A famous lady said, and I quote...

Checked out from the Portales Public Library, my book-of-the-month summary for May is “The New Quotable Woman,” edited by Elaine Partnow (Meridian, 1992, 714 pages).

Excerpts:

• “I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.” — Frida Kahlo (1910-1954)

• “There appears to be a strange propensity in human nature to torment itself, and as if the physical inconvenience with which we are surrounded in this world of ours were not enough, we go forth constantly in search of mental and imaginary evils.” — Charlotte Smith (1749-1806)

• “While we all desire to live long, we have all a horror of being old.” — Fanny Burney (1752-1840)

• “Our greatest mistakes may teach lessons which will be useful through life.” — Hannah Webster Foster (1758-1840)

• “To the mere superficial observer, it would seem that man was sent into this breathing world for the purpose of enjoyment — woman for that of trial and suffering.” — Sarah Wentworth Morton (1759-1846)

• “She was not an individual when she was with him, she was an audience.” — Margaret Asquith (1864-1945)

• “I regard irreligious people as pioneers. If there had been no priesthood the world would have advanced ten thousand times better than it has now.” — Anandabai Joshee (1865-1887)

• “Foremost among the barriers to equality is the system which ignores the mother’s service to society in making a home and rearing children.” — Katharine Anthony (1877-1965)

• “Happiness is like a butterfly which appears and delights us for one brief moment, but soon flies away.” — Anna Pavlova (1881-1931)

• “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” — Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

• “The art of being a woman can never consist of being a bad imitation of a man.” — Olga Knopf (1888-1978)

• “Such ignorance. All the boys were in military schools and all the girls were in the convent.” — Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980)

• “Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you? — Fanny Brice (1891-1951)

• “No matter where I run, I meet myself there.” — Dorothy Fields (1905-1974)

• “God forgives those who invent what they need.” — Lillian Hellman (1906-1984)

• “Have we come to the point where it is the children who are being asked to change the world? — Margaret Webster (1905-1972)

• “Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose.”— Billie Holiday (1915-1959)

• “I don’t mind the fun and games of being treated like a fragile flower. But as a psychologist working with the unromantic scientific facts of life, I find it hard to delude myself about feminine frailty.” — Estelle R. Ramsey (1917-1967)

• “I’ve always been too confused about who I was to decide who I was better than.” — Kristin Hunter (1931-2008)

• “I’m a vunderful housekeeper. Effry time I get a divorce, I keep the house.” — Zsa Zsa Gabor (1919-2016)

• “A lesser life does not seem lesser to the person who leads one. His life is very real to him; he is not a minor figure in it.” — Diane Johnson (1934-)

• “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” — Gloria Steinem (1934-)

• “When a man confronts catastrophe on the road, he looks in his purse — but a woman looks in her mirror.” — Margaret Turnbull (1872-1942)

Contact Wendel Sloan at:

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