Excess of passion and the force of love,—arguments than which there can be none more powerful to assuage the irritation of a woman’s mind.Titus Livius.The reason why so few women are touched by friendship is that they find it dull when they have experienced love.La Rochefoucauld.Where women are, the better things are implied if not spoken.Bronson Alcott.A woman is a well-served table that one sees with different eyes before and after the meal.Anonymous.The materials that go to the making of one woman were set free by the abstraction from inanimate nature of one man’s worth of masculine constituents.Holmes.Women are wise impromptu, fools on reflection.Italian Proverb.To say the truth, I never yet knew a tolerable woman to be fond of her own sex.Swift.“I like women,” said a clear-headed man of the world, “they are so finished.” They finish society, manners, language. Form and ceremony are their realm. They embellish trifles.Emerson.An opinion formed by a woman is inflexible; the fact is not half so stubborn.Anonymous.There is one thing admirable in women; they never reason about their blameworthy actions; even in their dissimulation there is an element of sincerity.Balzac.A mother dreads no memories,—those shadows have all melted away in the dawn of Baby’s smiles.George Eliot.Nature has said to woman: Be fair if thou canst, be virtuous if thou wilt; but considerate thou must be.Beaumarchais.A woman either loves or hates; she knows no medium.Syrus.The error of certain women is to imagine that, to acquire distinction, they must imitate the manners of men.De Maistre.Women’s virtue is the music of stringed instruments, which sound best in a room.Richter.With women, the desire to bedeck themselves is always the desire to please.Marmontel.In life, as in a promenade, woman must lean on a man above her.Karr.Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love.Shakespeare.The revolution the Boston boys started had to run in mother’s milk before it ran in man’s blood.Holmes.Women swallow at one mouthful the lie that flatters, and drink drop by drop the truth that is bitter.Diderot.A shameless woman is the worst of men.Young.There has been no church, however superstitious, that has not been adorned by many Christian women devoting their entire lives to assuaging the sufferings of men.Lecky.I dare say she’s like the rest of the women,—thinks two and two’ll come to make five, if she cries and bothers enough about it.George Eliot.We need the friendship of a man in great trials, of a woman in the affairs of everyday life.Thomas.How can one who hates men love a woman without blushing?Richter.Some women need much adorning, as some meat needs much seasoning to incite appetite.Rochebrune.’Tis beauty that doth make woman proud;. . . . . . . . .’Tis virtue that doth make them most admired;. . . . . . . . .’Tis government that makes them seem divine.Shakespeare.Women like audacity; when one astounds them, he interests them; and when one interests them, he is very sure to please them.Anonymous.Women should despise slander, and fear to provoke it.Mdlle. de Scuderi.Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman.Holmes.However virtuous a woman may be, a compliment on her virtue is what gives her the least pleasure.Prince de Ligne.It is not always for virtue’s sake that women are virtuous.La Rochefoucauld.The society of women is the element of good manners.Goethe.Woman is the Sunday of man.Michelet.If a woman has any malicious mischief to do, her memory is immortal.Plautus.When women have passed thirty, the first thing they forget is their age; when they have attained the age of forty, they have entirely lost the remembrance of it.De Lenclos.Even if women were immortal, they could never foresee their last lover.De Lamennais.It has been justly observed that heroines are best painted in general terms.Leigh Hunt.Love is superior to genius.De Musset.Time sooner or later vanquishes love; friendship alone subdues time.D’Arconville.A beautiful woman with the qualities of a noble man is the most perfect thing in nature; we find in her all the merits of both sexes.La Bruyère.One is alone in a crowd when one suffers, or when one loves.Rochepedre.All the passions die with the years; self-love alone never dies.Voltaire.A short absence quickens love, a long absence kills it.Mirabeau.Marriage often unites for life two people who scarcely know each other.Balzac.If a woman refrains from absurd or hateful words and acts, and if she is beautiful, we are straightway convinced that she is a paragon of wisdom and morality.Tolstoi.If we men require more perfection from women than from ourselves, it is doing them honour.Johnson.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.Anna Jameson.The castle that parleys and the woman who listens are ready to surrender.Proverb.Strange that the Gods should have given an antidote against the venom of savage serpents and none against that of a bad woman.Euripides.Women dress less to be clothed than to be adorned. When alone before their mirror they think more of men than of themselves.Rochebrune.The woman we love most is often the woman to whom we express it the least.De Beauchêne.Woman’s counsel is not worth much, yet he that despises it is no wiser than he should be.Cervantes.Woman is the nervous part of humanity; man the muscular.Halle.O woman, woman! thou art formed to bless the heart of restless man.Bird.Women are often ruined by their sensitiveness and saved by their coquetry.Mdlle. Azais.Women are compounds of plain-sewing and make-believe—daughters of Sham and Hem.Sheldon.Finesse has been given to woman to compensate the force of man.De Laclos.Women are demons who make us enter hell through the gates of paradise.Anonymous.It is to teach us early how to think and how to excite our infantile imagination, that prudent nature has given to women so much chit-chat.La Bruyère.Oh, woman! woman! thou shouldst have a few sins of thy own to answer for! Thou art the author of such a book of follies in man!Lytton.Woman’s dignity lies in her being unknown; her glory in the esteem of her husband; and her pleasure in the welfare of her family.Rousseau.Mensayof women what pleases them; womendowith men what pleases them.Ségur.Woman must not belong to herself; she is bound to alien destinies.Schiller.Don’t trust your horse in the field, nor your wife in your home.Russian Proverb.Woman has been fed upon flattery until it is not strange she hungers for substantial diet, whose best sauce is understanding and appreciation.Browne.One thing only I believe in a woman—that she will not come to life again after she is dead.Anonymous.The life of a woman is a long dissimulation. Candour, beauty, freshness, virginity, modesty,—a woman has each of these but once.La Bretonne.Men call physicians only when they suffer; women when they are only afflicted withennui.Mme. de Genlis.Men say more evil of a woman than they think; it is the contrary with women toward men.Dubay.A woman’s rank lies in the fulness of her womanhood; therein alone she is royal.George Eliot.The deceit of priests and the cunning of women surpass all else.Burger.Nothing is better than a good wife; and nothing is worse than a bad one, who is fond of gadding about.Hesiod.Woman often dies for love, as spotless maidens have died to live forever in the pantheon of sentiment.Browne.Love, that is but an episode in the life of man, is the entire story of the life of woman.Mme. de Stael.Women, priests, and poultry have never enough.Proverb.Woman is too soft to hate permanently; even if a hundred men have been a grief to her, she will still love the hundred and first.Kinkel.Intellect is to a woman’s nature what her skirt is to her dress.Holmes.Without woman man would be rough, rude, solitary, and would ignore all the graces, which are but the smiles of love.Chateaubriand.No woman who is absolutely and entirely good, in the ordinary sense of the word, gets a man’s most fervent, passionate love.Mrs W. K. Clifford.It is a misfortune for a woman never to be loved, but it is a humiliation to be loved no more.Montesquieu.Woman is the salvation or the destruction of the family.Amiel.An old coquette has all the defects of a young one, and none of her charms.Dupuy.Women, like the plants in the woods, derive their softness and tenderness from the shade.Landor.One should choose a wife with the ears rather than with the eyes.Proverb.From many a woman’s fortune this truth is clear as day; that falsely smiling pleasure with pain requites us ever.Nibelungenlied.Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless,—nay, the speech they have resolved not to utter.George Eliot.Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore choose the weakest and most ignorant.Johnson.Woman’s sensibility lights up, and quivers and falls, like the flame of a coal fire.Mitchell.The weakness of women gives to some men a victory that their merit would never gain.Anonymous.Women like brave men exceedingly, but audacious men still more.Le Mesle.The mistake of many women is to return sentiment for gallantry.Jouy.Women can rarely be deceived, for they are accustomed to deceive.Aristophanes.There are no pleasures where women are not.Marie De Romieu.Women’s tender hearts are much more susceptible of good impressions than the minds of the other sex.Steele.Coquettes are like hunters who are fond of hunting, but do not eat the game.Anonymous.Marriage with a good woman is a harbour in the tempest; but with a bad woman, it proves a tempest in the harbour.Petit-Senn.A man without religion is to be pitied, but a godless woman is a horror above all things.Elizabeth Evans.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 havehalfloved.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 firsttête-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 atête-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 somebonne 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 arealmostin love,almostfamous, andalmosthappy.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.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.
Excess of passion and the force of love,—arguments than which there can be none more powerful to assuage the irritation of a woman’s mind.
Titus Livius.
The reason why so few women are touched by friendship is that they find it dull when they have experienced love.
La Rochefoucauld.
Where women are, the better things are implied if not spoken.
Bronson Alcott.
A woman is a well-served table that one sees with different eyes before and after the meal.
Anonymous.
The materials that go to the making of one woman were set free by the abstraction from inanimate nature of one man’s worth of masculine constituents.
Holmes.
Women are wise impromptu, fools on reflection.
Italian Proverb.
To say the truth, I never yet knew a tolerable woman to be fond of her own sex.
Swift.
“I like women,” said a clear-headed man of the world, “they are so finished.” They finish society, manners, language. Form and ceremony are their realm. They embellish trifles.
Emerson.
An opinion formed by a woman is inflexible; the fact is not half so stubborn.
Anonymous.
There is one thing admirable in women; they never reason about their blameworthy actions; even in their dissimulation there is an element of sincerity.
Balzac.
A mother dreads no memories,—those shadows have all melted away in the dawn of Baby’s smiles.
George Eliot.
Nature has said to woman: Be fair if thou canst, be virtuous if thou wilt; but considerate thou must be.
Beaumarchais.
A woman either loves or hates; she knows no medium.
Syrus.
The error of certain women is to imagine that, to acquire distinction, they must imitate the manners of men.
De Maistre.
Women’s virtue is the music of stringed instruments, which sound best in a room.
Richter.
With women, the desire to bedeck themselves is always the desire to please.
Marmontel.
In life, as in a promenade, woman must lean on a man above her.
Karr.
Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love.
Shakespeare.
The revolution the Boston boys started had to run in mother’s milk before it ran in man’s blood.
Holmes.
Women swallow at one mouthful the lie that flatters, and drink drop by drop the truth that is bitter.
Diderot.
A shameless woman is the worst of men.
Young.
There has been no church, however superstitious, that has not been adorned by many Christian women devoting their entire lives to assuaging the sufferings of men.
Lecky.
I dare say she’s like the rest of the women,—thinks two and two’ll come to make five, if she cries and bothers enough about it.
George Eliot.
We need the friendship of a man in great trials, of a woman in the affairs of everyday life.
Thomas.
How can one who hates men love a woman without blushing?
Richter.
Some women need much adorning, as some meat needs much seasoning to incite appetite.
Rochebrune.
’Tis beauty that doth make woman proud;. . . . . . . . .’Tis virtue that doth make them most admired;. . . . . . . . .’Tis government that makes them seem divine.
Shakespeare.
Women like audacity; when one astounds them, he interests them; and when one interests them, he is very sure to please them.
Anonymous.
Women should despise slander, and fear to provoke it.
Mdlle. de Scuderi.
Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman.
Holmes.
However virtuous a woman may be, a compliment on her virtue is what gives her the least pleasure.
Prince de Ligne.
It is not always for virtue’s sake that women are virtuous.
La Rochefoucauld.
The society of women is the element of good manners.
Goethe.
Woman is the Sunday of man.
Michelet.
If a woman has any malicious mischief to do, her memory is immortal.
Plautus.
When women have passed thirty, the first thing they forget is their age; when they have attained the age of forty, they have entirely lost the remembrance of it.
De Lenclos.
Even if women were immortal, they could never foresee their last lover.
De Lamennais.
It has been justly observed that heroines are best painted in general terms.
Leigh Hunt.
Love is superior to genius.
De Musset.
Time sooner or later vanquishes love; friendship alone subdues time.
D’Arconville.
A beautiful woman with the qualities of a noble man is the most perfect thing in nature; we find in her all the merits of both sexes.
La Bruyère.
One is alone in a crowd when one suffers, or when one loves.
Rochepedre.
All the passions die with the years; self-love alone never dies.
Voltaire.
A short absence quickens love, a long absence kills it.
Mirabeau.
Marriage often unites for life two people who scarcely know each other.
Balzac.
If a woman refrains from absurd or hateful words and acts, and if she is beautiful, we are straightway convinced that she is a paragon of wisdom and morality.
Tolstoi.
If we men require more perfection from women than from ourselves, it is doing them honour.
Johnson.
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.
Anna Jameson.
The castle that parleys and the woman who listens are ready to surrender.
Proverb.
Strange that the Gods should have given an antidote against the venom of savage serpents and none against that of a bad woman.
Euripides.
Women dress less to be clothed than to be adorned. When alone before their mirror they think more of men than of themselves.
Rochebrune.
The woman we love most is often the woman to whom we express it the least.
De Beauchêne.
Woman’s counsel is not worth much, yet he that despises it is no wiser than he should be.
Cervantes.
Woman is the nervous part of humanity; man the muscular.
Halle.
O woman, woman! thou art formed to bless the heart of restless man.
Bird.
Women are often ruined by their sensitiveness and saved by their coquetry.
Mdlle. Azais.
Women are compounds of plain-sewing and make-believe—daughters of Sham and Hem.
Sheldon.
Finesse has been given to woman to compensate the force of man.
De Laclos.
Women are demons who make us enter hell through the gates of paradise.
Anonymous.
It is to teach us early how to think and how to excite our infantile imagination, that prudent nature has given to women so much chit-chat.
La Bruyère.
Oh, woman! woman! thou shouldst have a few sins of thy own to answer for! Thou art the author of such a book of follies in man!
Lytton.
Woman’s dignity lies in her being unknown; her glory in the esteem of her husband; and her pleasure in the welfare of her family.
Rousseau.
Mensayof women what pleases them; womendowith men what pleases them.
Ségur.
Woman must not belong to herself; she is bound to alien destinies.
Schiller.
Don’t trust your horse in the field, nor your wife in your home.
Russian Proverb.
Woman has been fed upon flattery until it is not strange she hungers for substantial diet, whose best sauce is understanding and appreciation.
Browne.
One thing only I believe in a woman—that she will not come to life again after she is dead.
Anonymous.
The life of a woman is a long dissimulation. Candour, beauty, freshness, virginity, modesty,—a woman has each of these but once.
La Bretonne.
Men call physicians only when they suffer; women when they are only afflicted withennui.
Mme. de Genlis.
Men say more evil of a woman than they think; it is the contrary with women toward men.
Dubay.
A woman’s rank lies in the fulness of her womanhood; therein alone she is royal.
George Eliot.
The deceit of priests and the cunning of women surpass all else.
Burger.
Nothing is better than a good wife; and nothing is worse than a bad one, who is fond of gadding about.
Hesiod.
Woman often dies for love, as spotless maidens have died to live forever in the pantheon of sentiment.
Browne.
Love, that is but an episode in the life of man, is the entire story of the life of woman.
Mme. de Stael.
Women, priests, and poultry have never enough.
Proverb.
Woman is too soft to hate permanently; even if a hundred men have been a grief to her, she will still love the hundred and first.
Kinkel.
Intellect is to a woman’s nature what her skirt is to her dress.
Holmes.
Without woman man would be rough, rude, solitary, and would ignore all the graces, which are but the smiles of love.
Chateaubriand.
No woman who is absolutely and entirely good, in the ordinary sense of the word, gets a man’s most fervent, passionate love.
Mrs W. K. Clifford.
It is a misfortune for a woman never to be loved, but it is a humiliation to be loved no more.
Montesquieu.
Woman is the salvation or the destruction of the family.
Amiel.
An old coquette has all the defects of a young one, and none of her charms.
Dupuy.
Women, like the plants in the woods, derive their softness and tenderness from the shade.
Landor.
One should choose a wife with the ears rather than with the eyes.
Proverb.
From many a woman’s fortune this truth is clear as day; that falsely smiling pleasure with pain requites us ever.
Nibelungenlied.
Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless,—nay, the speech they have resolved not to utter.
George Eliot.
Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore choose the weakest and most ignorant.
Johnson.
Woman’s sensibility lights up, and quivers and falls, like the flame of a coal fire.
Mitchell.
The weakness of women gives to some men a victory that their merit would never gain.
Anonymous.
Women like brave men exceedingly, but audacious men still more.
Le Mesle.
The mistake of many women is to return sentiment for gallantry.
Jouy.
Women can rarely be deceived, for they are accustomed to deceive.
Aristophanes.
There are no pleasures where women are not.
Marie De Romieu.
Women’s tender hearts are much more susceptible of good impressions than the minds of the other sex.
Steele.
Coquettes are like hunters who are fond of hunting, but do not eat the game.
Anonymous.
Marriage with a good woman is a harbour in the tempest; but with a bad woman, it proves a tempest in the harbour.
Petit-Senn.
A man without religion is to be pitied, but a godless woman is a horror above all things.
Elizabeth Evans.
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 havehalfloved.
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 firsttête-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 atête-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 somebonne 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 arealmostin love,almostfamous, andalmosthappy.
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.
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.