Georgette Heyer Quotes

It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession

In traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women were provided for. My father was a patriarch and I a pliant daughter. The neighborhood I'd grown up in was homogeneously Hindu, Bengali-speaking, and middle-class. I didn't expect myself to ever disobey or disappoint my father by setting my own goals and taking charge of my future.

It's a very confusing experience living as a woman in Japan. If your husband is white-collar, the wife is blue. Even if you marry a person of status, the wife inevitably remains a rung below.

A woman’s good goes to her husband and her bad to her kin.

In the U.S., women smile more than men. In the U.K., there's no difference between men and women.

[I]t is dangerous for a bride to be apologetic about her husband.

It never seems to occur to anybody that some women may not want to find husbands.

If women were humbler, men would be honester.

I've noticed in England once people reach a certain level they feel they have to get married.

This bugs me the worst. That's when the husband thinks that the wife knows where everything is, huh? Like they think the uterus is a tracking device. He comes in: "Hey, Roseanne! Roseanne! Do we have any Cheetos left?" Like he can't go over and lift up the sofa cushion himself.

There's a lot more historical baggage to deal with as a wife than as a partner.

I waited patiently - years - for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we'd say, Yeah, he's a Cool Guy.

As the dog becomes thoroughbred in the laws of clan and caste; obedient, fraternal and loyal; so is the man who accepts the gentleman's code.

Moral restrictions tend to become lax in a foreign country, since the fear of social opinion disappears.

As women, we're always in negotiation with how we're being perceived versus how we feel.

. . . women were brought up to have only one set of manners. A woman was either a lady or she wasn't, and we all know what the latter meant. Not even momentary lapses were allowed; there is no female equivalent of the boys-will-be-boys concept.

What foolsmiddle-classgirls are to expect other people to respect the same gods as themselves and E M Forster.

I worry about the men of your time, Grace. They all seem to be great fools. (Julian)

The constant pressure to bring about conformity is a dangerous thing.

I know it's the gentlemanly thing to let the wife file. But, then, everybody knows I'm no gentleman.

In the '50s you had to wear pink ribbons if you were a girl, and you were supposed to become a hairdresser or a secretary. I couldn't stomach it. Later on, when I fell in love with my husband and had children, that's when my mother's earthiness or sense of femaleness kicked in.

I wanted to know why people follow rules blindly, or why girls had to act a certain way and boys didn't. Why could boys ask girls out and girls not ask guys out? Why did girls have to shave their legs and guys didn't? Why did society, like, set everything up the way they did? My whole adolescence was full of unanswered whys. Because they never got answered, I just kept lighting fires everywhere - metaphorically speaking.

I've seen so many people in my life struggle tremendously to fit into those boxes or to live up to those expectations or pressures put upon them by whatever society's concept of 'normal' is. I get frustrated by rules and regulations. I'm frustrated by things that are exclusive to one particular life choice.

If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance.

Thanks to feminism, women can now acquire status in two ways: through marriage or their own achievements. Cure cancer or marry the man who does, either way society will applaud. Unless he marries into the British royal family, it doesn't work that way for men. Wives shed no glory on their husbands. Having tea with Nancy Reagan is an honor; having tea with Denis Thatcher is a joke.