Timeless quotes

While I was still searching but not finding—I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all. —Ecclesiastes 7:28

"The female always uses stillness to conquer the male. By using stillness, she becomes lower-than (inferior)." —The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 61

Women are accustomed to creep into dark places, and when dragged out into the light they will exert their utmost powers of resistance ... therefore, as I said before, in most places they will not endure to have the truth spoken without raising a tremendous outcry. —Plato

"[A woman] is constant only in her inconstancy." - Ovid

"And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.—1 Timothy 2:14

"We women have, if I am not to lie,
In this love matter, a quaint fantasy;
Look out a thing we may not lightly have,
And after that we'll cry all day and crave.
Forbid a thing, and that thing covet we;
Press hard upon us, then we turn and flee.
Sparingly offer we our goods, when fair;
Great crowds at market for dearer ware,
And what's too common brings but little price;
All this knows every woman who is wise.
—Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Prologue, lines 521-530

"For my part I consider that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is, therefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her. "—The Prince

"And let not women’s weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man’s cheeks! …
No, I’ll not weep.
I have full cause of weeping, but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws
Or ere I’ll weep."
—King Lear

"We treat women too well, and in this way have spoiled everything. We have done every wrong by raising them to our level. Truly the Oriental nations have more mind and sense than we in declaring the wife to be the actual property of the husband. In fact nature has made woman our slave ... Woman is given to man that she may bear children ... consequently she is his property." - Napoleon Bonaparte