CUPIDIANA
Stray thoughts on women, love and matrimony.
Few lovers are sure of each other. If you doubt it, listen to what they
say, and you will constantly hear them repeat: 'Do you love me?' 'Will
you always love me?' or 'How long will you love me?' They will often
wake each other in the night to repeat these questions.
* * * * *
Men should cease to be jealous when they discover that they have real
ground for being jealous. I do not believe that jealousy comes from
true love; but justifiable jealousy should cure one of love.
* * * * *
Love sanctifies everything. Men and women, who really love each other
and are faithful, are virtuous.
* * * * *
If you love a woman from the depths of your heart and soul, no words
can be found adequate to convey an idea of it.
* * * * *
You cannot blame a man or a woman for being in love any more than you
can blame them for having the toothache. If the love they feel is a
misfortune to them, or the cause of unhappiness to others, pity them
all.
* * * * *
Friendship is the old age of love. Happy the husband and wife who, when
the days of love and passion are gone, find real happiness and blessed
rest in friendship.
* * * * *
There should be no other law than love to bind a man and a woman
together. The day they cease to love each other should be the day on
which the contract determines, and they become friends.
* * * * *
The intelligent, artistic, refined man is a gourmet in love; the
foolish and brutal man is a gourmand.
* * * * *
Men in old age often give young ones salutary advice as a consolation
for being unable to give them bad example.
* * * * *
However ill you may speak or think of women, you will always find a
woman able to do it better than you.
* * * * *
Why are women far less indulgent than men for the faults of women?
* * * * *
If I were a beautiful woman, oh, how I should hate women!
* * * * *
The woman who has never succumbed to temptation, often because
temptation has never been in her way, is inexorable for the weaknesses
of her sex.
* * * * *
Nine times out of ten the ugly woman will at once accept as reliably
true any gossip she hears on the subject of a beautiful woman. She
draws herself up and thinks: 'No one could ever say such things of me.'
And she is right: no one would who did not wish to be grossly
flattering.
* * * * *
Only the woman who has yielded to temptation is charitable, and will
help the fallen angel. Like Dido, she says:
'Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco.'
* * * * *
It is because I love and revere woman that I pity the fallen one, and
cannot say an unkind word of her.
* * * * *
I think that men should go down on their knees before the fallen women,
and implore their pardon, in the name of their sex, for the injury--the
criminal, irretrievable injury--that has been done to them by the curs
and scoundrels who are the cause of their present condition.
* * * * *
A woman is a wretched coward who, having had, in succession, the
protection of a father and of a husband, does not pity and help, if she
can, the beautiful, unprotected girl who has tried to fight the battle
of life by herself, and has been wounded.
* * * * *
Woman is an angel who seldom appreciates a man who has not a bit of the
devil in him.
* * * * *
The most religious woman will postpone an interview with her Maker for
an appointment with her dressmaker.
* * * * *
Matrimony is like any other contract: an agreement signed by two
honourable persons, each of whom, in every clause, takes the other to
be a dishonourable one.
* * * * *
A loving woman will keep her heart warm as long as she lives, and her
hair black as long as she dyes.
* * * * *
Woman is an instrument given to man for his happiness and his delight.
If the instrument gets neglected, out of tune, and broken, man should
blame himself alone. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the instrument
is right enough; it only wants to be in good and careful keeping.
* * * * *
There are only two places in the world where a beautiful woman,
fashionably dressed, can walk comfortably without being stared at by
the women like a Barnum's freak out for an airing--Paris and New York,
and perhaps Bond Street, London, during the season. Everywhere else she
has to ride or hide. There is only one spot of the earth where such a
woman can go about in all freedom and security without running the risk
of being followed and otherwise annoyed by idle men, and that is Fifth
Avenue, New York.
* * * * *
In matrimony, to retain happiness and make it last to the end, it is
not a question for a woman to remain beautiful, it is a question for
her to remain interesting. Not the slightest detail should be beneath
her notice in order to keep alive the attention of her husband.
* * * * *
Love feeds on illusions, lives on trifles. If a man loves his wife, a
rose on her head, her hair parted the other way, a newly-trimmed
bonnet, may revive in him the interest he felt the first time he met
her, nay, the emotion he felt the first time he held her in his arms.
The very best dishes may become insipid if served with the eternally
same sauce.
* * * * *
There comes a time when a woman has to make up her mind to choose
between being called a 'dear old soul' or a 'crabby old thing.'
* * * * *
I love and admire the woman of forty who admits that she is ten years
older than her daughter, the woman of fifty who is proud to show me her
grandchildren, and does not object to being photographed with them, and
the woman of sixty who does not expect me to admire her shoulders at a
dinner-party.
* * * * *
Painting, music, and women are often admired or criticised by plucky
people who are not afraid of exhibiting their ignorance.
* * * * *
Women are born mothers or sweethearts. When they marry, they become
mother-wives and take their children into first consideration, or
sweetheart-wives, and bestow their best care and attentions on their
husbands. But for the former ones, many clubs would have to put up
their shutters.
* * * * *
A woman who is constantly blushing must be terribly well informed.
* * * * *
As long as it is man who proposes, matrimony will be promotion for a
woman.
* * * * *
The woman taken in adultery was formerly burned or stoned to death;
later on she was condemned to three months' imprisonment. Nowadays she
goes scot-free, and her husband is turned into ridicule. What more does
she want?--the Victoria Cross or the Legion of Honour?
* * * * *
There is no _esprit de corps_ among women.
* * * * *
America is the only country where you hear women speak well of their
sex. It speaks volumes for them, and it enables American men to be
polite and even gallant, and do the same.
* * * * *
Woman is made to love and to be loved. She may live on love and die of
it. For a man, love is the occupation of a few moments; for a woman,
love is the occupation of a lifetime.
* * * * *
If a man hears men speak ill of women, he should, before joining in the
chorus, remember his mother. Then he will be sure to take their
defence.
* * * * *
Women should have two great aims in life: trying to be beautiful and
succeeding in being pleasant.
* * * * *
Whether I think of woman as a grandmother, a mother, a wife, a
sweetheart, or even a little girl who, by-and-by, will bear all these
titles in succession, I believe that men ought to spend most of their
spare time in strewing with flowers the ground upon which a woman is
about to tread.
* * * * *
There are men who complain that roses have thorns. They should be
grateful to know that thorns have roses.
* * * * *
The roses of life are the women.
THE END
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.