That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library. Venerable and calm, wit...h all its treasures safe locked within its breast, it sleeps complacently and will, so far as I am concerned, so sleep forever. Never will I wake these echoes, never will I ask for that hospitality again ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man ...at twice its natural size.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The first duty of a lecturer--to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your no...tebooks and keep on the mantlepiece for ever.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have ...minded beyond reason the opinions of others.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even n...ow as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradles. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invalua...ble most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Young women ... you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You hav...e never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays by Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...it is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex. It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-ma...nly or man-womanly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
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 inadequat...e, 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? For we have too much likeness as it is, and if an explorer should come back and bring word of other sexes looking through the branches of other trees at other skies, nothing would be of greater service to humanity; and we should have the immense pleasure into the bargain of watching Professor X rush for his measuring-rods to prove himself "superior."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody c...an say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice or wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »