Max O'Rell

“ 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. ”

“ Nurses look the happiest women in the world — Their lives and their privileges — True story of a nurse.
If I were a woman of robust health, rich or poor, and I had no fascination for men, and matrimony had no fascination for me, I would become a nurse. The great, the only problem to solve in life, after all, is happiness, and the only possible way to be happy is to feel that you are wanted and you cause happiness in others; in a word, that somebody is glad and grateful that you are alive. I know I should find a great deal of happiness in nursing. ”

“ A woman is proud to call herself a reward, and that is why all heroes appeal to her so much. Mirabeau was the plainest of men, with his face covered with smallpox marks, yet no man ever made so many conquests among women. Successful generals, explorers, great orators, authors, artists, singers, all appeal to women. They may not love them personally, but it affords them great pleasure to be loved by them. There is in every woman a craving for a man superior to herself, and that is why women who try to dominate men are such dismal failures.
To a woman love is sacred, her food, her life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And now, where is that New Woman to be found? Put together a hundred women, intelligent and of good society; take out the beautiful ones; then take out the married ones who are loved by their husbands and their children, and kindly seek the New Woman among what is left—ugly women, old maids, and disappointed and neglected wives.
Woman has no grievance against man. Her only grievance should be, I admit, against Nature, which made her different from man, with duties different, physically and otherwise, almost always to her disadvantage. The world exists and marches on through love. ”

“ How I do love that simple, fascinating little woman who gently puts her arms round her husband's neck, kisses him, and confesses that she was wrong! What a brute that man is if he does not at once take that dear creature in his arms and make all the apologies he is capable of for behaving in such an ungentlemanly way as to force his wife to acknowledge that she was in the wrong! That man, if he is a gentleman, a man even, will spend weeks and weeks after such a confession attending to the smallest wishes of his wife. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I don't care what a few American millionaires, who prefer England to America, who crawl on all fours before the English aristocracy, who would think it beneath their dignity to give their daughters to honest Americans, and prefer to get some English noblemen's coats-of-arms out of pawn with their daughters and their dollars—I say I don't care what these people may say to the contrary, my firm conviction, more and more absolute every time that I travel throughout the United States, is that there is very little love to spare in America for the English people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many a woman would have been in despair if Nature had made her as fashion has often made her appear.
To-day it is the female form divine, beautifully draped in beautiful limp materials of soft, delicate hues, gracefully relieved by lovely lace and refined trimmings, the whole with a touch of simplicity that never fails to enhance the beauty of the wearer. No, never since the classical days of Athenian dress have women looked so beautiful as they do now.
The majority of us men are, I believe, conceited enough to think that women dress and try to look as beautiful as possible to please us. ”

“ Woman is an instrument given to man for his happiness and his delight. If the instrument gets neglected, out of tune, and broken, man should blame himself alone. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the instrument is right enough; it only wants to be in good and careful keeping.
There are only two places in the world where a beautiful woman, fashionably dressed, can walk comfortably without being stared at by the women like a Barnum's freak out for an airing—Paris and New York, and perhaps Bond Street, London, during the season. Everywhere else she has to ride or hide. ”

“ I owe to American women such pleasant, never-to-be-forgotten hours that on merely hearing the mention of the American woman I take off my hat.
Of all the women in the world, the American woman is the one who receives the best attentions at the hands of men. The Frenchman, it is true, is the slave of his womankind, but he expects her to be his thorough partner—I mean, to share with him his labours as well as his pleasures. The American man is the most devoted and hard-working husband in the world. ”

“ You cannot help falling in love any more than you can help becoming gray or bald, and you may fall in love against all the interests of your life. The more you argue against love, the more you love. Love has nothing to do with arguing and reasoning, any more than it has with duty and gratitude. You cannot command love to come or go, and many a woman has been on her knees praying that she might love a man to whom she owed a debt of gratitude, but the prayer has seldom been heard. A woman will remain faithful to a man out of duty or out of gratitude, but all that will not make her love him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If your husband or son, dear lady, would like to have a glass of wine or beer with his dinner, let him have it in your sweet and wholesome presence. Don't make a hypocrite of him. Don't compel him to go and hide himself in his club, or, worse, in a saloon, or, worse still, don't allow him to go and lose his manhood's dignity by crawling on all fours under the counter of a drug-store.
There is no virtue in compulsion. There is virtue only in liberty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The woman-hater is a man who has never petted his mother, who has never been the 'chum' of his sisters, who as a boy has despised girls, and as a young man has treated them with disrespect and even contempt. This kind of man has never once in his life given a thought to woman, has never deemed it consistent with his dignity to devote a minute to the study of her character. He has never given way to her charms, he has never felt her influence, he has never learned to smile kindly at her little foibles and fads. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The woman who has a keen sense of humour is a terrible one to make love to. The romantic one will find charms in all your shortcomings, but the other is inexorable. She is constantly on the look-out for something to laugh at; nothing will escape her. And you know that, if you laugh, love-making is out of the question.
I know a woman who was radically cured of her ardent love for a man because he had, near the tip of his nose, a tiny little wart which turned alternately white and red while he got passionately engaged telling her the sincerity and intensity of his love. ”

“ The rule of women over men is the survival of the fittest.
The best thing that can happen to a man is to be ruled by his wife; but she should rule him so discreetly, so diplomatically, that he could almost boast that it is he who rules her. At all events, he should remain very undecided which of the two it is that rules the other. And when a man is not quite sure that it is he who rules his wife, you may take it for granted that it is she who rules him. Of course, I start from this indispensable, fundamental element, that there is love between husband and wife. ”

“ How is the art of ruling a husband to be learned? The American and the French girls are at a good school; they have only to study how Mamma does it. I have travelled all over the world, and so far I have discovered two countries only in which the men are in leading-strings and the women are the leaders—my own beloved one and the United States of America. In these two privileged nations the women lead the men by the nose; but in America the women boast of it, and I do not think they should. In France the women do not boast of it, but they do it, and with a vengeance. ”

“ The love she has inspired is written on every one of her features. Her eyes sparkle with joy, her mouth expresses the ecstasy of past and present bliss, and also gratitude for the kisses that have been impressed upon it. Yes, the woman of forty is a joy, an intoxicating and an incomparable joy, to a husband. That woman is even more beautiful physically than she ever was, and her beauty is of such a different type from what it was at twenty that I can very well understand how a husband can seriously fall in love with his wife a second time. ”

“ I even know some who had children of their own, and who continued to be excellent mothers to the children by a former wife; but it is expecting too much of a woman to ask her to love other people's children as dearly as she does her own. Two broods will seldom live happily huddled together in the same nest. If it sometimes happens to be so, it is the exception.
The world is crowded with young girls who have preferred a rough life of toil and misery to living with cold, indifferent stepmothers, who made them keenly feel the loss they had sustained when their own mothers died. ”