" Women are like soft wax from which men have always shaped anything they wanted. Good heavens above, women cut their hair, left home and family, and died in alien lands for the sake of a man's cheap infatuation. Among the ideas for which women sacrificed themselves there isn't a single feminine idea... Selfless, faithful slaves!
...
Noble, exalted slavery! That, in fact, is the sublime purpose of a woman's life. From the awful muddle that has accumulated in my head in the course of my association with women, my memory has retained, as a filter, not ideas, clever words, or philosophy, but their extraordinary resignation to fate, their extraordinary charity and all-forgiveness... "

― Anton Chekhov