Chapter II: Part 2

Let an action be never so trivial in itself, women always make it appear of the most importance.

_Pope._
* * * * *

There are only two beautiful things in the world—women and roses; and only two sweet things—women and melons.

_Malherbe._

* * * * *

Before promising a woman to love only her, one should have seen them all, or should see only her.

_Dupuy._

* * * * *

Many young girls have a strange audacity blended with their instinctive delicacy.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Friendship that begins between a man and a woman will soon change its name.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

Women are formed by nature to feel some consolation in present troubles, by having them always in their mouth and on their tongue.

_Euripides._
* * * * *

Women give entirely to their affections, set their whole fortunes on the die, lose themselves eagerly in the glory of their husbands and children.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

We ask four things for a woman—that virtue dwell in her heart, modesty in her forehead, sweetness in her mouth, and labour in her hands.

_Chinese Proverb._

* * * * *

In all ill-matched marriages, the fault is less the woman’s than the man’s, as the choice depended on her the least.

_Mme. de Rieux._

* * * * *

Love lessens the woman’s refinement and strengthens the man’s.

_Richter._

* * * * *

Who takes an eel by the tail, or a woman at her word, soon finds he holds nothing.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

Homeliness is the best guardian of a young girl’s virtue.

_Mme. de Genlis._

* * * * *

In condemning the vanity of women, men complain of the fire they themselves have kindled.

_Lingrée._

* * * * *

A prude ought to be condemned to meet only indiscreet lovers.

_Raisson._

* * * * *

Women always speak the truth, but not the whole truth.

_Italian Proverb._

* * * * *

If all women’s faces were cast in the same mould, that mould would be the grave of love.

_Bichat._

* * * * *

What colour would it not have given to my thoughts, and what thrice-washed whiteness to my words, had I been fed on woman’s praises.

_Holmes._
* * * * *

One may see the heart of women through the rents which one may make in their self-love.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Women and music should never be dated.

_Goldsmith._

* * * * *

Men never are consoled for their first love, nor women for their last.

_Weiss._

* * * * *

A timorous woman often drops into her grave before she is done deliberating.

_Addison._

* * * * *

It is much worse to irritate an old woman than a dog.

_Menander._

* * * * *

There are women so hard to please that it seems as if nothing less than an angel will suit them; hence it comes that they often meet with devils.

_Marguerite de Valois._

* * * * *

Woman is a charming creature, who changes her heart as easily as her gloves.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

Women go further in love than most men, but men go further in friendship than women.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

Woman’s function is a guiding, not a determining one.

_Ruskin._

* * * * *

At first woman fosters our dearest hopes with the affection of a mother; then, like a giddy hen she forsakes the nest.

_Goethe._

* * * * *

A girl of sixteen accepts love; a woman of thirty incites it.

_Ricard._

* * * * *

A woman who loves, however erring, can never be entirely selfish, for love has a humanising influence, and a true passion renders any self-sacrifice easy.

_Peabody._

* * * * *

A secret passion defends the heart of a woman better than her moral sense.

_De La Bretonne._

* * * * *

Women’s hearts are made of stout leather; there’s a plaguey sight of wear in them.

_Haliburton._

* * * * *

A woman who pretends to laugh at love is like the child who sings at night when he is afraid.

_Rousseau._

* * * * *

Woman among savages is a beast of burden; in Asia she is a piece of furniture; in Europe she is a spoiled child.

_De Meilhan._

* * * * *

Women that are least bashful are not infrequently the most modest.

_Colton._

* * * * *

True feeling is a rustic vulgarity the flirt does not tolerate; she counts its healthiest and most honest manifestation all sentiment.

_Mitchell._

* * * * *

Shakespeare has no heroes, he has only heroines.

_Ruskin._

* * * * *

Some men are different; all women are alike.

_Delvau._

* * * * *

The empire of woman is an empire of sweetness, skilfulness and attractiveness; her orders are caresses, her evils are tears.

_Rousseau._

* * * * *

Women need not be beautiful every day of their lives; it is sufficient that they have moments which one does not forget, and the return of which one expects.

_Cherbuliez._

* * * * *

There are some lips from which even the proudest women love to hear the censure which appears to disprove indifference.

_Lytton._

* * * * *

It is in the nature of the feminine sex to seek here below to corrupt men, and therefore wise men never abandon themselves to the seductions of women.

_Laws of Manu._

* * * * *

Would that the race of women had never existed—except for me alone!

_Euripides._

* * * * *

Fools that on women trust; for in their speech is death, hell in their smile.

_Tasso._

* * * * *

At the age of sixty, to marry a beautiful girl of sixteen is to imitate those ignorant people who buy books to be read by their friends.

_Ricard._

* * * * *

Women forgive injuries, but never forget slights.

_Haliburton._

* * * * *

The virtue of women is often the love of reputation and quiet.

_Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

Woman is the most precious jewel taken from Nature’s casket for the ornamentation and happiness of man.

_Guyard._

* * * * *

Women have such a wonderful power of secreting adjectives that they cannot speak the truth when they try.

_Sheldon._

* * * * *

Women divine that they are loved long before it is told them.

_Marivaux._

* * * * *

The nervous fluid in man is consumed by the brain, in woman by the heart; it is there that they are most sensitive.

_Bayle._

* * * * *

There will always remain something to be said of woman, as long as there is one on the earth.

_De Boufflers._

* * * * *

The virtue of widows is a laborious virtue; they have to combat constantly with the remembrance of past bliss.

_Jerome._

* * * * *

A woman whose ruling passion is not vanity is superior to any man of equal capacity.

_Lavater._

* * * * *

Woman’s natural mission is to love, to love but one, to love always.

_Michelet._

* * * * *

One reason why women are forbidden to preach the gospel is that they would persuade without argument and reprove without giving offence.

_John Newton._

* * * * *

How little do lovely women know what awful beings they are in the eyes of inexperienced youth.

_Washington Irving._

* * * * *

During their youth women wish to be treated as divinities; they adore the ideal; they cannot bear the idea of being what Nature wishes them to be.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Love is a bird that sings in the heart of a woman.

_Karr._

* * * * *

Woman’s happiness is in obeying. She objects to men who abdicate too much.

_Michelet._

* * * * *

Nature sent woman into the world with the bridal dower of love.

_Richter._

* * * * *

The moral amelioration of man constitutes the chief mission of women.

_Comte._

* * * * *

Most ladies who have had what is considered as an education, have no idea of an education progressive through life.

_Foster._

* * * * *

One of the principal occupations of men is to divine women.

_Lacretelle._

* * * * *

Men do not always love those they esteem; women, on the contrary, esteem only those they love.

_Dubay._

* * * * *

I will not affirm that women have no character; rather, they have a new one every day.

_Heine._

* * * * *

The only person who can cure one of a woman is that woman herself.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Virtue is a beautiful thing in women when they don’t go about with it like a child with a drum, making all sorts of noise with it.

_Jerrold._

* * * * *

Wiles and deceits are woman’s specialities.

_Æschylus._

* * * * *

What man seeks in love is woman; what woman seeks in love is man.

_Houssaye._

* * * * *

There is no grace that is taught by the dancing-master, no style adopted into the etiquette of courts, but was first the whim and mere action of some brilliant woman.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

The conversation of women in society resembles the straw used in packing china; it is nothing, yet without it, everything would be broken.

_Mme. de Salm._

* * * * *

The woman who does not choose to love should cut the matter short at once by holding out no hope to her suitor.

_Marguerite de Valois._

* * * * *

One single honest man may yet be seen; but wander all the world round to find one honest woman, he will search in vain.

_Wieland._

* * * * *

A woman forgives the audacity which her beauty has prompted us to be guilty of.

_Lesage._

* * * * *

To marry a wife, if we regard the truth, is an evil, but it is a necessary evil.

_Menander._

* * * * *

Nothing is more difficult to choose than a good husband—unless it be to choose a good wife.

_Rousseau._

* * * * *

The rudest man, inspired by love, is more persuasive than the most eloquent man, if uninspired.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

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

_Gavarni._

* * * * *

Constancy is the chimera of love.

_Vauvenargues._

* * * * *

The pretension of youth always gives to a woman a few more years than she really has.

_Jouy._

* * * * *

I have only one advice to give you—fall in love with all women.

_Montmarin._

* * * * *

A beautiful face is the most beautiful of all spectacles.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

The sweetest harmony is the sound of the voice of the woman one loves.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

To marry is to domesticate the Recording Angel!

_R. L. Stevenson._

* * * * *

When one writes of woman he must reserve the right to laugh at his ideas of the day before.

_Ricard._

* * * * *

Who hath a fair wife hath need of more than two eyes.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

Men bestow compliments only on women who deserve none.

_Mme. Bachi._

* * * * *

Woman is more the companion of her own thoughts and feelings, and if they are turned to ministers of sorrow, where shall she look for consolation?

_Washington Irving._

* * * * *

Vanity, shame and, above all, temperament often makes the valour of men and the virtue of women.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

Bachelors are providential beings; God created them for the consolation of widows and the hope of maids.

_De Finod._

* * * * *

As the faculty of writing is chiefly a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has been always thrown upon the women.

_Johnson._

* * * * *

We look at one little woman’s face we love, as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our yearnings.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

There are some women who seem cold and beautiful stones, their hearts icicles, their tears frozen gems pressed out by injured pride.

_Alger._

* * * * *

Position, Wren said, is essential to the perfecting of beauty—a fine building is lost in a dark lane; a statue should be in the air; much more true is it of woman.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

A woman should never accept a lover without the consent of her heart, nor a husband without the consent of her judgment.

_De Lenclos._

* * * * *

Most women spend their lives in robbing the old tree from which Eve plucked the first fruit.

_Feuillet._

* * * * *

What is it that love does to women? Without it, she only sleeps; with it alone, she lives.

_Ouida._

* * * * *

Female levity is no less fatal to them after marriage than before.

_Addison._

* * * * *

The highest dressers, the highest face-painters, are not the loveliest women, but such as have lost their loveliness, or never had any.

_Leigh Hunt._

* * * * *

The heart of a woman never grows old; when it has ceased to love it has ceased to live.

_Rochepedre._

* * * * *

Neither in adversity nor in the joys of prosperity let me be associated with woman-kind.

_Æschylus._

* * * * *

Women ask if a man is discreet, as men ask if a woman is pretty.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

It is only the coward who reproaches as a dishonour the love a woman has cherished for him.

_Mme. de Lambert._

* * * * *

There is scarcely a single cause in which a woman is not engaged in some way fomenting the suit.

_Juvenal._

* * * * *

Do not take women from the bedside of those who suffer; it is their post of honour.

_Mme. Fée._

* * * * *

It is lucky for the poets that their mistresses are not obliged to sit to them. They would never write a line.

_Leigh Hunt._

* * * * *

It is easier for a woman to defend her virtue against men than her reputation against women.

_Rochebrune._

* * * * *

Twice is a woman dear—when she comes to the house and when she leaves it.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

A woman is like your shadow; follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

Woman is a changeable thing, as our Virgil informed us at school; but her change _par excellence_ is from the fairy you woo to the brownie you wed.

_Lytton._

* * * * *

How many ways to the heart has a woman?

_Channing._

* * * * *

What manly eloquence could produce such an effect as woman’s silence.

_Michelet._

* * * * *

When maidens sue, men live like gods.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

I think it takes a great deal from a woman’s modesty, going into public life; and modesty is her greatest charm.

_Mrs Ward Beecher._

* * * * *

The passion for praise, which is so very vehement in the fair sex, produces excellent effects in women of sense.

_Addison._

* * * * *

With women, friendship ends when rivalry begins.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

A woman is easily governed if a man takes her hand.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

The lover cannot paint his maiden to his fancy poor and solitary.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

The man who can govern a woman can govern a nation.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

An old woman is a very bad bride, but a very good wife.

_Fielding._

* * * * *

Apelles used to paint a good housewife on a snail, to import that she was a home-keeper.

_Howell._

* * * * *

Man argues woman may not be trusted too far; woman feels man cannot be trusted too near.

_Browne._

* * * * *

Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her person.

_Chesterfield._

* * * * *

God has placed the genius of women in their hearts, because the works of this genius are always works of love.

_Lamartine._

* * * * *

To think of the part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline!

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

The truth is, women are lost because they do not deliberate.

_Amelia E. Barr._

* * * * *

When God thought of _Mother_, he must have laughed with satisfaction, and framed it quickly, so rich, so deep, so divine, so full of soul, power and beauty was the conception.

_Ward Beecher._

* * * * *

A woman may always help her husband by what she knows, however little; by what she half knows, or mis-knows, she will only tease him.

_Ruskin._

* * * * *

Diffuse knowledge generally among women, and you will at once cure the conceit which knowledge occasions while it is rare.

_Sydney Smith._

* * * * *

The love of woman has in all ages given birth in man to passionate desires, poetic dreams, deferential attentions, persuasive forms of politeness.

_Alger._

* * * * *

A lady who had not learned discretion by experience and came to an evil end.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

In the elevated order of ideas, the life of man is glory; the life of woman is love.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

Women have more strength in their looks than we have in our laws, and more power by their tears than we have by our arguments.

_Saville._

* * * * *

The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them. “Her feet have touched the meadows and left the daisies rosy.”

_Ruskin._

* * * * *

The masculine personal pronoun is singularly restricted in woman’s judgment. Passion has curtailed her grammar amazingly. She can remember only one number (that is Greek).

_Browne._

* * * * *

There is nothing sadder than to look at dressy old things, who have reached the frozen latitudes beyond fifty, and who persist in appearing in the airy costume of the tropics.

_Sheldon._

* * * * *

A woman finds it a much easier task to do an evil than a virtuous deed.

_Plautus._

* * * * *

I have always said it: Nature meant to make woman its masterpiece.

_Lessing._

* * * * *

Woman is the organ of the devil.

_De Varennes._

* * * * *

Women are a breed the like of which neither sea nor earth produces anything; he who is always with them knows them best.

_Euripides._

* * * * *

Women make us lose paradise, but how frequently we find it again in their arms.

_De Finod._

* * * * *

Marriage has its unknown great men as war has its Napoleons, poetry its Cheniers, and philosophy its Descartes.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

Vanity ruins more women than love.

_Du Deffand._

* * * * *

Extremes in everything is a characteristic of woman.

_De Goncourt._

* * * * *

One loves more the first time, better the second.

_Rochepedre._

* * * * *

Of all religions love is the most deceptive.

_Paleologue._

* * * * *

The Indian axiom “Do not strike even with a flower a woman guilty of a hundred crimes” is my rule of conduct.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

To be loved as in books is a dream.

_Bourget._

* * * * *

The cruellest revenge of a woman is often to remain faithful to a man.

_Bossuet._

* * * * *

Women, cats and birds are the creatures that waste most time on their toilets.

_Nodier._

* * * * *

Female goodness seldom keeps its ground against laughter, flattery, or fashion.

_Johnson._

* * * * *

I received money with her, and for the dowry have sold my authority.

_Plautus._

* * * * *

There is no torture that a woman would not suffer to enhance her beauty.

_Montaigne._

* * * * *

Most women proceed like the flea, by leaps and jumps.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

The most fascinating women are those that can most enrich the every-day moments of existence.

_Leigh Hunt._

* * * * *

Learn, above all, how to manage women; their thousand “Ahs” and “Ohs,” so thousand fold, can be cured.

_Goethe._

* * * * *

All women are fond of minds that inhabit fine bodies, and of souls that have fine eyes.

_Joubert._

* * * * *

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even for our virtues.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

She who spat in my face while I was, shall come to kiss my feet when I am no more.

_Montaigne._

* * * * *

Some women are so just and discerning that they never see an opportunity of being generous.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

I am glad I am not a man, as I should be obliged to marry a woman.

_Mme. de Stael._

* * * * *

There would be no such animals as prudes or coquettes in the world were there not such an animal as man.

_Addison._

* * * * *

Women have tongues of craft and hearts of guile.

_Tasso._

* * * * *

A coquette has no heart; she has only vanity; it is adorers she seeks, not love.

_Poincelot._

* * * * *

The reputation of a woman may be compared to a mirror, shining and bright, but liable to be sullied by every breath that comes near it.

_Cervantes._

* * * * *

Many men kill themselves for love, but many more women die of it.

_Lemontey._

* * * * *

The brain-women never interest us like the heart-women; white roses please less than red.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

A woman is seldom roused to great and courageous exertion, but when something most dear to her is in immediate danger.

_Baillie._

* * * * *

A man can keep another person’s secret better than his own; a woman, on the contrary, keeps her secret though she tells all others.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

Men speak of what they know; women, of what pleases them.

_Rousseau._

* * * * *

A woman for a general, and the soldiers will be women.

_Latin Proverb._

* * * * *

Love is the most terrible, and also the most generous, of the passions; it is the only one which includes in its dreams the happiness of someone else.

_Karr._

* * * * *

VIRTUE: a word easy to pronounce, difficult to understand.

_Voltaire._

* * * * *

Marriage should combat without respite or mercy that monster that devours everything—habit.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

It is easy to find a lover and to retain a friend; what is difficult is to find the friend and retain the lover.

_Levis._

* * * * *

It’s better to love to-day than to-morrow. A pleasure postponed is a pleasure lost.

_Ricard._

* * * * *

Woman conceals only what she does not know.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

Love, pleasure, and inconstancy are but the consequences of a desire to know the truth.

_Duclos._

* * * * *

A coquette is one that is never to be persuaded out of the passion she has to please, nor out of a good opinion of her own beauty.

_Addison._

* * * * *

The vows that woman makes to her fond lover are only fit to be written on air or on the swiftly running stream.

_Catullus._

* * * * *

When a _lady_ walks the streets, she leaves her virtuous indignation countenance at home.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

The humour of affecting a superior carriage generally rises from a false notion of the weakness of the female understanding in general.

_Steele._

* * * * *

Woman is mistress of the art of completely embittering the life of the person on whom she depends.

_Goethe._

* * * * *

A woman submits to the yoke of opinion, but a man rebels.

_De Finod._

* * * * *

The only thing that has been taught successfully to women is to wear becomingly the fig-leaf they received from their first mother.

_Diderot._

* * * * *

Woman is like the reed that bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.

_Whately._

* * * * *

Women are happier in the love they inspire than in that which they feel; men are just the contrary.

_De Beauchêne._

* * * * *

To a susceptible youth, like myself, brought up in the country, women are perfect divinities.

_Washington Irving._

* * * * *

Women should be careful of their conduct, for appearances sometimes injure them as much as faults.

_Girard._

* * * * *

Excess of passion and the force of love,—arguments than which there can be none more powerful to assuage the irritation of a woman’s mind.

_Titus Livius._

* * * * *

The reason why so few women are touched by friendship is that they find it dull when they have experienced love.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

Where women are, the better things are implied if not spoken.

_Bronson Alcott._

* * * * *

A woman is a well-served table that one sees with different eyes before and after the meal.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

The materials that go to the making of one woman were set free by the abstraction from inanimate nature of one man’s worth of masculine constituents.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Women are wise impromptu, fools on reflection.

_Italian Proverb._

* * * * *

To say the truth, I never yet knew a tolerable woman to be fond of her own sex.

_Swift._

* * * * *

“I like women,” said a clear-headed man of the world, “they are so finished.” They finish society, manners, language. Form and ceremony are their realm. They embellish trifles.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

An opinion formed by a woman is inflexible; the fact is not half so stubborn.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

There is one thing admirable in women; they never reason about their blameworthy actions; even in their dissimulation there is an element of sincerity.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

A mother dreads no memories,—those shadows have all melted away in the dawn of Baby’s smiles.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

Nature has said to woman: Be fair if thou canst, be virtuous if thou wilt; but considerate thou must be.

_Beaumarchais._

* * * * *

A woman either loves or hates; she knows no medium.

_Syrus._

* * * * *

The error of certain women is to imagine that, to acquire distinction, they must imitate the manners of men.

_De Maistre._

* * * * *

Women’s virtue is the music of stringed instruments, which sound best in a room.

_Richter._

* * * * *

With women, the desire to bedeck themselves is always the desire to please.

_Marmontel._

* * * * *

In life, as in a promenade, woman must lean on a man above her.

_Karr._

* * * * *

Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love.

_Shakespeare._

* * * * *

The revolution the Boston boys started had to run in mother’s milk before it ran in man’s blood.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Women swallow at one mouthful the lie that flatters, and drink drop by drop the truth that is bitter.

_Diderot._

* * * * *

A shameless woman is the worst of men.

_Young._

* * * * *

There has been no church, however superstitious, that has not been adorned by many Christian women devoting their entire lives to assuaging the sufferings of men.

_Lecky._

* * * * *

I dare say she’s like the rest of the women,—thinks two and two’ll come to make five, if she cries and bothers enough about it.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

We need the friendship of a man in great trials, of a woman in the affairs of everyday life.

_Thomas._

* * * * *

How can one who hates men love a woman without blushing?

_Richter._

* * * * *

Some women need much adorning, as some meat needs much seasoning to incite appetite.

_Rochebrune._

* * * * *

’Tis beauty that doth make woman proud; . . . . . . . . . ’Tis virtue that doth make them most admired; . . . . . . . . . ’Tis government that makes them seem divine.

_Shakespeare._

* * * * *

Women like audacity; when one astounds them, he interests them; and when one interests them, he is very sure to please them.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Women should despise slander, and fear to provoke it.

_Mdlle. de Scuderi._

* * * * *

Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

However virtuous a woman may be, a compliment on her virtue is what gives her the least pleasure.

_Prince de Ligne._

* * * * *

It is not always for virtue’s sake that women are virtuous.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

The society of women is the element of good manners.

_Goethe._

* * * * *

Woman is the Sunday of man.

_Michelet._

* * * * *

If a woman has any malicious mischief to do, her memory is immortal.

_Plautus._

* * * * *

When women have passed thirty, the first thing they forget is their age; when they have attained the age of forty, they have entirely lost the remembrance of it.

_De Lenclos._

* * * * *

Even if women were immortal, they could never foresee their last lover.

_De Lamennais._

* * * * *

It has been justly observed that heroines are best painted in general terms.

_Leigh Hunt._

* * * * *

Love is superior to genius.

_De Musset._

* * * * *

Time sooner or later vanquishes love; friendship alone subdues time.

_D’Arconville._

* * * * *

A beautiful woman with the qualities of a noble man is the most perfect thing in nature; we find in her all the merits of both sexes.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

One is alone in a crowd when one suffers, or when one loves.

_Rochepedre._

* * * * *

All the passions die with the years; self-love alone never dies.

_Voltaire._

* * * * *

A short absence quickens love, a long absence kills it.

_Mirabeau._

* * * * *

Marriage often unites for life two people who scarcely know each other.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

If a woman refrains from absurd or hateful words and acts, and if she is beautiful, we are straightway convinced that she is a paragon of wisdom and morality.

_Tolstoi._

* * * * *

If we men require more perfection from women than from ourselves, it is doing them honour.

_Johnson._

* * * * *

How many women since the days of Echo and Narcissus have pined themselves into air for the love of men who were in love only with themselves.

_Anna Jameson._

* * * * *

The castle that parleys and the woman who listens are ready to surrender.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

Strange that the Gods should have given an antidote against the venom of savage serpents and none against that of a bad woman.

_Euripides._

* * * * *

Women dress less to be clothed than to be adorned. When alone before their mirror they think more of men than of themselves.

_Rochebrune._

* * * * *

The woman we love most is often the woman to whom we express it the least.

_De Beauchêne._

* * * * *

Woman’s counsel is not worth much, yet he that despises it is no wiser than he should be.

_Cervantes._

* * * * *

Woman is the nervous part of humanity; man the muscular.

_Halle._

* * * * *

O woman, woman! thou art formed to bless the heart of restless man.

_Bird._

* * * * *

Women are often ruined by their sensitiveness and saved by their coquetry.

_Mdlle. Azais._

* * * * *

Women are compounds of plain-sewing and make-believe—daughters of Sham and Hem.

_Sheldon._

* * * * *

Finesse has been given to woman to compensate the force of man.

_De Laclos._

* * * * *

Women are demons who make us enter hell through the gates of paradise.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

It is to teach us early how to think and how to excite our infantile imagination, that prudent nature has given to women so much chit-chat.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

Oh, woman! woman! thou shouldst have a few sins of thy own to answer for! Thou art the author of such a book of follies in man!

_Lytton._

* * * * *

Woman’s dignity lies in her being unknown; her glory in the esteem of her husband; and her pleasure in the welfare of her family.

_Rousseau._

* * * * *

Men _say_ of women what pleases them; women _do_ with men what pleases them.

_Ségur._

* * * * *

Woman must not belong to herself; she is bound to alien destinies.

_Schiller._

* * * * *

Don’t trust your horse in the field, nor your wife in your home.

_Russian Proverb._

* * * * *

Woman has been fed upon flattery until it is not strange she hungers for substantial diet, whose best sauce is understanding and appreciation.

_Browne._

* * * * *

One thing only I believe in a woman—that she will not come to life again after she is dead.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

The life of a woman is a long dissimulation. Candour, beauty, freshness, virginity, modesty,—a woman has each of these but once.

_La Bretonne._

* * * * *

Men call physicians only when they suffer; women when they are only afflicted with _ennui_.

_Mme. de Genlis._

* * * * *

Men say more evil of a woman than they think; it is the contrary with women toward men.

_Dubay._

* * * * *

A woman’s rank lies in the fulness of her womanhood; therein alone she is royal.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

The deceit of priests and the cunning of women surpass all else.

_Burger._

* * * * *

Nothing is better than a good wife; and nothing is worse than a bad one, who is fond of gadding about.

_Hesiod._

* * * * *

Woman often dies for love, as spotless maidens have died to live forever in the pantheon of sentiment.

_Browne._

* * * * *

Love, that is but an episode in the life of man, is the entire story of the life of woman.

_Mme. de Stael._

* * * * *

Women, priests, and poultry have never enough.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

Woman is too soft to hate permanently; even if a hundred men have been a grief to her, she will still love the hundred and first.

_Kinkel._

* * * * *

Intellect is to a woman’s nature what her skirt is to her dress.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Without woman man would be rough, rude, solitary, and would ignore all the graces, which are but the smiles of love.

_Chateaubriand._

* * * * *

No woman who is absolutely and entirely good, in the ordinary sense of the word, gets a man’s most fervent, passionate love.

_Mrs W. K. Clifford._

* * * * *

It is a misfortune for a woman never to be loved, but it is a humiliation to be loved no more.

_Montesquieu._

* * * * *

Woman is the salvation or the destruction of the family.

_Amiel._

* * * * *

An old coquette has all the defects of a young one, and none of her charms.

_Dupuy._

* * * * *

Women, like the plants in the woods, derive their softness and tenderness from the shade.

_Landor._

* * * * *

One should choose a wife with the ears rather than with the eyes.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

From many a woman’s fortune this truth is clear as day; that falsely smiling pleasure with pain requites us ever.

_Nibelungenlied._

* * * * *

Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless,—nay, the speech they have resolved not to utter.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore choose the weakest and most ignorant.

_Johnson._

* * * * *

Woman’s sensibility lights up, and quivers and falls, like the flame of a coal fire.

_Mitchell._

* * * * *

The weakness of women gives to some men a victory that their merit would never gain.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Women like brave men exceedingly, but audacious men still more.

_Le Mesle._

* * * * *

The mistake of many women is to return sentiment for gallantry.

_Jouy._

* * * * *

Women can rarely be deceived, for they are accustomed to deceive.

_Aristophanes._

* * * * *

There are no pleasures where women are not.

_Marie De Romieu._

* * * * *

Women’s tender hearts are much more susceptible of good impressions than the minds of the other sex.

_Steele._

* * * * *

Coquettes are like hunters who are fond of hunting, but do not eat the game.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Marriage with a good woman is a harbour in the tempest; but with a bad woman, it proves a tempest in the harbour.

_Petit-Senn._

* * * * *

A man without religion is to be pitied, but a godless woman is a horror above all things.

_Elizabeth Evans._

* * * * *

Cruelly tempted, perplexed and bewildered, when passion is stronger than reason, women do not think of consequences, but go blindfolded, headlong to their ruin.

_Amelia E. Barr._

* * * * *

Vanity acts like a woman,—they both think they lose something when love or praise is accorded to another.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

One woman reads another’s character without the tedious trouble of deciphering.

_Ben Jonson._

* * * * *

Women are much more like each other than men; they have, in truth, but two passions,—vanity and love.

_Chesterfield._

* * * * *

A jest that makes a virtuous woman only smile, often frightens away a prude.

_De Latena._

* * * * *

If the loving closed heart of a good woman were to open before a man, how much controlled tenderness, how many veiled sacrifices and dumb virtues would he see!

_Richter._

* * * * *

There are twenty-four hours in a day, and not a moment in the twenty-four in which a woman may not change her mind.

_De Finod._

* * * * *

Most women are better out of their houses than in them.

_Tacitus._

* * * * *

How many women are born too finely organised in sense and soul for the highway; they must walk with feet unshod!

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Women are rakes by nature and prudes by necessity.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

What means did the devil find out, or what instrument did his own subtlety present him, as fittest and aptest to work his mischief by? Even the unquiet vanity of the woman.

_Sir Walter Raleigh._

* * * * *

An obscure mist of sighs exhales out of the solitude of women in the nineteenth century.

_Alger._

* * * * *

If a woman’s young and pretty, I think you can see her good looks all the better for her being plainly dressed.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner than when his wife talks Greek.

_Johnson._

* * * * *

A young girl betrays, in a moment, that her eyes have been feeding on the face where you find them fixed.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Life is not long enough for a coquette to play all her tricks in.

_Addison._

* * * * *

The woman who loves us is only a woman, but the woman we love is a celestial being, whose defects disappear under the prism through which we see her.

_Girardin._

* * * * *

Woman’s love, like lichens on a rock, will still grow where even charity can find no soil to nurture itself.

_Bovée._

* * * * *

If a fox is cunning, a woman in love is still more so.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

There are few husbands whom the wife cannot win in the long run by patience and love.

_Marguerite de Valois._

* * * * *

A woman indeed ventures most, for she hath no sanctuary to retire to from an evil husband.

_Jeremy Taylor._

* * * * *

Better to have never loved, than to have loved unhappily, or to have _half_ loved.

_Louise Colet._

* * * * *

Love makes time pass, and time makes love pass.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

Love is the passion of great souls; it makes them merit glory, when it does not turn their heads.

_De Pompadour._

* * * * *

Nothing is so embarrassing as the first _tête-à-tête_, when there is everything to say, unless it be the last, when everything has been said.

_Roqueplan._

* * * * *

All joys do not cause laughter; great pleasures are serious; pleasures of love do not make us laugh.

_Voltaire._

* * * * *

The beautiful is always severe.

_Ségur._

* * * * *

Love! Love! Eternal enigma! Will not the Sphinx that guards thee find an Ædipus to explain thee?

_Pyat._

* * * * *

Friendship between two women is always a plot against each other.

_Karr._

* * * * *

Divert your mistress rather than sigh for her.

_Steele._

* * * * *

The ever-womanly draws us above.

_Goethe._

* * * * *

I love men, not because they are men, but because they are not women.

_Queen Christina._

* * * * *

Flow, wine! smile, women! and the universe is consoled.

_Beranger._

* * * * *

Discretion is more necessary to women than eloquence, because they have less trouble to speak well than to speak little.

_Du Bose._

* * * * *

There is no gown or garment that worse becomes a woman than when she will be wise.

_Luther._

* * * * *

Women live only in the emotion that love gives.

_Houssaye._

* * * * *

On great occasions it is almost always women who have given the strongest proofs of virtue and devotion.

_Montholon._

* * * * *

God bless all good women! To their soft hands and pitying hearts we must all come at last.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Neither education nor reason gives women much security against the influence of example.

_Johnson._

* * * * *

The hell for women who are only handsome is old age.

_Saint-Evremond._

* * * * *

Men are women’s playthings, women are the devil’s.

_Victor Hugo._

* * * * *

A woman, if she is bent on ill, never goes begging to the gardener for material; she has a garden at home.

_Plautus._

* * * * *

The woman in us still prosecutes a deceit like that begun in the garden; and our understandings are wedded to an Eve as fatal as the mother of their miseries.

_Glanvill._

* * * * *

Among all animals, from man to the dog, the heart of a mother is always a sublime thing.

_Dumas._

* * * * *

There are no ugly women; there are only women who do not know how to look pretty.

_Berryer._

* * * * *

It is not for good women that men have fought battles, given their lives, and staked their souls.

_Mrs W. K. Clifford._

* * * * *

Women’s sympathies give a tone, like the harp of Æolus, to the slightest breath.

_Mitchell._

* * * * *

A coquette is a woman who places her honour in a lottery; ninety-nine chances to one that she will lose it.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

The honour of woman is badly guarded when it is guarded by keys and spies. No woman is honest who does not wish to be.

_Dupuy._

* * * * *

The man that lays his hand upon a woman, save in the way of kindness, is a wretch whom ’twere gross flattery to name a coward.

_Tobin._

* * * * *

Beauty deceives women in making them establish on an ephemeral power the pretensions of a whole life.

_De Bigincourt._

* * * * *

I do not know that she was virtuous; but she was ugly, and with a woman that is half the battle.

_Heine._

* * * * *

Love works miracles every day; such as weakening the strong and strengthening the weak; making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools; favouring the passions, destroying reason, and, in a word, turning everything topsy-turvy.

_Marguerite de Valois._

* * * * *

In love, as in everything else, experience is a physician who never comes until after the disorder is cured.

_De la Tour._

* * * * *

Those who always speak well of women do not know them enough; those who always speak ill of them do not know them at all.

_Pigault-Lebrun._

* * * * *

Were we perfectly acquainted with our idol, we should never passionately desire it.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

Love is like the moon; when it does not increase, it decreases.

_Ségur._

* * * * *

As soon as women are ours, we are no longer theirs.

_Montaigne._

* * * * *

A woman laughs when she can, and weeps when she will.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

Woman may complain to God, as subjects do of tyrant princes; but otherwise she hath no appeal in the causes of unkindness.

_Jeremy Taylor._

* * * * *

A bachelor seeks a wife to avoid solitude; a married man seeks society to avoid a _tête-à-tête_.

_Varennes._

* * * * *

Silence and blushing are the eloquence of women.

_Chinese Proverb._

* * * * *

A woman who has not seen her lover for the whole day considers that day lost for her; the tenderest of men consider it only lost for love.

_Madame de Salm._

* * * * *

A woman that is ill-treated has no refuge in her griefs but in silence and secrecy.

_Steele._

* * * * *

There are only two good women in the world; one of them is dead, and the other is not to be found.

_German Proverb._

* * * * *

The most beautiful object in the world, it will be allowed, is a beautiful woman.

_Macaulay._

* * * * *

No woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more than she can be witty only by the help of speech.

_Hughes._

* * * * *

Every pretty girl one sees is a reminiscence of the Garden of Eden.

_Sheldon._

* * * * *

The Marys who bring ointment for our feet get but little thanks.

_Thackeray._

* * * * *

We censure the inconstancy of women when we are the victims; we find it charming when we are the objects.

_Desnoyers._

* * * * *

The purer the golden vessel the more readily is it bent; the higher worth of women is sooner lost than that of men.

_Richter._

* * * * *

Nature has given beauty to women which can resist shields and spears. She who is beautiful is stronger than iron and flame.

_Anacreon._

* * * * *

The heart of true womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it.

_Hawthorne._

* * * * *

Millions of people, generations of slaves, perish in this penal servitude of the factories merely in order to satisfy the whim of woman.

_Tolstoi._

* * * * *

A woman of sense ought to be above flattering any man.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time making nets, not cages.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Woman knows that the better she obeys the surer she is to rule.

_Michelet._

* * * * *

I have found that there is an intimate connection between the character of women and the fancy that makes them choose such and such material.

_Prosper Merimée._

* * * * *

Woman is the most perfect when the most womanly.

_Gladstone._

* * * * *

Woman is at once apple and serpent.

_Heine._

* * * * *

One must have loved a woman of genius in order to comprehend what happiness there is in loving a fool.

_Talleyrand._

* * * * *

The most reasonable women have hours wherein to be unreasonable.

_Cherbuliez._

* * * * *

The love of a bad woman kills others; the love of a good and noble woman kills herself.

_George Sand._

* * * * *

Woman is born for love, and it is impossible to turn her from seeking it.

_Ossoli._

* * * * *

Man sometimes asks of a book the truth; a woman always her illusions.

_Goncourt._

* * * * *

Societies commence with polygamy and finish with polyandry.

_Goncourt._

* * * * *

In a truly loving heart either jealousy kills love or love kills jealousy.

_Bourget._

* * * * *

It is not the treachery of women, but our own, which makes us beware of them.

_Bourget._

* * * * *

The world either breaks or hardens the heart.

_Chamfort._

* * * * *

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

_De Guerin._

* * * * *

Great vices, and great virtues, are exceptions in mankind.

_Napoleon I._

* * * * *

Most women caress sin before embracing penitence.

_Durois-Fontanelle._

* * * * *

When Eve ate the apple she knew she was naked. I have often thought, as I looked at her dancing daughters, that another bite would be of service to them.

_Sheldon._

* * * * *

Woman is a creature between man and the angels.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

Education raises many poor women to a stage of refinement that makes them suitable companions for men of a higher rank, and not suitable for those of their own.

_Lecky._

* * * * *

Elegance of appearance, ornaments, and dress, these are women’s badges of distinction; in these they delight and glory.

_Titus Livius._

* * * * *

Men who paint sylphs, fall in love with some _bonne et brave femme_, heavy-heeled and freckled.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

Woman—the gods be thanked!—is not even collaterally related to that sentimental abstraction called an angel.

_Browne._

* * * * *

There will always remain something to be said of woman, as long as there is one on the earth.

_Boufflers._

* * * * *

There are no oaths that make so many perjurers as the vows of love.

_Rochebrune._