Feel the need to be inspired? Check out these amazing quotes from some of the most influential women in literature.
What other quotes would you add to this list? Comment below with your suggestions!
“And, of course, men know best about everything…except what women know better.”
– Middlemarch, George Eliot
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me. I am a free human being with an independent will.”
– Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
– To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
“If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.”
– The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
“The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.”
– We Should All Be Feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love’s sake only. Don not say,
’I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day–
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry:
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.”
– Sonnets from the Portuguese, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.”
– Tiger Eyes, Judy Blume
“…because in spite of everything, I still believe that people really are good at heart.”
– The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
“She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”
– The Awakening, Kate Chopin
“Thinking has, many a time, made me sad, darling; but doing never did in all my life…My precept is, do something, my sister, do good if you can; but at any rate, do something.”
– North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell
“The world you desire can be won. It exists…it is real…it is possible…it’s yours.”
– Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
“The greatest wisdom doesn’t know itself. The richest plan is not to have one.”
– Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich
“Sometimes we reveal ourselves when we are least like ourselves.”
– Henry and June, Anais Nin
“Stop worrying about your identity and concern yourself with the people you care about, ideas that matter to you, beliefs you can stand by, tickets you can run on. Intelligent humans make those choices with their brain and hearts and they make them alone. The world does not deliver meaning to you. You have to make it meaningful…and decide what you want and need and must do. It’s a tough, unimaginably lonely and complicated way to be in the world. But that’s the deal: you have to live; you can’t live by slogans, dead ideas, clichés, or national flags. Finding an identity is easy. It’s the easy way out.”
– On Beauty, Zadie Smith
Looking for a new book to read? Check in every Friday for a “Bee Happy” post, where I share reviews of books I’ve read or other book-themed lists.
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