Quotes by 17th-century Women

It requires infinitely a greater genius to make love, than to make war.

Ninon de Lenclos

God's image man doth bear
Without it he is but a human shape,
Worse than the Devil.

The Duke returned from the wars today and did pleasure me in his top-boots.

Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough

A Man that wants Money thinks none can be unhappy that has it...

Susannah Centlivre

Quieting an angry mob that thought her carriage was that of the Duchess of Portsmouth, Catholic lover of Charles II:

Pray, good people, be civil. I am the Protestant whore.

For truly in nature there are many operations that are far more than mechanical. Nature is not simply an organic body like a clock, which has no vital principle of motion in it; but it is a living body which has life and perception, which are much more exalted than a mere mechanism or a mechanical motion.

Anne Conway (philosopher)

Pleasure and pain, the good and the bad, are so intermixed that we can not shun the one without depriving ourselves of the other.

Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon

My birth day. I am sixteen Years old. How many years have been past by me in thoughtlessness & vanity.

Elizabeth Fuller

The Lord hereby would make us the more acknowledge His hand, and to see that our help is always in Him

Mary Rowlandson

In loss itself I find assuagement: having lost the treasure, I've nothing to fear.

Juana Inés de la Cruz

In things greate and extraordinary some perhaps will take notice of God's working, who either forgett or believe not that he takes as well a care and account of their smallest concernments...

Lucy Hutchinson

The bloody Wolf, the Wolf does not pursue;
The Boar, though fierce, his Tusk will not embrue
In his own kind, Bears, not on Bears do prey:
Thou art then, Man, more savage far than they.

The Cittie of New York is a pleasant, well compacted place, situated on a Commodius river which is a fine harbour for shipping.... I left New-York with no Little regrett...

Sarah Kemble Knight

Nul n'est content de sa fortune;
Ni mécontent de son esprit.

Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde Deshoulières

He is so infinitely blessed, that every perception of His blissful presence imparts a gladness to the heart. Every degree of approach to Him is, in the same proportion, a degree of happiness.

Stricken by a guilty conscience, some men will say that I speak with excessive temerity about all men in general. They are greatly mistaken. If they behave justly, they will be protected from my attacks and those of others. I separate the just from the wicked (who are the subject of my discourse), since not all men are bad and not all women are good.

Arcangela Tarabotti

A little philosophy carries a man from God, but a great deal brings him back again.

I have made a solemn vow never to send my drawings because people have cheated me. In particular, just today I found... that, having done a drawing of souls in Purgatory for the Bishop of St. Gata, he, in order to spend less, commissioned another painter to do the painting using my work. If I were a man, I can't imagine it would have turned out this way.

Artemisia Gentileschi

A year or two to come seems long, but twenty past as nothing.

Rachel Russell, Lady Russell

God hath put no such difference between the Male and Female as man would make.

How many brave Men, courageous Women, and innocent Children did I see butcher'd, to do God good Service?... I went to the Irish Rebellion, where I saw more than three hundred thousand Souls murder'd in cold Blood.crying, Nits will become Lice, destroy Root and Branch: with a thousand other Barbarities, too tedious as well as too dreadful to repeat, beside what has been transacted abroad.