"Women love always: when earth slips from them, they take refuge in heaven"
About this Quote
The intent is double. On one level, it flatters the endurance of women's attachment, suggesting a love that outlasts material conditions. On another, it indicts the conditions that make transcendence necessary in the first place. "Earth" reads as the realm of property, public power, legal standing, sexual autonomy - the things 19th-century women were routinely denied or could be made to "slip" through marriage, scandal, widowhood, or simple dependence. "Heaven" is both consolation and containment: religion, idealized romance, moral purity, the socially approved spaces where women's longing can be redirected when worldly agency is blocked.
Sand, a novelist who lived loudly against bourgeois constraint, knew the pose she was describing. The line courts sentimentality while exposing its mechanism: if you can't keep women secure on earth, society will applaud their ability to turn deprivation into virtue. It's empathy sharpened into critique, and its sting lands because the metaphors are effortless - a fall, a refuge, a reward that looks suspiciously like a substitute.
Quote Details
| Topic | Love |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Sand, George. (2026, January 16). Women love always: when earth slips from them, they take refuge in heaven. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/women-love-always-when-earth-slips-from-them-they-126429/
Chicago Style
Sand, George. "Women love always: when earth slips from them, they take refuge in heaven." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/women-love-always-when-earth-slips-from-them-they-126429/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Women love always: when earth slips from them, they take refuge in heaven." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/women-love-always-when-earth-slips-from-them-they-126429/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.










