“The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”

“Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?”

“Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?”

“It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only? Ought not education to bring out and fortify the differences rather than the similarities?”

“Doesn't one always think of the past, in a garden with men and women lying under the trees? Aren't they one's past, all that remains of it, those men and women, those ghosts lying under the trees, ... one's happiness, one's reality?”

“Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.”

“This late age of the world’s experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears.”