Part 6

If you wish a coquette to regard you, cease to regard her.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Women of forty always fancy they have found the Fountain of Youth, and that they remain young in the midst of the ruins of their day.

_Houssaye._

* * * * *

The perfect loveliness of a woman’s countenance can only consist in that majestic peace which is founded in the memory of happy and useful years, full of sweet records.

_Ruskin._

* * * * *

Trust your dog to the end; a woman—till the first opportunity.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

In mythology no god falls in love with Minerva. A mannish woman only attracts a feminine man.

_Sheldon._

* * * * *

Women have the same desires as men, but do not have the same right to express them.

_Rousseau._

* * * * *

Youth feeds on its own flowery pastures; in pleasures it builds up a life that knows no trouble till the name of virgin is lost in that of wife.

_Sophocles._

* * * * *

The world is so unjust that a female heart which has once been touched is thought for ever blemished.

_Steele._

* * * * *

Nature and custom would, no doubt, agree in conceding to all males the right of at least two distinct looks at every comely female countenance.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

We love handsome women from inclination, homely women from interest, and virtuous women from reason.

_Houssaye._

* * * * *

There is something still more to be studied than a Jesuit, and that is a Jesuitess.

_Eugene Sue._

* * * * *

Uneducated men may escape intellectual degradation; uneducated women cannot.

_Sydney Smith._

* * * * *

A woman and her servant, acting in accord, would outwit a dozen devils.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

Cast in so slight and exquisite a mould, so mild and gentle, so pure and beautiful, that earth seemed not her element, nor its rough creatures her fit companions.

_Dickens._

* * * * *

The wife is a constellation of virtues; she’s the moon, and thou art the man in the moon.

_Congreve._

* * * * *

Scylla must have broken off many excellent matches in her time, if she insisted upon all that loved her loving her dogs also.

_Lamb._

* * * * *

A light wife doth make a heavy husband.

_Shakespeare._

* * * * *

Trust a poor woman to dress her children in finery.

_Mitchell._

* * * * *

A woman is turned into a love-magnet by a tingling current of life running around her.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Women and maidens must be praised, whether truly or falsely.

_German Proverb._

* * * * *

The supreme beauty of Greek art is rather male than female.

_Winckelmann._

* * * * *

The man is the head of the woman, but she rules him by her temper.

_Russian Proverb._

* * * * *

Women are in general more addicted to the petty forms of vanity, jealousy, spitefulness, and ambition, and they are also inferior to men in active courage.

_Lecky._

* * * * *

Certain importunities always please women, even when the importuner does not please.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

It is difficult for a woman ever to try to be anything good when she is not believed in,—when it is always supposed that she must be contemptible.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

Woman’s beauty, the forest’s echo, and rainbows soon pass away.

_German Proverb._

* * * * *

The starry crown of woman is in the power of her affection and sentiment and the infinite enlargements to which they lead.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

However much woman may need deliverance from some outward trials and disabilities, her grand want is a freer, deeper, richer, holier inward life.

_Alger._

* * * * *

He that hath a fair wife never wants trouble.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

The man who awakes the wondering, trembling passion of a young girl always thinks her affectionate.

_George Eliot._

* * * * *

A woman, unlike Narcissus, seeks not her own image and a second I; she much prefers a not I.

_Richter._

* * * * *

Woman is seldom merciful to the man who is timid.

_Lytton._

* * * * *

A wife! A mother! Two magical words, comprising the sweetest source of man’s felicity. Theirs is the reign of beauty, of love, of reason,—always a reign.

_Aimi Martin._

* * * * *

Woman is the dwelling-place of religion, and communicates it to the young.

_Channing._

* * * * *

The first and chief thing that should be looked for in a woman is fear.

_Tolstoi._

* * * * *

A woman fascinates a man quite as often by what she overlooks as by what she sees.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Women have no fear of marriage, because they are so occupied in imagining the happiness it may bring them that they never think of the possible misery it includes.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Devotion is the last love of women.

_Saint-Evremond._

* * * * *

A woman with whom one discusses love is always in expectation of something.

_Poincelot._

* * * * *

The beauty of some women has days and seasons, and depends upon accidents which diminish or increase it.

_Cervantes._

* * * * *

We meet in society many attractive women whom we would fear to make our wives.

_D’Harleville._

* * * * *

The woman who plays with the love of a loyal man is a curse; she may close his heart for ever against all confidence in her sex.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

It is the male that gives charm to womankind, that produces an air in their faces, a grace in their motions, a softness in their voices, and a delicacy in their complexions.

_Addison._

* * * * *

In life, woman must wait until she is asked to love, as in a salon she waits for an invitation to dance.

_Karr._

* * * * *

A sharp eye can almost always see the train leading from a young girl’s eye or lip to the “I love you” in her heart.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Women, wind, and fortune soon change.

_Spanish Proverb._

* * * * *

A woman without a laugh in her ... is the greatest bore in nature.

_Thackeray._

* * * * *

To women, mildness is the best means to be right.

_Mme. de Fontaines._

* * * * *

Women bestow on friendship only what they borrow from love.

_Chamfort._

* * * * *

The best shelter for a girl is her mother’s wing.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Whoever, allured by riches or high rank, marries a vicious woman is a fool.

_Euripides._

* * * * *

For a woman to be at once a coquette and a bigot is more than the meekest of husbands can bear.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

A wretched woman is more unfortunate than a wretched man.

_Victor Hugo._

* * * * *

A good woman is a hidden treasure; who discovers her will do well not to boast about it.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

Women are twice as religious as men; all the world knows that.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

The most dreadful thing against women is the character of the men who praise them.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

A woman is naturally as much more capricious than a man as she is more susceptible. A slighter shock suffices to jostle her delicate emotions out of delight into disgust.

_Alger._

* * * * *

Love thy wife as thy soul; shake her as a plum-tree.

_Russian Proverb._

* * * * *

Love is of all the passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the senses.

_Voltaire._

* * * * *

Time is the sovereign physician of all passions.

_Montaigne._

* * * * *

Obstacles usually stimulate passion, but sometimes they kill it.

_Sand._

* * * * *

Folly was condemned to serve as a guide to Love whom she had blinded.

_La Fontaine._

* * * * *

The future of society is in the hands of the mothers. If the world was lost through woman, she alone can save it.

_De Beaufort._

* * * * *

The breaking of a heart leaves no traces.

_Sand._

* * * * *

From the moment it is touched, the heart cannot dry up.

_Bourdaloue._

* * * * *

’Tis the greatest misfortune in nature for a woman to want a confidant.

_Farquhar._

* * * * *

How many women would laugh at the funerals of their husbands if it were not the custom to weep.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Venus with ease engenders wiles in knowing dames; but a woman of simple capacity, by reason of her small understanding, is removed from folly.

_Euripides._

* * * * *

Modesty in women has great advantages; it enhances beauty, and serves as a veil to uncomeliness.

_Fontenelle._

* * * * *

Of all wild beasts, on earth or in the sea, the greatest is a woman.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

One must tell women only what one wants to be known.

_Beaumarchais._

* * * * *

Speak to women in a style and manner proper to approach them, they never fail to improve by your counsels.

_Steele._

* * * * *

A woman without religion is even worse, a flame without heat, a rainbow without colour, a flower without perfume.

_Mitchell._

* * * * *

A woman once fallen will shrink from no impropriety.

_Tacitus._

* * * * *

I don’t want a woman to weigh me in a balance; there are men enough for that sort of work.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

Women soften our character, and yet make us heroic. The same traits of character produce these different effects.

_Channing._

* * * * *

Women, like empresses, condemn to imprisonment and hard labour nine-tenths of mankind.

_Tolstoi._

* * * * *

There is one dangerous science for women, one which let them indeed beware how they profanely touch; that of theology.

_Ruskin._

* * * * *

A woman’s fame is the tomb of her happiness.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

There will be so many more women in heaven than men that any marriage, except of the Mormon kind, would be impossible.

_Sheldon._

* * * * *

COQUETTE—a female general who builds her fame on her advances.

_Field._

* * * * *

When, like spoiled children, women cry for the moon, it is because they have heard that the moon contains a man.

_Browne._

* * * * *

Women famed for their valour, their skill in politics, or their learning, leave the duties of their own sex in order to invade the privileges of ours.

_Goldsmith._

* * * * *

Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone; man only knows man’s insensibility to a new gown.

_Jane Austen._

* * * * *

Women in this degenerate age are rare, to whom aught else but sordid gain is dear.

_Ariosto._

* * * * *

Woman, divorced from home, wanders unfriended like a waif upon the waves.

_Goethe._

* * * * *

Women are right to crave beauty at any price, since beauty is the only merit that men do not contest with them.

_Dupuy._

* * * * *

Your true flirt plays with sparkles; her heart, much as there is of it, spends itself in sparkles; she measures it to sparkle, and habit grows into nature.

_Mitchell._

* * * * *

The prejudices of men emanate from the mind, and may be overcome; the prejudices of women emanate from the heart, and are impregnable.

_Boyer d’Argens._

* * * * *

Women are the poetry of the world in the same sense as the stars are the poetry of heaven.

_Hargrave._

* * * * *

The pleasure of talking is the inextinguishable passion of women, coeval with the act of breathing.

_Lesage._

* * * * *

Women of the world never use harsh expressions when condemning their rivals.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Women are, for the most part, good or bad, as they fall amongst those who practise virtue or vice.

_Johnson._

* * * * *

Women exceed the generality of men in love.

_La Bruyère._

* * * * *

Women commend a modest man, and like him not.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

A delicate woman is the best instrument; she has such a magnificent compass of sensibilities.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

To say “Everyone is talking about him” is a eulogy; but to say “Everyone is talking about her” is an elegy.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery.

_Victor Hugo._

* * * * *

Confound the make-believe women we have turned loose in our streets.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

It is easier to take care of a peck of fleas than of one woman.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

Women are like thermometers, which, on a sudden application of heat, sink at first a few degrees, as preliminary to rising a good many.

_Richter._

* * * * *

Until we know woman, we know not _strength of love_. In this we have, perhaps, the best emblem of omnipotence as well as divine goodness.

_Channing._

* * * * *

A coquette sparkles, but it is more the sparkle of a harmless and pretty vanity than of calculation.

_Mitchell._

* * * * *

Her step is music, and her voice is song.

_Bailey._

* * * * *

Man carves his destiny; woman is helped to hers.

_Julia Ward Howe._

* * * * *

If the women did not make idols of us, and if they saw us as we see each other, would life be bearable or could society go on?

_Thackeray._

* * * * *

Women are apt to love the men who they think have the largest capacity of loving.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

There are few women whose charms survive their beauty.

_La Rochefoucauld._

* * * * *

A woman despises a man for loving her unless she happens to return his love.

_Elizabeth Stoddard._

* * * * *

Beauty is the first gift Nature gives to woman, and the first she takes from her.

_De Méré._

* * * * *

Women must have their wills while they live, because they make none when they die.

_Proverb._

* * * * *

Women never truly command till they have given their promise to obey; and they are never in more danger of being made slaves than when the men are at their feet.

_Farquhar._

* * * * *

A woman who is guided by the head, and not by the heart, is a social pestilence.

_Balzac._

* * * * *

An asp would render its sting more venomous by dipping it into the heart of a coquette.

_Poincelot._

* * * * *

Voluptuaries know what they talk about when they profess not to care for sense in woman.

_Leigh Hunt._

* * * * *

A woman who has surrendered her lips has surrendered everything.

_Viaud._

* * * * *

A woman repents sincerely of her fault only after being weaned from her infatuation for the one who induced her to commit it.

_De Latena._

* * * * *

Let the great soul incarnated in some woman’s form, poor and sad and single, in some Dolly or Joan, go out to service.

_Emerson._

* * * * *

Woman, naturally enthusiastic of the good and beautiful, sanctifies all that she surrounds with her affection.

_Mercier._

* * * * *

Woman have more understanding than we have, and women of spirit are not to be won by mourners.

_Steele._

* * * * *

Marry a virgin, that thou mayst teach her discreet manners.

_Hesiod._

* * * * *

Pretty women gaze at a beauty with envy, homely women with spite, old men with regret, young men with transport.

_D’Argens._

* * * * *

Hell is paved with women’s tongues.

_Abbé Guyon._

* * * * *

A woman is more influenced by what she divines than by what she is told.

_De Lenclos._

* * * * *

We never fall in love with a woman, in distinction from women, until we can get an image of her through a pinhole.

_Holmes._

* * * * *

However talkative a woman may be, love teaches her silence.

_Rochebrune._

* * * * *

There is something so gross in the carriage of some wives that they lose their husbands’ hearts.

_Budgell._

* * * * *

Men declare their love before they feel it; women confess theirs only after they have proved it.

_De Latena._

* * * * *

In love it is only the commencement that charms. I am not surprised that one finds pleasure in frequently recommencing.

_Prince de Ligne._

* * * * *

The heart of a loving woman is a golden sanctuary, where often there reigns an idol of clay.

_Limayrae._

* * * * *

Women call repentance the sweet remembrance of their faults and the bitter regret of their inability to recommence them.

_Beaumanoir._

* * * * *

Virtue, with some women, is but the precaution of locking doors.

_Lemontey._

* * * * *

She had married her husband for his wit, and was willing to do the next best thing for any man who was wittier.

_Francis Prevost._

* * * * *

Women are often ruined by their sensitiveness and saved by their coquetry.

_Mdlle. Azaïs._

* * * * *

In love only the awkward are punished—like the Spartan thieves.

_Anonymous._

* * * * *

The action of woman on our destiny is unceasing.

_Lord Beaconsfield._

* * * * *

The weaknesses of women have been given them by nature to exercise the virtues of men.

_Mme. Necker._

* * * * *

The most chaste woman may be the most voluptuous, if she loves.

_Mirabeau._

* * * * *

Love renders chaste the most voluptuous pleasures.

_Virey._

* * * * *

Manners, morals, customs change: the passions are always the same.

_Mme. de Flahaut._

* * * * *

Discretion is more necessary to women than eloquence.

_Du Bosc._

* * * * *

Marriage is a lottery in which men stake their liberty, and women their happiness.

_Mme. de Rieux._

* * * * *

Orpheus went to Hell to find his wife: how many widowers would not even go to Heaven to find theirs?

_Petit-Senn._

* * * * *

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

_Parny._

* * * * *

A reputation for success has as much influence with women as a reputation for wealth has with men.

_Lord Beaconsfield._

* * * * *

Women give themselves to God when the Devil wants nothing more to do with them.

_Sophie Arnould._

* * * * *

The beauty of a young girl should speak to the imagination, and not to the senses.

_Karr._

* * * * *

Prudery is the hypocrisy of modesty.

_Massias._

* * * * *

Women distrust men too much in general, and not enough in particular.

_Commerson._

* * * * *

There is a magic in Duty which sustains judges, inflames warriors and cools the married.

_Dupuy._

* * * * *

There are beautiful flowers that are scentless, and beautiful women that are unlovable.

_Hovellé._

* * * * *

Love is a beggar who still begs when one has given him everything.

_Rochepedre._

* * * * *

The quarrels of lovers are like summer showers that leave the country more verdant and beautiful.

_Mme. Necker._

* * * * *

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

_De Lenclos._

* * * * *

A prude ought to be condemned to meet only indiscreet lovers.

_Raisson._

* * * * *

Science seldom renders men amiable; women never.

_Beauchêne._

* * * * *

Women are in the moral world what flowers are in the physical.

_Maréchal._

* * * * *

Who loves not women, wine and song, remains a fool his whole life long.

_Martin Luther._

* * * * *

Virtue and Love are two ogres: one must eat the other.

_D’Houdetot._

* * * * *

Love never dies of starvation, but often of indigestion.

_De Lenclos._

* * * * *

Women swallow at one mouthful the lie that flatters, and drink drop by drop a truth that is bitter.

_Diderot._

* * * * *

A woman with whom one discusses love is always in expectation of something.

_Poincelot._

* * * * *

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

_Montesquieu._

* * * * *

Love pleases more than marriage, for the reason that romance is more interesting than history.

_Chamfort._

* * * * *

Fortune hath somewhat of the nature of a woman, who, if she be too closely wooed, is commonly the further off.

_Charles V._

* * * * *

Great pleasures are serious: pleasures of love do not make us laugh.

_Voltaire._

* * * * *

One is always a woman’s first lover.

_De Laclos._

* * * * *

Even if women were immortal, they could never foresee their last lover.

_Lammenais._

* * * * *

Devotion is the last love of women.

_St Evremond._

* * * * *

Love, that sometimes corrupts pure bodies, often purifies corrupt hearts.

_Laténa._

* * * * *

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

_De Varennes._

* * * * *

Marriage is often but ennui for two.

_Commerson._

* * * * *

Love that seldom gives us happiness, at least makes us dream of it.

_Sénancourt._

* * * * *

Woman is the most precious jewel taken from Nature’s casket for the ornamentation and happiness of man.

_Guyard._

* * * * *

Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.

_Lacon._

* * * * *

Love is like medical science—the art of assisting Nature.