I believe that it’s better to be looked over than it is to be overlooked. And that a girl who keeps her eyes open is always the kind to look out for. I know the difference between a good man and a bad one, but I haven’t decided which I like better.
Mae West (1893–1980), American actress
I don’t think that the wrath of God descends on bad girls. No, I think bad girls have a ball and die having a ball. The life my characters lead – having affairs, living from one party to the next … and going shopping – this is their idea of a ball. It’s not up to me to say, ‘Girls, this isn’t the sort of ball you should be having.’
Shobhaa De, Indian writer
There is no worse evil than a bad woman; and nothing has ever been produced better than a good one.
Euripides (c.480–406 BC), Greek playwright, in Melanippe, fifth century BC
It’s the good girls who keep the diaries; the bad girls never have the time.
Tallulah Bankhead (1902–1968), American actress
I’m not a bad girl, I’m just a good girl who does bad things.
Anon
I just sort of wish people would dance differently. It reminds me of teenage sex.
Laurie Anderson, American musician
There’s nothing better than good sex. But bad sex? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is better than bad sex.
Billy Joel, American singer
The worst sex I’ve ever had has always been great.
Vince McMahon, American sports commentator, in Esquire, 2005
We are lads. We have burgled houses and nicked car stereos, and we like girls and swear and go to the football and take the piss.
Noel Gallagher, British singer, in interview, Melody Maker, 1996
A bachelor’s virtue depends upon his alertness; a married man’s depends upon his wife’s.
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956), American writer and humorist
Never trust a husband too far, nor a bachelor too near.
Helen Rowland (1875–1950), American writer and humorist
Bachelors are not fashionable any more. They are a damaged lot. Too much is known about them.
Lord Caversham, in An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), Irish playwright
Being a bachelor is the first requisite of the man who wishes to form an ideal home.
Beverley Nichols (1898–1983), British writer
A bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever.
Helen Rowland
A bachelor has to have inspiration for making love to a woman, a married man needs only an excuse.
Helen Rowland
I’m o’er young, I’m o’er young,
I’m o’er young to marry yet!
I’m o’er young, ‘twod be a sin
To tak me frae my mammy yet.
Robert Burns (1759–1796), Scottish poet, in Aye Waukin O
People always assume that bachelors are single by choice and spinsters because nobody asked them. It never enters their heads that poor bachelors might have worn the knees of their trousers out proposing to girls who rejected them or that a girl might deliberately stay unmarried because she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life filling a man’s stomach with food and washing his dirty shirts.
Jilly Cooper, British novelist, in Angels in a Rush
No unmarried woman can be polite to a bachelor without beginning to speculate how he would look in a wedding coat. This fact, which is too obvious to need proof, makes friendly dealings with them somewhat strained.
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956), American writer and humorist
Most men are [married]. I say countries go to war. The question is – is it a good idea? I live alone (a bachelor flat in Teddington) and any woman would love to get their hands on it and do it over. But I have freedom and the only person I have to please is me.
Benny Hill (1924–1992), British comedian
For the butterfly, mating and propagation involve the sacrifice of life; for the human being, the sacrifice of beauty.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), German writer
Is it too much to ask that a woman be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it to the caresses of a subhumanly ugly mate?
Germaine Greer, Australian feminist writer
I love being a woman. You can cry. You get to wear pants now. If you’re on a boat and it’s going to sink, you get to go on the rescue boat first. You can wear cute clothes. It must be a great thing, or so many men wouldn’t be wanting to do it.
Gilda Radner (1946–1989), American actress
We have to have faith in ourselves. I have never met a woman who, deep down in her core, really believes she has great legs. And if she suspects that she might have great legs, then she’s convinced that she has a shrill voice and no neck.
Cynthia Heimel, American feminist writer
There’s a difference between beauty and charm. A beautiful woman is one I notice. A charming woman is one who notices me.
John Erskine (1879–1951), American educator
It’s a good thing that beauty is only skin deep or I’d be rotten to the core.
Phyllis Diller (1917–2012), American actress
When I go to the beauty parlour, I always use the emergency entrance. Sometimes I just go for an estimate.
Phyllis Diller
Beauty is altogether in the eye of the beholder.
Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (1855–1897), Irish novelist, in Molly Bawn, 1878
I admit that I think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand, no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly.
Lord Henry, in The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), Irish playwright
Beauty for some provides escape
Who gain happiness in eyeing
The gorgeous buttocks of the ape
Or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), British writer
The epithet beautiful is used by surgeons to describe operations which their patients describe as ghastly, by physicists to describe methods of measurement which leave sentimentalists cold, by lawyers to describe cases which ruin all the parties to them, and by lovers to describe the objects of their infatuation, however unattractive they may appear to the unaffected spectators.
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Irish playwright
Beauty. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914), American writer
If beauty isn’t genius it usually signals at least a high level of animal cunning.
Peter York, British journalist
The feminine vanity-case is the grave of masculine illusions.
Helen Rowland (1875–1950), American writer and humorist
Life belongs to the pretty woman.
Lady Isobel Barnett (1918–1980), British television personality
One girl can be pretty – but a dozen are only a chorus.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940), American novelist, in The Last Tycoon, 1941
Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966), British novelist
My love in her attire doth show her wit. It doth so well become her:
For every season she hath dressings fit, for winter, spring and summer.
No beauty she doth miss, when all her robes are on:
But beauty’s self she is, when all her robes are gone.
Sixteenth-century madrigal
You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, which doesn’t say much for you.
Groucho Marx (1880–1977), American comedian, in Animal Crackers, 1930
In Britain, an attractive woman is somehow suspect. If there is talent as well, it is overshadowed. Beauty and brains just can’t be entertained; someone has been too extravagant.
Vivien Leigh (1913–1967), British actress
That although artificial teeth are a great blessing, and although a suitable wig may be a charitable covering for a bald head, yet she is committing a sin against her personal appearance as well as against her self-respect if she dyes her hair.
Mary Scharlieb (1845–1930), British gynaecological surgeon and writer, in The Seven Ages of Woman, 1915
It’s not fair the emphasis put on beauty, or on sexuality.
Rosanna Arquette, American actress
Everyone wants to look like her. Chick with a dick.
Cheryl Cole, British singer, on Lily Allen
The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.
Dr Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), British writer and lexicographer
The cool kindliness of sheets, that soon smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss of blankets.
Rupert Brooke (1887–1915), British war poet
For I’ve been born and I’ve been wed – all of man’s peril comes of bed.
Charles Henry Webb (1834–1905), American journalist
She isn’t a bad bit of goods, the Queen! I wish all the fleas in my bed were as good.
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish writer, in Don Quixote, 1605
It is getting too squeaky. The technicians are worried one of the legs might fall off.
Anonymous BBC Radio 4 source, on the bed used in the radio programme The Archers
Always buy a good pair of shoes and a good bed – if you’re not in one you’re in the other.
Gloria Hunniford, British television presenter, repeating advice from her mother
This morning my girlfriend was so loud in bed that we woke up the neighbours. So I told them to roll over and go back to sleep.
Jarod Kintz, American writer, in It Occurred to Me
If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn’t it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?
Gloria Steinem, American feminist writer
The mother-in-law thinks I’m effeminate; not that I mind because, beside her, I am!
Les Dawson (1934–1993), British comedian
There is a tide in the affairs of women,
Which, taken at the flood, heads – God knows where.
Lord Byron (1788–1824), British Romantic poet, in Don Juan, 1819
He was the rudest, meanest man I’ve ever seen. He was terrifically hostile – maybe because he was blind – and everybody hated him but that one secretary he was going to bed with. She was the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen, but he didn’t care because he couldn’t see her.
Truman Capote (1924–1984), American writer, on James Thurber
Funny really. When you look at the things that go on these days, my story reads like Noddy.
Diana Dors (1931–1984), British actress
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But Ah, my foes, and Oh my friends –
It gives a lovely light!
Edna St Vincent Millay (1892–1950), American poet, in A Few Figs From Thistles, 1922
I’m proud that I was never vulgar. There’s no way I’d need a tattoo or [to] dress up in some surgical appliance to give folks a good night out.
Tina Turner, American singer, referring to Cher
I repent of my diets, the delicious dishes rejected out of vanity, as much as I lament the opportunities for making love that I let go because of pressing tasks or puritanical virtue.
Isabel Allende, Chilean writer
The behaviour of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life.
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), Austrian psychoanalyst, in Sexuality and the Psychology of Love
Contrary to popular belief, English women do not wear tweed nightgowns.
Hermione Gingold (1897–1987), British actress
I’ve always been famous, it’s just no one knew it yet.
Lady Gaga, American singer
Understand that sexuality is as wide as the sea. Understand that your morality is not law. Understand that we are you. Understand that if we decide to have sex whether safe, safer, or unsafe, it is our decision and you have no rights in our lovemaking.
Derek Jarman (1942–1994) British film-maker and gay activist
People take sex far too seriously.
Christina Aguilera, American singer, in Newsweek, 2006
I don’t want to be horny when I’m seventy, because it will be so hard to fulfil.
Neil Simon, American playwright and screenwriter
I’m not going to lose weight because someone tells me to. I make music to be a musician, not to be on the cover of Playboy or Vogue.
Adele, British singer
I would never know how to sell myself as a sex symbol. That’s not how I’m programmed.
Jude Law, British actor
… wherefore, since if the parts be smooth, conception is prevented, some anoint that part of the womb on which the seed falls with oil of cedar, or with ointment of lead or with frankincense, commingled with olive oil.
Aristotle (384–322 BC), Greek philosopher
The remedy for preventing conception shocks the mind of woman, at the first thought; but prejudice soon flies.
Richard Carlile (1790–1843), British campaigner for universal suffrage and the emancipation of women, in Every Woman’s Book; or, What is Love?
If instead of birth control everyone would preach drink control, you would have little poverty, less crime and fewer illegitimate children … I speak feelingly; for as my brother Harold John Tennant and I were the last of twelve children, it is more than probable we should never have existed had the fashion of birth control been prevalent in the eighties.
Margot Asquith (1865–1945), wife of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, in Places and Persons, 1925
We want far better reasons for having children than not knowing how to prevent them.
Dora Russell (1894–1986), British socialist campaigner and writer
The contraceptive pill may reduce the importance of sex not only as a basis for the division of labour, but as a guideline in developing talents and interests.
Caroline Bird, American writer, in Born Female, 1968
He no play-da-game. He no make-a-da rules!
Earl Butz (1909–2008), US Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Nixon and Ford, referring to the Pope’s stricture against contraception
Vasectomies and condoms are as safe for women as anything based on men’s behaviour can be.
Spare Rib magazine
Skullion had little use for contraceptives at the best of times. Unnatural, he called them, and placed them in the lower social order of things along with elastic-sided boots and made-up bow ties. Not the sort of attire for a gentleman.
Tom Sharpe, British novelist, in Porterhouse Blue, 1974
My girlfriend just found out she’s been taking aspirins instead of the pill. Well, at least she doesn’t have a headache – but I do.
From Laugh-In, NBC TV, 1969
The pill came to market and changed the sexual and real estate habits of millions: motel chains were created to serve them.
Herbert Gold, American novelist, in the New York Times, 1972
Young girl: Have I had any side effects from the pill?
Doctor: Only promiscuity.
Don Orehek, American cartoonist, caption in Playboy magazine, 1969
I wonder how he feels, his first game in a Dutch cap.
Barry Davies, British sports commentator, discussing a member of the Holland football team during the 1990 World Cup
Even if a condom in your purse was approaching the sell-by date, it would still be worth having it.
Ben Elton, British writer and comedian
Some women behave like harlots when they feel the life of a child in their wombs. They induce herbs or other means to cause miscarriage, only to perpetuate their amusement and unchastity. Therefore I shall deprive them from everlasting life and send them to everlasting death.
Bridget of Sweden (1303–1373), Swedish nun and visionary, in Revelations
The command ‘be fruitful and multiply’ was promulgated according to our authorities, when the population of the world consisted of two people.
William Ralph Inge (Dean Inge, 1860–1954), British professor of Divinity at Cambridge and Dean of St Paul’s, in More Lay Thoughts of a Dean, 1931
Protestant women may take the pill, Roman Catholic women must keep taking The Tablet.
Irene Thomas (1919–2001), British radio personality (The Tablet is a Roman Catholic newspaper)
Family Planning – please use rear entrance.
Sign outside the Barnstable Health Centre
Let us have a vast condom within us to protect the health of our soul amid the filth into which it is plunged.
Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), French writer
The unbelieving repulsion on her face was fixed forever for me like Kean’s Macbeth.
John Osborne (1929–1994), British playwright, recalling his meeting with Lynn Reid Banks, author of The L-Shaped Room, after he had offered her a sandwich into which he had inserted a used condom
The best contraceptive is a glass of cold water: not before or after, but instead.
Pakistani delegate at the International Planned Parenthood Conference
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956), American writer and humorist
Contraceptives should be used on all conceivable occasions.
Spike Milligan (1918–2002), British comedian
I want to tell you a terrific story about oral contraception. I asked this girl to sleep with me and she said ‘No’.
Woody Allen, American actor and film-maker
If nature had arranged that husbands and wives should have children alternatively, there would never be more than three in a family.
Lawrence Housman (1865–1959), British writer and illustrator
Don’t wreck a sublime chocolate experience by feeling guilty. Chocolate isn’t like premarital sex. It will not make you pregnant. And it always feels good.
Lora Brody, American celebrity chef
Bisexuality is not so much a cop-out as a fearful compromise.
Jill Johnston (1929–2010), American feminist writer, in Lesbian Nation, 1973
I can’t understand why more people aren’t bisexual. It would double your chances for a date on Saturday night.
Woody Allen, American actor and film-maker
A Bay Area bisexual told me I didn’t quite coincide with either of his desires.
Woody Allen
If you swing both ways, you really swing … double your pleasure.
Joan Baez, American folk singer
OK, OK, if you’re asking me am I one, I’ll go that route – good public relations. If it’s good enough for Gore Vidal and Elton John, it’s good enough for me. I am bisexual, happy and proud. A woman in every bed … and a man too.
Rock Hudson (1925–1985), American actor
There’s nothing wrong with going to bed with somebody of your own sex. People should be very free with sex – they should draw the line at goats.
Elton John, British singer
I was too polite to ask.
Gore Vidal (1925–2012), American writer and wit, when asked whether his first sexual experience had been heterosexual or homosexual
I am not bisexual. I am not gay. I have never had sex with men.
Matt LeBlanc, American actor
Blondes have the hottest kisses. Red-heads are fair-to-middling torrid, and brunettes are the frigidest of all. It’s something to do with hormones, no doubt.
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004), American actor and 40th President of the United States
Is it possible that blondes also prefer gentlemen?
Mamie Van Doren, American actress who modelled herself on Marilyn Monroe
Who can resist a date with a blonde? She always wanted me to come back. By God I’ve been lucky, haven’t I?
Professor Sir Alan Walters (1926–2009), on his appointment as Chief Economic Advisor to Margaret Thatcher
Sex makes you get real.
Pamela Anderson, Canadian actress and model, in Playboy magazine
We are born sexual creatures, thank God, but it’s a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift.
Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962), American actress
Really that little dealybob is too far away from the hole. It should be built right in.
Loretta Lynn, American country music singer, on the female body
Woman has ovaries, a uterus … It is often said that she thinks with her glands. Man superbly ignores the fact that his anatomy also includes glands, such as the testicles, and that they secrete hormones.
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), French writer
Our [women’s] bodies are shaped to bear children and our lives are a worship out of the processes of creation. All ambition and intelligence are beside that great elemental point.
Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978), Canadian-born poet
My bust was visible under the negligée in one scene. Suddenly, there were Barbra Streisand’s breasts and I was worried that people might concentrate on my body instead of my acting.
Barbra Streisand, American actress and singer, on seeing rushes of the sex scenes with Nick Nolte in the film The Prince of Tides, 1991
… Much like the stump-end of a whist-card pencil.
From The Mastery of Sex Through Psychology and Religion by Leslie Weatherhead and Dr Marion Greaves, 1931
He must have had a magnificent build before his stomach went in for a career of its own.
Margaret Halsey (1910–1997), American writer
When the life of the party wants to express the idea of a pretty woman in mime, he undulates his two hands in the air and leers expressively. The notion of a curve is so closely connected to sexual semantics that some people cannot resist sniggering at road signs. The most popular image of the female, despite the exigencies of the clothing trade, is all boobs and buttocks, a hallucinating sequence of parabolas and bulges.
Germaine Greer, Australian feminist writer, in The Female Eunuch, 1970
Like a drawing by a student in a life class who was sitting at the back without his specs.
Victoria Wood, British comedienne, describing someone’s appearance
I would have preferred to omit this chapter, that women might not become all the more arrogant by knowing that they also, like men, have testicles, and that they not only suffer the pain of having to nourish the child within their bodies … but also that they too put something of their own into it.
Juan Valverde de Amusco (c.1525–1588), Spanish anatomist, in Historia de La Composicion del Cuerpo Humano, 1556
The two women gazed out of the slumped and sagging bodies that had accumulated around them.
Nadine Gordimer, South African writer and winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature, in Vital Statistics, 1965
The womb of a woman is in the number of the insatiable things mentioned in the Scriptures. I cannot tell whether there is anything in the world its greediness may be compared unto; neither hell fire nor the earth being so devouring, as the privy parts of a lascivious woman.
Nicolas Venette (1633–1698), French physician, quoted in The Mysteries of Conjugal Love Revealed
Fat is not about lack of self-control or willpower. Fat is about protection, sex nurturance, mothering, strength and assertion. Fat is a social disease.
Susie Orbach, feminist psychotherapist, in Fat is a Feminist Issue, 1978
I want to ask Tim if he’s been manscaped.
Jenni Murray, host of BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, on meeting presenter Tim Samuels
I’m aware of my body.
Joanna Lumley, British actress
Abs are overrated anyway … What u know about this Bart Simpson body?
Bruno Mars, American singer, on Twitter
If you have a boyfriend and he loves my body then I’m not worried.
Adele, British singer
I didn’t know, truly I didn’t know. Mine is a life sheltered to the point of stuffiness. I attend no movies, for any motion picture theatre is an enlarged and magnificently decorated lethal chamber to me. I have read but little of Madame Glyn. I did not know that things like it were going on. I have misspent my days. When I think of all those hours flung away in reading Henry James and Santayana, when I might have been reading life, throbbing, beating, perfumed life, I practically break down. Where, I ask you, have I been, that no true word of Madame Glyn’s literary feats has come to me?
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967), American wit, on Elinor Glyn, New Yorker, 1927
Women who love men who hate women who love men too much but love men and on and on … you have to feel sorry for the women who buy this stuff and believe it. Even under the best of circumstances men are hard creatures to trap. Women who flatter themselves into thinking they’ve trapped one are like people who believe they can get rid of the cockroaches in their kitchen. They’re in for a big surprise late one night when they turn on the light.
Harry Shearer, American actor and voice artist, giving his views on ‘relationship’ books
A lot of bad novels in which the clitoris is described as the red pearl and the penis is always described as engorged and throbbing. Mercy.
Rita Mae Brown, American feminist writer, on the sexual revolution
Is this a book that you would ever wish your wife or servants to read?
Mervyn Griffith-Jones QC (1909–1979), British prosecuting counsel at the trial for obscenity of D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, 1960
Sister Susie built her hopes on the book of Marie Stopes but I fear from her condition she must have read the wrong edition.
Madge Kendall (1848–1945), British actress
Fair crack of the whip, who reads dictionaries anyway? You’ve guessed it, sport – old ladies doing the Women’s Weekly crossword and audio-typists who can’t spell ‘receive’. Correct me if I’m wrong but case in point: A red-blooded digger puts the hard word on the homy little tart down the local rubbidy … she looks like she’ll come across so he whips her up to his brick veneer unit and they’re both starkers before the froth’s gone flat on his Fosters. She’s screaming for it, so what does this rat-bag do? He sticks his nose (wait for it) in a copy of the Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary! Viewed dispassionately thus, I ask you, readers, what strange minority need does this flaming book meet?
Sir Les Patterson (aka Australian comedian Barry Humphries), in the Sunday Times
An interviewer asked me what book I thought best represented the modern American woman. All I could think of to answer was: Madame Bovary.
Mary McCarthy (1912–1989), American writer, in On the Contrary, 1962
I’m going to introduce a resolution to have the Postmaster General stop reading dirty books and deliver the mail.
Gale W. McGee (1915–1992), US Senator of the Democratic Party
At last an unprintable book that is readable.
Ezra Pound (1885–1972), American poet, on Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, 1934
Perversity is the muse of modern literature.
Susan Sontag (1933–2004), American writer and political activist
We romantic writers are there to make people feel and not think. A historical romance is the only kind of book where chastity really counts.
Barbara Cartland (1901–2000), British novelist
The modest and chaste woman may be assured that nothing in here is meant to offend her. Instruction, upon a matter, of which both men and women are by far too ignorant, for their welfare and happiness, is the sole object of this publication. It may shock prejudices, but it will be approved by reason and due deliberation.
Richard Carlile (1790–1843), British campaigner for universal suffrage and the emancipation of women
Reading about sex in yesterday’s novels is like watching people smoke in old films.
Fay Weldon, British writer, in an interview in The Guardian
A dirty book is rarely dusty.
Anon
Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way round.
David Lodge, British writer and critic, in The British Museum is Falling Down, 1965
Who wants normal? I would get bored.
Nancy Dell’Olio, Italian lawyer and media personality, when asked about her relationships with men
It’s impossible to be more flat-chested than I am.
Candice Bergen, American actress
Uncorsetted, her friendly bust gives promise of pneumatic bliss.
T.S. Eliot (1888–1965), American writer
There are two good reasons why men go to see her. Those are enough.
Howard Hughes (1905–1976), American business magnate, on Jane Russell
A fine woman shows her charms to most advantage when she seems most to conceal them. The finest bosom in nature is not so fine as imagination forms.
Dr John Gregory (1724–1773), British physician, in A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters, 1774
It was not a bosom to repose upon, but it was a capital bosom to hang jewels upon.
Charles Dickens (1812–1870), British writer, describing Mrs Merdle in Little Dorrit, 1857
Of course I flaunt my assets. They are big, but I’ve always had ’em, pushed ’em up, whacked ’em around. Why not make fun when I’ve earned a fortune with ’em?
Dolly Parton, American country music singer
If I hadn’t had them, I would have had some made.
Dolly Parton
Even today, every time I open a magazine I get depressed looking at cleavages which look as if they should be offering day trips. If it wasn’t for men’s infantile obsession with large breasts, women wouldn’t experience these humiliating scenarios in the first place.
Jaci Stephen, British journalist, in If Men Had More Up Top We’d Need Less Up Front
Boys, I’ve got an idea. Let’s fill the whole screen with tits.
Hunt Stromberg (1894–1968), American film producer, discussing a documentary about the South Seas
I came to London during the ’70s with the Three Degrees and was staying at the Hilton Hotel. After a day’s shopping, I breezed into reception to collect my key when I noticed a man in front of me staring with his eyes so wide open they were nearly falling out of his head. I thought maybe I knew him, so I said: ‘Hello.’ When I looked down, I realised the boob tube I was wearing had slipped and I was standing topless in front of a complete stranger.
Sheila Ferguson, American singer, describing her most embarrassing moment
MORDELL LECTURE, 1978. Professor J. Tits, of the Collège de France, will deliver the Mordell lecture at 5 p.m. on Monday 24th April in the Babbage lecture theatre, New Museums site. The title of the lecture will be ‘Rigidity’.
Cambridge University Reporter
Miss World has always had its fair share of knockers.
Julia Morley, British chairwoman of the Miss World contests
A vacuum with nipples.
Otto Preminger (1905–1986), Austro-Hungarian film director, on Marilyn Monroe
To read the papers and magazines, you would think we were almost worshipping the female bosom.
Billy Graham, American Christian evangelist, 1966
If anything happens to me, please arrange for me to be buried topless.
Ann Stevens (1910–2004), mother of American actor George Hamilton, after she revealed that, at the age of 73, she had just had her breasts enlarged by silicone implant
Big breasts à la Pamela Anderson are one thing, but ones that look more like old socks with tangerines dropped in the bottom are an entirely different kettle of poison.
Arabella Weir, British actress and writer, in Does My Bum Look Big in This?, 1997
This country is into tits and ass.
Neil Simon, American playwright and screenwriter
I used to be so top-heavy that I leaned forward.
Loni Anderson, American actress
God bless Fergie for bringing back boobs and hips. Every fat farm girl should kiss Sarah Ferguson’s chubby thighs.
Joan Rivers, American comedienne
My breasts aren’t actresses.
Liv Ullman, Norwegian actress and director, on nudity in the theatre
It’s not my fault they’re pert.
Cheryl Cole, British singer, on her breasts
First, we see how women have been the cause of many troubles, have done great harm to those who govern cities, and have caused in them many divisions … among the primary causes of the downfall of tyrants, Aristotle puts the injuries they do on account of women, whether rape, violation or the breaking up of marriages.
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), Italian philosopher, in Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius
The wife is entirely under the power and subjection of her husband.
James Balfour (c.1525–1573), British judge and politician, in The Practiks of Sir James Balfour of Pittendreich, 1550
Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man, not to rule and command him.
John Knox (c.1514–1572), British clergyman and leader of the Protestant Reformation, in First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women
How is it that woman, who is soulless herself, can discern the soul in man? How can she judge about his morality who is herself non-moral? How can she grasp his character when she has no character herself?
Otto Weininger (1880–1903), Austrian religious writer, in Our Church Review
It is even possible, quite often, to spot women on the pill from a certain deadness about their flesh, lustiness about their eyes and lifelessness in their movements.
Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990), British writer and satirist, speaking on BBC television, 1965
Anyone who ever thought that Ellen and I broke it off because of sexuality couldn’t be more mistaken. And for anyone who thought my mother’s prayers had anything to do with me marrying a man, forget it.
Anne Heche, American actress
Just because I look sexy on the cover of Rolling Stone doesn’t mean I’m naughty.
Britney Spears, American singer
I hate the whole reluctant sex-symbol thing. It’s such bull. You see these dudes greased up, in their underwear, talking about how they don’t want to be sex symbols.
Ben Affleck, American actor
I’m forcing more men into my company to get more sexual tension into the business – because I love the buzz and the sexuality of verbal foreplay.
Anita Roddick (1942–2007), founder of Body Shop International
My business is a love story with the world.
Luciano Benetton, Italian clothing magnate and founder of the Benetton Group
Like sex in Victorian England, the reality of Big Business today is our big dirty secret.
Ralph Nader, American attorney and activist
I have a tremendous charge out of business. I get the same sort of feeling that women must have when their babies pop out.
Sir Terence Conran, British designer and founder of Habitat
I often get invited to boardroom lunches as the token woman: I find it tempting to say something outrageous.
Jennifer d’Abo (1945–2003), British former chairwoman of Ryman Ltd
A lot of businesses are being started by women who have been working for idiots for years. They know they can do their boss’s job, but they know they will never be given it.
Jean Denton, Baroness Denton of Wakefield (1935–2001), British businesswoman and politician
If you love your customer to death, you can’t go wrong.
Sir Graham Day, Canadian-British businessman and former CEO of the Rover Group
If there was a good deal or a woman – I would probably go after the woman.
David Wickins (1921–2007), British founder of British Car Auctions and four times married
I’ll tell you what: if you become our Playmate for July, I’ll get you that new addressograph for your department.
Hugh Hefner, American founder of Playboy magazine, to his subscription manager, Charlaine Karalus; after some coaxing, she agreed
I sell projects but I try not to fall in love with them. If someone says to me, ‘I love you’, I have more suspicion of him than the guy who says, ‘I just want to make money’, God bless him. He’s the guy I want to deal with.
Adnan Khashoggi, Saudi Arabian businessman
Where? When? How much?
Your place, tonight, free.
Business-like exchange between Francois d’Orleans, Prince de Joinville (1818–1900) and actress Rachel Felix
Advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
Jerry Della Femina, Italian-American advertising executive
Don’t tell my mother I work in an advertising agency … she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.
Jacques Séguéla, French publicist, 1979
Falling in love with the boss is the cardinal sin in the office. A girl must look after her boss – be a friend, public relations officer, colleague and nanny – but never love him. Nothing is more boring or irritating to his friends and colleagues than an adoring and possessive secretary.
Raine Spencer, Lady Dartmouth, British politician and socialite, addressing a group of secretarial students in 1966
Men will try to use secretaries as status symbols. They hire them for ornamental reasons. Every time a young one leaves to get married, they swear they’ll go for someone older and steadier. Then they go right ahead and hire the next pretty face with 40-40 speeds.
Katharine Whitehorn, British journalist
Industrial relations are like sexual relations. It’s better between two consenting parties.
Vic Feather (1908–1976), British former General Secretary of the TUC, in the Guardian Weekly, 1976
Employees make the best dates. You don’t have to pick them up and they’re always tax deductable.
Andy Warhol (1928–1987), American artist, in Exposures, 1979
In a society where people get more or less what they want sexually, it is much more difficult to motivate them in an industrialised context, to make them buy refrigerators and cars.
William S. Burroughs (1914–1997), American writer, in The Guardian, 1969
Professionalism, if you like, is not having sex on Thursdays or Fridays.
Don Revie (1927–1989), British football manager, in The Guardian, 1976
It’s a historic moment for our company and for athletic supporters in general.
Randy Black, vice-president of Bike Athletic, on selling their 300-millionth jockstrap
Sex is not taxed, but it can be taxing.
John Barrymore (1882–1942), American actor
The sex element is the most important in the business. You must sell sex.
Bobby Darin (1936–1973), American singer
A mystery man on a bicycle is being sought by police following two incidents in which Reading women have been jabbed in the buttocks. The police have been told that a man rode up behind young women in the town, stuck what is believed to be a school compass into them, and rode off.
From Punch’s ‘Country Life’ column
The buttocks are the most aesthetically pleasing part of the body because they are non-functional. Although they conceal an essential orifice, these pointless globes are as near as the human form can ever come to abstract art.
Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980), British theatre critic
The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the shadow of cosmic boredom.
Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893), French short-story writer
He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation.
James Joyce (1882–1941), Irish writer, in Ulysses, 1922
How brave a prospect is a broad backside!
Henry Vaughan (1621–1695), British writer and physician
Mary: Which would you say is my best side, Mr Hitchcock?
Alfred: My dear, you’re sitting on it.
Conversation between Mary Anderson, American actress, and Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980), British film director, on a photoshoot for the 1944 film Lifeboat
It was a stupid compromise.
The explanation of a man with three previous convictions for indecent exposure, when arrested for baring his buttocks to a group of girls
Buttock fetishism is comparatively rare in our culture … Girls are often self-conscious about their behinds, draping themselves in long capes and tunics, but it is more often because they are too abundant in that region than otherwise.
Germaine Greer, Australian feminist writer, in The Female Eunuch, 1970
George Moore unexpectedly pinched my behind. I felt rather honoured that my behind should have drawn the attention of the great master of English prose.
Ilka Chase (1900–1978), American actress and novelist
Do you scratch your bottom while taking a bath? Have it reglazed by the professionals.
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