Quotes by Women Authors

The last cobwebs
of fog in the
black firtrees are flakes
of white ash in the world's hearth.

Denise Levertov
Denise Levertov
I think I only appear smart by staying quiet as often as possible.

How little do they know human nature, who think they can say no to passion, so far shalt thou go, and no farther!

I often think that the ideal of our perfection that we set up, and often go through torture to achieve, may not be God's idea of how He wants us to be at all. That may be something quite different that we never would have thought of, and what seems like a failure to us may really be something bringing us closer to His will for us.

Aunt Loretta has something that maybe you could call class. It's not the made-up kind that Grandma has, fake pearls and Sunday hats, but something that comes to you as if you were born to the king and queen. Aunt Loretta understands better than Grandma that reading a big book is more classy than wearing fake pearls watching TV.

If it's easter than east and wester than west, it must be north.

She had gradually changed her name. "Jane" was too dull. Last year, she'd added a "y", becoming Jayne, which had more personality.

You would not think that birds who have no brain at all could become so friendly. I swear some of them are more intelligent than many humans, but that says more about our fellow beings than it does about the birds.

You'll get through this. And I know it's impossible to believe right now, but it gets better. Trust me.

Susane Colasanti
Susane Colasanti
What the men like best are what there's the least sense in, dresses you can't sit down in, that won't stand a lot of action, that hobble you and truss you up and slow you down and fix it so you can't hardly breathe, till finally you're off in one corner, like a bird in a cage, not cluttering up the busy paths in life that men has got to use. That's the styles they really like!

It is not difficult to find a religious justification for killing.

Life's too short to waste it on someone you can't trust. You should be able to depend on the man you love not to lie to you or cheat on you. If you have that as a base, you can work on the other stuff.

Reason is necessarily the language of moral, political, and scientific argument: not because reason is holy or on some elevated plane, but because it isn't; because it is accessible to all humans; because, as well as working, it can be seen to work.

We are the whirlwinds that winnow the West—
We scatter the wicked like straw!
We are the Nemeses, never at rest—
We are Justice, and Right, and the Law!

I was raised to feel that doing nothing was a sin. I had to learn to do nothing.

Map age genes place of origin
and love's lineaments. For mapped onto each body is love. Carthography of one's own country
or the contours of a foreign land

Every generation proclaims that each must lead his own life, but seldom grants the subsequent generation the right to lead theirs.

It were a blessed sight to see That child become a willow tree, His brother trees among. He'd be four times as tall as me, And live three times as long.

Oh, hear Him within you speaking this infinite love, moving like some divine and audible leaven, lifting the sky of the soul with expansions of light, shaping new heights and new depths, and, at your stir of assent, spreading the mountains with flame, filling the hollows with Heaven.

Suspense is torture... but delightful--or there'd be no gambling in the world.

If my hair gets any frizzier, I'll shave it to the scalp. Or light it on fire. Whichever is easier.

If prayers worked, Hitler would have been stopped at the border of Poland by angels with swords of fire.

Why is it that so many people think that charity consists in giving away merely what they cannot use instead of the article the recipient needs?

Mabel Osgood Wright
Mabel Osgood Wright
The only truth is that I live. Sincerely, I live. Who am I? Well, that's a bit much.

Clarice Lispector
Clarice Lispector
When we fill our thoughts with right things, the wrong ones have no room to enter

Joyce Meyer
Joyce Meyer