A Woman's Work: Prepare to Be Inspired

Charlotte Bronte said: “Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.

Scroll down for a month’s worth of wisdom about the power and plight of women.

March 1: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

March 2: “Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.” — Faith Whittlesey

March 3: “Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression.” — Margaret Sanger

March 4: “Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it by use.” — Ruth Gordo

March 5: “It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.” — Madeleine Albright

March 6: “Women hold up half the sky.” — Chinese proverb

March 7: “To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh

March 8: “How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself?” ― Anaïs Nin

March 9: I always thought that people told you that you’re beautiful—that this was a title that was bestowed upon you…I think that it’s time to take this power into our own hands and to say, “You know what? I’m beautiful. I just am. And that’s my light. I’m just a beautiful woman.” — Margaret Cho

March 10: “In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.” ― Sheryl Sandberg, author, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

March 11: “Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, “She doesn’t have what it takes.” They will say, “Women don’t have what it takes.” — Clare Boothe Luce

March 12: “I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a door mat or a prostitute.” — Rebecca West, “Mr Chesterton in Hysterics: A Study in Prejudice,” The Clarion, Nov. 14, 1913

March 13: “Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge.” — Andrea Dworkin

March 14: “The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, “It’s a girl.” — Shirley Chisholm

March 15: “Women belong in the house … and the Senate.” — Author Unknown

March 16: “I think it’s about time we voted for senators with breasts. After all, we’ve been voting for boobs long enough.” — Claire Sargent, 1992 Arizona senatorial candidate

March 17: “One of the most courageous things you can do is identify yourself, know who you are, what you believe in and where you want to go.” — Sheila Murray Bethel

March 18: “I wish someone would have told me that, just because I’m a girl, I don’t have to get married.” — Marlo Thomas

March 19: “Women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their opressors.” — Evelyn Cunningham

March 20: “There was a time when men thought it was sexy to have a housewife waiting for him to come home from work in her slippers, but in modern society, I think an independent woman is even more sexy.” — Kat Graham

March 21: ““You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” — Mae West

March 22: “Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.” — Oprah Winfrey

March 23: “Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you’re proud to live.” – Anne Sweeney, president of Walt Disney_

March 24: “You are more powerful than you know; you are beautiful just as you are.” — Melissa Etheridge

March 25: “It’s in the reach of my arms, The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman, Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me.” — MAYA ANGELOU, Phenomenal Woman

March 26: “Whatever a woman’s reason may say, her feelings tell her the truth.” — Stefan Zweig, Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman

March 27: “No matter what a woman looks like, if she’s confident, she’s sexy.” — Paris Hilton, author, Paris Hilton: A Biography

March 28: “In revenge and in love woman is more barbaric than man is.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, author, Beyond Good and Evil

March 29: “You won’t regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.” — Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King

March 30: “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, Sigmund Freud: Life and Work