Part 2

If love gives wit to fools, it undoubtedly takes it from wits.

_A. Karr._

* * * * *

The great defect in men is that they never put themselves in the place of the woman they judge.

_Mme. D’Epinay._

* * * * *

There is not a love, however violent it may be, to which ambition and interest do not add something.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

A man philosophises better than a woman on the human heart, but she reads the hearts of men better than he.

_Rousseau._

* * * * *

What a woman should demand of a man in courtship, or after it, is, first, respect for her, as she is a woman; and next to that, to be respected by him above all other women.

_Lamb._

* * * * *

A beautiful and chaste woman is the perfect workmanship of God, the true glory of angels, the rare miracle of earth, and the sole wonder of the world.

_Hermes._

* * * * *

Just corporeal enough to attest humanity, yet sufficiently transparent to let the celestial origin shine through.

_Ruffini._

* * * * *

If we wish to know the political and moral condition of a State, we must ask what rank women hold in it. Their influence embraces the whole of life.

_Aimi Martin._

* * * * *

A woman,—where can she put her hope in storms, if not in Heaven?

_Mitchell._

* * * * *

Woman’s heart is like a lithographer’s stone,—what is once written upon it cannot be rubbed out.

_Thackeray._

* * * * *

The lives of a multitude of women all around us contain a large element of unsuccessful outward or inward ambitions,—vain attempts and prayers.

_Alger._

* * * * *

An ideal type, in which meekness, gentleness, patience, humility, faith and love are the most prominent features, is not naturally male, but female.

_Lecky._

* * * * *

Even though the wife be little, bow down to her in speaking.

_Talmud._

* * * * *

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.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

’Tis a terrible thing that we cannot wish young ladies well without wishing them to become old women.

_Johnson._

* * * * *

We men have no right to say it, but the omnipotence of Eve is in humility.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

Rejected lovers need never despair! There are four-and-twenty hours in a day, and not a moment in the twenty-four in which a woman may not change her mind.

_De Finod._

* * * * *

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.

_Marguerite de Valois._

* * * * *

The only true and firm friendship is that between man and woman, because it is the only affection exempt from actual or possible rivalry.

_A. Comte._

* * * * *

The yoke of love is sometimes heavier than that of all the virtues.

_Montaigne._

* * * * *

Love is the poetry of the senses.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

Love is the beginning, the middle and the end of everything.

_Lacordaire._

* * * * *

Women are constantly the dupes, or the victims of their extreme sensitiveness.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

When a man says he has a wife, it means that a wife has him.

_Gavarni._

* * * * *

Woman is more constant in hatred than in love.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

A woman dies twice; the day that she quits life and the day that she ceases to please.

_Weiss._

* * * * *

Love is the association of two beings for the benefit of one.

_Countess Nathalie._

What a woman wills, God wills.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

Some women kindle emotion so rapidly in a man’s heart, that the judgment cannot keep pace with it.

_Hardy._

* * * * *

The Bible says that woman is the last thing which God made. He must have made it on Saturday night. It shows fatigue.

_Dumas._

* * * * *

Woman’s power is for rule, not for battle; and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement and decision.

_Ruskin._

* * * * *

Woman is a delightful musical instrument, of which love is the bow and man the artist.

_Bayle._

* * * * *

Fit the same intellect to a man, and it is a bowstring; to a woman, and it is a harpstring.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

A clip of a wife roasts her husband, stouthearted though he may be, without a fire, and hands him over to premature old age.

_Hesiod._

* * * * *

There are three things I have always loved and have never understood—painting, music, and woman.

_Fontenelle._

* * * * *

Learned women have lost all credit by their impertinent talkativeness and conceit.

_Swift._

* * * * *

The coquette compromises her reputation, and sometimes even her virtue; the prude, on the contrary, often sacrifices her honour in private, and preserves it in public.

_Mme. du Boccage._

* * * * *

When a woman has explicitly condemned a given action, she apparently gathers courage for its commission under a little different conditions.

_Howells._

* * * * *

The homage of a man may be delightful until he asks straight for love, by which woman renders homage.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

The Divine Right of Beauty is the only one an Englishman ought to acknowledge, and a pretty woman is the only tyrant he is not authorised to resist.

_Junius._

* * * * *

The beauty of a lovely woman is like music.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

If there be any one whose power is in beauty, in purity, in goodness, it is woman.

_Ward Beecher._

* * * * *

God created woman only to tame man.

_Voltaire._

* * * * *

O woman! it is thou that causeth the tempests that agitate mankind.

_Rousseau._

* * * * *

The laughter, the tears, and the song of a woman are equally deceptive.

_Latin Proverb._

A woman’s lot is made for her by the love she accepts.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

Woman is an idol that man worships until he throws it down.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

She who dresses for others besides her husband, marks herself a wanton.

_Euripides._

* * * * *

With soft persuasive prayers woman wields the sceptre of the life which she charmeth.

_Schiller._

* * * * *

Men are the cause of women’s dislike for one another.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

The beautiful woman always gives me joy, and a high mind, too, if I think what she does for me.

_Reinmar._

* * * * *

Women have the genius of charity. A man gives but his gold; a woman adds to it her sympathy.

_Legouvé._

* * * * *

A woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.

_Johnson._

* * * * *

The only way to get the upper hand of a woman, is to be more woman than she is herself.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

The devastating egotism of man is properly foreign to woman; though there are many women as haughty, hard and imperious as any man.

_Alger._

* * * * *

There are some women who think virtue was given them as claws were given to cats—to do nothing but scratch with.

_Jerrold._

* * * * *

An immodest woman is food without salt.

_Arabian Proverb._

* * * * *

The evil in women is usually communicated by men. Much of the deceit of which they are accused is the effect of masculine inoculation.

_Browne._

* * * * *

The lover never sees personal resemblances in his mistress to her kindred or to others.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

The friendship of a man is often a support; that of a woman is always a consolation.

_Rochepedre._

* * * * *

Woman is the blood royal of life; let there be slight degrees of precedence among them, but let them all be sacred.

_Burns._

* * * * *

The woman who is resolved to be respected can make herself to be so, even amidst an army of soldiers.

_Cervantes._

* * * * *

To form devices quick is woman’s wit.

_Euripides._

* * * * *

Woman’s power is over the affections. A beautiful dominion is hers, but she risks its forfeiture when she seeks to extend it.

_Bovée._

* * * * *

To remain virtuous, a man has only to combat his own desires; a woman must resist her own inclinations and the continual attack of man.

_De Latena._

* * * * *

A cunning woman is a knavish fool.

_Lyttleton._

* * * * *

A woman often thinks she regrets the lover, when she only regrets the love.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

Even the satyrs, like men, in one way or another, could win the love of a woman.

_Malcolm Johnson._

* * * * *

You wish to create Eve over again, or rather to call forth a female Adam. I object.

_Sheldon._

* * * * *

Let a man pray that none of his woman-kind should form a just estimation of him.

_Thackeray._

* * * * *

In love, she who gives her portrait promises the original.

_Dupuy._

* * * * *

The man who seems to care little whether he charms or attracts women is he who offends and seduces.

_Goethe._

* * * * *

To correct the faults of man, we address the head; to correct those of woman, we address the heart.

_De Beauchêne._

* * * * *

The man flaps about with a bunch of feathers: the woman goes to work softly with a cloth.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Glory can be for a woman but the brilliant mourning of happiness.

_Mme. de Stael._

* * * * *

Women have more of what is termed good sense than men. They cannot reason wrong, for they do not reason at all.

_Hazlitt._

* * * * *

In anger against a rival, all women, even duchesses, employ invective. Then they make use of everything as a weapon.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

What is civilisation? I answer, the power of good women.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

Science seldom renders men amiable; women, never.

_Beauchêne._

* * * * *

The egotism of woman is always for two.

_Mme. de Stael._

* * * * *

The wisest woman you talk with is ignorant of something that you know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

A widow is like a frigate of which the first captain has been shipwrecked.

_Karr._

* * * * *

Where women are, are all kinds of mischief.

_Menander._

* * * * *

Woman is the symbol of moral and physical beauty.

_Gautier._

* * * * *

No man knows what the wife of his bosom is—no man knows what a ministering angel she is—until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world.

_Washington Irving._

* * * * *

Women have, in general, but one object, which is their beauty; upon which scarce any flattery is too gross for them.

_Chesterfield._

* * * * *

If Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter, the face of the whole world would have been changed.

_Pascal._

* * * * *

A worthless girl has enslaved me,—me, whom no enemy ever did.

_Epictetus._

* * * * *

An indigent female, the object probably of love and tenderness in her youth, at a more advanced age a withered flower, has nothing to do but retire and die.

_Hall._

* * * * *

In love affairs, from innocence to the fault, there is but a kiss.

_Alberic Second._

* * * * *

The destiny of women is to please, to be amiable, and to be loved.

_Rochebrune._

* * * * *

A beautiful woman is the paradise of the eyes, the hell of the soul, and the purgatory of the purse.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

If you would make a pair of good shoes, take for the sole the tongue of a woman; it never wears out.

_Alsatian Proverb._

* * * * *

One is always a woman’s first lover.

_De Laclos._

* * * * *

A man must be a fool who does not succeed in making a woman believe that which flatters her.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

I have seen faces of women that were fair to look upon, yet one could see that the icicles were forming round these women’s hearts.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

The highest mark of esteem a woman can give a man is to ask his friendship, and the most signal proof of her indifference is to offer him hers.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

The fire of woman’s passion, consuming the wilderness of her limitation, rises to the pure flame that has blazed on every altar of Eros between the Nile and the Columbia.

_Browne._

* * * * *

Frailty! thy name is woman.

_Shakespeare._

* * * * *

The tears of a young widow lose their bitterness when wiped by the hands of love.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

She could not reconcile the anxieties of spiritual life, involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

Venus herself, if she were bald, would not be Venus.

_Apuleius._

* * * * *

Women often deceive to conceal what they feel; men to simulate what they do not feel—love.

_Legouvé._

* * * * *

Women are the happiest beings of the creation; in compensation for our services, they reward us with a happiness of which they retain more than half.

_De Varennes._

* * * * *

No woman is too silly not to have a genius for spite.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

There is no compensation for the woman who feels that the chief relation of her life has been a mistake. She has lost her crown.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

There are plenty of women who believe women to be incapable of anything but to cook, incapable of interest in affairs.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

A woman is happy and attains all that she desires when she captivates a man; hence the great object of her life is to master the art of captivating men.

_Tolstoi._

* * * * *

The secret of youthful looks in an aged face is easy shoes, easy corsets and an easy conscience.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Who does not know the bent of woman’s fancy?

_Spenser._

* * * * *

Love makes mutes of those who habitually speak most fluently.

_De Souderi._

* * * * *

Every great passion is but a prolonged hope.

_Feuchères._

* * * * *

Beauty in woman is power.

_De Rotrou._

* * * * *

We are by no means aware how much we are influenced by our passions.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.

_Gautier._

* * * * *

Glances are the first _billets-doux_ of love.

_De L’Enclos._

* * * * *

Beauty and ugliness disappear equally under the wrinkles of age; one is lost in them, the other hidden.

_Petit-Senn._

* * * * *

Where pride begins, love ends.

_Lavater._

* * * * *

The girl who wakes the poet’s sigh is a very different creature from the girl who makes his soup.

_Sheldon._

* * * * *

Women know a point more than the devil.

_Italian Proverb._

* * * * *

To a gentleman every woman is a lady in right of her sex.

_Lytton._

* * * * *

Did you ever hear of a man’s growing lean by the reading of “Romeo and Juliet,” or blowing his brains out because Desdemona was maligned?

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Great women belong to history and to self-sacrifice.

_Leigh Hunt._

* * * * *

The heart of a coquette is like a rose, of which the lovers pluck the leaves, leaving only the thorns for the husband.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

In our age women commonly preserve the publication of their good offices and their vehement affection toward their husbands until they have lost them.

_Montaigne._

* * * * *

When women cannot be revenged, they do as children do—they then cry.

_Cardan._

* * * * *

At twenty, man is less a lover of woman than of women; he is more in love with the sex than with the individual, however charming she may be.

_La Bretonne._

* * * * *

The man who has taken one wife deserves a crown of patience; the man who has taken two deserves two crowns of pity.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

The knowledge of the charms one possesses prompts one to utilise them.

_Sénancourt._

* * * * *

There is no more agreeable companion than the one woman who loves us.

_St Pierre._

* * * * *

Jealousy is the sister of love, as the devil is the brother of the angels.

_Boufflers._

* * * * *

Men bestow compliments only on women who deserve none.

_Bachi._

* * * * *

Two smiles that approach each other end in a kiss.

_Hugo._

* * * * *

There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which beams and blazes in the dark hours of adversity.

_Washington Irving._

* * * * *

A woman is never displeased if we please several other women, provided she is preferred. It is so many more triumphs for her.

_Ninon de L’Enclos._

There is a woman at the beginning of all great things.

_Lamartine._

* * * * *

Women prefer us to say a little evil of them, rather than to say nothing of them at all.

_Ricard._

* * * * *

One syllable of woman’s speech can dissolve more of love than a man’s heart can hold.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Women, deceived by men, want to marry them; it is a kind of revenge, as good as any other.

_Beaumanoir._

* * * * *

A woman is seldom tenderer to a man than immediately after she has deceived him.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Women like balls and assemblies, as a hunter likes a place where game abounds.

_De Latena._

* * * * *

Fortune rules in nuptials; women are as like to turn out badly as to prove a source of joy.

_Euripides._

* * * * *

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

_Chevalier._

* * * * *

Man without woman is head without body; woman without man is body without head.

_German Proverb._

* * * * *

Wrinkles disfigure a woman less than ill-nature.

_Dupuy._

* * * * *

I am sure I do not mean it an injury to women when I say there is a sort of sex in souls.

_Steele._

* * * * *

A woman, when she has passed forty becomes an illegible scrawl; only an old woman is capable of divining old women.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

A beautiful woman is never silly; she has the best wit that a man may ask of a woman, she is pretty.

_Stahl._

* * * * *

All the reasons of men are not worth one sentiment of woman.

_Voltaire._

* * * * *

A man never knows how to live until a woman has lived with him.

_Mere._

* * * * *

It may not be impossible to find a constant heart in an unfaithful body.

_Stahl._

* * * * *

Women may be pardoned for lack of common sense. The culprit in them is the heart.

_Stahl._

* * * * *

The history of love would be the history of humanity; it would be a beautiful book to write.

_Nodier._

* * * * *

Love is composed of so many sensations, that something new of it can always be said.

_Saint Prosper._

* * * * *

A woman is frank when she is not uselessly untruthful.

_France._

* * * * *

Jealousy for a woman is only a wound to self-respect. In man it is a torture profound as moral suffering, continuous as physical suffering.

_France._

* * * * *

Love preserves beauty, and the flesh of woman is fed with caresses as are bees with flowers.

_France._

* * * * *

Every lover who tries to find in love anything else than love is not a lover.

_Bourget._

* * * * *

One must be sensual to be human.

_France._

When a lover gives, he demands—and much more than he has given.

_Parry._

* * * * *

In most men there is a dead poet whom the man survives.

_St Beuve._

* * * * *

The Egyptian people, wisest then of nations, gave to their Spirit of Wisdom the form of a woman; and into her hand, for a symbol, the weaver’s shuttle.

_Ruskin._

* * * * *

The life of a woman can be divided into three epochs; in the first she dreams of love, in the second she experiences it, in the third she regrets it.

_Saint Prosper._

* * * * *

The ruses of women multiply with their years.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

Women wish to be loved, not because they are pretty or good or well-bred or graceful or intelligent, but because they are themselves.

_Amiel._

* * * * *

Society depends upon women. The nations who confine them are unsociable.

_Voltaire._

* * * * *

A beautiful woman with the qualities of a noble man is the most perfect thing in nature.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

Woman, in accordance with her unbroken, clear-seeing nature, loses herself and what she has of heart and happiness in the object she loves.

_Richter._

* * * * *

Society is the book of women.

_Rousseau._

* * * * *

Women, like princes, find few real friends.

_Lyttleton._

* * * * *

In love affairs, a young shepherdess is a better partner than an old queen.

_De Finod._

* * * * *

To “Get out of my house,” and “What do you want with my wife?” there is no answer.

_Don Quixote._

* * * * *

Our ice-eyed brain women are really admirable if we only ask of them just what they can give, and no more.

_Holmes._