10 Wonderful Quotes from Women

Once someone criticized my use of quotations because they were mostly from men. In fact, I'm not biased towards men's voices. But when I examined my database to discover whether this imbalance was actually there, I saw that it was true: by far, most of my quotes are from men.

But this is not because of gender bias. It's because for thousands of years it was "a man's world." Women raised the family. Men went out into the world, got educated and went to work. And so it has been mostly the voices of men that were recorded throughout history.

But I also discovered that I had quoted hundreds of women. In my blog posts that featured quotes, I've included a lot of wisdom from well-known, accomplished women.

But in this post, I dedicate the entire space to quotes from women. These are among my favorites...

PERSEVERANCE - “What we call failure is not the falling down but the staying down.” - Mary Pickford, American actress (1893-1979)

SELF-ESTEEM - "Let me listen to myself and not to them." - Gertrude Stein, American novelist (1874-1946)

COMPOSURE - “If you want a place in the sun, you've got to put up with a few blisters.” - Abigail Van Buren, American columnist (1918- )

SELF-AWARENESS - “In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.” - Virginia Woolf, British novelist (1882-1941)

SPIRITUALITY - “Anybody can observe the Sabbath but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.” - Alice Walker, American novelist (1944- )

HONESTY - “The best mind-altering drug is truth.” - Lily Tomlin, American actress (1936- )

INITIATIVE - “You can listen to what everybody says, but the fact remains that you’ve got to get out there and do the thing yourself.” - Joan Sutherland, Austrailian singer (1926- )

SELF-DEVELOPMENT - "If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living." - Gail Sheehy, American author (1937- )

PASSION - “Each of us has a fire in our heart for something. It’s our goal in life to find it and to keep it.” - Mary Lou Retton, American Olympic gymnast (1968- )

COURAGE - “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” - Anaïs Nin, American author (1903-1977)

Let me know if you appreciate this focus on women. There's a ton more where these came from!

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength . (Permission to use image purchased from istockphoto.com)