A Room of One's Own- Virginia Woolf

'...to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said of the greatest human disasters, a mere flea bite by comparison.'

'And again I am reminded by dipping into newspapers and novels and biographies that when a woman speaks to women she should have something very unpleasant up her sleeve. Women are hard on women. Women dislike women. Women- but are you not sick to death of the word? I can assure you that I am. Let us agree, then, that a paper read by a woman to women should end with something particularly disagreeable. But how does it go? What can I think of? The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventiality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity. I like- I must not run on this way....Let me then adopt a sterner tone'