Spinsters Quotes

“Don't laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragic romances are hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns, and many silent sacrifices of youth, health, ambition, love itself, make the faded faces beautiful in God's sight. Even the sad, sour sisters should be kindly dealt with, because they have missed the sweetest part of life, if for no other reason.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married.”
― Elizabeth I, Collected Works

“At least as a single woman, I had time to pursue my own interests, read voraciously, and travel when opportunity presented.”
― Tasha Alexander, And Only to Deceive

“Being a woman, in this world, ultimately makes you crazy.”
― Holly Bourne, Am I Normal Yet?

“He is a young man with a future of power and opportunity and we are young women destined to be either wives and mothers at the very best, or spinster parasites at the worst.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Boleyn Inheritance

“The cat required far less attendance than a human child, which is one of the reasons why spinster ladies prefer felines to babies.”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Mummy Case

“I don’t want to relax. I don’t want to … oh, dear Lord.” He had bent his head to her throat, searching for the visible thrum of her pulse. A light, hot shock went through her. “Don’t do that,” she said weakly, but he was insistent, his mouth wickedly soft, and her breath hitched as she felt the brush of his tongue. Her hands shot to his muscle-banked shoulders. “Mr. Rohan, you mustn’t—”
“This is how to kiss, Amelia.” He cradled her head in his palms, deftly tilting it to the side. “Noses go here.” Another disorienting brush of his mouth, a wash of sensual heat. “You taste like sugar and tea.”
“I already know how to kiss!”
“Do you?” His thumb passed over her kiss-heated lips, urging them to part. “Then show me,” he whispered. “Let me in, Amelia.”
Never in her life had she thought a man would say something so outrageous to her. And if the words were improper, the gleam in his eyes was positively immolating.
“I … I’m a spinster.” She offered the word as if it were a talisman. Everyone knew that rakish gentlemen were supposed to leave spinsters alone. But it appeared no one had told Cam Rohan.
A covert smile deepened the corners of his mouth. “That’s not going to keep you safe from me.” She tried to turn away from him, but his hands guided her face back to his. “I can’t seem to leave you alone. In fact, I’m reconsidering my entire policy on spinsters.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Mine Till Midnight

“Was it so very obvious that I was not married? Of course it was. For one thing, I had no husband with me, looking after and indulging me. But there was something else about married women that I noticed, their solid smugness at not having to worry about the course of their future. Married women were set like jelly in a mold, whereas spinsters like me were formless and unpredictable.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Remarkable Creatures

“Mamey said that in her day a woman who had not married by the age of thirty was called a thornback, named after a flat, spiny, prehistoric-looking fish.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“There were legions of her kind during the nineteen-thirties, women from the age of thirty and upward, who crowded into their war-bereaved spinsterhood with voyages of discovery into new ideas and energetic practices in art and social welfare, education or religion.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“One night he said abruptly: Stephen won't marry—I don't want her to marry; it would only mean disaster.'

And at this Anna broke out in angry protest. Why shouldn't Stephen marry? She wished her to marry. Was he mad? And what did he mean by disaster? No woman was ever complete without marriage—what on earth did he mean by disaster He frowned and refused to answer her question. Stephen, he said, must go up to Oxford. He had set his heart on a good education for the child, who might some day become a fine writer. Marriage wasn't the only career for a woman. Look at Puddle, for instance; she'd been at Oxford—a most admirable, well-balanced, sensible creature. Next year he was going to send Stephen to Oxford. Anna scoffed: 'Yes, indeed, he might well look at Puddle! She was what came of this higher education—a lonely, unfulfilled, middle-aged spinster. Anna didn't want that kind of life for her daughter.”
― Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness

“At first reading, these are stories about love and marriage and the conventional heterosexual happily-ever-after. Only at the second does a sneaky doubt perhaps creep in to suggest that maybe marriage is not the best thing that could ever happen to these women. It has been suggested that with these clever layers of meaning, Jane was perhaps even more subversive than we give her credit for. Yes, she was writing for the commercial market. But she was also writing for her female cronies, for Martha Lloyd, Cassandra and Miss Sharp. She glibly provided the happy endings that society expected, but in an off-hand, almost perfunctory fashion. You don’t have to believe in Jane’s happy endings if you don’t want to. I like to think that this is the band of spinsters’ last laugh.”
― Lucy Worsley

“It is your final gift
to me: this room
where I shall bleed and knit,
as spinsters do.”
― Jill Alexander Essbaum, Heaven

“Given her ladyship's propensity for attracting deceased persons.

Like an aged spinster attracts cats.”
― Verity Bright, A Midwinter Murder