_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._
* * * * *