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Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel. —Bella Abzug

"Stay" is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary. —Louisa May Alcott

As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might. —Marian Anderson

Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway. —Mary Kay Ash

In passing, also, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance he laid the blame on woman. —Nancy Astor, British politician

Imagination is the highest kite one can fly. —Lauren Bacall, American actress

There is a way to look at the past. Don't hide from it. It will not catch you—if you don't repeat it. —Pearl Bailey

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations. —Faith Baldwin

You must learn day by day, year by year, to broaden your horizon. The more things you love, the more you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about, the more you have left when anything happens. —Ethel Barrymore

What will happen can't be stopped: aim for grace. —Ann Beattie

Listening to your heart is not simple. Finding out who you are is not simple. It takes a lot of hard work and courage to get to know who you are and what you want. —Sue Bender

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. —Sally Berger

Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich. —Sarah Bernhardt, French actress

Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to face many a danger, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle. —Annie Besant

Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting. —Elizabeth Bibesco

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph. —Shirley Temple Black, actress, singer, and U.S. ambassador

...there is That in an old doctor's wisdom that recollects a wagon train I once saw on a Willacoochee back road, and there is That in a Tampa Bay waterspout that draws all the people to the window of a plane, and there is That in the voices of two old friends who have found each other again at a gas station in Savannah. It is a sound that sounds beneath the illusions that keep us separate, and it binds, and holds, and surprises a crowd of strangers into quietness. —Amy Blackmarr

Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth to. —Erma Bombeck

When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. —Elayne Boosler

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. —Anne Bradstreet

Whenever people say we mustn't be sentimental, you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And, if they add, we must be realistic, they mean they are going to make money out of it. —Brigid Brophy

I believe you are your work. Don't trade the stuff of your life, time, for nothing more than dollars. That's a rotten bargain. —Rita Mae Brown

Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese. —Billie Burke

In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth. —Rachel Carson

The secret of having a personal life is not answering too many questions about it. —Joan Collins

All you'll get from strangers is surface pleasantry or indifference. Only someone who loves you will criticize you. —Judith Crist

One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done. —Marie Curie

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. —Marie Curie

Character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life—is the source from which self-respect springs. —Joan Didion

It is the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter. —Marlene Dietrich, German actress

In youth we learn; in age we understand. —Marie Ebner-Eschenbach, Austrian writer

Animals are such agreeable friends, they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms. —George Eliot

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to stay, abstains from giving us worthy evidence of the fact. —George Eliot

If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck? —Linda Ellerbee

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do on a rainy afternoon. —Susan Ertz

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold. —Zelda Fitzgerald

Take your work seriously, but never yourself. —Dame Margot Fonteyn

I'll not listen to reason. Reason always means what someone else has got to say. —Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, British writer

I can't think of any sorrow in the world that a hot bath wouldn't help, just a little bit. —Susan Glaspell in The Visioning

Some things... arrive on their own mysterious hour, on their own terms and not yours, to be seized or relinquished forever. —Gail Godwin, American writer

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain. —Vivian Greene

Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin. —Grace Hansen

People change and forget to tell each other. —Lillian Hellman

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then. —Katharine Hepburn

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all. —Hypatia of Alexandria

And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. —Erica Jong

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't. —Erica Jong

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame. —Erica Jong

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy. —Erica Jong

Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got. —Janis Joplin

Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power. —Barbara Jordan

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. —Helen Keller

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit. —Helen Keller

Hold out your hands, to feel the luxury of the sunbeams! —Helen Keller

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker. —Helen Keller

It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. —Sally Kempton, American writer

What women want in the age of this world is not chivalry, but justice. —May Stocking Knaggs, 1887

Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid. —Hedy Lamarr

If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in eye and say, "I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me." —Ann Landers

People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim. —Ann Landers

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other. —Ann Landers

Love doesn't just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. —Ursula K. LeGuin, American writer

If you see a whole thing—it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives.... But close up a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. —Ursula K. LeGuin

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next. —Ursula K. LeGuin, American writer

The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting. —Fran Leibowitz

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. —Doris Lessing, British writer

A person who talks fast often says things she hasn't thought of yet. —Caron Warner Lieber

Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. —Anne Morrow Lindbergh

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age. —Sophia Loren

Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life. —Sophia Loren

It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere. —Lois Lowry