Love and Marriage
LOVE AND MARRIAGE
To Love on Feeling Its Approach
By Helen Hoyt
(In “The Masses.”)
Love is a burden, a chain,
Love is a trammel and tie;
Love is disquiet and pain
That slowly go by.
O why should I bind my heart
And bind my sight?
Love is only a part
Of all delight.
Let me have room for the rest,—
To find and explore!
Love is greatest and best?
But love closes the door.
And closes us off so long from the ways
And concernments of men;
And owns us, and hinders our days.
O love, come not again!
I have walked with you all my mile,
Now let me be free, be free!
O now a little while
Love, come not back to me!
Ashes of Life
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
(In “The Forum.”)
Love has gone and left me, and the days are all alike;
Eat I must and sleep I will,—and would that night were here!
But ah!—to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
Would that it were day again!—with twilight near!
Love has gone and left me and I don’t know what to do;
This or that or what you will is all the same to me;
But all the things that I begin I leave before I’m through—
There’s little use in anything as far as I can see.
Love has gone and left me, and the neighbors knock and borrow,
And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse,—
And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
There’s this little street and this little house.
The Greatest Love
By Rahel Varnhagen
(From “Life and Letters of Rahel Varnhagen.”)
Only one in the whole world recognizes my claim to the personality, and
does not wish merely to use and swallow up some part or other of me;
loves me as nature created me, and fate distorted me; understands this
fate; is willing to leave me the remainder of my life, and to gladden it
and draw it nearer to heaven; and, for the happiness of being my friend,
will be, do, and leave all for me. This is the man who is called my
bridegroom.
Love-Songs
By Mary Carolyn Davies
What is love?
Love is when you touch me;
Love is a noise of stars singing as they march;
Love is a voice of worlds glad to be together;
What is love?
There is a strong wall about me to protect me:
It is built of the words you have said to me.
There are swords about me to keep me safe:
They are the kisses of your lips.
Before me goes a shield to guard me from harm:
It is the shadow of your arms between me and danger.
All the wishes of my mind know your name,
And the white desires of my heart
They are acquainted with you.
The cry of my body for completeness,
That is a cry to you.
My blood beats out your name to me, unceasing, pitiless—
Your name, your name.
My body talks about you in the night,
My hand says soft, “His hand is like a shield.”
My cheek grows warm, remembering your lips.
My arms reach blindly out into the dark;
My pulses say, “We cannot beat without him;”
And my eyes do not speak at all, for what they know is beyond being said.
My body talks about you all night long.
I cannot sleep, my body talks so loud.
See, I lead you to my heart,
It is a winding way, the way to my heart;
It is thorn-beset and very long;
It is walled and buttressed; it is sentineled,
And none could ever find the way alone.
So take my hand,
And I will lead you to my heart.
Our hearts lie so close
That when your heart trembles,
Mine will be afraid.
Our hearts beat so near
That when your heart stirs,
Mine will hear it.
Our hearts speak so loud
That all the world must know.
I have lost track of what world I am living in
Or what day I am seeing;
I only know that there is blue about—
The blue of your eyes;
I only know that there is music somewhere—
Words quick and broken that you have said.
Your parted lips hard on mine,
Your sudden arms crushing heaven into my heart,
Your broken words that tell me nothing and everything—
When God is thundering the last world into oblivion,
And quenching the farthest star,
And putting blackness around,
We two will cling to each other.
A Man Never Gets Over It
By Cornelia A. P. Comer
(From “The Wealth of Timmy Zimmerman,” in the “Atlantic Monthly.”)
“I mean to have a swell home, if I am a bachelor,” boasted Timmy. “I feel
like I wanted it. It’s just another game, I guess. But I’ll play a lone
hand—I don’t reckon a man can be ready for matrimony when it sends cold
shivers down his spine just to think of it, do you?”
Kid lowered his voice.
“Timmy, listen a minute. I’ll tell you something—_a man never gets over
feelin’ that way about it_. He just has to kind of chloroform them
feelings and hurry along with it. Because there ain’t no doubt it’s the
thing to do.”
Marriage, a Partnership
By Mrs. Newell Dwight Hillis
(American contemporary. From “The American Woman and Her Home.”)
There is a sense in which marriage is a contract, at the same time
business, moral and social....
Marriage is looked upon often as the consummation of the romance of life,
whereas, it is simply its beginning. It is called a matter of the heart,
which it should be, but it should also be an affair of the intellect.
It is fortunate that the day of early marriage has passed, since the
early marriage implied a choice guided almost wholly by the emotions, as
the intellect is slower in its development than the heart. But marriage
should involve both heart and brain and fulfill the chief desire of both.
One of the Best Things
By Charlotte Perkins Gilman
(From “The Duty of Surplus Women,” in “The Independent.”)
(See page 280)
If marriage laws are wrong, mend them. If marriage customs offend, change
them. If other people’s marriages do not please, improve on them. But
marriage itself remains a good thing—one of the best things in the world.
What Is Love?
By Elizabeth Philip
(English contemporary. Quoted from “Women the World Over.”)
What is Love, that all the world
Should talk so much about it?
What is Love, that neither you
Nor I can do without it?
What is Love that it should be
As changeful as the weather?
Is it joy or is it pain
Or is it both together?
Love’s a tyrant and a slave,
A torment and a treasure.
Having it, you know no peace,
Lacking it, no pleasure.
Would I shun it if I could?
Faith, I almost doubt it.
No, I’d rather bear its sting,
Than live my life without it.
The Art of Loving
By Ellen Key
(Contemporary Norwegian writer. From “Love and Marriage.”[10])
Every developed modern woman wishes to be loved not _enmale_, but _en
artiste_. Only a man whom she feels to possess an artist’s joy in her,
and who shows this joy in discreet and delicate contact with her soul as
with her body, can retain the love of the modern woman.
[10] J. G. Stokes Co., Pub.
A New Stimulus to Marriage
By Mrs. St. Clair Stobart
(See page 55)
As concerns marriage, if it should indeed be true that women, who can
find practical work in life outside marriage, would no longer be so eager
to marry, this would not necessarily be an evil, for it would probably
act as an additional incentive to man to desire marriage. Marriage has
been regarded for women as a profession in which failure involves, as
in other professions, humiliation. Women are trained, therefore, under
the present régime, to employ all the arts at their disposal to ensure
success in their profession.... If women were absorbed in professions
and occupations, such as farming, architecture, territorial service,
and the like, and only desired marriage when and because they loved, we
would have the loss in the woman of the wiles and artificialities which
formerly stimulated the man, and marriage would be counterbalanced by a
more healthy emulation on the part of the man, who would be desirous to
obtain something of value which was difficult to get.
The Old Suffragist
By Margaret Widdemer
(See page 156)
She could have loved—her woman passions beat
Deeper than theirs, or else she had not known
How to have dropped her heart beneath their feet
A living stepping-stone.
The little hands—did they not clutch her heart?
The guarding arms—was she not very tired?
Was it an easy thing to walk apart,
Unresting, undesired?
She gave away her crown of woman-praise,
Her gentleness and silent girlhood grace
To be a merriment for idle days,
Scorn for the market-place:
She strove for an unvisioned, far-off good,
For one far hope she knew she would not see:
These—not _her_ daughters—crowned with motherhood,
And love and beauty—free.
Postponing Marriage
By Ethel Maud Colquhoun
(See page 172)
A very important question in this connection is whether, in promising
fidelity to one woman, a lover is really undertaking more than he can
perform. When he postpones marriage to the latest possible moment man is
certainly not offering to his bride that gift of a life-long devotion
which is part of the ideal of true love.
Marriage of the “Friends”
By Lucretia Mott
(One of the early leaders in the Woman Suffrage, Anti-Slavery, and other
progressive movements of her time. A member of the Society of Friends—a
Quaker. The following is from a letter written in 1869 to Josephine
Butler, of England.)
In the Marriage union, no ministerial or other official aid is required
to consecrate or legalize the bond. After due care in making known their
intentions, the parties, in presence of their friends, announce their
covenant, with pledge of fidelity and affection, invoking Divine aid
for its faithful fulfilment. There is no assumed authority or admitted
inferiority, no _promise_ of obedience. Their independence is equal,
their dependence mutual, and their obligations reciprocal. This of course
has had its influence on married life and the welfare of families. The
permanence and happiness of the conjugal relation among us have ever
borne a favorable comparison with those of other denominations.
The Love That Pales
By Mary Wollstonecraft
1759-1797
(See page 121)
Youth is the season for love in both sexes; but in those days of
thoughtless enjoyment provision should be made for the more important
years of life, when reflection takes place of sensation. But Rousseau,
and most of the male writers who have followed his steps, have warmly
inculcated that the whole tendency of female education ought to be
directed to one point—to render them pleasing.
Let me reason with the supporters of this opinion who have any knowledge
of human nature. Do they imagine that marriage can eradicate the habitude
of life? The woman who has only been taught to please will soon find that
her charms are oblique sunbeams, and that they cannot have much effect
on her husband’s heart when they are seen every day, when the summer is
past and gone. Will she then have sufficient native energy to look into
herself for comfort, and cultivate her dormant faculties? Or is it not
more rational to expect that she will try to please other men, and, in
the emotions raised by the expectations of new conquests, endeavor to
forget the mortification her love or pride has received? When the husband
ceases to be a lover, and the time will inevitably come, her desire
of pleasing will then grow languid, or become a spring of bitterness;
and love, perhaps the most evanescent of all passions, gives place to
jealousy or vanity.
When Marriage Meant Bondage
By Lucy Stone
(Probably the most brilliant and effective of the early woman suffrage
orators. Is said to have possessed a beautiful speaking voice, and great
personal charm. The founder, with her husband, Henry Blackwell, of “The
Woman’s Journal.” From “Susan B. Anthony, Her Life and Work.”)
The common law, which regulates the relation of husband and wife, and is
modified only in a few instances by the statutes, gives the “custody” of
the wife’s person to the husband, so that he has a right to her even
against herself. It gives him her earnings, no matter with what weariness
they have been acquired, or how greatly she may need them for herself or
her children. It gives him a right to her personal property which he may
will away from her, also the use of her real estate, and in some of the
states, married women, insane persons and idiots are ranked together as
not fit to make a will; so that she is left with only one right, which
she enjoys in common with the pauper, the right of maintenance. Indeed,
when she has taken the sacred marriage vows, her legal existence ceases.
A Possible Utopia
By Josephine Pitcairn Knowles
(From “The Upholstered Cage.”)
Nothing is permanent, there is going on always a continual shuffling of
the cards of public opinion; trends of thought, standards of conduct
come and go; and so when the day comes that women are more economically
independent, then they will go on strike and sweep away all the unworthy
suitors and declare that they will only mate with the physically and
mentally sound, and then all considerations but love and respect will
go by the board. This will appear but a distant and unrealizable Utopia
to many who read this; nevertheless it will happen; all changes seem
incredible from the distance, but when they crystallize themselves in
fact nothing appears more natural or suitable. Every prophecy since the
commencement of history has been scouted in its first inception, but
when in time it has fulfilled itself it is seen to be the very thing
awaited, natural and obvious, and a direct result of the past sequence of
events.
Marriage and the Labor Market
By M. Carey Thomas
(See page 10)
Recent investigations of the after lives of college women and of their
sisters who have not been to college have shown us that only about
one-half of the daughters of men of the professional business classes
who do not inherit independent fortunes can look forward to marriage.
Statistics seem to prove that only fifty per cent. of the women of these
classes marry. What are the other fifty per cent. to do except work or
starve? Most women of independent means marry because their inherited
fortunes enable them to contribute to the support of the family. Women of
the working classes marry because they too, can help by their labor to
support the family. It is only the dowerless women who are prevented by
social usage from engaging in paid work outside the home, or in manual
labor inside the home, after marriage, who remain unmarried. All other
women are married and at work.
Is it well for the great middle classes of our civilized nations that is,
for the classes that are not very poor or very rich, to contain these
ever increasing number of celibate men and women? To such a question
there can be only one reply. If it is ill, as we all admit, why do we
not encourage the women of these middle classes to work and marry like
the women of the poorer classes who are practically all married? Why in
England and Germany and the United States are there these thousands upon
thousands of unmarried women teachers, a celibate class like the monks
and nuns of the Middle Ages, and like them an ever present menace to the
welfare of the state? Why in Italy, on the other hand, are so many of the
women public school teachers married? Because in Germany and England and
the United States women teachers lose their positions when they marry,
and marry and starve they cannot. Because in Italy women teachers are
allowed to marry and teach. Is it inconceivable that the state of the
future in which women as well as men will vote will deprive women of
bread because they wish to marry?
Marriage Laws in 1850
By Clarina Howard Nichols
(From speech at Woman’s Suffrage Convention in 1852. Quoted from “Life of
Susan B. Anthony.”)
If a wife is compelled to get a divorce on account of the infidelity
of the husband, she forfeits all right to the property which they have
earned together, while the husband, who is the offender still remains the
sole possession and control of the estate. She, the innocent party, goes
out childless and portionless by decree of law, and he, the criminal,
retains the home and children by favor of the same law. A drunkard takes
his wife’s clothing to pay his rum bills, and the court declares that the
action is legal because the wife belongs to the husband.
A Preventive of Divorce
By Margaret O. B. Wilkinson
(From “Parents and Their Problems.”)
(See page 173)
And here we come to the most potent of all causes of divorce—the
conventionally enforced idleness of many married women—parasitism, Mrs.
Schreiner calls it—and the overwork of many of our men.... The rush of
our present life comes to bear most heavily on our most chivalrous. It
wears them out physically and mentally and discourages them spiritually
before they are fifty years of age. It gives them only time enough to
nourish a vague doubt of the womanhood that is content to fatten their
toil, instead of laboring staunchly with them as healthy women should
do. They find their usefulness limited, their powers exhausted, and
wonder why. And then, sometimes in utter weariness they throw off the
yoke and try to begin again. But the women are not always wholly to
blame for this condition. Sometimes with a perfectly unreasoning “I can
support a wife” pride, a man will insist that a woman give up once and
forever the only work in which she takes an interest, and leaves her a
choice between idleness and housework in his home (which always, with or
without fitness, a man will permit a woman to do)! But if a woman should
say to her husband before, or soon after marriage, “John, it does not
please me that you should be a lawyer—you must become a stock broker,” or
“James, when you marry me you must give up the art you love and become a
carpenter,” would we not be quick to decry her injustice? Yet there are
men who still say to their wives, “The work you love you must give up.
You may do the work I provide or none at all.”
Of course, motherhood brings to women certain limitations, but the thing
we do not recognize is that these limitations are temporary. And, if,
in the ages past, women were able to combine with motherhood the most
arduous physical labors, it seems probable, that, in the present and
future when the demands of maternity are less rigorous, women should be
able, with gain to the race, to enter new fields of labor and accomplish
laudable results.
Surely there is no greater safeguard for man and woman than the work in
which mind and body can delight.
Overheard in the Marriage Congress
By Adella M. Parker
(From the Suffrage Edition of the “Daily News,” Tacoma, Wash.)
Once upon a time all the men in the world gathered together to make
the laws of marriage. And the women, learning of this, gathered also,
protesting and saying:
“A woman is one of the parties to every contract of marriage. Why do we
also not make the laws of marriage?”
“Woman’s place is at home,” said the men.
“But,” said the women, “the marriage agreement is the very basis of the
home.”
“Yes,” said the men, “but woman’s place is at home. It is not her place
to create the conditions that make the home.”
“For how long is the marriage contract?” asked the women.
“Forever,” said the men. Then the women said:
“Suppose we should insist upon helping to make the contracts we enter
into?”
“It wouldn’t be lawful,” said the men.
“Who makes the laws?” said the women.
“We do,” said the men.
“And do the men make the laws concerning the rights of children?” asked a
woman with a babe in her arms, and another at her heels.
“Oh yes,” said the men.
“And the laws concerning a woman’s rights with respect to her own child?”
“Yes,” said the men, “the women bear the children, but the men determine
their legal control.”
“Can the marriage contract ever be broken?” asked the bravest one of the
women.
“No,” said the men, “it can’t be broken except upon facts that can’t be
proved.”
“Do the men keep the marriage vows?” softly asked a woman ’way at the
rear.
“Hush,” said a portly landlord who owned a “restricted district;” “no
respectable woman would ask such a question.” Then a thoughtful woman
earnestly asked:
“Will there not be more murders, and more suicides and more insanity if
the women have not part in settling the terms of marriage?”
But the Lombrosos and the Allen McLane Hamiltons and all the other
criminologists and insanity experts paid no heed to this question.
Finally the women said:
“But suppose we don’t enter into these contracts that you make?”
“Oh, but you will,” said the men.
And they did. But some of the women got even.
The Cry of Man to Woman
By C. Gasquoine Hartley
(From “The Truth About Woman.”)
The cry of man to woman under the patriarchal system has been, and still
for the most part is, “Your value in our eyes is your sexuality; for your
work we care not.” But mark this! The penalty of this false adjustment
has fallen upon men. For women, in their turn, have come to value men
first in their capacity as providers for them, caring as little for man’s
sex value as men for women’s work-value. From the moment when women had
to place the economic considerations in love first, her faculties of
discrimination were no more of service for the selection of the fittest
man. Here we may find the explanation of the kind of men girls have been
willing to marry—old men, the unfit fathers, the diseased.... And it is
the race that has suffered.
When Love Went By
By Theodosia Garrison
(In “The Woman’s Home Companion.”)
When Love went by I scarcely bent
My eyes to see the way he went.
Life had so many joys to show,
What time I had to watch him go,
Or bid him in, whom folly sent.
But when the day was well nigh spent,
From out the casement long I leant,
Ah, would I had been watching so
When Love went by!
Gray day with dismal nights are blent,
Lonely and sad and discontent;
I would his feet had been more slow.
Oh, heart of mine, how could we know
Or realize what passing meant
When Love went by?
The Flirt
By Amelia Josephine Burr
(From “The Century Magazine.”)
Beautiful Boy, lend me your youth to play with;
My heart is old.
Lend me your fire to make my twilight gay with,
To warm my cold;
Prove that the power my look has not forsaken,
That at my will
My touch can quicken pulses and awaken
Man’s passion still.
The moment that I ask do not begrudge me.
I shall not stay.
I shall have gone, e’er you have time to judge me,
My empty way.
I am not worth remembrance, little brother,
Even to damn.
One kiss—O God! if I were only other
Than what I am!
I Can Go to Love Again
By Margaret Widdemer
(From “The Century Magazine.”)
Now that you are gone, loving hands, loving lips,
Now I can go back to love,
I can free my soul, that was kissed to eclipse,
I can fling my thoughts above.
I can run and stand in the wind, on the hill,
Now that I am lone and free,
Whistle through the dusk and the cleansing chill,
All my red-winged dreams to me.
I had dreamed of love like a wind, like a flame,
I had watched for love, a star;
That was never love that you brought when you came....
Silver cord and golden bar!
I was swathed with love like a veil, like a cloak;
I was bound with love a shroud,
All my red-winged dreams flew afar when you spoke....
Dreams I dared not call aloud.
They are waiting still in the hush, in the light,
Morning wind and leaves and dew,
Whisper of the grass, of the waves, of the night,
Things I gave away for you.
I can speed my soul to its old wonderlands,
Free my wild heart’s wings from chain,
Now that you are gone, loving lips, loving hands,
I can go to love again.
Marriage the Sole Means of Maintenance
By Josephine Butler
(English. Editor of “Woman’s Work and Woman’s Culture,” published in
1869. From the Introduction.)
What dignity can there be in the attitude of women in general, and toward
men, in particular, when marriage is held (and often necessarily so,
being the sole means of maintenance) to be the one end of a woman’s life,
when it is degraded to the level of a feminine profession, when those
who are soliciting a place in this profession resemble those flaccid
Brazilian creepers which cannot exist without support, and which sprawl
out their limp tendrils in every direction to find something—no matter
what—to hang upon; when the insipidity or the material necessities of so
many women’s lives make them ready to accept almost any man who may offer
himself? There has been a pretense of admiring this pretty helplessness
of women. But let me explain that I am not deprecating the condition of
dependence in which God has placed every human being, man or woman,—the
sweet interchange of services, the give and take of true affection, the
mutual support and aid of friends or lovers, who have each something to
give and to receive. That is a wholly different thing from the abject
dependence of one entire class of persons on another and a stronger
class. In the present case such a dependence is liable to peculiar
dangers by its complication with sexual emotions and motives, and with
relations which ought, in an advanced and Christian community, to rest
upon a free and deliberate choice,—a decision of the judgment and of the
heart, and into which the admission of a necessity, moral or material,
introduces a degrading element.... Cordelia ... declared, “Love is not
love when it is mingled with respects that stand aloof from the entire
point.” Truly, the present condition of society ... leaves little room
for the heart’s choice.
The Confidante
By Nora Elizabeth Barnhart
(In “The Independent.”)
I let him in and shut the door,
And when the key was turned,
There leapt a look into his face—
A look I had not learned!
Within the four walls of my heart
He sudden stalked a lord,
Possessed of all he did survey,
To hold by might of sword!
Ah! Then how gray and small the room
That I had deemed so fair!
How paltry were its furnishings,
Its wealth of book and chair!
The wide-flung windows seemed to shrink,
That long my stars had framed!
The stretch of daisy fields and hills
Lay startled and ashamed!
And all my little world was his,
Which once had stretched so wide!
He holds the key upon his palm,
And jingles it with pride!
Mirandy on the Monotony of Domesticity
By Dorothy Dix
(Foremost among American humorous writers. In “Good Housekeeping.”)
Dere ain’t nothin’ dull in bein’ married, and dere ain’t no sameness
’bout havin’, a husband which I reckon is de main reason dat most of
us wants one. Hits de ole maids an’ de ole bachelors what ain’t got
nobody to boss ’em an’ dispute ’em, an’ rile ’em, an’ fight wid ’em, dat
gets dull an’ lonesome lak. Not married folks.... Life in one of dese
ole bachelor clubs, or spinsters’ retreats makes me think of my batter
puddin’s. Hit sets well on a weak stomach, but hit aint got no flavor to
hit. Matrimony, hits lak one of de fruit cakes what I bakes at Christmas.
Hits full of ginger an’ spice, an’ plums, an’ raisins, an’ hits mighty
apt to give dem a night mare what partakes of hit, but hit sho has got
taste to hit.
Marriage Not an Assurance of Support
By Alice Henry
(From “The Trade Union Woman.”[11])
It often happens that marriage in course of time proves to be anything
but an assurance of support. Early widowed, the young mother herself may
have to earn her children’s bread. Or the husband may become crippled, or
an invalid, or he may turn out a drunkard or spendthrift. In any of these
circumstances, the responsibility and burden of supporting the family
usually falls upon the wife. Is it strange that the group so often drifts
into undeserved pauperism, sickness and misery, perhaps later on even
into those depths of social maladjustment that bring about crime?
[11] Henry Holt Publishing Co.
The Price of Love
By Mary Austin
(From “Love and the Soul Maker.”[12])
“But love,” Valda insisted, ... “should be free.”
“If it is, Nature didn’t make it so. Automatically the end of loving ties
up with it those who love and the unborn.
“No sooner do we begin upon it than we enter upon certainties of
effecting the happiness of the one who loves with us, and the potential
third. It is so little free, that we can neither go out of it nor into
it on the mere invitation, nor abate by saying so one of the widening
circles of its disaster. Whether for better or worse, love is irrevocably
tied to its consequences.”
By Mme. de Girardin
It is not easy to be a widow; one must resume all the modesty of girlhood
without being allowed even to feign ignorance.
By Comtesse d’ Houdetot
I have seen more than one woman drown her honor in the clear water of
diamonds.
By De Maintenon
Before marriage woman is a queen; after marriage, a subject.
By de l’Enclos
The resistance of a woman is not always a proof of her virtue, but more
frequently of her experience.
By Anne Morton Barnard
A prison, plus “love”, is tyranny with its crown carefully hidden.
Mrs. W. K. Clifford
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?
By George Eliot
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.
By Marguerite de Valois
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.
By Countess Natahlie
Love is the association of two beings for the benefit of one.
George Eliot
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.
By “Ouida”
What is it that love does to woman? Without it, she only sleeps; with it
alone, she lives.
By Mme. de Lambert
It is only the coward who reproaches as a dishonor the love a woman has
cherished for him.
By Amelia E. Barr
The truth is, women are lost because they do not deliberate.
By Mrs. Alec Tweedie
(See page 126)
There will be more marriages, and happier marriages, when women are on an
equal footing with men in education and income.
By Mme. du Bocage
The coquette comprises her reputation, and sometimes even her virtue;
the prude, on the contrary, often sacrifices her honor in private, and
preserves it in public.
By George Sand
A woman cannot guarantee her heart, even though her husband be the
greatest and most perfect of men.
By Mme. de Rieux
In all ill-mated marriages, the fault is less the woman’s than the man’s,
as the choice depended on her the least.
By Marguerite de Valois
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.
By Mme. Bachi
Men bestow compliments only on women who deserve none.
By Mme. de Rieux
Marriage is a lottery in which men stake their liberty, and women their
happiness.
By Mme. de Flahaut
Manners, morals, customs change; the passions are always the same.
By Mme. Necker
The quarrels of lovers are like summer showers that leave the country
more verdant and beautiful.
By Mme. Reyband
To continue love in marriage is a science.
By Anna Jameson
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.
By Amelia E. Barr
Cruelly tempted, perplexed and bewildered, when passion is stronger than
reason, women do not think of consequences, but go blindfolded, headlong
to their ruin.
By Louise Colet
Better to have never loved, than to have loved unhappily, or to have
_half_ loved.
By De Pompadour
Love is the passion of great souls; it makes them merit glory, when it
does not turn their heads.
Mme. de Stael
I am glad I am not a man, as I should be obliged to marry a woman.
By Mme. de Motteville
A woman can be held by no stronger tie than the knowledge that she is
loved.
[12] Doubleday, Page and Co.