Chapter I: Part 1

_Woman and the Wits_

Woman
and
Her Wits

Epigrams on Woman,
Love, and Beauty
Collected and Edited by
G. F. MONKSHOOD

New York Boston

H. M. CALDWELL CO.

Dedicated
TO
R. R.
WITH HOMAGE.

G. F. M.

LONDON, 1899.

_PREFACE_

_Until some fortunate being—wit, student, and man of the world (he will have to be all three)—can, in a cunningly chosen library, write the history of the Epigram, and the birth and growth of epigrammatic thought, we shall always be in doubt as to what an epigram is, and most people will be in doubt as to where the best epigrams are. The word itself is as difficult to define as its own essences—wit, humour, style, etc. We recognise the epigram when uttered or printed just as swiftly as we recognise beauty in a woman, yet rarely can we describe either. The sheer study that awaits the historian of the Epigram has, doubtless, been a great deterrent; he would have to consider epigrams from the Bible and the apocryphal writings downwards! In “Woman and the Wits” I have brought together some of the wisest, wittiest, and tenderest epigrams, proverbs, axioms, adages or short, pithy sentences—call them what you will—relating to the woman and women, and also to the passions, affections, sentiments, and emotions generally._

_My thanks are due principally to Mr. Morton and Mr. Du Bois for many excellent epigrams and for hints as to arrangement._

_G. F. MONKSHOOD._

_London, 1899._

Woman and the Wits

Second thoughts are best. God created man; woman was the after-thought.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

I have been ready to believe that we have seen a new revelation, and the name of its Messiah is woman.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

The whisper of a beautiful woman can be heard further than the loudest call of duty.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

The man who enters his wife’s dressing-room is either a philosopher or a fool.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

Be circumspect in your liaisons with women. It is better to be seen at the opera with this man than to be seen at mass with that woman.

_Mme. de Maintenon._

* * * * *

Two women placed together make cold weather.

_Shakespeare._

* * * * *

I have seen many instances of women running to waste and self-neglect, and disappearing gradually from the earth, almost as if they had been exhaled to heaven.

_Washington Irving._

* * * * *

Physical love is an ephemeral spark designed to kindle in human hearts the flame of a more lasting love. It is the outer court of the temple.

_Sabatier._

* * * * *

Between the mouth and the kiss, there is always time for repentance.

_Ricard._

* * * * *

Love decreases when it ceases to increase.

_Chateaubriand._

* * * * *

Partake of love as a temperate man partakes of wine; do not become intoxicated.

_De Musset._

* * * * *

A woman never commands a man, unless he be a fool, but by her obedience.

_Turkish Spy._

* * * * *

Many benefit by the caresses they have not inspired; many a vulgar reality serves as a pedestal to an ideal idol.

_Gautier._

* * * * *

In the highest society, as well as in the lowest, woman is merely an instrument of pleasure.

_Tolstoi._

* * * * *

Women know at first sight the character of those with whom they converse. There is much to give them a religious height to which men do not attain.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

Women see through and through each other; and often we most admire her whom they most scorn.

_Buxton._

* * * * *

Woman is a miracle of divine contradictions.

_Michelet._

* * * * *

Before going to war say a prayer; before going to sea say two prayers; before marrying say three prayers.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

If marriages are made in Heaven you had but few friends there.

_Scotch Proverb._

* * * * *

A man should choose for a wife only such a woman as he would choose for a friend, were she a man.

_Joubert._

* * * * *

I think Nature and an angry God produced thee to the world, thou wicked sex, to be a plague to man.

_Ariosto._

* * * * *

Women enjoy more the pleasure they give than the pleasure they feel.

_Rochepedre._

* * * * *

Woman’s tongue is her sword, which she never lets rust.

_Mme. Necker._

* * * * *

Wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity.

_Bacon._

* * * * *

Feminine charity renews every day the miracle of Christ feeding a multitude with a few loaves and fishes.

_Legouvé._

* * * * *

On seeing a lady sitting at the dinner-table between two Bishops, Sydney Smith inquired, “Her name is Susanna, I assume?”

* * * * *

With cleverness, thirty years, and a little beauty, a woman makes fewer conquests but more durable ones.

_Dupuy._

* * * * *

Women who marry seldom act but once; their lot is, ere they wed, obedience unto a father, thenceforth to a husband.

_Marston._

* * * * *

It is woman’s way. They always love colour better than form, rhetoric better than logic, priestcraft better than philosophy, and flourishes better than figures.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

A prude exhibits her virtue in word and manner; a virtuous woman shows hers in her conduct.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

Tears are the strength of women.

_Saint-Evremond._

* * * * *

A woman’s best qualities do not reside in her intellect, but in her affections. She gives refreshment by her sympathies rather than by her knowledge.

_Smiles._

* * * * *

A woman’s thoughts run before her actions.

_Shakespeare._

* * * * *

It is valueless to a woman to be young unless pretty, or to be pretty unless young.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

Silence and modesty are the best ornaments of women.

_Euripides._

* * * * *

The plainest man who pays attention to women will sometimes succeed as well as the handsomest who does not.

_Colton._

* * * * *

A woman can be held by no stronger tie than the knowledge that she is loved.

_Mme. de Motteville._

* * * * *

As vivacity is the gift of women, gravity is that of men.

_Addison._

* * * * *

Women are passive agents, and when love prompts them they can outsuffer martyrs.

_Massinger._

* * * * *

Between two beings susceptible to love, the duration of love depends upon the first resistance of the woman, or the obstacles that society puts in their way.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

A woman (of the right kind) reading after a man, follows him as Ruth followed the reapers of Boaz, and her gleanings are often the finest of the wheat.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

To a woman of spirit, the most intolerable of all grievances is a restraint on the liberty of the tongue.

_Junius._

* * * * *

If women were humbler men would be honester.

_Vanbrugh._

* * * * *

These women are shrewd tempters with their tongues.

_Shakespeare._

* * * * *

Nature makes fools; women make coxcombs.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

No friendship is so cordial or so delicious as that of girl for girl; no hatred so intense or immovable as that of woman for woman.

_Landor._

* * * * *

Women are priestesses of the unknown.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

To give you nothing and to make you expect everything, to dawdle on the threshold of love while the doors are closed, this is all the science of a coquette.

_De Bernard._

* * * * *

Men always say more evil of a woman than there really is; and there is always more than is known.

_Mezeray._

* * * * *

Neither walls, nor goods, nor anything is more difficult to be guarded than woman.

_Alexis._

* * * * *

Would you hurt a woman most, aim at her affections.

_Wallace._

* * * * *

A wise man ought often to admonish his wife, to reprove her seldom, but never to lay hands on her.

_Marcus Aurelius._

* * * * *

A woman of honour should never suspect another of things she would not do herself.

_Marguerite de Valois._

* * * * *

We only demand that a woman should be womanly; which is not being exclusive.

_Leigh Hunt._

* * * * *

Man forsakes Christianity in his labours; woman cherishes it in her solitudes and trials. Man lives by repelling, woman by enduring—and here Christianity meets her.

_Channing._

* * * * *

It is not easy to be a widow; one must resume all the modesty of girlhood, without being allowed even to feign ignorance.

_Mme. de Girardin._

* * * * *

A woman’s hopes are woven as sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

Women cannot see so far as men can, but what they do see they see quicker.

_Buckle._

* * * * *

The more idle a woman’s hand, the more occupied her heart.

_Dubay._

* * * * *

Women speak easily of platonic love; but while they appear to esteem it highly, there is not a single ribbon of their toilet that does not drive platonism from our hearts.

_Ricard._

* * * * *

If woman did turn man out of Paradise, she has done her best ever since to make it up to him.

_Sheldon._

* * * * *

A man cannot possess anything that is better than a good woman, nor anything that is worse than a bad one.

_Simonides._

* * * * *

A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband; but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.

_Solomon._

* * * * *

How wisely it is constituted that tender and gentle women shall be our earliest guides—instilling their own spirits.

_Channing._

* * * * *

Let woman stand upon her female character as upon a foundation.

_Lamb._

* * * * *

The modest virgin, the prudent wife, and the careful matron are much more serviceable in life than petticoated philosophers, blustering characters, or virago queens.

_Goldsmith._

* * * * *

A heart which has been domesticated by matrimony and maternity is as tranquil as a tame bullfinch.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

If men knew all that women think, they would be twenty times more audacious.

_Karr._

* * * * *

A beautiful woman pleases the eye, a good woman pleases the heart; one is a jewel, the other a treasure.

_Napoleon I._

* * * * *

Women especially are to be talked to as below men and above children.

_Chesterfield._

* * * * *

When joyous, a woman’s licence is not to be endured; when in terror, she is a plague.

_Æschylus._

* * * * *

Modesty in woman is a virtue most deserving, since we do all we can to cure her of it.

_Lingrés._

* * * * *

When we speed to the devil’s house, woman takes the lead by a thousand steps.

_Goethe._

* * * * *

When a woman pronounces the name of a man but twice a day, there may be some doubt as to the nature of her sentiments; but three times!

_Balzac._

* * * * *

Women know by nature how to disguise their emotions far better than the most consummate male courtier can do.

_Thackeray._

* * * * *

Beauty is worse than wine; it intoxicates both the holder and the beholder.

_Zimmerman._

* * * * *

Woman alone knows true loyalty of affection.

_Schiller._

* * * * *

Women are never stronger than when they arm themselves with their weakness.

_Mme. du Deffand._

* * * * *

Women are apt to see chiefly the defects of a man of talent and the merits of a fool.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Women have a perpetual envy of our vices; they are less vicious than we, not from choice, but because we restrict them; they are the slaves of order and fashion.

_Johnson._

* * * * *

It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the “dear deceit” of beauty.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

I detest those women who mount the pulpit and lay their passions bare.

_Eugenie de Guérin._

* * * * *

Of all men, Adam was the happiest; he had no mother-in-law.

_Parfait._

* * * * *

Beloved darlings, who cover over and shadow many malicious purposes with a counterfeit passion of dissimulate sorrow and unquietness.

_Sir Walter Raleigh._

* * * * *

A mother’s tenderness and caresses are the milk of the heart.

_Eugenie de Guérin._

* * * * *

Lovers have in their language an infinite number of words in which each syllable is a caress.

_Rochepedre._

* * * * *

To love is the least of the faults of a loving woman.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

What is it that renders friendship between women so lukewarm and of so short a duration? It is the interests of love and the jealousy of conquest.

_Rousseau._

* * * * *

There is nothing in love but what we imagine.

_St Beuve._

* * * * *

I am a strenuous advocate for liberty and property, but when these rights are invaded by a pretty woman, I am neither able to defend my money nor my freedom.

_Junius._

* * * * *

There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.

_Chamfort._

* * * * *

To educate a man is to form an individual who leaves nothing behind him; to educate a woman is to form future generations.

_Laboulaye._

* * * * *

There are no women to whom virtue comes easier than those who possess no attractions.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

In courting women, many dry wood for a fire that will not burn for them.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

It is no more possible to do without a wife than it is to dispense with eating and drinking.

_Luther._

* * * * *

God created the coquette as soon as he made the fool.

_Victor Hugo._

* * * * *

The sweetest thing in life is the unclouded welcome of a wife.

_Willis._

* * * * *

Trust not a woman, even when dead.

_Latin Proverb._

* * * * *

I have seen more than one woman drown her honour in the clear water of diamonds.

_Comtesse d’Houdetot._

* * * * *

Who trusts himself to woman or to waves should never hazard what he fears to lose.

_Oldmixon._

* * * * *

It is vanity that renders the youth of women culpable and their old age ridiculous.

_Mme. dé Sonza._

* * * * *

There are three things that women throw away—their time, their money, and their health.

_Madame Geoffrin._

* * * * *

The pleasant man a woman will desire for her own sake, but the languishing lover has nothing to hope from but her pity.

_Steele._

* * * * *

Woman is an overgrown child that one amuses with toys, intoxicates with flattery, and seduces with promises.

_Sophie Arnould._

* * * * *

True modesty protects a woman better than her garments.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Woman is the sweetest present that God has given to man.

_Guyard._

* * * * *

Coquetry is the desire to please, without the want of love.

_Rochepedre._

* * * * *

Before marriage, woman is a queen; after marriage, a subject.

_De Maintenon._

* * * * *

Coquetry is a continual lie, which renders a woman more contemptible and more dangerous than a courtesan who never lies.

_De Varennes._

* * * * *

The test of civilisation is the estimate of woman.

_Curtis._

* * * * *

Provided a woman be well-principled she has dowry enough.

_Plautus._

* * * * *

The more women have risked, the more they are willing to sacrifice.

_Duclos._

* * * * *

A flattered woman is always indulgent.

_Chenier._

* * * * *

Beauty is the eye’s food and the soul’s sorrow.

_German Proverb._

* * * * *

Some cunning men choose fools for their wives, thinking to manage them, but they always fail.

_Johnson._

* * * * *

A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects be considered a tolerable blessing.

_Washington Irving._

* * * * *

Divination seems heightened to its highest power in woman.

_Bronson Alcott._

* * * * *

Silence has been given to woman to better express her thoughts.

_Desnoyers._

* * * * *

The society of women endangers men’s morals and refines their manners.

_Montesquieu._

* * * * *

Women are supernumerary when present, and missed when absent.

_Portuguese Proverb._

* * * * *

The virtuous woman who falls in love is much to be pitied.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

A coquette is more occupied with the homage we refuse her than with what we bestow upon her.

_Dupuy._

* * * * *

Women are extremists; they are either better or worse than men.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

Woman is the crime of man. She has been his victim since Eden. She wears on her flesh the trace of six thousand years of injustice.

_Pelletan._

* * * * *

Socrates studied under Aspasia, and Aspasia governed the world under the name of Pericles.

_Houssaye._

* * * * *

The one who has read the book that is called woman knows more than the one who has grown pale in libraries.

_Houssaye._

* * * * *

Woman is the eighth capital sin, but she is perhaps the fourth theological virtue.

_Houssaye._

* * * * *

All passions are good when one masters them.

_Rousseau._

* * * * *

Consideration for woman is the measure of a nation’s progress in social life.

_Gregoire._

* * * * *

There is something of woman in everything that pleases.

_Dupaty._

* * * * *

No man has yet discovered the means of giving successfully friendly advice to women—not even to his own.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

The anger of a woman is the greatest evil with which one can threaten enemies.

_Chillon._

* * * * *

I would have a woman as true as death. At the first real lie that works from the heart outward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into a better world.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

There is no jewel in the world so valuable as a chaste and virtuous woman.

_Cervantes._

* * * * *

Nature has given to women fortitude enough to resist a certain time, but not enough to resist completely the inclination which they cherish.

_Dorat._

* * * * *

Without woman the two extremes of life would be without succour, and the middle without pleasure.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

In all eras and all climes a woman of great genius or beauty has done what she chose.

_Ouida._

* * * * *

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

_Bacon._

* * * * *

A woman would be in despair if Nature had formed her as fashion makes her appear.

_Mdlle. de Lespinasse._

* * * * *

The resistance of a woman is not always a proof of her virtue, but more frequently of her experience.

_Ninon de l’Enclos._

* * * * *

What a wilful, wayward thing is woman! Even in their best pursuits so loose of soul that every breath of passion shakes their frame.

_Francis._

* * * * *

The love of woman is universally for one man. Even though degraded, half-unsexed, outcast, abandoned to despair, she inflexibly seeks her individual own.

_Browne._

* * * * *

Rascal! That word on the lips of a woman, addressed to a too daring man, often means angel!

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Why should man, who is strong, always get the best of it, and be forgiven so much; and woman who is weak, get the worst and be forgiven so little?

_Mrs W. K. Clifford._

* * * * *

WOMEN. Their love first inspires the poet, and their praise is his best reward.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Women have no worse enemies than women.

_Duclos._

* * * * *

With what hope can we endeavour to persuade the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost in vanity.

_Johnson._

* * * * *

A mother’s prayers, silent and gentle, can never miss the road to the throne of all bounty.

_Beecher._

* * * * *

Venus always saves the lover whom she leads.

_Delatouche._

* * * * *

A good-tempered woman, of the order yclept buxom, not only warrants a pair of expansive shoulders, but bespeaks our approbation of them.

_Leigh Hunt._

* * * * *

Men love at first and most warmly; women love last and longest. This is natural enough; for nature makes women to be won and men to win.

_Curtis._

* * * * *

What we call in men _wisdom_ is in women prudence. It is a partiality to call one greater than the other.

_Steele._

* * * * *

An undoubted, uncontested, conscious beauty is, of all women, the least sensible of flattery.

_Chesterfield._

* * * * *

Women who have not fine teeth laugh only with their eyes.

_Mme. de Rieux._

* * * * *

Women generally consider consequences in love, seldom in resentment.

_Colton._

* * * * *

Woo the widow whilst she is in weeds.

_German Proverb._

* * * * *

Wounds of the heart! your traces are bitter, slow to heal, and always ready to re-open.

_De Musset._

* * * * *

The head is always the dupe of the heart.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

O women! you are very extraordinary children.

_Diderot._

* * * * *

There are different kinds of love, but they have all the same aim: possession.

_Roqueplan._

* * * * *

A man who can love deeply is never utterly contemptible.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

If love gives wit to fools, it undoubtedly takes it from wits.

_A. Karr._

* * * * *

The great defect in men is that they never put themselves in the place of the woman they judge.

_Mme. D’Epinay._

* * * * *

There is not a love, however violent it may be, to which ambition and interest do not add something.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

A man philosophises better than a woman on the human heart, but she reads the hearts of men better than he.

_Rousseau._

* * * * *

What a woman should demand of a man in courtship, or after it, is, first, respect for her, as she is a woman; and next to that, to be respected by him above all other women.

_Lamb._

* * * * *

A beautiful and chaste woman is the perfect workmanship of God, the true glory of angels, the rare miracle of earth, and the sole wonder of the world.

_Hermes._

* * * * *

Just corporeal enough to attest humanity, yet sufficiently transparent to let the celestial origin shine through.

_Ruffini._

* * * * *

If we wish to know the political and moral condition of a State, we must ask what rank women hold in it. Their influence embraces the whole of life.

_Aimi Martin._

* * * * *

A woman,—where can she put her hope in storms, if not in Heaven?

_Mitchell._

* * * * *

Woman’s heart is like a lithographer’s stone,—what is once written upon it cannot be rubbed out.

_Thackeray._

* * * * *

The lives of a multitude of women all around us contain a large element of unsuccessful outward or inward ambitions,—vain attempts and prayers.

_Alger._

* * * * *

An ideal type, in which meekness, gentleness, patience, humility, faith and love are the most prominent features, is not naturally male, but female.

_Lecky._

* * * * *

Even though the wife be little, bow down to her in speaking.

_Talmud._

* * * * *

The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her own beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

’Tis a terrible thing that we cannot wish young ladies well without wishing them to become old women.

_Johnson._

* * * * *

We men have no right to say it, but the omnipotence of Eve is in humility.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

Rejected lovers need never despair! There are four-and-twenty hours in a day, and not a moment in the twenty-four in which a woman may not change her mind.

_De Finod._

* * * * *

There are few husbands whom the wife cannot win in the long run by patience and love, unless they are harder than the rocks which the soft water penetrates in time.

_Marguerite de Valois._

* * * * *

The only true and firm friendship is that between man and woman, because it is the only affection exempt from actual or possible rivalry.

_A. Comte._

* * * * *

The yoke of love is sometimes heavier than that of all the virtues.

_Montaigne._

* * * * *

Love is the poetry of the senses.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

Love is the beginning, the middle and the end of everything.

_Lacordaire._

* * * * *

Women are constantly the dupes, or the victims of their extreme sensitiveness.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

When a man says he has a wife, it means that a wife has him.

_Gavarni._

* * * * *

Woman is more constant in hatred than in love.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

A woman dies twice; the day that she quits life and the day that she ceases to please.

_Weiss._

* * * * *

Love is the association of two beings for the benefit of one.

_Countess Nathalie._

What a woman wills, God wills.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

Some women kindle emotion so rapidly in a man’s heart, that the judgment cannot keep pace with it.

_Hardy._

* * * * *

The Bible says that woman is the last thing which God made. He must have made it on Saturday night. It shows fatigue.

_Dumas._

* * * * *

Woman’s power is for rule, not for battle; and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement and decision.

_Ruskin._

* * * * *

Woman is a delightful musical instrument, of which love is the bow and man the artist.

_Bayle._

* * * * *

Fit the same intellect to a man, and it is a bowstring; to a woman, and it is a harpstring.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

A clip of a wife roasts her husband, stouthearted though he may be, without a fire, and hands him over to premature old age.

_Hesiod._

* * * * *

There are three things I have always loved and have never understood—painting, music, and woman.

_Fontenelle._

* * * * *

Learned women have lost all credit by their impertinent talkativeness and conceit.

_Swift._

* * * * *

The coquette compromises her reputation, and sometimes even her virtue; the prude, on the contrary, often sacrifices her honour in private, and preserves it in public.

_Mme. du Boccage._

* * * * *

When a woman has explicitly condemned a given action, she apparently gathers courage for its commission under a little different conditions.

_Howells._

* * * * *

The homage of a man may be delightful until he asks straight for love, by which woman renders homage.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

The Divine Right of Beauty is the only one an Englishman ought to acknowledge, and a pretty woman is the only tyrant he is not authorised to resist.

_Junius._

* * * * *

The beauty of a lovely woman is like music.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

If there be any one whose power is in beauty, in purity, in goodness, it is woman.

_Ward Beecher._

* * * * *

God created woman only to tame man.

_Voltaire._

* * * * *

O woman! it is thou that causeth the tempests that agitate mankind.

_Rousseau._

* * * * *

The laughter, the tears, and the song of a woman are equally deceptive.

_Latin Proverb._

A woman’s lot is made for her by the love she accepts.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

Woman is an idol that man worships until he throws it down.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

She who dresses for others besides her husband, marks herself a wanton.

_Euripides._

* * * * *

With soft persuasive prayers woman wields the sceptre of the life which she charmeth.

_Schiller._

* * * * *

Men are the cause of women’s dislike for one another.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

The beautiful woman always gives me joy, and a high mind, too, if I think what she does for me.

_Reinmar._

* * * * *

Women have the genius of charity. A man gives but his gold; a woman adds to it her sympathy.

_Legouvé._

* * * * *

A woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.

_Johnson._

* * * * *

The only way to get the upper hand of a woman, is to be more woman than she is herself.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

The devastating egotism of man is properly foreign to woman; though there are many women as haughty, hard and imperious as any man.

_Alger._

* * * * *

There are some women who think virtue was given them as claws were given to cats—to do nothing but scratch with.

_Jerrold._

* * * * *

An immodest woman is food without salt.

_Arabian Proverb._

* * * * *

The evil in women is usually communicated by men. Much of the deceit of which they are accused is the effect of masculine inoculation.

_Browne._

* * * * *

The lover never sees personal resemblances in his mistress to her kindred or to others.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

The friendship of a man is often a support; that of a woman is always a consolation.

_Rochepedre._

* * * * *

Woman is the blood royal of life; let there be slight degrees of precedence among them, but let them all be sacred.

_Burns._

* * * * *

The woman who is resolved to be respected can make herself to be so, even amidst an army of soldiers.

_Cervantes._

* * * * *

To form devices quick is woman’s wit.

_Euripides._

* * * * *

Woman’s power is over the affections. A beautiful dominion is hers, but she risks its forfeiture when she seeks to extend it.

_Bovée._

* * * * *

To remain virtuous, a man has only to combat his own desires; a woman must resist her own inclinations and the continual attack of man.

_De Latena._

* * * * *

A cunning woman is a knavish fool.

_Lyttleton._

* * * * *

A woman often thinks she regrets the lover, when she only regrets the love.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

Even the satyrs, like men, in one way or another, could win the love of a woman.

_Malcolm Johnson._

* * * * *

You wish to create Eve over again, or rather to call forth a female Adam. I object.

_Sheldon._

* * * * *

Let a man pray that none of his woman-kind should form a just estimation of him.

_Thackeray._

* * * * *

In love, she who gives her portrait promises the original.

_Dupuy._

* * * * *

The man who seems to care little whether he charms or attracts women is he who offends and seduces.

_Goethe._

* * * * *

To correct the faults of man, we address the head; to correct those of woman, we address the heart.

_De Beauchêne._

* * * * *

The man flaps about with a bunch of feathers: the woman goes to work softly with a cloth.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Glory can be for a woman but the brilliant mourning of happiness.

_Mme. de Stael._

* * * * *

Women have more of what is termed good sense than men. They cannot reason wrong, for they do not reason at all.

_Hazlitt._

* * * * *

In anger against a rival, all women, even duchesses, employ invective. Then they make use of everything as a weapon.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

What is civilisation? I answer, the power of good women.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

Science seldom renders men amiable; women, never.

_Beauchêne._

* * * * *

The egotism of woman is always for two.

_Mme. de Stael._

* * * * *

The wisest woman you talk with is ignorant of something that you know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

A widow is like a frigate of which the first captain has been shipwrecked.

_Karr._

* * * * *

Where women are, are all kinds of mischief.

_Menander._

* * * * *

Woman is the symbol of moral and physical beauty.

_Gautier._

* * * * *

No man knows what the wife of his bosom is—no man knows what a ministering angel she is—until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world.

_Washington Irving._

* * * * *

Women have, in general, but one object, which is their beauty; upon which scarce any flattery is too gross for them.

_Chesterfield._

* * * * *

If Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter, the face of the whole world would have been changed.

_Pascal._

* * * * *

A worthless girl has enslaved me,—me, whom no enemy ever did.

_Epictetus._

* * * * *

An indigent female, the object probably of love and tenderness in her youth, at a more advanced age a withered flower, has nothing to do but retire and die.

_Hall._

* * * * *

In love affairs, from innocence to the fault, there is but a kiss.

_Alberic Second._

* * * * *

The destiny of women is to please, to be amiable, and to be loved.

_Rochebrune._

* * * * *

A beautiful woman is the paradise of the eyes, the hell of the soul, and the purgatory of the purse.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

If you would make a pair of good shoes, take for the sole the tongue of a woman; it never wears out.

_Alsatian Proverb._

* * * * *

One is always a woman’s first lover.

_De Laclos._

* * * * *

A man must be a fool who does not succeed in making a woman believe that which flatters her.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

I have seen faces of women that were fair to look upon, yet one could see that the icicles were forming round these women’s hearts.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

The highest mark of esteem a woman can give a man is to ask his friendship, and the most signal proof of her indifference is to offer him hers.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

The fire of woman’s passion, consuming the wilderness of her limitation, rises to the pure flame that has blazed on every altar of Eros between the Nile and the Columbia.

_Browne._

* * * * *

Frailty! thy name is woman.

_Shakespeare._

* * * * *

The tears of a young widow lose their bitterness when wiped by the hands of love.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

She could not reconcile the anxieties of spiritual life, involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

Venus herself, if she were bald, would not be Venus.

_Apuleius._

* * * * *

Women often deceive to conceal what they feel; men to simulate what they do not feel—love.

_Legouvé._

* * * * *

Women are the happiest beings of the creation; in compensation for our services, they reward us with a happiness of which they retain more than half.

_De Varennes._

* * * * *

No woman is too silly not to have a genius for spite.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

There is no compensation for the woman who feels that the chief relation of her life has been a mistake. She has lost her crown.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

There are plenty of women who believe women to be incapable of anything but to cook, incapable of interest in affairs.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

A woman is happy and attains all that she desires when she captivates a man; hence the great object of her life is to master the art of captivating men.

_Tolstoi._

* * * * *

The secret of youthful looks in an aged face is easy shoes, easy corsets and an easy conscience.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Who does not know the bent of woman’s fancy?

_Spenser._

* * * * *

Love makes mutes of those who habitually speak most fluently.

_De Souderi._

* * * * *

Every great passion is but a prolonged hope.

_Feuchères._

* * * * *

Beauty in woman is power.

_De Rotrou._

* * * * *

We are by no means aware how much we are influenced by our passions.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.

_Gautier._

* * * * *

Glances are the first _billets-doux_ of love.

_De L’Enclos._

* * * * *

Beauty and ugliness disappear equally under the wrinkles of age; one is lost in them, the other hidden.

_Petit-Senn._

* * * * *

Where pride begins, love ends.

_Lavater._

* * * * *

The girl who wakes the poet’s sigh is a very different creature from the girl who makes his soup.

_Sheldon._

* * * * *

Women know a point more than the devil.

_Italian Proverb._

* * * * *

To a gentleman every woman is a lady in right of her sex.

_Lytton._

* * * * *

Did you ever hear of a man’s growing lean by the reading of “Romeo and Juliet,” or blowing his brains out because Desdemona was maligned?

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Great women belong to history and to self-sacrifice.

_Leigh Hunt._

* * * * *

The heart of a coquette is like a rose, of which the lovers pluck the leaves, leaving only the thorns for the husband.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

In our age women commonly preserve the publication of their good offices and their vehement affection toward their husbands until they have lost them.

_Montaigne._

* * * * *

When women cannot be revenged, they do as children do—they then cry.

_Cardan._

* * * * *

At twenty, man is less a lover of woman than of women; he is more in love with the sex than with the individual, however charming she may be.

_La Bretonne._

* * * * *

The man who has taken one wife deserves a crown of patience; the man who has taken two deserves two crowns of pity.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

The knowledge of the charms one possesses prompts one to utilise them.

_Sénancourt._

* * * * *

There is no more agreeable companion than the one woman who loves us.

_St Pierre._

* * * * *

Jealousy is the sister of love, as the devil is the brother of the angels.

_Boufflers._

* * * * *

Men bestow compliments only on women who deserve none.

_Bachi._

* * * * *

Two smiles that approach each other end in a kiss.

_Hugo._

* * * * *

There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which beams and blazes in the dark hours of adversity.

_Washington Irving._

* * * * *

A woman is never displeased if we please several other women, provided she is preferred. It is so many more triumphs for her.

_Ninon de L’Enclos._

There is a woman at the beginning of all great things.

_Lamartine._

* * * * *

Women prefer us to say a little evil of them, rather than to say nothing of them at all.

_Ricard._

* * * * *

One syllable of woman’s speech can dissolve more of love than a man’s heart can hold.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Women, deceived by men, want to marry them; it is a kind of revenge, as good as any other.

_Beaumanoir._

* * * * *

A woman is seldom tenderer to a man than immediately after she has deceived him.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Women like balls and assemblies, as a hunter likes a place where game abounds.

_De Latena._

* * * * *

Fortune rules in nuptials; women are as like to turn out badly as to prove a source of joy.

_Euripides._

* * * * *

One of the sweetest pleasures of a woman is to cause regret.

_Chevalier._

* * * * *

Man without woman is head without body; woman without man is body without head.

_German Proverb._

* * * * *

Wrinkles disfigure a woman less than ill-nature.

_Dupuy._

* * * * *

I am sure I do not mean it an injury to women when I say there is a sort of sex in souls.

_Steele._

* * * * *

A woman, when she has passed forty becomes an illegible scrawl; only an old woman is capable of divining old women.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

A beautiful woman is never silly; she has the best wit that a man may ask of a woman, she is pretty.

_Stahl._

* * * * *

All the reasons of men are not worth one sentiment of woman.

_Voltaire._

* * * * *

A man never knows how to live until a woman has lived with him.

_Mere._

* * * * *

It may not be impossible to find a constant heart in an unfaithful body.

_Stahl._

* * * * *

Women may be pardoned for lack of common sense. The culprit in them is the heart.

_Stahl._

* * * * *

The history of love would be the history of humanity; it would be a beautiful book to write.

_Nodier._

* * * * *

Love is composed of so many sensations, that something new of it can always be said.

_Saint Prosper._

* * * * *

A woman is frank when she is not uselessly untruthful.

_France._

* * * * *

Jealousy for a woman is only a wound to self-respect. In man it is a torture profound as moral suffering, continuous as physical suffering.

_France._

* * * * *

Love preserves beauty, and the flesh of woman is fed with caresses as are bees with flowers.

_France._

* * * * *

Every lover who tries to find in love anything else than love is not a lover.

_Bourget._

* * * * *

One must be sensual to be human.

_France._

When a lover gives, he demands—and much more than he has given.

_Parry._

* * * * *

In most men there is a dead poet whom the man survives.

_St Beuve._

* * * * *

The Egyptian people, wisest then of nations, gave to their Spirit of Wisdom the form of a woman; and into her hand, for a symbol, the weaver’s shuttle.

_Ruskin._

* * * * *

The life of a woman can be divided into three epochs; in the first she dreams of love, in the second she experiences it, in the third she regrets it.

_Saint Prosper._

* * * * *

The ruses of women multiply with their years.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

Women wish to be loved, not because they are pretty or good or well-bred or graceful or intelligent, but because they are themselves.

_Amiel._

* * * * *

Society depends upon women. The nations who confine them are unsociable.

_Voltaire._

* * * * *

A beautiful woman with the qualities of a noble man is the most perfect thing in nature.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

Woman, in accordance with her unbroken, clear-seeing nature, loses herself and what she has of heart and happiness in the object she loves.

_Richter._

* * * * *

Society is the book of women.

_Rousseau._

* * * * *

Women, like princes, find few real friends.

_Lyttleton._

* * * * *

In love affairs, a young shepherdess is a better partner than an old queen.

_De Finod._

* * * * *

To “Get out of my house,” and “What do you want with my wife?” there is no answer.

_Don Quixote._

* * * * *

Our ice-eyed brain women are really admirable if we only ask of them just what they can give, and no more.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

A marriageable girl is a kind of merchandise that can be negotiated at wholesale only on condition that no one takes a part at retail.

_Karr._

* * * * *

Woman is a flower that exhales her perfume only in the shade.

_De Lamennais._

* * * * *

An honest woman is the one we fear to compromise.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

A woman, the more curious she is about her face, is commonly the more careless about her home.

_Ben Jonson._

* * * * *

Heaven has refused genius to woman, in order to concentrate all the fire in her heart.

_Rivarol._

* * * * *

The two pleasantest days of a woman are her marriage day and the day of her funeral.

_Hipponax._

* * * * *

A woman who writes commits two sins; she increases the number of books, and decreases the number of women.

_Karr._

* * * * *

A lady’s wish—he said, with a certain gallantry of manner—makes slaves of us all.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

In nineteen cases out of twenty, for a woman to play her heart in the game of love is to play at cards with a sharper, and gold coin against counterfeit pieces.

_Bourget._

* * * * *

Women are at ease in perfidy, as are serpents in bushes.

_Feuillet._

* * * * *

Women see without looking; their husbands often look without seeing.

_Desnoyers._

* * * * *

Most women who ride well on horseback have little tenderness. Like the Amazons, they lack a breast.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Earth has nothing more tender than a woman’s heart when it is the abode of pity.

_Luther._

* * * * *

In wishing to control her empire, woman destroys it.

_Canabis._

* * * * *

Wherever women are honoured, the gods are satisfied.

_Laws of Manu._

* * * * *

To a woman, the romances she makes are more amusing than those she reads.

_Gautier._

* * * * *

Women give themselves to God when the devil wants nothing more with them.

_Sophie Arnould._

* * * * *

Sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and affection of human nature.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

All the reasoning of man is not worth one sentiment of woman.

_Voltaire._

* * * * *

When an old crone frolics, she flirts with death.

_Syrus._

* * * * *

There never was in any age such a wonder to be found as a dumb woman.

_Plautus._

* * * * *

Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men’s nurses.

_Bacon._

* * * * *

Tenderness has no deeper source than the heart of a woman, devotion no purer shrine, sacrifice no more saint-like abnegation.

_Saint-Foix._

* * * * *

It is difficult for a woman to keep a secret; and I know more than one man who is a woman.

_Lafontaine._

* * * * *

All the evil that women have done to us comes from us, and all the good they have done to us comes from them.

_Aimi Martin._

* * * * *

Have a useful and good wife in the house, or don’t marry at all.

_Euripides._

* * * * *

There are beautiful flowers that are scentless, and beautiful women that are unlovable.

_Houelle._

* * * * *

None can do a woman worse despite than to call her old.

_Ariosto._

* * * * *

He who flatters women most pleases them best, and they are most in love with him whom they think is most in love with them.

_Chesterfield._

* * * * *

Suitors of a wealthy girl seldom seek for proof of her past virtue.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Imperious Venus is less potent than caressing Venus.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

The clown knows very well that the women are not in love with him, but with Hamlet, the fellow in the black cloak and plumed hat.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak.

_Shakespeare._

* * * * *

Women, asses, and nuts require strong hands.

_Italian Proverb._

* * * * *

Woman sends forth her sympathies on adventure. She embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless.

_Washington Irving._
* * * * *

A woman is sometimes fugitive, irrational, indeterminable, illogical and contradictory. A great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her.

_Amiel._

* * * * *

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness! A beautiful woman utters absurdities: we listen, and we hear not the absurdities but wise thoughts.

_Tolstoi._

* * * * *

A woman cannot guarantee her heart, even though her husband be the greatest and most perfect of men.

_George Sand._

* * * * *

It is born in maidens that they should wish to please everything that has eyes.

_Gleim._

* * * * *

The woman who throws herself at a man’s head will soon find her place at his feet.

_Desnoyers._

* * * * *

Women and wine, game and deceit, make the wealth small and the wants great.

_Proverb._
* * * * *

I confess I like the quality ladies better than the common kind even of literary ones.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Women sometimes deceive the lover—never the friend.

_Mercier._

* * * * *

You see in no place of conversation the perfection of speech so much as in accomplished women.

_Steele._

* * * * *

A fan is indispensable to a woman who can no longer blush.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

When a wrong idea possesses a woman, much bitterness flows from her tongue.

_Euripides._

* * * * *

Marriage communicates to women the vices of men, but never their virtues.

_Fourier._
* * * * *

In love, the confidant of a woman’s sorrow often becomes the consoler of it.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

A royal court without women is like a year without spring, a spring without flowers.

_Francis I. of France._

* * * * *

A woman full of faith in the one she loves is but a novelist’s fancy.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

O Pygmalion, who can wonder (no artist surely) that thou didst fall in love with the work of thine own hands.

_Leigh Hunt._

* * * * *

The mistakes of a woman result almost always from her faith in the good and her confidence in the truth.

_Balzac._

* * * * *