59 Inspiring Quotes From Women

In a world where words hold immense power, the voices of women have continually inspired change, courage, and compassion across generations. Whether it's through literature, speeches, or everyday conversations, women's words have the potential to uplift souls and ignite revolutions. This curated collection of the top 59 inspiring quotes from women aims to celebrate their timeless wisdom and enduring impact on our lives. Each quote is a testament to the strength, creativity, and resilience that define the feminine spirit, offering motivation and insight for anyone seeking inspiration. Join us on this journey of empowerment as we explore these remarkable expressions of courage and vision from extraordinary women.

1. “She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.” - zadie smith

2. “The Creator made women to please the eye, and to boggle the mind.” - Robert Jordan

3. “Es natural condición de las mujeres desdeñar a quien las quiere y amar a quien las aborrece” - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

4. “Harry," Bob drawled, his eye lights flickering smugly, "what you know about women, I could juggle.” - Jim Butcher

5. “There is no greater insight into the future than recognizing...when we save our children, we save ourselves” - Margaret Mead

6. “To face a man in combat is challenge enough. To find the goddess in a woman is the life work of a man. Hard though the first may be, the second is the harder longer road. But every man seeks the woman of the dream, and only the best of men finds what he seeks.” - Rosalind Miles

7. “A living poem" had always been the words that came to mind when he tried to describe her to others.” - Nicholas Sparks

8. “Over your breasts of motionless current,over your legs of firmness and water,over the permanence and the prideof your naked hairI want to be, my love, now that the tears arethrowninto the raucous baskets where they accumulate,I want to be, my love, alone with a syllableof mangled silver, alone with a tip of your breast of snow.” - Neruda Pablo

9. “Women's regular bleeding engenders phantoms.” - Paracelsus

10. “A woman's perfume tells more about her than her handwriting. ” - Christian Dior

11. “When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women” - Gustave Flaubert

12. “I have no will of my own. Never did. Limp and lily-livered, I always obey - is it possible that's attractive to women?” - Anton Chekhov

13. “I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.” - Mary Wollstonecraft

14. “If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women: they do not read them in a true light: they misapprehend them, both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend.” - Charlotte Brontë

15. “Men do not know what they do not know, and women should not tell them.” - Amy Bloom

16. “Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted make-up.” - Marian Keyes

17. “Used to be hewas my heart's desire.His forthright gaze,his expert hands:I'd lie on the couch with my eyesclosed just thinking about it.Never about the factthat everything changes,that even this,my best passion,would not be immune.No, I would bask on in aneternal daydream of the handsfinding me, the gaze like a windingstair coaxing me down. . . .Until I caught a glimpseof something in the mirror:silly girl in her lingerie,dancing with the furniture--a hot little bundle, flush withcliches. Into that pairof too-bright eyes I lookedand saw myself. And something else:he would never look that way.” - Deborah Garrison

18. “Not that she's a political animal, she's just an ordinary woman, but as a woman she's of the view that you don't bring children into the world to have them shot.” - Hans Fallada

19. “It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is the laconic way in which, as a daughter of the epoch that saw the Napoleonic Wars, she contrives like a Greek dramatist to keep it off the stage while she concentrates on the human factor. I think this comes close to affectation on the part of some of her admirers. Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion, for example, is partly of interest to the female sex because of the 'prize' loot he has extracted from his encounters with Bonaparte's navy. Still, as one born after Hiroshima I can testify that a small Hampshire township, however large the number of names of the fallen on its village-green war memorial, is more than a world away from any unpleasantness on the European mainland or the high or narrow seas that lie between. (I used to love the detail that Hampshire's 'New Forest' is so called because it was only planted for the hunt in the late eleventh century.) I remember watching with my father and brother through the fence of Stanstead House, the Sussex mansion of the Earl of Bessborough, one evening in the early 1960s, and seeing an immense golden meadow carpeted entirely by grazing rabbits. I'll never keep that quiet, or be that still, again.This was around the time of countrywide protest against the introduction of a horrible laboratory-confected disease, named 'myxomatosis,' into the warrens of old England to keep down the number of nibbling rodents. Richard Adams's lapine masterpiece Watership Down is the remarkable work that it is, not merely because it evokes the world of hedgerows and chalk-downs and streams and spinneys better than anything since The Wind in the Willows, but because it is only really possible to imagine gassing and massacre and organized cruelty on this ancient and green and gently rounded landscape if it is organized and carried out against herbivores.” - Christopher Hitchens

20. “This pre-eminence is something [men] have unjustly arrogated to themselves. And when it's said that women must be subject to men, the phrase should be understood in the same sense as when we say we are subject to natural disasters, diseases, and all the other accidents of this life: it's not a case of being subjected in the sense of obeying, but rather of suffering an imposition, not a case of serving them fearfully, but rather of tolerating them in a spirit of Christian charity, since they have been given to us by God as a spiritual trial.” - Moderata Fonte

21. “I harbor ill feelings toward a society, and a clergy, that allows marriage partners to split over the smallest incompatibility, where divorce comes in a multitude of flavors, like Baskin Robbins ice cream, where men and women can blame one another and everything except themselves for matrimony's mess. They look for externals over which they have no control and, fingering them, take no responsibility.” - Robert Dykstra

22. “Women who disapprove of men - and there's plenty to disapprove of - should remember how we started out, and how far we had to travel.” - Nick Hornby

23. “Os homens têm experiência de séculos a mais que as mulheres em: malsentir, antever e precaver. Quando levadas ao mundo do trabalho "masculino", as mulheres aceleram seu desenvolvimento nessa mesma direção e, dessa forma, as crianças estão deixando de aprender a amar, ou, ao menos, se afeiçoar.” - Carlos Messa

24. “Why is it that all cars are women?" he asked. "Because they're fussy and demanding," answered Zee. "Because if they were men, they'd sit around and complain instead of getting the job done," I told him.” - Patricia Briggs

25. “Proper deformity shows not in the fiendSo horrid as in woman.” - William Shakespeare

26. “Luxury is the ease of a t-shirt in a very expensive dress.” - Karl Lagerfeld

27. “I even made poor Louis take me on Crusade. How's that for blasphemy? I dressed my maids as Amazons and rode bare-breasted halfway to Damascus. Louis had a seizure and I damn near died of windburn... but the troops were dazzled.” - James Goldman

28. “This is where men and women are different, we can put aside petty competition for relationships - they can't. It interferes.” - Adriana Trigiani

29. “You can tell people of the need to struggle, but when the powerless start to see that they really can make a difference, nothing can quench the fire.” - Leymah Gbowee

30. “She knew breaking up with Ethan was going to be a full-time job because being in a relationship with him had also been a full-time job.” - Richard Finney

31. “Women that can work a camera with ease often work men just as effortlessly for both require the same commitment to vanity and manipulation.” - Tiffany Madison

32. “Sexuality is not meant to be this way - an honest, consensual expression in which a girl might take an active role when she feels good and ready and not one minute before. No. Sexual desire is meant to sell soap. And cars. And beer. And religion.” - Libba Bray

33. “It may be a man's world, but men are easily controlled by women.” - Ashly Lorenzana

34. “Ah, when love dies, women lose two and a half inches in height.” - M.C. Beaton

35. “Tu es ma came, plus mortelle que l'héroïne afghane, plus dangereux que la blanche colombienne, tu es ma solution à mon doux problème.” - Carla Bruni

36. “We are out sisters' keepers.” - Eileen Granfors

37. “Free women," said Anna, wryly. She added, with an anger new to Molly, so that she earned another quick scrutinizing glance from her friend: "They still define us in terms of relationships with men, even the best of them.” - Doris Lessing

38. “Where is your false, your treacherous, and cursed wife?""She's gone forrard to the Police Office," returns Mr Bucket. "You'll see her there, my dear.""I would like to kiss her!" exclaims Mademoiselle Hortense, panting tigress-like. "You'd bite her, I suspect," says Mr Bucket."I would!" making her eyes very large. "I would love to tear her, limb from limb.""Bless you, darling," says Mr Bucket, with the greatest composure; "I'm fully prepared to hear that. Your sex have such a surprising animosity against one another, when you do differ.” - Charles Dickens

39. “[F]rom my years of understanding ... I happily chose this kind of life in which I yet live [i.e., unmarried], which I assure you for my own part hath hitherto best contented myself and I trust hath been most acceptable to God. From the which if either ambition of high estate offered to me in marriage by the pleasure and appointment of my prince ... or if the eschewing of the danger of my enemies or the avoiding of the peril of death ... could have drawn or dissuaded me from this kind of life, I had not now remained in this estate wherein you see me. But so constant have I always continued in this determination ... yet is it most true that at this day I stand free from any other meaning that either I have had in times past or have at this present.” - Elizabeth I

40. “[J]ust the sight of this book, even though it was of no authority, made me wonder how it happened that so many different men – and learned men among them – have been and are so inclined to express both in speaking and in their treatises and writings so many wicked insults about women and their behaviour. Not only one or two ... but, more generally, from the treatises of all philosophers and poets and from all the orators – it would take too long to mention their names – it seems that they all speak from one and the same mouth. Thinking deeply about these matters, I began to examine my character and conduct as a natural woman and, similarly, I considered other women whose company I frequently kept, princesses, great ladies, women of the middle and lower classes, who had graciously told me of their most private and intimate thoughts, hoping that I could judge impartially and in good conscience whether the testimony of so many notable men could be true. To the best of my knowledge, no matter how long I confronted or dissected the problem, I could not see or realise how their claims could be true when compared to the natural behaviour and character of women.” - Christine de Pizan

41. “[S]ince you are angry at me without reason, you attack me harshly with, "Oh outrageous presumption! Oh excessively foolish pride! Oh opinion uttered too quickly and thoughtlessly by the mouth of a woman! A woman who condemns a man of high understanding and dedicated study, a man who, by great labour and mature deliberation, has made the very noble book of the Rose, which surpasses all others that were ever written in French. When you have read this book a hundred times, provided you have understood the greater part of it, you will discover that you could never have put your time and intellect to better use!" My answer: Oh man deceived by willful opinion! I could assuredly answer but I prefer not to do it with insult, although, groundlessly, you yourself slander me with ugly accusations. Oh darkened understanding! Oh perverted knowledge ... A simple little housewife sustained by the doctrine of Holy Church could criticise your error!” - Christine de Pizan

42. “She has man's brain--a brain that a man should have were he much gifted--and woman's heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me when He made that so good combination.” - Bram Stoker

43. “When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.” - Fulton J. Sheen

44. “A fine young man and a fine young felly he always was, except that in the old days, before you began coming in here, Mr. Witherwax, he maybe had too much money and spent too much of it on girls. Take them alone, either one; the money without the women, or a good girl without the money that can be a help to a young felly, and he's fixed for life. But put them together; and often as not, the young felly goes on the booze. ("The Better Mousetrap")” - Fletcher Pratt

45. “Basically, all women are nurturers and healers, and all men are mental patients to varying degrees.” - Nelson DeMille

46. “Is there a more pitiable spectacle than that of a wife contending with others for that charm in her husband's sight which no philters and no prayers can renew when once it has fled forever?Women are so unwise. Love is like a bird's song beautiful and eloquent when heard in forest freedom, harsh and worthless in repetition when sung from behind prison bars.You cannot secure love by vigilance, by environment, by captivity. What use is it to keep the person of a man beside you if his soul be truant from you?” - Ouida

47. “Women had a tendency to see what they wanted to see i men, at least in the beginning” - Nicolas Sparks

48. “To us, your power comes from one simple thing: you’re a woman, and we men will doanything humanly possible to impress you so that, ultimately, we can be with you. You’re the driving force behind why we wake up every day. Men go out and get jobs and hustle to makemoney because of women. We drive fancy cars because of women. We dress nice, put on cologne, get haircuts and try to look all shiny and new for you. We do all of this because the more our game is stepped up, the more of you we get. You’re the ultimate prize to us.” - Steve Harvey

49. “Think of yourself as an athlete. I guarantee you it will change the way you walk, the way you work, and the decisions you make about leadership, teamwork, and success.” - Mariah Burton Nelson

50. “I can never get used to the fact, though I know it, that women are born cynics. Men have to learn cynicism. Infant girls could teach it to them.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

51. “A woman's flattery may inflate a man's head a little; but her criticism goes straight to his heart, and contracts it so that it can never again hold quite as much love for her.” - Helen Rowland

52. “Do you know?What the fuck do women want?l know what you want: everything.” - Chris Rock

53. “I don't love men that love other women. I think more of myself then that.” - Rose The Vampire Diaries

54. “Feminists amuse me more than illusionists. They are the only type of people that can make an illogical argument seem even more illogical with paintings of delusions.” - Lionel Suggs

55. “A woman's beauty should not imitate art.” - Lionel Suggs

56. “I look forward to being older, when what you look like becomes less and less an issue and what you are is the point."(As quoted in Put Your Big Girl Panties on and Deal with it, Roz Van Meter, 2007)” - Susan Sarandon

57. “Without women, the beginning of our life would be helpless; the middle, devoid of pleasure; and the end, of consolation.” - Victor Joseph Étienne de Jouy

58. “So let us be clear about this up front: We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women's power as economic catalysts. That is the process under way - not a drama of victimization but of empowerment, the kind that transforms bubbly teenage girls from brothel slaves into successful businesswomen.This is a story of transformation. It is change that is already taking place, and change that can accelerate if you'll just open your heart and join in.” - Nicholas D. Kristof

59. “I believe that the souls of women flatten and anchor themselves in times of adversity, lay in for the stay.” - Elizabeth Berg