Arnold Haultain

“ Is the coalescence of thought and feeling outside the bounds of human possibility? What, then, impels mankind to crave it, to attempt it, to sacrifice so much for it?—There is a cosmic puzzle here with which nor philosophy nor psychology nor religion has yet attempted to grapple.
After all, pitiful as it may be, lamentable as it may be, it is true, and it must be said, that this human heart of ours goes through life hungry, very hungry and unappeased. For what it hungers, what it has missed, whereto it looks for sustenance, it itself does not know. ”

“ A difficult and a delicate path it is that a girl has to tread through life—and often enough a dangerous. Yet with extraordinary deftness she treads it. She must win her a mate, yet has to pretend that the mate wins her. She makes believe to be captured, yet has herself to be intent on the chase. To be wooed and wedded is the law of her being, yet not for one moment dares she to exhibit too great an alacrity to obey that law; for she knows instinctively that an easy victory prognosticates a fickle victor. ”

“ That there is a Universe, is apparent; that it is one and complete, we suppose; that there are in it Jacks and Jills, is indubitable; that these Jacks and Jills crave mutual support, sympathy, love, friendship, wifehood, sistership, companionship, brotherhood, is also indubitable. If therefore the whole scheme of the Universe is not a farce, what does this craving of Love for Lover mean? And yet,
It is quite impossible to conceive of a Universe of Love, in which all the claims of Heart and Soul and Senses shall be eternally and infinitely satisfied? ”

“ She who captures a man by a single charm, be it even beauty, holds him by a weak chain.
Think not it was merely beauty that made Helen or Cleopatra historic.
Beauty is much, and grace is much; but there is a charm more subtle and potent than these.
* * *
Beauty without modesty is a rose without perfume: the petals may delight, but they lack an ineffable savor. Like a flower, too,
Though the tangible petals are numbered and comptable, the subtle perfume eludes the sense and is inexhaustible. For
Modesty is the exhalation of the soul: at once it enhances, as it refines, the potency of beauty. ”

“ Three things there be—nay, four—which man can never be sure, how a greatsoever his acumen, his astuteness, or his zeal: a woman; a race horse; a patent; and the money-market. They defy both faith and fate; they should be the recreations not the resources of life; and he is a fool who stakes more than a portion of his substance on any one of them.
* * *
What a paltry thing, after all, is man, man uncomplemented by woman! Left to himself, he stagnates; linked with a woman, he rises—-or sinks. A gentle touch stimulates him, a confiding heart makes of him a new creature. ”

“ Fame may allure him, friends encourage him, fortune cause him a momentary smile, but only woman makes him; and fame, friends, fortune, all are naught if there be not at his side a sharer of his weal. A man will strive for fortune, strip himself for friends, scour the earth for fame; but were there no woman in the world to be won, not one of these things would he do. ”

“ Beauty should never be analyzed. At sight of graceful neck, who speaks of "musculus sterno-cleido-mastoideus"; at touch of moist red lips, who thinks upon the corpuscles of Paccini?
* * *
More women are wooed for their complexions than for their characters.
* * *
Could women only know it, nothing can add to their charms: how provokingly delightful is the uniformed demureness of an hospital nurse beside the elaborate bedizenments of a woman of fashion!
* * *
The most beautiful thing known among men is: a good woman. And this is not an anomaly. ”

“ To get, the human heart must give.
The heart eats out itself; causes its own emptiness; creates its own void.
The selfish and egoistical life breeds always the vapid and vacuous heart.
Would you appease your own hunger? Feed the hungry hearts around you.
Do you crave fullness of joy? Give joy to the joyless.
Would you fill your own cavity, satisfy your craving, attain your desire, find what you seek? Give—give—give. The more the better, for
The greater the donation, the greater the repletion. ”

“ Only this I see: that each little heart creates its own little universe: the bee's, the that of its hive and the fields; man's, that of his earth and the stars. What may be above or beyond the stars, man no more knows than the bee knows what is beyond the fields. The heart—be it man's or a bee's—is the centre of its self-made sphere. Some day, perhaps, man's sphere will extend as far beyond the stars as today it extends beyond the fields. ”

“ That is a significant fact, and probably, could we fathom all the profundities and unravel all the entanglements of the relations between the sexes, as deep and as intricate as significant, that no woman thinks a man can pay her a higher compliment than to wish to make her his own. For though
Woman thinks man her ultimate aim and desire, Nature knows that man is but the stepping-stone to the child. In the end woman agrees with Nature. We may go farther, and say
Women are nearer the eternal laws than are men. Men govern themselves by the laws they themselves make. Women are lawless. ”

“ A man's interests may be many and and behold, a bold girl will appear and carry off the shy man! Perhaps to the life-long chagrin and sorrow of all three.
Often, oh! how often, an awkward and sophisticated youth and a prim maid with down-cast eyes will sit together, waltz together, and the one never get one inch the nearer to the other, though soul and mind and body crave a closer union. ”

“ A girl in her 'teens will make love to a gentleman of forty—and vice versa. In fact
The indiscreet impetuosity of youth succumbs before the astuteness of age.
The bachelor and the spinster both sometimes wonder that the benedick and the bride are still their rivals; for they know not that
In the amatorial art, matrimony is no handicap. In short,
There is no barrier at which love will balk. Nay more,
Love will forgive anything:
Did love demand it, love, though it might blush, would not blench. And
Often love itself stands amazed at its own divine audacity. ”

“ Poor aching, beating, human heart! It cannot reason; it cannot count the cost. To it seems that impulse, divine and mighty impulse, is the sole law of the earth; in time it learns that impulse, the mightiest, the divinest, though it may be law in heaven, is sometimes a veritable nemesis on earth: it gives freely, gladly, without compunction; it finds the gift rewarded by consequences too pitiful for tears. ”

“ It is in aphelion that the corona appears most splendid;
Were perihelion to result is coalescence, perhaps the photosphere would be proved composed of terrestrial vapors. And if it did (as no doubt it would) , would it be at all bedimmed? For, to the devout astrologer
Nothing, nothing will ever destroy beauty—and therefore wonder. So,
Bodily beauty, where Love is priestess, is a daedal spur to the loftiest worship.
The lover is ever worshipful. And
Where is worship, nothing can be profane. So
In love there is nor taint nor stain. ”

“ Unless a woman gives her heart, how can she give her aid? Surely,
Unless a man's armor is buckled on for the strife of life by feminine sympathy, the fight is apt to be a sorry one at best; since
A woman's true business is to back her husband: if SHE leaves him in the lurch, there is little hope for him. For of a truth
The strongest man is handicapped in the struggle for existence unless he knows and feels that his wife is at his side—not pushing him so much as leaning upon him. ”

“ A woman will often blandly ask why the two rivals to her hand should not be friends! Yet it is significant of much that she does her utmost to keep them apart! Indeed,
In no instance are a woman's tact and finesse so exercised as in playing off one man against another.—And yet usually she delights in the task; for
Being-made-love-to is to women what killing—whether of men or of animals—is to men. In a word,
To be sought after is to woman what war or the chase is to man. ”

“ No woman can be coerced into love,—though she may be coerced into marriage. And
Man, the clumsy wielder of one blunt weapon, often enough stands agape at his own powerlessness before the invulnerable woman of his desire. Indeed,
The battle between the coquettish maid and determined man is like the battle between the Retiarius and the Mirmillio. The coquetry ensnares the man as with a net against which his sword is useless.
* * *
A woman's emotions are as practical as a man's reason.
A man's emotions are never practical. This is why,
In the emotional matter of love, men and women so often lash. ”

“ Does the potency lie in the eyes and the lips, or is there some inscrutable and psychic power? At all events, who will explain how it is that
A man will sometimes forsake the most beautiful of wives and a woman will forsake the kindest of husbands to follow recklessly one who admits no comparison with the one forsaken? All we can say is that
The potency of personality exceeds the potency of beauty. For, Powerful as is physical charm, it counts not for all in the matter of love. Yet what it may be that does count, and how and why it does count, no man living shall say. ”

“ When the man has declared himself hers and hers alone; has given proof of the truth of such declaration; has bound the woman to himself by terms dictated by herself then, but not till then, the woman acts spontaneously and without control; then she blushes. But
Seek not, impulsive masculine lover, to explore too many of the mysteries of this thy feminine helpmeet. Perchance she feels herself so much above thee that she blushes to give the herself. Perchance she regards thee so much a symbol of the god-like, that she blushes for because she is not more worthy. ”

“ If it calls reason to aid, its soaring hopes are dashed, its romance spoiled, and it itself reduced to the level of a machine that calculates. If it acts on impulse and, meeting a heart that beats, so it thinks, in unison, unites itself with it, often enough that other soon palpitates to a different rhythm, or itself cannot keep time, and all things go awry. ”

“ A man can never know too much. Perhaps a woman can. And
It is a question how far a man admires a woman who knows too much. For,
If there is nothing a man can teach a woman, not even of the ways of love, the man is apt to be chagrined. Besides,
Too much knowledge is inimical to romance.
* * *
War is a man's true trade; love, woman's.
* * *
There is no stronger argument against the equality of the sexes than a woman's hand. It was made to toil? No; to place in her lover's. In truth,
Is there anything more fragile in nature than a woman's hand? ”

“ Even she who is minded to be caught will not spare her huntsman the ardor of the chase, and lightly esteems him who imagines she is to be lightly won.
In the chess-like game of love-making, no woman plays for check-mate: the game interests her too much to bring it to a finish. What pleases her most is stale-mate, where, though the King cannot be captured, the captress can maneuver without end.
A man imagines he wins by strenuous assault. The woman knows the victory was due to surrender. ”

“ From woman, who e're she be, there seems to emanate a potency ineffable to man,—impalpable, invisible, divine. It lies not in beauty or grace, not even in manner or mein; and it requires neither wiles nor artifice. It is not the growth of long and intimate acquaintance, for often it acts spontaneously and at once; and neither the woman who possesses it nor the man who succumbs to it can give it a name. For to say that it consists in the effluence or influence of personality or temperament, of affinity or passion, of sympathy or charm, is to say nothing save that we know not what it is. ”

“ She has played with love so much, that when a real and serious love is offered her, she still thinks it the toy that amused her. But
Soon enough does the man, if he is earnest—and a man never proposes unless he is in earnest—enlighten the girl of his choice: for
To a man, love never is a toy—though mere lust may be:
Men never play with love, as do girls: they play with lust,—as they play with bats and balls and fire-arms;
When men fall in love, they fall in love with a vengeance; and
The seriousness with which the man falls in love startles the girl. ”

“ To see the girl of thy heart—even if so be she not thine, nor not nearly thine—comport herself with another as she does with thee—ah! that gives a twinge to the masculine heart. Nay, lesser things than this will perturb this irascible organ: that the other should admire her charms—that she should accept such admiration. . . .. yet what cares she that these discomfort a man? For
A man's discomfiture is naught to a woman. In sooth,
Take a woman to task for her conduct, and with how soft an answer she will turn away your wrath, how deftly make light of your rival's advances! ”

“ Perhaps the pleasure intermixed with love's pangs arises from the thought that the other is the cause of our suffering. For,
In all love, it is the sacrifice of oneself for the other that brings keenest joy. ”

“ Many a man has debated for months whether to propose or not; and sometimes a woman will accept on a Friday the man that she refused point-blank of a Tuesday. But perhaps,
Where the heart hesitates, it is not so much a case of love as a case of convenience. For,
An overwhelming love leaves the heart of either doubt or debate. ”