en:Girls

The laughter of girls is, and ever was, among the delightful sounds of earth. ~ Thomas De Quincey

A girl is a young female human usually a child or an adolescent. When a girl becomes an adult, she is accurately described as a woman. However, the term girl is also used for other meanings, including young woman, and is sometimes used as a synonym for daughter, or girlfriend. Girl may also be a term of endearment used by an adult, usually a woman, to designate adult female friends.

A

Girls are so queer you never know what they mean. They say no when they mean yes, and drive a man out of his wits just for the fun of it. ~ Louisa May Alcott
  • Girls are so queer you never know what they mean. They say no when they mean yes, and drive a man out of his wits just for the fun of it.
  • Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;
    Girls aren't like that.
    • Kingsley Amis, "A Bookshop Idyll", A Case of Simples (1956), p. 55. Cf. Lord Byron, Don Juan, "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart, / 'Tis woman's whole existence."
  • Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.
    • Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), ch. 35
  • Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then. It is something to think of, and gives her a sort of distinction among her companions.

B

  • I have male friends whose daughters are approaching puberty at speeds upwards of 700 miles per hour, and when you say the word "dating," my friends get a look in their eyes that makes Charles Manson look like Captain Kangaroo.
  • I think that if you had two desert islands, and you put girl babies on one island and boy babies on another island, and they were somehow able to survive with no help from adult society, eventually the girls would cooperate in collecting pieces of driftwood and using them to build shelters, whereas the boys would pretend that driftwood pieces were guns.
    • Dave Barry, Dave Barry Turns 40 (1990), pp. 63-64
  • A Trick that everyone abhors
    In Little Girls is slamming Doors.
  • She was not really bad at heart,
    But only rather rude and wild:
    She was an aggravating child.
    • Hilaire Belloc, "Rebecca", Cautionary Tales (1907)
  • Pam, I adore you, Pam, you great big mountainous sports girl,
      Whizzing them over the net, full of the strength of five:
    That old Malvernian brother, you zephyr and khaki shorts girl,
        Although he's playing for Woking,
        Can't stand up
      To your wonderful backhand drive.
    • John Betjeman, "Pot Pourri from a Surrey Garden", Selected Poems (1948), p. 33
  • The sort of girl I like to see
    Smiles down from her great height at me.
    She stands in strong, athletic pose
    And wrinkles her retroussé nose.
    Is it distaste that makes her frown,
    So furious and freckled, down
    On an unhealthy worm like me?
    Or am I what she likes to see?
    • John Betjeman, "The Olympic Girl", A Few Late Chrysanthemums (1955), p. 69
  • Those girls who give themselves to the man they love before marriage really succeed in cheating themselves. I know and understand how strong the temptation is, but also I know something else: there is nothing else more beautiful and wonderful than sexual love between marriage partners — when that love is entered into and blessed by God. Why would anyone want to accept anything less?

C

A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous. ~ Coco Chanel
  • Of all the girls that are so smart
    There's none like pretty Sally,
    She is the darling of my heart,
    And she lives in our alley.
  • A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.
    • Coco Chanel, attributed in Ali Basye, The Long (and Short} of It: The Madcap History of the Skirt (New York: HarperEntertainment, 2007) p. 78
  • A damsel with a dulcimer
    In a vision once I saw:
    It was an Abyssinian maid,
    And on her dulcimer she play’d,
    Singing of Mount Abora.
  • Poor little rich girl
    You're a bewitched girl,
    Better beware!
  • Secrets with girls, like loaded guns with boys,
    Are never valued till they make a noise.
    • George Crabbe, "The Maid’s Story", l. 84. Tales of the Hall (1819)
  • He found the harem filled with rocking maids
    Surrendered to the orgies of the sob.
  • In the summer, girls come and summer girls go.
    Some are worthwhile and some are so-so.

D

  • Minerva House, conducted under the auspices of the two sisters, was a 'finishing establishment for young ladies,' where some twenty girls of the ages of from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything, and a knowledge of nothing; instruction in French and Italian, dancing lessons twice a-week; and other necessaries of life.
  • "You were speaking about its being a girl," said Miss Betsey. "I have no doubt it will be a girl. I have a presentiment that it must be a girl. Now child, from the moment of the birth of this girl—"
    "Perhaps boy," my mother took the liberty of putting in.
    "I tell you I have a presentiment that it must be a girl," returned Miss Betsey.
  • I assure you she's the dearest girl.
    • Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850), ch. 27 (Traddles)
  • They shut me up in Prose -
    As when a little Girl
    They put me in the Closet -
    Because they liked me "still" -
    Still! Could themself have peeped -
    And seen my Brain - go round -
    They might as wise have lodged a Bird
    For Treason - in the Pound -
  • "Fiddlesticks," Mother said. "Anything he will learn about sixteen-year-old girls from you will probably be a good deal more innocent than what he will learn some day from sixteen-year-old girls."
  • I am going to turn over a new life and am going to be a very good girl and be obedient to Isa Keith, here there is plenty of gooseberries which makes my teeth watter.

G

Young girls are the chatelaines of truth; they must see that it is protected, that the guilty lead the life of the guilty, even if the world rocks on its foundations ~ Jean Giraudoux
  • When one is not used to it, it is difficult to be recollected in the middle of a crowd of more or less wild little girls, who in class do the bare minimum that will keep them out of trouble and in play-time go right off their heads.
    • Henri Ghéon, The Secret of the Little Flower (1934), ch. 4, trans. Donald Attwater (London: Sheed & Ward, 1934), p. 51
  • Young girls are the chatelaines of truth; they must see that it is protected, that the guilty lead the life of the guilty, even if the world rocks on its foundations.
    • Jean Giraudoux, Electra (1937), Act I, trans. Phyllis La Farge with Peter H. Judd
  • Recently Anita and I judged a beauty contest where the girls answered questions about marriage and motherhood. Several said, "I think I'll be a good mother. I plan to stay with my children full-time until nursery school, and then I can go out and work. Seems as though the girls think it's okay to raise their kids until nursery school, then let others do it from then on. Sure, plenty of husbands want that, too. Some parents ship their kids off to school or camp all summer just to get rid of them. Most of the girls we interviewed in this contest said they saw nothing unusual about having sexual intercourse before marriage. These are so-called nice girls, eighteen and nineteen, who without batting an eyelash tell you, "I don't think there's anything wrong with living together before marriage." You ask why, and discover many come from broken homes. They don't want to make the mistakes their parents made. They'd rather avoid marriage completely.
    • Bob Green, Bless This House (1972), pp. 18–19
  • A good many girls these days assume the male role and call boys for dates. I have a nagging feeling that boys are going to get less and less interested in girls as a result. The intrigue is going. If a girl wants to put herself on an equal plane with the boy, she's going to find herself less and less in demand. It used to be that if guys wanted to date a sharp girl they had to polish the car and fix themselves up — and compete. If they don't have to do that, they're going to lose interest. Maybe girls phone boys from necessity. Maybe the boys don't have that get-up-and-go — that desire. I see an extreme lack of desire in young men today.
    • Bob Green, Bless This House (1972), p. 142

H

  • When I was 13, I was flat as a board and totally unhappy about it. I would write in my diary every day, Oh, if I could just have a B cup by summer! I actually prayed for big boobs. So I developed at about 14, and then I was 15, 16, 17, and they kept going.
    • Katherine Heigl, discussing her bust in an interview with Maxim (June 2000)
  • Oh God — I look back now, and it seems so gross. At just 14 years old, I had to wear a thong bikini. And then they used that scene in the trailer, so my entire school saw it! There are still men who come up to me today and say, "You were really hot in that film!" I was 14, for God's sake!
  • Girls were made to love and kiss.

I

  • A girl and a guinea are both alike. You never know how good they are till you ring them.
    • Jean Ingelow, John Jerome, His Thoughts and Ways (1886), ch. 7
  • A blossom yet unsmelt,
    A tender shoot unpinched,
    A gem uncut,
    Untasted, fresh-fermented honey-wine,
    The fruit of proper actions
    Still intact—
    A beauty without fault or flaw.
  • A young girl's beauty should speak to the soul and to the imagination, and not to the senses like the beauty of women.
Thank heaven for little girls!
For little girls get bigger every day.
~ Alan Jay Lerner
  • Thank heaven for little girls!
    For little girls get bigger every day.
  • Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers....
    When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.
  • There was a little girl,
    Who had a little curl,
    Right in the middle of her forehead,
    When she was good,
    She was very good indeed,
    But when she was bad she was horrid.
    • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "There Was a Little Girl", in B. R. T. Machetta, Home Life of Longfellow (1882), p. 90
  • In country music, the singers are really soulful, and you can just hear all the emotion on their voices. They mean everything they say. And R&B is the same way. It's like every note, every word, is telling you exactly how the singers feel about what they're singing about. It's just that in country music, all that feeling is usually about a truck, and in R&B, it's more often about a girl. And for me, girls are a lot more fun to sing about than a truck.
  • "Always be civil to the girls, you never know who they may marry" is an aphorism which has saved many an English spinster from being treated like an Indian widow.

N

  • The young girl stood beside me. I
    Saw not what her young eyes could see:
    —A light, she said, not of the sky
    Lives somewhere in the Orange Tree.
    • Shaw Neilson, "The Orange Tree", Ballad and Lyrical Poems (1923)

O

Dear to the heart of a girl is her own beauty and charm. ~ Ovid
  • Families selling their children, and mostly girls, so that families could buy food. In one of reported cases, a six-year-old girl and 18-month-old toddler were sold for $3,350 and $2,800 respectively. In another reporting, a 9-year-old girl was sold for about $2,200 in the form of sheep, land and cash. There are many more such stories.... Some of these girls will become child brides... Child marriage are also a major violation of their human rights and can sometimes amount to a form of modern day slavery. While poverty may drive child marriage, child marriage traps girls in a cycle of poverty. Child marriage further puts girls at risk of physical and sexual abuse... Some of the girls will be turned into child laborers... The people of Afghanistan cannot be left to starve. Afghan girls cannot be sacrificed.
  • Virginibus cordi grataque forma sua est.
    • Dear to the heart of a girl is her own beauty and charm.
    • Ovid, The Art of Beauty (c. AD 8), trans. Rolfe Humphries

P

  • And there was that wholesale libel on a Yale prom. If all the girls attending it were laid end to end, Mrs. Parker said, she wouldn't be at all surprised.
    • Dorothy Parker, quoted in Alexander Woollcott, "Our Mrs. Parker", While Rome Burns (New York: The Viking Press, 1934), p. 149. This was the first appearance in print of Parker's famous quote, subsequently often put into direct speech as "If all the girls attending the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised."
  • Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling,
    All caressing, none beguiling,
    Bud of beauty, fairly blowing,
    Every charm to Nature owing,
    This and that new thing admiring,
    Much of this and that enquiring,
    Knowledge by degrees attaining,
    Day by day some virtue gaining,
    Ten years hence, when I leave chiming,
    Beardless poets, fondly rhyming,
    (Fescued now, perhaps, in spelling,)
    On thy riper beauties dwelling,
    Shall accuse each killing feature
    Of the cruel, charming creature
    Whom I knew complying, willing,
    Tender, and averse from killing.
    • Ambrose Philips, "To Miss Margaret Pulteney" (27 April 1727), in Alexander Chambers (ed.) The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper, vol. 13 (1812), p. 123
  • Sugar, spice and everything nice. These were the ingredients chosen to create the perfect little girls.

Q

  • The laughter of girls is, and ever was, among the delightful sounds of earth.
    • Thomas De Quincey, "Coleridge and Opium-Eating" (1845), in Coleridge and Opium-Eating and Other Writings (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1862), footnote on p. 85.

R

  • The eroticization of innocence and the fascination with the erotic child are deeply gendered. From depictions of sexualized images of prepubescent girls in the Victorian era to the Lolita-like commodification of little girls as sexual consumers and performers in contemporary society, it is the girl-child, not the boy-child, whose innocence is eroticized. And it is the eroticization of little girls that provokes our (adult) concern for their protection. Indeed, societal anxieties around girls as we enter the first decade of the twenty-first century continue to circle around what Walkerdine has termed the "protosexual" girl. It is the sexual girl that represents the "Other" to normal childhood, where "normal girls as well behaved, hard working and asexual".
    • Emma Renold, "Primary School 'Studs': (De)constructing Young Boys' Heterosexual Masculinities", reprinted from Men and Masculinities, Volume 9, Number 3 (2007), 275-297 in Sexualities: Identities, Behaviors, and Society (2004), 2nd Edition (2015) by Michael Kimmel and The Stony Book Sexualities Research Group (editors), p. 79
  • The blessed damozel lean’d out
       From the gold bar of Heaven;
    Her eyes were deeper than the depth
       Of waters still'd at even;
    She had three lilies in her hand,
       And the stars in her hair were seven.

S

Oh, my sweet Mother—'tis in vain—
I cannot weave, as once I wove—
So wildered is my heart and brain
With thinking of that youth I love!
~ Sappho
  • Oh, my sweet Mother—'tis in vain—
      I cannot weave, as once I wove—
    So wildered is my heart and brain
      With thinking of that youth I love!
    • Sappho, Fr. 102 Voigt (tr. Thomas Moore, 1826)
  • Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough,
    A-top on the topmost twig,—which the pluckers forgot, somehow,—
    Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now.
    • Sappho, Fr. 105a Voigt (tr. D. G. Rossetti, 1870)
  • You speak like a green girl,
    Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
  •    The full sum of me
    Is sum of something, which, to term in gross,
    Is an unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpracticed;
    Happy in this, she is not yet so old
    But she may learn; happier than this,
    She is not bred so dull but she can learn;
    Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit
    Commits itself to yours to be directed
    As from her lord, her governor, her king.
  • Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.

T

  • 'Tis a credit to any good girl to be neat,
    But quite a disgrace to be fine.
    • Ann Taylor, "The Folly of Finery", Hymns for Infant Schools (1827), p. 24

V

  • Malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella,
    Et fugit ad salices et se cupit ante videri.
    • Galatea aims an apple at me, naughty girl,
      And flees into the willows — and wants to be seen first.
    • Virgil, Eclogues, no. 3, l. 64, in D. A. Russell and M. Winterbottom, Ancient Literary Criticism: The Principal Texts in New Translations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), ch. 14, p. 548

W

  • Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here
    If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
    Thy nature is not therefore less divine.
    Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year;
    And worshipp'st at the temple’s inner shrine,
    God being with thee when we know it not.

See also

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