Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes

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.

When women hold off from marrying men, we call it independence. When men hold off from marrying women, we call it fear of commitment.

And then also I think it's harder for women because comedy is so opposite of being ladylike.

If I want to dislike women, I should be allowed to. As it happens, I love them. Women to me are privately worshipped and publicly disdained.

She is a great man whose only flaw is that she is a woman.

Despite the strength of the feminist movement in the 1970s and beyond, a fable has persisted that educated women are rejected as marriage partners.

Men make angry music and it's called rock-and-roll; women include anger in their vocabulary and suddenly they're angry and militant.

A fine world in which man reproaches woman with fulfilling his heart's desire!

A man must know how to fly in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.

Perhaps some of the appeal of the dangerous-but-yummy paranormal anti-hero lies in his scorn for societal expectations. Yes, women have come a long way, but there are still some cultural stigmas more associated with women than men.

I think I am really irreverent and I pretty much just talk to and about men the way men talk to and about women.

A single woman with a very narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid - the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman of good fortune is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.

Whenever a female takes a strong stand for herself, the majority of the time they have to really, really narrow it down to being feminine and wearing dresses and just being lipstick chic.

The industry is quite chauvinistic generally. Expectations of women, girls, what they should look like, how they should be, what they should say, what they should wear, how their hair should be, what colour their skin should be.

In France, a woman may forget that she is neither young nor handsome; for the absence of these claims to attention does not expose her to be neglected by the male sex.

Female performers have been doing this for years - pushing the envelope about sexuality - and the minute a man does it, everybody freaks out.

Bad behaviour makes men more glamorous. Women get destroyed, thrown out of society and locked up in institutions.

I love young men, lots of them, your ancient masculine double standard.

I think society, in general, is hard on women, period.

A political woman loses her beauty within a year.

I used to be very interested in the history of women's rights in this country and in other countries. I tried to learn as much as I could about it, and more than anything, I would be called gay. It was phenomenal. But if a boy has something to say, he is appreciated; he's even popular. If a girl says something, it's instantly a threat.

I describe the relationship between man and woman as a Hegelian relationship between master and slave. As long as men are able to increase their sexual value through work, fame or wealth, while women are only powerful through their body, beauty and youth, nothing will change.

There's a lot of criticism on how an actress is aging. Why do we do that with women? I work with a lot of men who take terrible care of themselves - they drink too much, or they eat too much. We need to allow women to age.

It really pisses me off when people look at women who are older and are not in a relationship as somehow sad or missing something, because they certainly don't look at men that way.

It's absolutely delightful to get dressed up for a lovely evening, but when it goes from being a fun thing to being a chore, and a chore that men don't have to do, then we need to think about it differently.