Part 5

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._

* * * * *

I love men, not because they are men, but because they are not women.

_Queen Christina._

* * * * *

Flow, wine! smile, women! and the universe is consoled.

_Beranger._

* * * * *

Discretion is more necessary to women than eloquence, because they have less trouble to speak well than to speak little.

_Du Bose._

* * * * *

There is no gown or garment that worse becomes a woman than when she will be wise.

_Luther._

* * * * *

Women live only in the emotion that love gives.

_Houssaye._

* * * * *

On great occasions it is almost always women who have given the strongest proofs of virtue and devotion.

_Montholon._

* * * * *

God bless all good women! To their soft hands and pitying hearts we must all come at last.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Neither education nor reason gives women much security against the influence of example.

_Johnson._

* * * * *

The hell for women who are only handsome is old age.

_Saint-Evremond._

* * * * *

Men are women’s playthings, women are the devil’s.

_Victor Hugo._

* * * * *

A woman, if she is bent on ill, never goes begging to the gardener for material; she has a garden at home.

_Plautus._

* * * * *

The woman in us still prosecutes a deceit like that begun in the garden; and our understandings are wedded to an Eve as fatal as the mother of their miseries.

_Glanvill._

* * * * *

Among all animals, from man to the dog, the heart of a mother is always a sublime thing.

_Dumas._

* * * * *

There are no ugly women; there are only women who do not know how to look pretty.

_Berryer._

* * * * *

It is not for good women that men have fought battles, given their lives, and staked their souls.

_Mrs W. K. Clifford._

* * * * *

Women’s sympathies give a tone, like the harp of Æolus, to the slightest breath.

_Mitchell._

* * * * *

A coquette is a woman who places her honour in a lottery; ninety-nine chances to one that she will lose it.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

The honour of woman is badly guarded when it is guarded by keys and spies. No woman is honest who does not wish to be.

_Dupuy._

* * * * *

The man that lays his hand upon a woman, save in the way of kindness, is a wretch whom ’twere gross flattery to name a coward.

_Tobin._

* * * * *

Beauty deceives women in making them establish on an ephemeral power the pretensions of a whole life.

_De Bigincourt._

* * * * *

I do not know that she was virtuous; but she was ugly, and with a woman that is half the battle.

_Heine._

* * * * *

Love works miracles every day; such as weakening the strong and strengthening the weak; making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools; favouring the passions, destroying reason, and, in a word, turning everything topsy-turvy.

_Marguerite de Valois._

* * * * *

In love, as in everything else, experience is a physician who never comes until after the disorder is cured.

_De la Tour._

* * * * *

Those who always speak well of women do not know them enough; those who always speak ill of them do not know them at all.

_Pigault-Lebrun._

* * * * *

Were we perfectly acquainted with our idol, we should never passionately desire it.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

Love is like the moon; when it does not increase, it decreases.

_Ségur._

* * * * *

As soon as women are ours, we are no longer theirs.

_Montaigne._

* * * * *

A woman laughs when she can, and weeps when she will.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

Woman may complain to God, as subjects do of tyrant princes; but otherwise she hath no appeal in the causes of unkindness.

_Jeremy Taylor._

* * * * *

A bachelor seeks a wife to avoid solitude; a married man seeks society to avoid a _tête-à-tête_.

_Varennes._

* * * * *

Silence and blushing are the eloquence of women.

_Chinese Proverb._

* * * * *

A woman who has not seen her lover for the whole day considers that day lost for her; the tenderest of men consider it only lost for love.

_Madame de Salm._

* * * * *

A woman that is ill-treated has no refuge in her griefs but in silence and secrecy.

_Steele._

* * * * *

There are only two good women in the world; one of them is dead, and the other is not to be found.

_German Proverb._

* * * * *

The most beautiful object in the world, it will be allowed, is a beautiful woman.

_Macaulay._

* * * * *

No woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more than she can be witty only by the help of speech.

_Hughes._

* * * * *

Every pretty girl one sees is a reminiscence of the Garden of Eden.

_Sheldon._

* * * * *

The Marys who bring ointment for our feet get but little thanks.

_Thackeray._

* * * * *

We censure the inconstancy of women when we are the victims; we find it charming when we are the objects.

_Desnoyers._

* * * * *

The purer the golden vessel the more readily is it bent; the higher worth of women is sooner lost than that of men.

_Richter._

* * * * *

Nature has given beauty to women which can resist shields and spears. She who is beautiful is stronger than iron and flame.

_Anacreon._

* * * * *

The heart of true womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it.

_Hawthorne._

* * * * *

Millions of people, generations of slaves, perish in this penal servitude of the factories merely in order to satisfy the whim of woman.

_Tolstoi._

* * * * *

A woman of sense ought to be above flattering any man.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time making nets, not cages.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Woman knows that the better she obeys the surer she is to rule.

_Michelet._

* * * * *

I have found that there is an intimate connection between the character of women and the fancy that makes them choose such and such material.

_Prosper Merimée._

* * * * *

Woman is the most perfect when the most womanly.

_Gladstone._

* * * * *

Woman is at once apple and serpent.

_Heine._

* * * * *

One must have loved a woman of genius in order to comprehend what happiness there is in loving a fool.

_Talleyrand._

* * * * *

The most reasonable women have hours wherein to be unreasonable.

_Cherbuliez._

* * * * *

The love of a bad woman kills others; the love of a good and noble woman kills herself.

_George Sand._

* * * * *

Woman is born for love, and it is impossible to turn her from seeking it.

_Ossoli._

* * * * *

Man sometimes asks of a book the truth; a woman always her illusions.

_Goncourt._

* * * * *

Societies commence with polygamy and finish with polyandry.

_Goncourt._

* * * * *

In a truly loving heart either jealousy kills love or love kills jealousy.

_Bourget._

* * * * *

It is not the treachery of women, but our own, which makes us beware of them.

_Bourget._

* * * * *

The world either breaks or hardens the heart.

_Chamfort._

* * * * *

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

_De Guerin._

* * * * *

Great vices, and great virtues, are exceptions in mankind.

_Napoleon I._

* * * * *

Most women caress sin before embracing penitence.

_Durois-Fontanelle._

* * * * *

When Eve ate the apple she knew she was naked. I have often thought, as I looked at her dancing daughters, that another bite would be of service to them.

_Sheldon._

* * * * *

Woman is a creature between man and the angels.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

Education raises many poor women to a stage of refinement that makes them suitable companions for men of a higher rank, and not suitable for those of their own.

_Lecky._

* * * * *

Elegance of appearance, ornaments, and dress, these are women’s badges of distinction; in these they delight and glory.

_Titus Livius._

* * * * *

Men who paint sylphs, fall in love with some _bonne et brave femme_, heavy-heeled and freckled.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

Woman—the gods be thanked!—is not even collaterally related to that sentimental abstraction called an angel.

_Browne._

* * * * *

There will always remain something to be said of woman, as long as there is one on the earth.

_Boufflers._

* * * * *

There are no oaths that make so many perjurers as the vows of love.

_Rochebrune._

* * * * *

The heart makes of woman a sublime being, the senses in their brutality make of her a true being.

_Bourget._

* * * * *

It is neither honour nor love which makes a betrayed man think of killing a woman. Murder comes of the senses.

_Bourget._

* * * * *

Love is a religion and its cult must cost more than that of all the other religions.

_Bourget._

* * * * *

Of an ancient love one may make everything, even a new love—everything, except friendship.

_Bourget._

* * * * *

One blushes oftener from the wounds of self-love than from modesty.

_Guibert._

* * * * *

When the intoxication of love has passed, we laugh at the perfections it had discovered.

_De Lenclos._

* * * * *

The passions are the orators of great assemblies.

_Rivarol._

* * * * *

Every one speaks well of his heart, but no one dares to speak well of his mind.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

There are people who are _almost_ in love, _almost_ famous, and _almost_ happy.

_De Krudener._

* * * * *

Women are an aristocracy.

_Michelet._

* * * * *

Women are too imaginative and sensitive to have much logic.

_Mme. du Deffand._

* * * * *

The man who lives in indifference is one who has never seen the woman he could love.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

I wish Adam had died with all his ribs in his body.

_Boucicault._

* * * * *

One mother is more venerable than a thousand fathers.

_Laws of Manu._

* * * * *

Tell a woman that she is beautiful, and the devil will repeat it to her ten times.

_Italian Proverb._

* * * * *

A woman is most merciless when shame goads on her hate.

_Juvenal._

* * * * *

God made her small in order to do a more choice bit of workmanship.

_De Musset._

* * * * *

The venom of the female viper is more poisonous than that of the male viper.

_Butler._

* * * * *

Friendships of women are cushions wherein they stick their pins.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Women rouge that they may not blush.

_Italian Proverb._

* * * * *

A woman in love is a very poor judge of character.

_Holland._

* * * * *

There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

_Shakespeare._

* * * * *

A woman’s whole life is the history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire.

_Washington Irving._

* * * * *

Women never lie more astutely than when they tell the truth to those who do not believe them.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

A woman’s friendship borders more closely on love than man’s.

_Coleridge._

* * * * *

Women never weep more bitterly than when they weep with spite.

_Ricard._

* * * * *

To love her is a liberal education.

_Congreve._

* * * * *

It is to woman that the heart appeals when it needs consolation.

_Demoustier._

* * * * *

Irregular vivacity of temper leads astray the hearts of ordinary women in the choice of their lovers and the treatment of their husbands.

_Addison._

* * * * *

A woman without beauty knows but half of life.

_Mme. de Montaran._

* * * * *

The only confidence that one can repose in the most discreet woman is the confidence of her beauty.

_Le Mesle._

* * * * *

A knot of ladies got together by themselves is a very school of impertinence and detraction, and it is well if those be the worst.

_Swift._

* * * * *

Never say man, but men; nor women, but woman; for the world has thousands of men and only one woman.

_Weiss._

* * * * *

But one thing on earth is better than the wife—that is the mother.

_Schefer._

* * * * *

A virtuous woman has in the heart a fibre less or a fibre more than other women; she is stupid or sublime.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past.

_Amiel._

* * * * *

All women are good—good for nothing, or good for something.

_Cervantes._

* * * * *

Women are a new race, re-created since the world received Christianity.

_Henry Ward Beecher._

* * * * *

Beauty, in a modest woman, is like fire or a sharp sword at a distance: neither doth the one burn nor the other wound those that come not too near them.

_Cervantes._

* * * * *

What woman desires is written in heaven.

_La Chaussée._

* * * * *

Woman is the highest, holiest, most precious gift to man. Her mission and throne is the family.

_Todd._

* * * * *

Of all heavy bodies, the heaviest is the woman we have ceased to love.

_Lemontey._

* * * * *

If a wife can induce herself to submit patiently to her husband’s mode of life, she will have no difficulty to manage him.

_Aristotle._

* * * * *

Men would be saints if they loved God as they love women.

_St Thomas._

* * * * *

Than woman there is no fouler and viler fiend when her mind is bent on ill.

_Homer._

* * * * *

A woman forgives everything but the fact that you do not covet her.

_De Musset._

* * * * *

The desire to please is born in women before the desire to love.

_De Lenclos._

* * * * *

Of all things that man possesses, women alone take pleasure in being possessed.

_Malherbe._

* * * * *

Women and young men are apt to tell what secrets they know from the vanity of having been trusted.

_Chesterfield._

* * * * *

Women are like pictures; of no value in the hands of a fool, till he hears men of sense bid high for the purchase.

_Farquhar._

* * * * *

The best woman is the one least talked about.

_Schiller._

* * * * *

In this advanced century a girl of sixteen knows as much as her mother, and enjoys her knowledge much more.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

In love, a woman is like a lyre that surrenders its secrets only to the hand that knows how to touch its strings.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

Men say knowledge is power; women think dress is power.

_Sheldon._

* * * * *

She is the most virtuous woman whom Nature has made the most voluptuous, and reason the coldest.

_La Beaumelle._

* * * * *

For one woman who affronts her kind by wicked passions or remorseless hate, a thousand make amends in age and youth.

_Mackay._

* * * * *

It is often woman who inspires us with the great things that she will prevent us from accomplishing.

_Dumas._

* * * * *

A man who is known to have broken many hearts is naturally invested with a tantalising charm to women who have yet hearts to be broken.

_Boyesen._

* * * * *

Between a woman’s “yes” and “no” I would not venture to stick a pin.

_Cervantes._

* * * * *

A woman’s love is often a misfortune; her friendship is always a boon.

_Mézières._

* * * * *

A woman’s head is always influenced by her heart, but a man’s heart is always influenced by his head.

_Blessington._

* * * * *

Women love always; when earth slips away from them they take refuge in heaven.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

The finger of the first woman loved is like that of God: the imprint of it is eternal.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Most women prefer that we should talk ill of their virtue rather than of their wit or of their beauty.

_Fontenelle._

* * * * *

In buying horses and in taking a wife, shut your eyes tight and commend yourself to God.

_Tuscan Proverb._

* * * * *

All women desire to be esteemed; they care much less about being respected.

_Dumas._

* * * * *

Women are women but to become mothers: they go to duty through pleasure.

_Joubert._

* * * * *

Coquetry is a net laid by the vanity of women to ensnare that of man.

_Bruin._

* * * * *

To a woman of delicate feeling, the most persuasive declaration of love is the embarrassment of an intellectual man.

_De Latena._

* * * * *

A coquette is to a man what a toy is to a child; as long as it pleases him he keeps it.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

When a woman once begins to be ashamed of what she ought not to be ashamed of, she will not be ashamed of what she ought.

_Titus Livius._

* * * * *

Friend, beware of fair maidens! When their tenderness begins, our servitude is near.

_Victor Hugo._

* * * * *

That perfect disinterestedness and self-devotion of which man seems incapable, but which is sometimes found in women.

_Macaulay._

* * * * *

A pretty woman’s worth some pains to see.

_Browning._

* * * * *