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Words to live by: Famous women on life and love

"A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after." —Gloria Steinem"I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes." —Edna St. Vincent Millay“Good sex is like good Bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand.” —Mae West"I have learned not to worry
famous quotes about love and life
gloria steinem alice walker and mae westGetty Images / Today

"A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after." 
Gloria Steinem

"I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes."
Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Good sex is like good Bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand.”
Mae West

"I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart."
Alice Walker

"...what I have learned for myself is that I don't have to be anybody else; and that myself is good enough; and that when I am being true to that self, then I can avail myself to extraordinary things such as this, you know, that I didn't think was necessarily possible...and I think that's the thing. You have to allow for the impossible to be possible."
Lupita Nyong'o

“The desire to get married is a basic and primal instinct in women. It's followed by another basic and primal instinct: the desire to be single again.”
Nora Ephron

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Maya Angelou

"No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor."
--Betty Freidan

“Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it and it darts away.”
Dorothy Parker

"I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name."
Emily Dickinson

"If you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best."
Marilyn Monroe

"For women the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.'
Isabel Allende

“Above all, be the heroine of your own life, not the victim.”
Nora Ephron

"It's never too late—never too late to start over, never too late to be happy."
Jane Fonda

"Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, 'I'm possible!'"
Audrey Hepburn

A version of this story originally appeared on iVillage.