Part 1

_Woman and the Wits_

Woman and Her Wits

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

New York Boston

H. M. CALDWELL CO.

Dedicated TO R. R. WITH HOMAGE.

G. F. M.

LONDON, 1899.

_PREFACE_

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

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

_G. F. MONKSHOOD._

_London, 1899._

Woman and the Wits

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

_Proverb._

* * * * *

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

_Holmes._

* * * * *

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

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

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

_Balzac._

* * * * *

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

_Mme. de Maintenon._

* * * * *

Two women placed together make cold weather.

_Shakespeare._

* * * * *

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

_Washington Irving._

* * * * *

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

_Sabatier._

* * * * *

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

_Ricard._

* * * * *

Love decreases when it ceases to increase.

_Chateaubriand._

* * * * *

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

_De Musset._

* * * * *

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

_Turkish Spy._

* * * * *

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

_Gautier._

* * * * *

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

_Tolstoi._

* * * * *

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

_Emerson._

* * * * *

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

_Buxton._

* * * * *

Woman is a miracle of divine contradictions.

_Michelet._

* * * * *

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

_Proverb._

* * * * *

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

_Scotch Proverb._

* * * * *

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

_Joubert._

* * * * *

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

_Ariosto._

* * * * *

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

_Rochepedre._

* * * * *

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

_Mme. Necker._

* * * * *

Wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity.

_Bacon._

* * * * *

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

_Legouvé._

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

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

_Dupuy._

* * * * *

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

_Marston._

* * * * *

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

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

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

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

Tears are the strength of women.

_Saint-Evremond._

* * * * *

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

_Smiles._

* * * * *

A woman’s thoughts run before her actions.

_Shakespeare._

* * * * *

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

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

Silence and modesty are the best ornaments of women.

_Euripides._

* * * * *

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

_Colton._

* * * * *

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

_Mme. de Motteville._

* * * * *

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

_Addison._

* * * * *

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

_Massinger._

* * * * *

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

_Balzac._

* * * * *

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

_Holmes._

* * * * *

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

_Junius._

* * * * *

If women were humbler men would be honester.

_Vanbrugh._

* * * * *

These women are shrewd tempters with their tongues.

_Shakespeare._

* * * * *

Nature makes fools; women make coxcombs.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

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

_Landor._

* * * * *

Women are priestesses of the unknown.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

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

_De Bernard._

* * * * *

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

_Mezeray._

* * * * *

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

_Alexis._

* * * * *

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

_Wallace._

* * * * *

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

_Marcus Aurelius._

* * * * *

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

_Marguerite de Valois._

* * * * *

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

_Leigh Hunt._

* * * * *

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

_Channing._

* * * * *

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

_Mme. de Girardin._

* * * * *

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

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

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

_Buckle._

* * * * *

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

_Dubay._

* * * * *

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

_Ricard._

* * * * *

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

_Sheldon._

* * * * *

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

_Simonides._

* * * * *

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

_Solomon._

* * * * *

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

_Channing._

* * * * *

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

_Lamb._

* * * * *

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

_Goldsmith._

* * * * *

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

_Holmes._

* * * * *

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

_Karr._

* * * * *

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

_Napoleon I._

* * * * *

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

_Chesterfield._

* * * * *

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

_Æschylus._

* * * * *

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

_Lingrés._

* * * * *

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

_Goethe._

* * * * *

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

_Balzac._

* * * * *

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

_Thackeray._

* * * * *

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

_Zimmerman._

* * * * *

Woman alone knows true loyalty of affection.

_Schiller._

* * * * *

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

_Mme. du Deffand._

* * * * *

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

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

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

_Johnson._

* * * * *

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

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

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

_Eugenie de Guérin._

* * * * *

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

_Parfait._

* * * * *

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

_Sir Walter Raleigh._

* * * * *

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

_Eugenie de Guérin._

* * * * *

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

_Rochepedre._

* * * * *

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

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

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

_Rousseau._

* * * * *

There is nothing in love but what we imagine.

_St Beuve._

* * * * *

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

_Junius._

* * * * *

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

_Chamfort._

* * * * *

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

_Laboulaye._

* * * * *

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

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

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

_Balzac._

* * * * *

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

_Luther._

* * * * *

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

_Victor Hugo._

* * * * *

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

_Willis._

* * * * *

Trust not a woman, even when dead.

_Latin Proverb._

* * * * *

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

_Comtesse d’Houdetot._

* * * * *

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

_Oldmixon._

* * * * *

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

_Mme. dé Sonza._

* * * * *

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

_Madame Geoffrin._

* * * * *

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

_Steele._

* * * * *

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

_Sophie Arnould._

* * * * *

True modesty protects a woman better than her garments.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

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

_Guyard._

* * * * *

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

_Rochepedre._

* * * * *

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

_De Maintenon._

* * * * *

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

_De Varennes._

* * * * *

The test of civilisation is the estimate of woman.

_Curtis._

* * * * *

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

_Plautus._

* * * * *

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

_Duclos._

* * * * *

A flattered woman is always indulgent.

_Chenier._

* * * * *

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

_German Proverb._

* * * * *

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

_Johnson._

* * * * *

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

_Washington Irving._

* * * * *

Divination seems heightened to its highest power in woman.

_Bronson Alcott._

* * * * *

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

_Desnoyers._

* * * * *

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

_Montesquieu._

* * * * *

Women are supernumerary when present, and missed when absent.

_Portuguese Proverb._

* * * * *

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

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

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

_Dupuy._

* * * * *

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

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

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

_Pelletan._

* * * * *

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

_Houssaye._

* * * * *

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

_Houssaye._

* * * * *

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

_Houssaye._

* * * * *

All passions are good when one masters them.

_Rousseau._

* * * * *

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

_Gregoire._

* * * * *

There is something of woman in everything that pleases.

_Dupaty._

* * * * *

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

_Balzac._

* * * * *

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

_Chillon._

* * * * *

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

_Holmes._

* * * * *

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

_Cervantes._

* * * * *

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

_Dorat._

* * * * *

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

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

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

_Ouida._

* * * * *

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

_Bacon._

* * * * *

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

_Mdlle. de Lespinasse._

* * * * *

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

_Ninon de l’Enclos._

* * * * *

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

_Francis._

* * * * *

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

_Browne._

* * * * *

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

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

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

_Mrs W. K. Clifford._

* * * * *

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

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Women have no worse enemies than women.

_Duclos._

* * * * *

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

_Johnson._

* * * * *

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

_Beecher._

* * * * *

Venus always saves the lover whom she leads.

_Delatouche._

* * * * *

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

_Leigh Hunt._

* * * * *

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

_Curtis._

* * * * *

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

_Steele._

* * * * *

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

_Chesterfield._

* * * * *

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

_Mme. de Rieux._

* * * * *

Women generally consider consequences in love, seldom in resentment.

_Colton._

* * * * *

Woo the widow whilst she is in weeds.

_German Proverb._

* * * * *

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

_De Musset._

* * * * *

The head is always the dupe of the heart.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

O women! you are very extraordinary children.

_Diderot._

* * * * *

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

_Roqueplan._

* * * * *

A man who can love deeply is never utterly contemptible.

_Balzac._

* * * * *