Max O'Rell

“ New York on a Sunday is never very gay. To-day the city seemed to me horrible: dull, dirty, and dreary. It is not the fault of New York altogether. I have the spleen. A horribly stormy passage, the stomach upside down, the heart up in the throat, the thought that my dear ones are three thousand miles away, all these things help to make everything look black. It would have needed a radiant sun in one of those pure blue skies that North America is so rich in to make life look agreeable and New York passable to-day. ”

“ Accept a life of abnegation and devotion. There is in devotion a bliss which is unsurpassed. Devotion is perhaps the most refined and lofty form of selfishness; it raises you so much in your own estimation! It enslaves so surely the hearts of those whom you love! Devotion is not a sacrifice; it is a halo.
If I were a woman, I would give all the pleasures of life to witness the smile of my husband on a sick-bed as I entered the room to come and sit by his side with his hand in mine. In health, the man loves to feel that he is the protector of his wife ”

“ Not more than one woman had ever been able to boast of having been his mistress longer than a week. And yet he had loved once in his life, loved with a noble passion a young girl with a face full of lofty beauty, eyes in whose look were depths of loyalty and truth, and on whose brow purity sat enthroned. And that woman, whom he had thus loved, whose image had never become completely effaced from his memory—that woman was Dora! whom he here found again lovelier still than in bygone years, and married to a man who was evidently absorbed in his invention and his calculations. ”

“ The proudest day of a young French officer's life is the day on which he goes out in the street for the first time with all his ironmongery on, his moustache curled up, his cap on his right ear, his sabre in his left hand. The soldiers he meets salute him, the ladies seem to smile approvingly upon him; he feels like the conquering hero of the day; all is bright before him; battles only suggest to him victories and promotions. ”

“ It must be admitted that, after praising the women of their own country, most men award to Spanish women the palm for beauty. The conclusion must naturally be that the Spanish woman is very beautiful; but, to my mind, it is a kind of beauty that does not appeal to the heart or the soul as it does to the senses. Her large eyes, veiled by thick lashes, her delicate nose and well-formed, ever-moving nostrils, her undulating form, the suppleness, almost boneless, beautifully moulded limbs and figure, her vigour, her languor—every fibre of the Spanish woman's body, I say, appeals to the senses. ”

“ You leave Glasgow in gloom, wrapped in its eternal winding-sheet of fog and mud, and you arrive at Edinburgh to find clean streets, pure air, and a clear beautiful sky. Such at least was my own experience, six times repeated. The prospect delights the eyes and heart; your lungs begin to do their work easily; you breathe freely once more, and once more feel glad to be alive.
You alight at Waverley Station in the centre of the city. You cannot do better than go straightway and take up your quarters at the Royal Hotel, Princes Street, opposite the gigantic Gothic monument erected to Walter Scott. ”

“ Yet, behold John Bull, junior, on the football ground! The hero of a bad cause, but for all that a hero; a lusty little fellow, fearless, hardy, strong-knit, iron-muscled, and mule-headed, who, rather than let go a ball that he holds firmly in his arms, will perform feats of valor; who, simply to pass this ball between two goals, will grovel in the dust, reckless of lacerated shoulders, a broken rib or jaw-bone, and will die on a bed of suffering with a smile upon his lips if he can only hear, before closing his eyes, that his side has won the game. ”

“ Spent the whole morning wandering about Boston, and visiting a few interesting places. Beacon Street, the public gardens, and Commonwealth Avenue are among the finest thoroughfares I know. What enormous wealth is contained in those miles of huge mansions!
The more I see Boston, the more it strikes me as a great English city. It has a character of its own, as no other American city has, excepting perhaps Washington and Philadelphia. The solidity of the buildings, the parks, the quietness of the women’s dresses, the absence of the twang in most of the voices, all remind you of England. ”

“ The saddest spectacle that the world can offer is that of a sweet, sensible, intelligent woman married to a conceited, tyrannical fool.
The mirror is the only friend who is allowed to know the secrets of a woman's imperfections.
When a woman is deeply in love, the capacity of her heart for charity is without limit. If all women were in love there would be no poverty on the face of the earth.
The fidelity of a man to the woman he loves is not a duty, but almost an act of selfishness. It is for his own sake still more than for hers that he should be faithful to her. ”

“ Another thing that would induce me to embrace that profession—or vocation I ought rather to call it—is the absolute freedom that nurses enjoy. Their very dress inspires respect in all alike, high and low. They can go wherever they like with their uniform on—into a first tier box at the opera or into the lowest slums of the city. Everybody will stand back to let them pass; all will throw at them a glance of sympathy and admiration. The upper tens treat the nurse like the lady that she is, the submerged ones like the angel that brings them a ray of sunshine. ”

“ No houses opposite: only large gardens, beautifully kept, sloping gracefully away to the bottom of a valley, whence the ground rises almost perpendicularly, bearing on its summit houses of a prodigious height. It is the old town of Edinburgh, where everything will bring back memories of Mary Stuart and the novels of Scott. On the right the famous castle perched on a sheer rock nearly four hundred feet high; the whole bathed in a blue-grey haze that forms a light veil to soften its colouring and contour. It is impossible to imagine a more romantic sight in the midst of a large modern city. ”

“ An artist is a piece of machinery that must be wound up every day. There is scarce an artist worthy of the name who does not think he is used up each time that he terminates a new work, and there is not a painter who, when he shows a new picture for the first time, does not watch the scrutinising gaze of the critic, much as a mother watches with anxious eye the expression of the doctor who is going to pronounce himself upon the subject of her sick child. An artist is a child, who must be constantly petted and applauded. ”

“ The most noble part that has been allotted to woman is that of the flower in the vegetable kingdom. This rôle consists in throwing a spell over the world, in making life more refined and poetical—in a word, in spreading fragrance around her and imparting it to all who come in contact with her. A wag once said that but for the women men could have hoped for Paradise. Good! But what about this world? Is not woman the direct or indirect motive for all our actions? Is she not the embodiment of the beautiful, and therefore the mother of Art? ”

“ The easily unstrung, almost hysterical, temperament of a woman will sometimes make her give up all the quiet enjoyment of family happiness and love for the noisy applause of the crowd. It acts on her like an intoxicating beverage; and if men sometimes get cured of the craving for drink, women, it is well known, never do. The celebrated woman is seldom fit to be, or, if she is, to remain, a wife and a mother. She becomes an anomaly, a freak. It is in woman's nature. She cannot look down to drop her love on a man; to love she must admire and look up. ”

“ Yet passion is very seldom compatible with true love. Passion is as fickle as love is constant. Passion is but a proof of vanity and selfishness.
Woman is only the pretext for the display of it. Singers, actresses, danseuses, all women detached from that shade and mystery in which love delights in dwelling, women who give to the public all the treasures of their beauty, amiability, and talent are those who inspire in men the most violent passions, but they are seldom truly loved unless they consent to retire from the glare of the footlights and withdraw to the shade. ”

“ The coquette is generally a cold-hearted, cold-blooded woman, as perfectly sure of herself as those famous Mexican horsemen who can ride at full speed toward a precipice and stop suddenly dead on the edge of it. The coquette has no capacity for love; she does not seek love, but admiration and homage only. Unlike the flirt, she lacks cheerfulness and humour. To obtain admiration and boast of a new conquest she will risk even her reputation, compromise herself; yet her virtue is in safe keeping, for she has neither heart nor passion. In the comedy of love the coquette is the villain of the play. ”

“ There is not a woman in the world with whom I should like to change places. How could I be happier than I am?"
"What is your definition of happiness?" said Philip, continuing to paint.
"For a woman," replied Dora, with warmth, "happiness consists in being loved by the man whom she loves and can be proud of; in being rich enough to afford all the necessary comforts of life, and poor enough to make pulling together a necessity; an existence hand in hand, side by side. And what is yours?"
"Well, I confess, I should like to be a little richer than that," said Philip, with a little amused smile. ”

“ Talk of woman's mission as wife and mother, as naturalists and moralists do, but let all of us artists cry at the top of our voices that woman's mission is to make life beautiful by the cultivation of her own beauty, beauty of body, mind, and heart.
It is the duty of woman to look as beautiful as she can; it is her imperious duty to charm the world by her sweetness and amiability. A woman who neglects this duty is guilty toward her fellow-creatures, even guilty toward her Maker, by not helping the destiny for which she was created. ”

“ The last words of Monsieur de Lussac came back to her memory, "Pansies for thought—Love lies bleeding." What connection would there be between a pansy and a crushed love? No one had ever loved her well enough to break his heart about her, except Philip, and he had married her. But he? Had there been a romance in his life, before she had known him? He had never spoken of anything of the kind. "After all," she said to herself, "the best of men have some experience of that kind in their early life, which they do not talk about. Ah, well! what matters it? Philip has filled my life with happiness." ”

“ I pity from the bottom of my heart the good woman who is not to know the whispers of love of a good husband or the caresses of little children, but I am not prepared to see life become a burden for her sake.
There is no possibility of denying or ignoring the fact. The purpose, the raison d'être, of woman is to be a mother, as the raison d'être of a fruit-tree is to bear fruit. And woe to the next generations, for everybody knows that only the children of quiet and reposed women are healthy and intelligent. ”

“ What makes a wife so useful to an ambassador is that she adds her own power of intuition to the five senses already possessed by her husband.
Love in matrimony can live only on condition that man and wife remain interesting in each other's eyes. Devotion, fidelity, attention to duty, and all the troop of domestic virtues will not be sufficient to keep love alive.
Beauty is not the mother of Love. On the contrary, it is often love which engenders beauty, gives brilliancy to the eyes, gracefulness to the body, vibration to the voice. Love is the sun that hatches the flowers of the soul. ”

“ If his wife has been good to him and she is still young when he dies, why should he condemn her to solitude for the rest of her days? What good does it do to him, when he is under the grass, to have his wife lonely and miserable? If I were a woman ever so fond of my husband, I would so much resent that stipulation that I would tear his will in pieces and marry the first respectable and attractive man who sought my hand. ”

“ Perfection seldom looks amiable and bright, and modern beauty must look intelligent—brilliant even. Ancient Greece would not have looked at a turned-up nose; but such a nose denotes gaiety, wit, spirit of repartee, and we like it.
I hope I shall not offend that most talented of French actresses, Madame Rejane, or her admirers, by saying that Athens would have refused to look at her; but the Parisians, the descendants and successors of the Attic Greeks, love her, with her big mouth, square when it laughs, and her turned-up nose. To them she is the embodiment of liveliness, wit, and gaiety. ”

“ The name of woman will ever be glorious so long as it is synonymous with beauty, tenderness, sweetness, devotion, all the sacred troop of virtues. It will be glorious, thanks to the Lucretias, the Penelopes, the Cornelias, ancient and modern, the devoted daughters, the loving wives, the adorable mothers, to the thousands of obscure heroines, who remind us, in the words of the great poet of antiquity, that the best women have been those whom the world has heard least of. ”

“ The worst feature of women as a sex is the absence of free-masonry among them. They stick together only for the redress of more or less imaginary grievances; perhaps the only one really momentous to their sex—I mean the desertion of trusting women by treacherous men—scarcely appeals to them. The woman who has fallen through love and confidence will get no sympathy from women, not even from the one who should give it to her—I mean the one who has given herself to a man, not because she loved him, but because he offered her money and matrimony. ”

“ A woman cannot love or respect a man who allows himself to be purchased for a title of nobility, and a man cannot love or respect a woman who buys him, and thus degrades him in his own eyes. There is no possible element of happiness in such marriages. If there is something in nobility, it should be nobleness of character in those who belong to it. What has become of the old motto Noblesse oblige?
The only chance of success in matrimony is that there should not be one single reproach which, in the inevitable moments of friction, may ever be hurled by one at the face of the other. ”

“ There should be more joy in the heart of a woman for a man who remains in love with her than for a hundred others whose admiration she may obtain.
There are some women who may love a man ever so much, and be loved by him to their hearts' content, who will use all their artillery to bring down strangers to their feet, but who will make little or no effort to look their best for the man who loves them and is devoted to them. For such women their beauty is an altar erected to unknown gods. ”

“ Never have a sneer at a woman or at a child. Whenever you feel sarcastic, exercise your talents on something else.
Never profane the words, 'I love you'; they may seal the fate of a woman; but when you have uttered these three words in great earnestness, and the woman has answered with that great religious, almost sad, smile that Victor Hugo called 'the smile of angels,' when, in a word, she is yours, place her on a pedestal, on an altar, and worship her. The world has nothing better to offer you. ”

“ Marriage will be a failure as long as men are of opinion that fidelity, patience, devotion, amiability, cheerfulness, and self-abnegation are virtues expected of women only; marriage will be a failure as long as it is a firm, the two partners of which do not bring about the same capital of qualities, as long as what is bad in the goose is not bad in the gander.
Certainly I like to see in a man a more powerful will than in a woman; I like to see more sweetness in a woman than in a man. ”

“ Nurses look all cheerful and happy, and the beauty of their faces, in England, is enhanced, I must say, by a pleasing, very becoming semi-nunlike attire, that gives them a peculiar charm which you find in no other women. There is engraven on their faces that joy of living which Heaven seems to stamp upon the faces of women who devote themselves to the well-being and happiness of their fellow-creatures and to the assuaging of their pains and sufferings. Yes, nurses all look beautiful, and if I were a woman, theirs is the kind of beauty which I should like to possess. ”

“ The supreme coquetry of a woman is to know how to reign, even when her husband governs. Her very weakness is the best weapon in her hands. Her husband should be the motive of all her actions. Before thinking of appearing beautiful to the indifferent, she should think of appearing beautiful to her husband.
If she is admired, she should feel proud of it for his sake, and make him understand that only crumbs are for strangers; that he alone is invited to the whole meal of her beauty, her love, her boundless devotion. ”

“ I take the American woman to be too intelligent—I had almost said too intellectual—to enjoy that childish pastime.
I hate the coquette and somewhat pity, if not despise, the flirt. I love straightforwardness. I admire that woman who blooms in the shade, who is earnest in her affections, and who waits until she is in love to allow the curtain to rise; then who honestly, devotedly, straightforwardly, goes through the whole comedy. ”

“ He is ironclad, and a woman cannot come near him without getting a bruise of some sort or other. He will ever stand before his wife a perfect model for her to look up to, and all her pretty little womanly ways, being a closed letter to him, will be wretchedly wasted on him.
Like all conceited men, the woman-hater has no humour in him. He cannot for the life of him see a joke. A frivolous remark will make him frown. He is a moral man with a vengeance, but all his morality and all the gold in the world are not worth the smile of a genial, cheerful husband. ”