Avon invented the concept of direct marketing and direct selling beauty. And that's still very valid to us. We'll have a firm that will be around for another 114 years as strongly as it was the first 114.

I became CEO at the beginning of the hit on old economy stocks. When something like that occurs in your first six months as a CEO of a more traditional branded firm, it makes for a fast learning curve.

If you feel like it's difficult to change, you will probably have a harder time succeeding.

My parents kept the best aspects of the Asian culture, and they Americanized the family. My mother was a great example for me. She was a working mother with a good career.

A representative is free delivery; she's a personal beauty consultant. Some people want that high touch.

I can only have dinner with my girlfriends once a month instead of once a week.

I think it's critical that you feel you're working for a person who is committed to advancing your career.

No one in my family had a retail or marketing background. They were professionals. They didn't understand just what I was doing by going into retailing. After I started, though, it got into my blood. I knew this was what I wanted.

You know, you go home and you try on a new mascara, and I guess a male CEO can't do that.

Women like myself, CEOs, can pave the way for more women to get to the top.

Avon is a unique place to work; we've got family-friendly policies. We have more senior women in high-level management than any other company; 46 percent of our officers are women.

Avon invented the concept of direct marketing and direct selling beauty. And that's still very valid to us. We'll have a firm that will be around for another 114 years as strongly as it was the first 114.

Since I'm a mother and a wife, I have to have passion or the frustration would win out. But I love managing people. The product is second to managing the people. And marketing to consumers is so challenging because it is evolving constantly.

We also never undercut representatives' prices. A representative will always be able to sell the discounts in our core business, which are not offered at retail. So it's never more advantageous to buy there.

China is going to be one of Avon's largest market opportunities. It has a large geographic expanse, with hundreds of thousands of women in small villages really striving to make an earnings opportunity for themselves.

I feel like I'm part of history being made. I leave Apple board meetings thinking, 'I've got to do a better job.'

I think the economic empowerment of women that has been growing over the past decade is at the 'inflection point' with this global recession. Women are, we believe, the solution for their families in their ability to go out and increase household income.

It has given me a global vantage point, being the daughter of immigrants from China, who had nothing when they came here. And now I am leading a company. It speaks to something deep in me, the concept that you don't have to start with anything.

President Obama's 100-day plan is pretty impressive. I think it's a Wow 100-plus days. The administration is not operating from fear, it is trying to drive change for the future, and that's a good thing.

Talent is the No. 1 priority for a CEO. You think it's about vision and strategy, but you have to get the right people first.

The game in beauty is changing so much, if your product isn't high tech or can't make a unique performance claim - plump your lips, reduce your lines, look glossy, and stay on for 24 hours - you can't go to market today. I'm not just talking about a $20 lipstick, but a $5 lipstick!

There are pros and cons of experience. A con is that you can't look at the business with a fresh pair of eyes and as objectively as if you were a new CEO. Fire yourself on a Friday night and come in on Monday morning as if a search firm put you there as a turn-around leader. Can you be objective and make the bold change?

There's obviously a correlation between an economically empowered woman and the investments she makes. That leads to her social and moral conscience for bettering her community.

When a woman earns a dollar, the payback is higher. She'll invest in her children, in their education, health care, and basic needs. The impact of a woman's role in the economy benefits society at large.

Women are clearly the major consumers in far more than just female categories. It doesn't matter whether it is purchases of cars, cosmetics, or even products for men, female consumption power is the leading consumption power in the world. Any company that overlooks the woman as the decision maker is making a huge mistake.

Follow your compass not your clock.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

Because beauty isn't enough, there must be something more.

Oh! this opponent, this collaborator against your will, whose notion of beauty always differs from yours and whose means are often too limited for active assistance to your intentions!

The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within - strength, courage, dignity.

Beauty set up distance between other people and me. It warped their behavior.

Do not confuse beauty with beautiful. Beautiful is a human judgment. Beauty is All. The difference is everything.

The double hundred Fowler hit in the Madras Test was an absolute beauty.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

I had a lot of resentment for a while toward Kim Novak. But I don't mind her anymore. She's okay. We've become friends. I even asked her before this trip for some beauty tips.

You don't know what the Chinese expect in the way of beauty. The presentation is just a farce. You come into a room filled with 50 people and they don't talk to you. There's very little interaction.

Then Christ shall be clothed with all the beauty of the elect as if with a long tunic variously adorned, in which He shall shine as if covered with all manner of precious stones.

There is no spot of ground, however arid, bare or ugly, that cannot be tamed into such a state as may give an impression of beauty and delight.

Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.

To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.

There's one more thing I want to say. It's a touchy subject. Black beauty. Black sensuality. We live in a culture where the beauty of black people isn't always as celebrated as other types. I'd like to help change that if I can!

In things to be seen at once, much variety makes confusion, another vice of beauty. In things that are not seen at once, and have no respect one to another, great variety is commendable, provided this variety transgress not the rules of optics and geometry.

The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.

The real message of the Dance opens up the vistas of life to all who have the urge to express beauty with no other instrument than their own bodies, with no apparatus and no dependence on anything other than space.

The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mode but the true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives the passion that she shows. The beauty of a woman grows with the passing years.

For I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide.

For me the greatest beauty always lies in the greatest clarity.

The English Bible - a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.

I believe every chess player senses beauty, when he succeeds in creating situations, which contradict the expectations and the rules, and he succeeds in mastering this situation.