quote of the Day for 2016-07-05

"I may not here omit those two main plagues, and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people: they go commonly together."

— Robert Burton (1577-1640) The Anatomy of Melancholy, part 1, section 2, member 3. subsection 13 (1621)

The Temptation of Saint Anthony by Lovis Corinth (1897)

Quote of the Day for 2016-02-17

"Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority. Their one comfort is the assurance that, even though it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man."

— H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) "Duty Before Security," The Smart Set, June 1919

Lobby card for The Lion in Winter (1968) Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine and Peter O'Toole as Henry II

Quote of the Day for 2016-02-09

"Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation."

— Abigail Adams (1744-1818) Letter to John Adams, March 31, 1776

The Women's Strike for Equality march down Fifth Ave. in New York City (August 26, 1970) Photo by Bob Adelman

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-17

"The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'"

— Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Said to Marie Bonaparte and quoted by Ernest Jones in The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, volume 2

Portrait of Mona Lisa del Giocondo by Leonardo da Vinci (circa 1503-06)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-29

"Intimacies between women go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending up in small talk without loss of esteem."

— Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) The Death of the Heart, part 2, chapter 1

The Letter by Vittorio Reggianini

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-05

"No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother."

— Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) Women and the New Race

Cover of the Birth Control Review for November 1923, from The American Birth Control League, the precursor to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America