset with him about something, she would do what women all do at such times: She would deny that anything was wrong, then continue acting as if something was wrong, in hopes that he would do what men always do at such times -beg for an explanation, agonise over the answer, ask for hints, and agonise a little more.” - Judith McNaught
33. “Hey, Hank, I notice all the women around your place lately ... good looking stuff; you're doing all right.""Sam," I say, "that's not true; I am one of God's most lonely men.” - Charles Bukowski
34. “Eccola dunque col pensiero laggiù.Le par d’essere ancora fanciulla, arrampicata sul belvedere del prete, in una sera di maggio. Una grande luna di rame sorge dal mare, e tutto il mondo pare d’oro e di perla. La fisarmonica riempie coi suoi gridi lamentosi il cortile illuminato da un fuoco d’alaterni il cui chiarore rossastro fa spiccare sul grigio del muro la figura svelta e bruna del suonatore, i visi violacei delle donne e dei ragazzi che ballano il ballo sardo. Le ombre si muovono fantastiche sull’erba calpestata e sui muri della chiesa; brillano i bottoni d’oro, i galloni argentei dei costumi, i tasti della fisarmonica: il resto si perde nella penombra perlacea della notte lunare. Noemi ricordava di non aver mai preso parte diretta alla festa, mentre le sorelle maggiori ridevano e si divertivano, e Lia accovacciata come una lepre in un angolo erboso del cortile forse fin da quel tempo meditava la fuga.La festa durava nove giorni di cui gli ultimi tre diventavano un ballo tondo continuo accompagnato da suoni e canti: Noemi stava sempre sul belvedere, tra gli avanzi del banchetto; intorno a lei scintillavano le bottiglie vuote, i piatti rotti, qualche mela d’un verde ghiacciato, un vassoio e un cucchiaino dimenticati; anche le stelle oscillavano sopra il cortile come scosse dal ritmo della danza. No, ella non ballava, non rideva, ma le bastava veder la gente a divertirsi perché sperava di poter anche lei prender parte alla festa della vita.Ma gli anni eran passati e la festa della vita s’era svolta lontana dal paesetto, e per poterne prender parte sua sorella Lia era fuggita di casa…Lei, Noemi, era rimasta sul balcone cadente della vecchia dimora come un tempo sul belvedere del prete.” - Grazia Deledda
35. “Elles [Rosa Luxembourg, Marie Curie] démontrent avec éclat que ce n'est pas l'infériorité des femmes qui a déterminé leur insignifiance historique: c'est leur insignifiance historique qui les a vouées à l'infériorité.” - Simone de Beauvoir
36. “Their collective advice: don't settle. Keep looking. Find Mr. Right. That is what they all did. And by God, I think they believe it. Because nobody who marries at the ripe age of twenty-three can be settling. Naturally. That is a phenomenon that only happens to women in their thirties.” - Emily Giffin
37. “Women can go mad with insomnia.The sleep-deprived roam houses that have lost their familiarity. With tea mugs in hand, we wander rooms, looking on shelves for something we will recognize: a book title, a photograph, the teak-carved bird -- a souvenir from what place? A memory almost rises when our eyes rest on a painting's grey sweep of cloud, or the curve of a wooden leg in a corner. Fingertips faintly recall the raised pattern on a chair cushion, but we wonder how these things have come to be here, in this stranger's home.Lost women drift in places where time has collapsed. We look into our thoughts and hearts for what has been forgotten, for what has gone missing. What did we once care about? Whom did we love? We are emptied. We are remote. Like night lilies, we open in the dark, breathe in the shadowy world. Our soliloquies are heard by no one.” - Cathy Ostlere
38. “О Зевс! Зачем ты создавал жену?И это зло с его фальшивым блескомЛучам небес позволил обливать?Иль для того, чтоб род людской продолжить,Ты обойтись без женщины не мог?Иль из своих за медь и злато храмовИль серебро не мог бы сыновейТы продавать, чего который стоит,Освободив жилища нам от жен?Что жены зло, мне доказать не трудно.Родной отец за дочерью, ееВзлелеявши, чужому человекуПриданое дает - освободиЕго от дочки только. Муж, конечно,Отравленной украсив розой сад,Ей восхищен бывает. Точно куклуИль алмаз фальшивый, он женуСтарается оправить подороже.Но и мужей жена нищит, и только.И хорошо, кому попалось в домНичтожное творенье, чтоб ни злого,Ни доброго придумать не могла.Но умницы!.. Избави боже, еслиВ ней на вершок побольше, чем в других,Ума, излишек этот АфродитеНа пользу лишь - коварством станет он.Напротив, та, которая природойОбижена жена, по крайней мере,На хитрости Киприды не пойдет.” - Euripides
39. “A person didn’t need to be beautiful, they just needed to be loved. But I couldn’t help wanting it. If that was the way I could be loved, to be beautiful, I’d take it” - Janet Fitch
40. “I want to be a woman who lives totally abandoned to the first commandment: to love my Lord, my God, with all my heart. I don’t want the reputation that I love God, I don’t want to write songs about loving God, I don’t want to talk about loving God. I want to actually love God. When I close my eyes, I want my heart to move. When I close my eyes and I look at Him, I want to feel alive on the inside. I want to look at Him with a fire in my heart and it’s real.” - Misty Edwards
41. “Who does not know that without women we can feel no content or satisfaction throughout this life of ours, which but for them would be rude and devoid of all sweetness and more savage than that of wild beasts? Who does not know that women alone banish from our hearts all vile and base thoughts, vexations, miseries, and those turbid melancholies that so often are their fellows?” - Baldassare Castiglione
42. “Women!” he muttered. “Can't live with 'em, can't escape even by killing 'em.” - Naomi Kramer
43. “I thought I had been a suffragist before I became a Poor Law Guardian, but now I began to think about the vote in women's hands not only as a right but as a desperate necessity.” - Emmeline Pankhurst
44. “He'd call me false and faithless and I've always had a weakness for those two words; next to cruel, they're the nicest words for a woman to hear, and not so hard to earn.” - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
45. “We aren't going to choose paths of wisdom if we don't trust the One who has marked out those paths for us. Fear of the Lord is trust in the Lord” - Lydia Brownback
46. “As soon as a friendship passed a certain point - some obscure and secret boundary - a woman quite automatically became overwhelmed by a raging compulsion to complicate things.” - David Eddings
47. “Done is better than perfect.” - Sheryl Sandberg
48. “No woman has ever written enough.” - bell hooks
