Helen Rowland

“ The hardest thing in life is to discover the exact geographical location of a man's grouch—whether it is in his tooth, his vanity or his digestion, or is just a chronic condition of the whole system.
Being in love is like a fascinating spin at will in an automobile; being married, like a trolley trip on rails, with somebody ringing the bell at you every few minutes.
A woman's love is composed of maternal tenderness, childlike inconsistency, torturing jealousy and sublime unselfishness—and how is a man ever going to comprehend a mixture like that? ”

“ A girl hides her emotions under a veil of modesty, a spinster under a cloak of cynicism, a wife under a mantle of tact, and a widow under a cloud of mystery—and then women wonder why they are "misunderstood."
Proposing is a sort of acrobatic feat, in which a man must hang on to his nerve with one hand and to the girl with the other. If he lets go of either, he is lost.
In love, as in poker, men play just to play—and then proceed to throw away what has been easily won, without any thought of its value. Thus gamblers so often die in poverty and Lotharios in loneliness. ”

“ Of course it is easier to marry a widower than a bachelor. A man who has been through the Armageddon of one marriage has no spirit of battle left in him.
When a widow begins curling her hair, again, or a widower begins worrying about his thinness on top, Cupid chuckles and gets out his arrows and Satan smiles behind his hand.
In the matrimonial market a seasoned bachelor is just a shop-worn remnant; a divorcé is a cast-off, second-hand article; but a widower is a treasured heirloom inherited only through death. ”

“ A good husband is one who will get up and lift the ice off the dumbwaiter instead of lying back and lifting his voice to tell you how to do it without "hurting your itsy bitsy fingers."
The shallower a man's love, the more it bubbles over into eloquence. When his emotions go deep, words stick in his throat, and have to be hauled out of him with a derrick.
To be happy with a man you must understand him a lot and love him a little; to be happy with a woman you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all. ”

“ The sweetest part of a love affair is just before the confession when you begin discussing love in the abstract and gazing concretely into one another's eyes.
Marriage is a photogravure made from the glowing illusions which Love has painted on the canvas of the heart.
A woman may have to reach heaven before she tastes supernal joy; but to taste supreme punishment she has only to watch the love-mist die out of a man's eyes.
Nothing frightens a man like a woman's stony silence. ”

“ A man's wife is something like his teeth: He never thinks of her unless she happens to bother him.
Life is a tale that is "told": the monk tells his beads, the seer tells fortunes, the lover tells lies—and a woman tells everything.
To collect books is a sign of culture, to collect jewels a sign of wealth, but to collect husbands is a sign of paresis.
A modern bachelor makes love with his hand on his pulse and his eye on the clock. ”

“ A man falls in love through his eyes, a woman through her imagination, and then they both speak of it as an affair of "the heart."
No, Clarice, a man's idea of being loved isn't exactly being followed around with a hot water bottle, a box of pills and the eternal question: "Do you love me as much as ever?"
One grass widow doesn't make a summer resort—but she can always make it interesting.
When a man has baggy trousers nowadays it is from falling on his knees to an automobile—not to a girl. ”

“ A man's love is not actually dead until he begins subconsciously to think of his wife as the person who makes him wear his rubbers, mow the lawn, put up the fly-screens, and explain where he has been all Saturday afternoon.
The average man is so busy backing away from the girls he ought to marry that he usually backs right into the arms of the one woman under Heaven that he ought not to marry.
A man is like a motor-car which always balks on the trolley-tracks and runs at top speed down hill; a wife is the human brake that prevents him from going to destruction. ”

“ One may be loved forever! It is the vain desire to go on being a "heart-breaker" after one's flirting days are over that constitutes the real tragedy of age.
A man regards a woman's love first as an unattainable dream, then as a boon, then as a blessing, then as a right, then as a matter-of-course—and, last, as a punishment. ”

“ Every woman has a different notion of an ideal husband; but every woman's ideal lover is the same impossible combination of saint and devil, brute and baby, hero and mollycoddle, that never is seen anywhere off the stage or outside the pages of a "best thriller."
Love is a voyage of discovery, marriage the goal—and divorce the relief expedition.
A man never can comprehend why a woman can't understand how he can be dead in love with one girl and acutely alive to the charms of a lot of others at the same time. ”

“ THE modern bachelor is like a blotting pad; he can soak up all the sentiment and flattery a woman has to offer him, without ever spilling a drop.
A confirmed bachelor is so sure of his ability to dodge, that he is willing to amuse every pretty girl he meets, by handing her a rope and daring her to catch him.
A bachelor is a large body of egotism, completely surrounded by caution and fortified at all points by suspicion. His chief products are wild oats and cynicism; his chief industry is dodging matrimony ”

“ A man may honestly admire a superior woman; but when it comes to marrying, he usually looks about for something far enough beneath him to enjoy being ordered about and patted on the head.
A girl's heart is like her dressing-table—crowded with tenderly cherished little souvenirs of love; a man's, like his pipe, is carefully cleaned and emptied after each flame has gone out. ”

“ The man who falls in love at first sight never knows what has struck him, and therefore mercifully escapes all the agonizing slow-torture of feeling himself sink, inch by inch, into the quicksands of matrimony.
Never believe that justice is all you owe your husband; what every man needs, from the woman who loves him, is faith, hope and charity—and above all, mercy. ”

“ If there were only two women and one man in the world, the man would marry the brunette and then spend the rest of his life peeping over her shoulder and trying to flirt with the blonde.
A woman always embalms the corpse of a dead love; a man wisely cremates it, and plants a new love in the ashes.
A fool and her money are soon courted.
A woman's pity for a man who loves her against her will may be akin to love; but a man's pity for a woman who loves him without his permission is a twin brother to boredom. ”

“ A man's life is like a musical comedy; there is always one woman in it who is the star—but it takes ninety-nine others to make up the "ensemble."
Nothing so annoys a man as to have a woman "cheer him up," when he is enjoying the exquisite luxury of feeling sorry for himself.
The modern girl's "perfect candor" has taken the sin out of sincerity—and most of the sweet scent out of the flower of sentiment. Without the Serpent, the Garden of Eden would seem a dull old place to most men. [51]
Love is neither a bonfire, nor a kitchen-fire ”

“ Love is a matter of chance; matrimony a matter of money, and divorce—a matter of course.
Adam was the first man to "misunderstand" a woman.
A man is like a park squirrel; if you fling your favors or your charms at his head he will never come up and eat out of your hand.
What a man calls his "conscience" is merely the mental action that follows a sentimental reaction after too much wine or love. ”

“ Nowadays, a truly chivalrous girl will "lie like a lady" in order to protect a trusting man's vanity.
The woman who fascinates a man is not the one who looks up to him as the sun of her existence, but the one who merely looks down on him as one of the footlights. [41]
Don't doubt a man when he says, "I never loved like this before." Each time a man falls in love with so much more ease and facility that he doesn't recognize it as the same old emotion at all.
The first time a man lies to his wife he is surprised to discover how easy it is to do it. ”

“ Love is a matter of give and take—marriage, a matter of misgive and mistake.
Even a fool knows enough to laugh at a man's joke—but only a born Siren knows enough to hang onto his coat-lapel and beg him to "Tell it again!"
Some men are born for matrimony, some achieve matrimony—but most of them are merely poor dodgers.
There are many times when a woman would gladly drop her husband, if she did not feel morally certain that some other woman would come right along and pick him up. ”

“ A man is so apt to mistake his love of experiment for love of a woman that half the time he doesn't know which is which.
Why is it that a man never thinks he has tasted the cup of joy unless he has splashed it all over himself, as though it were his morning bath? ”

“ ALL the love routes lead to a kiss—but some men make love with the directness of an express train, some as haltingly as a local and some with the charm, smoothness and variation of a "special."
When a man complains of the girls who "pursue" him, don't forget that the mark of a real "girl-charmer" is his dead silence concerning all women except the one to whom he happens to be talking.
A man's idea of displaying "resolution" appears to be first to find out what a woman wants him to do, and then to proceed "resolutely" not to do it. ”

“ Nothing bores a man so much as for a woman to give him all her love—when he wanted only a little of it.
Solomon was the only man who ever had six hundred and ninety-nine alibis when one of his wives detected the fragrance of another woman's sachet on his coat lapel.
Every man "rocks the boat" of happiness at least once during a love affair—usually by trying to leap out of it before it lands in the port of Matrimony. All a man needs in order to win any woman is a little audacity, a little mendacity and plenty of pertinacity. ”

“ A girl knows exactly what kind of man she wants to marry; but a widow knows all the kinds she doesn't want to marry, and usually makes a safe selection by the wise process of elimination.
A widow's chief consolation in remarrying is probably that she finds it less exhausting to sit up and wait for one man to come home evenings, than to sit up and wait for a lot of them to go home.
Widows have all the honor and glory without any of the trials of matrimony; a live husband may be a necessity, but a dead one is a luxury.
Matrimony is the price of love—widowhood, the rebate. ”

“ A man recuperates so much more quickly from his remorse than a woman does from her indignation that by the time she has forgiven him he is tired of being good and ready to sin again.
Before marriage, a man will go home and lie awake all night thinking about something you said; after marriage, he'll go to sleep before you finish saying it.
A man can never understand how a woman gets so much joy out of leading him all the way to the threshold of love and then sweetly closing the door in his face. ”

“ TRUE LOVE is nothing but friendship, highly intensified, flavored with sentiment, spiced with passion, and sprinkled with the stardust of romance.
True Love can be no deeper than your capacity for friendship, no higher than your ideals, and no broader than the scope of your vision. ”

“ A sympathetic woman is like a rose which a man wears over his heart; a stupid woman is like a cabbage which he keeps in his kitchen; but a merely "clever" woman is like a dahlia—he knows he ought to admire her, but he had just as lief do so from a distance. ”

“ Marriage is the miracle which affords a woman a chance to gratify her vanity, pacify her family, mortify her rivals, and electrify her friends, all at the same time. Marriage is sweet! [28]
Love is what incites the caveman to drag a woman around by the hair and makes the civilized man permit a woman to drag him around by the nose.
The heart of a woman is a secret sanctuary where she is constantly burning incense and candles before a succession of idols of clay. ”

“ Love is just a glittering illusion with which we gild the hard, cold facts of life—until all the world seems bright and shining!
Most men are so busy dodging one love affair that they step right back under the wheels of another, and are fatally mangled. ”

“ Marriage is the operation by which a woman's vanity and a man's egotism are extracted without an anaesthetic.
Jealousy is the false alarm that wakes us up from love's young dream.
The most successful men are not those who have been inspired by a wise woman's love, but those who have perspired in order to gratify a foolish woman's whims. ”

“ No matter how many wrinkles a widow may have in her face, she always has enough at her fingertips to offset them.
Even a dead husband gives a widow some advantage over a spinster; the very debts her husband left afford her something to boast about to the unmarried woman who has only her own board bills to pay.
A girl takes a man for better or for worse—but a widow merely takes him for granted. ”

“ Dissimulation is the price of peace—but it's awfully hard for a married woman to preserve the peace by deceiving her husband into thinking that he is deceiving her, every time he tries. [69]
Of course men are not so suspicious as women. A woman in love would be jealous of a store dummy; but how can a man possibly suspect that any girl on whom he may bestow himself could ever think of anybody else?
A good woman inspires a man, a brilliant woman interests him, a beautiful woman fascinates him—but the considerate woman gets him. ”

“ It is no more reasonable to expect a man to love you tomorrow because he loves you today, than it is to assume that the sun will be shining tomorrow because the weather is pleasant today.
Sending a man a sentimental note, just after he has spent the evening with you, has about the same thrilling effect as offering him a sandwich, immediately after dinner.
A "good woman," according to Mrs. Grundy, is one who would scorn to sacrifice society for the sake of a man but will cheerfully sacrifice the man she marries for the sake of society. ”