Inspirational Quotes by Women




Let the generations know that the women in uniform also guaranteed their freedom. That our resolve was as great as the brave men who stood among us, and with victory our hearts were just as full and beat just as fast. That the tears fell just as hard for those we left behind us.– LT Anne (Sosh) Brehm, U.S. Army Nurse Corps (WWII),Women in Military Service for America Memorial

There are no little events in life, those we think of no consequence may be full of fate, and it is at our own risk if we neglect the acquaintances and opportunities that seem to be casually offered, and of small importance. – Amelia E. Barr (1831-1919), author of many books including “Remember The Alamo.”

I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes. – Edna St. Vincent Millay
(1892 – 1950) the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself. – Lucille Ball (August 6, 1911 – April 26, 1989) drama coaches told her that she “had no future at all as a performer.”

When a man spends his time giving his wife criticism and advice instead of compliments, he forgets that it was not his good judgment, but his charming manners, that won her heart. – Helen Rowland (1875-1950) American journalist and humorist.

You can’t win them all — but you can try. – Babe Didrikson, won two gold and one silver medal in the 1932 Olympics and excelled at basketball, track and field, and golf.

Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman

Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world. – Harriet Tubman (1820-1913), worker on the Underground Railroad.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life. – Virginia Woolf, writer (1882-1941)

My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition. – Indira Gandhi, India’s first female prime minister.

I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life — and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do. – Georgia O’Keeffe, American Artist (1887-1986)

For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone. – Audrey Hepburn


Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. – Eleanor Roosevelt

I don’t have a warm personal enemy left. They’ve all died off. I miss them terribly because they helped define me. – Clare Boothe Luce

I’m tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I want to do. I’m tired of acting like I don’t eat more than a bird, and walking when I want to run. I’m tired of saying, “How wonderful you are!” to fool men who haven’t got one-half the sense I’ve got, and I’m tired of pretending I don’t know anything, so men can tell me things and feel important while they’re doing it. – Scarlett O’Hara, heroine in Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind.”

“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.” – Grace Murray Hopper (American Computer programmer and Inventor of COBOL, 1906-1992)

Nadia Boulanger, Conductor[on becoming the first woman to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra] – I’ve been a woman for a little over 50 years and have gotten over my initial astonishment. As for conducting an orchestra, that’s a job where I don’t think sex plays much part.

I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun. – Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003), American actress.

Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door. – Coco Chanel (1883-1971), French fashion designer.

Coco Chanel
Coco Chanel

I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. — Eleanor Roosevelt

“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat” – Rebecca West

A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika. – Dorothy Parker

This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes. – Hannah Arendt

Agatha Christie

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. – Agatha Christie

Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the ‘Titanic’ who waved off the dessert cart. – Erma Bombeck

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs. – Charlotte Bronte

“Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform. — Susan B. Anthony

“I have to keep reminding myself that I am their mother. Sometimes we are sitting at home and I feel like we are waiting for our mom to come home.” – Ruby Wax (1953), American comedienne who is best known for her work in the UK with British comedies.

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow. – Helen Keller

“I never gave away anything without wishing I had kept it; nor kept it without wishing I had given it away.” – Louise Brooks (1906-1985), American silent film star, credited with creating the “bob” haircut sensation of the 1920s.

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Good Advice on and Off the Course: “Concentrate, play your game, and don’t be afraid to win.” – Amy Strum Alcott (1956), winner of the 1980 U.S. Open for golf.

“I refused, saying that the forward car was a smoker, and as I was in the ladies’ car, I proposed to stay. . . [The conductor] tried to drag me out of the seat, but the moment he caught hold of my arm I fastened my teeth in the back of his hand. I had braced my feet against the seat in front and was holding to the back……” He…and another man succeeded in dragging me out.” – Ida B. Wells 1884

“The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear favored by the gods.” – Maxine Hong Kingston (1940), author of The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts a memoir that earned her the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of “Time Magazine’s” top nonfiction… books of the 1970s.

Bella Abzug

Maybe we weren’t at the Last Supper, but we’re certainly going to be at the next one. Bella Abzug, Congresswoman, 1977

“No star is ever lost we once have seen, We always may be what we might have been.” – Adelaide A. Proctor (1825-1864), favorite poet of Queen Victoria.

It is never too late to be what you might have been. – George Eliot (male pen name of Mary Ann Evans. 1819-1880)

“So pronounced was the popular voice against us, in the parlor, press, and pulpit that most of the ladies who had attended the convention and signed the declaration, one by one, withdrew their names and influence and joined our persecutors. Our friends gave us the cold shoulder and felt themselves disgraced by the whole proceeding.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1848 following the Seneca Falls Convention

If women could go into your Congress, I think justice would soon be done to the Indians. Sara Winnemucca, Piute tribe activist, 1883

If one is rich and one’s a woman, one can be quite misunderstood.” – Katharine Graham, newspaper publisher

“Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform.” —Susan B. Anthony

“If you refuse us our rights as citizens, I will bring charges against you in Criminal Court and I will sue each of you personally for large, exemplary damages! I know I can win. I have Judge Selden as a lawyer. There is any amount of money to back me, and if I have to, I will push to the ‘last ditch’ in both courts….” – Susan B. Anthony to Registrars of Rochester’s 8th Ward as she attempted to vote – 1872.

The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them. – Queen Victoria

I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship. – Louisa May Alcott

“Women must pay for everything. They do get more glory than men for comparable feats, but, they also get more notoriety when they crash.” – Amelia Earhart

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow. – Helen Keller

If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing. – Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of Great Britain

I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much. – Mother Theresa, social activist

Mother Teresa

“So pronounced was the popular voice against us, in the parlor, press, and pulpit that most of the ladies who had attended the convention and signed the declaration, one by one, withdrew their names and influence and joined our persecutors. Our friends gave us the cold shoulder and felt themselves disgraced by the whole proceeding.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1848 following the Seneca Falls Convention

One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying. – Joan of Arc

“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.” Zora Neale Hurston 1891?- 1960

“I believe everything happens for a reason! People change so you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you can appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so that you will eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes, good things fall apart, so better things can …fall together.” – Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962), American

Marilyn Monroe

actress.

“I think the most important thing a woman can have – next to talent, of course – is her hairdresser.” – Joan Crawford (1908-1977), American actress.

“Give yourself something to work toward – constantly.” – Mary Kay Ash (1918-2001), founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics. With over 800,000 independent reps in 37 countries, it is the number one selling brand in America.

“The beginning is always today.” – Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), British writer and feminist. She advocated the need for women to be educated, to broaden their mind, a difficult challenge in the 18th Century.

“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.” – Mother Teresa (1910-1997)

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

“We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don’t care for.” – Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1831-1916), Austrian author, considered to be one of the most important German writers of the 19th Century.

“Dogs never bite me. Just humans.” – Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962), American actress.

“If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role.”- Judy Garland (1922-1969), American actress and singer.

“It is always the simple that produces the marvelous.” – Amelia Barr (1831-1919),

Lady Nancy Astor

British/American Novelist.

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, “I used everything you gave me”. – Erma Bombeck (1927-1996), American humorist and writer.

Lauren Bacall

“I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.” – Lauren Bacall (1924), American actress.

“The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything… or nothing.” – Nancy Astor (1879 – 1964), first woman to sit as a Member of Parliament (MP) in the British House of Commons.

?”I think that if you shake the tree, you ought to be around when the fruit falls to pick it up.” – Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), first American Impressionist artist.

“I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.” – Maya Angelou (1928), American poet.

“People have to learn sometimes not only how much the heart, but how much the head, can bear.” – Maria Mitchell (1818-1889), American astronomer.

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