Gilda Radner:I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch.
Gilda Radner:I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next.
Ayn Rand:He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost fascinating.
Helen Reddy:If I have to, I can do anything. I am strong, I am invincible, I am Woman.
Myrtle Reed:Lots of people think they're charitable if they give away their old clothes and things they don't want.
Agnes Repplier:Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their pedestals.
Agnes Repplier:The tourist may complain of other tourists, but he would be lost without them.
Wynetka Ann Reynolds:Anyone who says you can't see a thought simply doesn't know art.
Adrienne Rich:Lying is done with words and also with silence.
Ann Richards:Teaching was the hardest work I had ever done, and it remains the hardest work I have done to date.
Joan Rivers:I have flabby thighs, but fortunately my stomach covers them.
Joan Rivers:I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking.
Joan Rivers:I told my mother-in-law that my house was her house, and she said, "Get the hell off my property."
Joan Rivers:If God wanted us to bend over he'd put diamonds on the floor.
Joan Rivers:There is not one female comic who was beautiful as a little girl.
Kelly Robinson:Things are always darkest just before they go pitch black.
Eleanor Roosevelt:Friendship with one's self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.
Eleanor Roosevelt:I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
Eleanor Roosevelt:You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.
Jacqueline Roque (wife of Pablo Picasso):If my husband ever met a woman on the street who looked like one of his paintings he would faint.
Christina Georgina Rossetti:Love is like a rose, the joy of all the earth.
Christina Georgina Rossetti:My heart is like a singing bird.
Christina Georgina Rossetti:Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad.
Roseanne:My husband and I didn't sign a pre-nuptial agreement. We signed a mutual suicide pact.
Roseanne:Experts say you should never hit your children in anger. When is a good time? When you're feeling festive?
Roseanne:In Tulsa, restaurants have signs that say, "Sorry, we're open."
Helen Rowland:A husband is what's left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted.
Helen Rowland:Before marriage, a man will lay down his life for you; after marriage he won't even lay down his newspaper.
Helen Rowland:Every man wants a woman to appeal to his better side, his nobler instincts, and his higher nature – and another woman to help him forget them.
Helen Rowland:Never trust a husband too far or a bachelor too near.
Helen Rowland:The follies which a man regrets the most in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity.
Helen Rowland:Before marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you've said. After marriage, he'll fall asleep before you finish saying it.
Rita Rudner:Before I met my husband I'd never fallen in love, though I'd stepped in it a few times.
Rita Rudner:My mother buried three husbands – and two of them were only napping.
Rita Rudner:My mother is such a lousy cook that Thanksgiving at her house is a time of sorrow.
Rita Rudner:To attract men, I wear a perfume called "New Car Interior."
Rita Rudner:Whenever I date a guy, I think, is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?
Rita Rudner:I want to have children, but my friends scare me. One of my friends told me she was in labor for 36 hours. I don't even want to do anything that feels good for 36 hours.
Rita Rudner:My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We can't decide whether to ruin our carpet or ruin our lives.
Roseanne:I figure that if the children are alive when I get home, I've done my job.
Dora Russell:We want far better reasons for having children than not knowing how to prevent them.
Rosalind Russell:Success is a public affair. Failure is a private funeral.
Patsy H. Sampson:Human successes, like human failures, are composed of one action at a time and achieved by one person at a time.
George Sand:There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.
May Sarton:Women are at last becoming persons first and wives second, and that is as it should be.
Dorothy Sayers:As I grow older and older, / And totter toward the tomb, / I find that I care less and less / Who goes to bed with whom.
Zenna Schaffer:Give a man a fish and he has food for a day. Teach him how to fish and you can get rid of him of the entire weekend.
Anne Sexton:It doesn't matter who my father was. It matters who I remember he was.
Anne Wilson Schaef:Getting to the top isn't bad, and it's probably best done as an afterthought.
Margaret Sherwood:In great moments life seems neither right nor wrong, but something greater: it seems inevitable.
Beverly Sills:You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.
Cornelia Otis Skinner:Women's virtue is man's greatest invention.
Grace Slick:No matter how big or soft or warm your bed is, you still have to get out of it.
Liz Smith:You can't build a reputation on what you intend to do.
Margaret Smith:I don't visit my parents often because Delta Airlines won't wait in the yard while I run in.
Susan Sontag:Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.
Susan Sontag:Sanity is a cozy lie.
Janet Sorensen:I love my kids, but I wouldn't want them for friends.
Muriel Spark:One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom.
Gertrude Stein:When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that.
Gloria Steinem:Most women's magazines simply try to mold women into bigger and better consumers.
Gloria Steinem:I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.
Gladys Browyn Stern:Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone.
Harriet Beecher Stowe:The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
Meryl Streep:Instant gratification is not soon enough.
Muriel Strode:Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Annie Sullivan:We all like stories that make us cry. It's so nice to feel sad when you've nothing in particular to feel sad about.
Annie Sullivan:The truth is not wonderful enough to suit the newspapers, so they enlarge upon it, and invent ridiculous embellishments.
Baroness Edith Summerskill:Nagging is the repetition of unpalatable truths.
Gloria Swanson:All creative people should be required to leave California for three months every year.
Anne Sophie Swetchine:To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others.
Jane Taylor:Who ran to help me when I fell, and would some pretty story tell, or kiss the place to make it well? My mother.
Sara Teasdale:No one worth possessing can be quite possessed.
Josephine Tey:Lack of education is an extraordinary handicap when one is being offensive.
Margaret Thatcher:Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
Margaret Thatcher:If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.
Margaret Thatcher:No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions – he had money, too.
Margaret Thatcher:Success is having a flair for the thing that you are doing, knowing that is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a sense of purpose.
Margaret Thatcher:You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.
Lily Tomlin:Why is it when we talk to God we're said to be praying, but when God talks to us we're schizophrenic?
Sophie Tucker:I've been rich and I've been poor. Rich is better.
Judy Tenuta:This guy says, "I'm perfect for you, 'cause I'm a cross between a macho man and a sensitive man." I said, "Oh, a gay trucker?"
Margaret Turnbull:No man is responsible for his father. That was entirely his mother's affair.
Quotable Women – An Archive of