Jane Welsh Carlyle Quotes

Marriage is a custom brought about by women who then proceed to live off men and destroy them, completely enveloping the man in a destructive cocoon or eating him away like a poisonous fungus on a tree.

When men get together, they moan about their wives. The commentary provided on marriage between groups of men is typically one from a viewpoint that assumes marriage to be life's greatest, most unfun mistake. Not only is it often as disingenuous as Joe Biden's hairline, but it's incredibly harmful.

Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared.

I do believe that men can be emasculated by successful women. I don't think I'm emasculating. But I have seen the dynamic with men who either don't make money or make less money. It's just not good for them.

Men were only made into 'men' with great difficulty even in primitive society: the male is not naturally 'a man' any more than the woman. He has to be propped up into that position with some ingenuity, and is always likely to collapse.

I'll do shoes for the lady who lunches, but it would be, like, a really nasty lunch, talking about men. But where I draw the line, what I absolutely won't do, is the lady who plays bridge in the afternoon!

We take men's obligation to earn money, and when they do it well, we blame them for having power and being oppressors. And when they don't do it all, women just don't marry men who are reading 'I'm Okay, You're Okay' in the unemployment line.

Most women seem to be required to pit themselves against men in dramatic situations, and the men got to pit themselves against ideas or God.

Really, in a way, I took over the male role.

I think being raised by a single mother put me on the outside, and I would watch my mother's married friends and think, 'Why does she put him down in public?' or, 'Why is he so rude to her?' It seemed to me that there were very few marriages where the couple were genuinely in a supportive, loving partnership.

In the case of maternal health care, you look at, well naturally, it's the mother who's the customer, who makes the decisions. But in truth, the mother in many areas, in certain parts of India, the mother has very little decision-making power at all. The real decision-maker is the mother-in-law.

I think being ambitious, successful, powerful, making a lot of money - I don't care what color you are as a woman; it's difficult to find a mate. I think the natural order is that men want to be providers.

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.

'I'll be back' always sounded a little girly to me.

You always have this fear in a movie of just being somebody's woman.

90% of the divorces are initiated by women. That is really odd. Why? What's going on? What's the great discontent at the heart of it?

My God, must I always wear a low-cut dress to be important?

I'll do shoes for the lady who lunches, but it would be, like, a really nasty lunch, talking about men.

'Beauty Queen' is the weirdest, strangest, and most perfect play to do before 'Hedda Gabler', because there are so many similar issues for Maureen and Hedda. I had played leading ladies before but couldn't really hook into them. After 'An American Daughter' and 'Beauty Queen', I had all the ballast.

The society in 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied extensively at Harvard under Perry Miller, to whom the book is dedicated.

Some husbands regard it as their prerogative to compel their wives to fit their standards of what they think to be the ideal.

You look at someone like Beyonce singing 'Single Ladies,' when we all know she's married. Some of it is just for entertainment.

That's what my mother did. And my father was the first person she'd met who treated her kindly. She was terrified of men, and she married a very meek, kind, dear man. And she had the upper hand. She ruled the roost.

My work generally tends to be an all-out, 360-degree subversive take on everything, most of all my own notion of myself as a son, father, husband, human being and male in this culture.

There are still women who are not living their own lives, but living through their men or their children.