I wish i could tell you that through the tragedy i mined some undiscovered, life-altering absolute that i could pass on to you.I didn’t.The cliches apply-people are what count,life is precious,materialism is over rated, and the little things matter,live in the moment-and i can repeat them to you ad nauseam.you might listen, but you won’t...

Es gibt zwei Sorten von Männern. Die einen verstehen ‘etwas von Frauen’, die anderen sind solche, die einfach ‘Frauen verstehen’. Ich weiß nicht, welche Sorte mir verdächtiger ist.

As I stated earlier, I do not believe there is anything inherently wrong with even the most overused elements of epic fantasy. Magic swords, dragons, destined heroes — even dark lords and ultimate evils can legitimately be used in literature of serious intent, not just mocked in satirical meta-fiction. To claim that they cannot would...

Yet if women are so flighty, fickle, changeable, susceptible, and inconstant (as some clerks would have us believe), why is it that their suitors have to resort to such trickery to have their way with them? And why don’t women quickly succumb to them, without the need for all this skill and ingenuity in conquering...

rather babble away and at least partially express something difficult than reproduce impeccable clichés

What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: “You are a little girl and therefore you ought to like dolls”; if the answer is, “But I don’t,” there is no more to be said.

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.

Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance (…); as great as a man, some think even greater. But this is woman in fiction. In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out [in his History of England], she was locked up, beaten...

words failed.” But words were not failing us at all. It was not true that there was no way to describe our experience. We had plenty of language to talk to each other about the horror of what was happening, and talk we did. If there was a communication problem it was that there were...

Does a rake deserve to possess anything of worth, since he chases everything in skirts and then imagines he can successfully hide his shame by slandering [women in general]?

Now, it is frequently asserted that, with women, the job does not come first. What (people cry) are women doing with this liberty of theirs? What woman really prefers a job to a home and family? Very few, I admit. It is unfortunate that they should so often have to make the choice. A man...

It is time to effect a revolution in female manners – time to restore to them their lost dignity – and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.

I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.””Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have...

That night she wrote a hasty sketch and showed it to Oliver. “It’s all right,” he said. “But I’d take out that stuff about Olympian mountains and the Stygian caverns of the mine. That’s about used up, I should think.

If I made a joke about just dropping by, would you write me off as cliché?

My Lady, you certainly tell me about wonderful constancy, strength and virtue and firmness of women, so can one say the same thing about men? (…)Response [by Lady Rectitude]: “Fair sweet friend, have you not yet heard the saying that the fool sees well enough a small cut in the face of his neighbour, but...

The rule seemed to be that a great woman must either die unwed … or find a still greater man to marry her. … The great man, on the other hand, could marry where he liked, not being restricted to great women; indeed, it was often found sweet and commendable in him to choose a...

We are accustomed to repeating the cliché, and to believing, that ‘our most precious resource is our children.’ But we have plenty of children to go around, God knows, and as with Doritos, we can always make more. The true scarcity we face is practicing adults, of people who know how marginal, how fragile, how...

She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance – a misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have...

It is extraordinarily entertaining to watch the historians of the past … entangling themselves in what they were pleased to call the “problem” of Queen Elizabeth. They invented the most complicated and astonishing reasons both for her success as a sovereign and for her tortuous matrimonial policy. She was the tool of Burleigh, she was...

Wine and women make wise men dote and forsake God’s law and do wrong.” However, the fault is not in the wine, and often not in the woman. The fault is in the one who misuses the wine or the woman or other of God’s crations. Even if you get drunk on the wine and...

The man or the woman in whom resides greater virtue is the higher; neither the loftiness nor the lowliness of a person lies in the body according to the sex, but in the perfection of conduct and virtues.

Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him — or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.

Do you really believe … that everything historians tell us about men – or about women – is actually true? You ought to consider the fact that these histories have been written by men, who never tell the truth except by accident.

[S]ince you are angry at me without reason, you attack me harshly with, “Oh outrageous presumption! Oh excessively foolish pride! Oh opinion uttered too quickly and thoughtlessly by the mouth of a woman! A woman who condemns a man of high understanding and dedicated study, a man who, by great labour and mature deliberation, has...

The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great...

Let’s have some new cliches.

[T]he wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile.

[I]f you seek in every way to minimise my firm beliefs by your anti-feminist attacks, please recall that a small dagger or knife point can pierce a great, bulging sack and that a small fly can attack a great lion and speedily put him to flight.

In fact, there is perhaps only one human being in a thousand who is passionately interested in his job for the job’s sake. The difference is that if that one person in a thousand is a man, we say, simply, that he is passionately keen on his job; if she is a woman, we say...

When you hear men talking,” said Cornelia, “all they ever do is speak ill of women. … And I don’t quite know how they managed to make this law in their favour, or who exactly it was who gave them a greater license to sin than is allowed to us; and if the fault is...

[Women] complain about many clerks who attribute all sorts of faults to them and who compose works about them in rhyme, prose, and verse, criticizing their conduct in a variety of different ways. They then give these works as elementary textbooks to their young pupils at the beginning of their schooling, to provide them with...

Comedy is hard to do. All the cliches about it are true.

When people dis fantasy—mainstream readers and SF readers alike—they are almost always talking about one sub-genre of fantastic literature. They are talking about Tolkien, and Tolkien’s innumerable heirs. Call it ‘epic’, or ‘high’, or ‘genre’ fantasy, this is what fantasy has come to mean. Which is misleading as well as unfortunate.Tolkien is the wen on...

I know, I know…there’s something cliché about that. The heroine initially wanting to clobber a protagonist male, but later realizing that he’s grown on her and she actually really likes him. Technically, I’m not supposed to find that appealing. But maybe real life is a lot more cliché than anyone wants to admit. Or maybe...

[J]ust the sight of this book, even though it was of no authority, made me wonder how it happened that so many different men – and learned men among them – have been and are so inclined to express both in speaking and in their treatises and writings so many wicked insults about women and...

[T]he more clamour we make about ‘the women’s point of view’, the more we rub it into people that the women’s point of view is different, and frankly I do not think it is — at least in my job. The line I always want to take is, that there is the ‘point of view’...

Morris Weissman [on the phone, discussing casting for his movie]: “What about Claudette Colbert? She’s British, isn’t she? She sounds British. Is she, like, affected or is she British?

Clichés so often befall vain people.

I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.

Is it possible to say “It was a beautiful morning at the end of November” without feeling like Snoopy?

God bids you not to commit lechery, that is, not to have sex with any woman except your wife. You ask of her that she should not have sex with anyone except you — yet you are not willing to observe the same restraint in return. Where you ought to be ahead of your wife...

Cliches are what make you understand something.

In reaction against the age-old slogan, “woman is the weaker vessel,” or the still more offensive, “woman is a divine creature,” we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that “a woman is as good as a man,” without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we...

Come on, it’s an American tradition. Apple soup? Mom’s homemade chicken pie?’ She chuckled in spite of herself, then winced. ‘It’s apple pie and Mom’s homemade chicken soup. But you didn’t do badly, for a start.

When a man gives his opinion, he’s a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she’s a bitch.

i do not say ‘good-bye.’ i believe that’s one of the bullshittiest words ever invented. it’s not like you’re given the choice to say ‘bad-bye’ or ‘awful-bye’ or ‘couldn’t-care-less-about-you-bye.’ every time you leave, it’s supposed to be a good one. well, i don’t believe in that. i believe against that.

Two clichés make us laugh. A hundred cliches move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.(Casablanca, or, The Clichés Are Having a Ball)

[Y]ou are not ashamed of your sin [in committing adultery] because so many men commit it. Man’s wickedness is now such that men are more ashamed of chastity than of lechery. Murderers, thieves, perjurers, false witnesses, plunderers and fraudsters are detested and hated by people generally, but whoever will sleep with his servant girl in...