Woman does not differ from man in her primary life calling. This calling is to serve God. The difference is only in the object of the service. Even though the calling of a woman’s life is the same as a man’s—to serve God—and is performed using the same means—through love—for the majority of women the object of this service is more defined than for men. The object is this: to raise and rear with love generation after generation of new workers in the cause of God.
Tell me, luxurious woman, if someone were to ask you, what would you prefer: to have a clean, healthy and beautiful body, but to wear poor clothes, or to have an ugly and sick body, but to walk around in gold, showing off your attire? Would you not rather have beauty in the actual nature of your body than in the splendor of your clothes? So if you want this in relation to your body, would you really want the opposite in relation to your soul? If you have a repulsive soul, hideous and black, do you really think that golden jewelry will do anything for you? Is this not extreme madness?
— John Chrysostom
If the kindness of woman is limitless, it also happens that her spite has no limit.
A good wife is a priceless gift to her husband, whereas an evil one is a malignant ulcer.
— The Talmud
A few gentle words are a woman’s best decoration.
Take a walk through a big city and look at what is being sold in the best shops, things that cost millions and are the products of arduous and oftentimes ruinous labor of millions of workers. All these objects of luxury that are used by women are things that can be done without. If women could only understand the evil that is the result of their frivolous, unnecessary luxury!
The more beautiful a woman is, the more honest she should be, because only honesty can counteract the harm that her beauty may cause.
— Lessing
It is not the husband who chooses his wife, but the wife who chooses her husband. In order to choose the best father for her children, a woman must know what is good and what is evil. This is, therefore, what women should learn before all else.
A truly chaste young woman who spends all the strength of her motherly self-denial in the service of God, manifested in her love for other people, is the most beautiful and happy human being.
Nothing is more natural to a woman than selflessness. And nothing repels one away from her as much as selfishness.
Perfection is the same for both man and woman: the perfection of love. If it happens that oftentimes man surpasses woman in the reasonableness and firmness of love, then woman always surpasses man in selflessness in love.
