“ The empire of woman is an empire of sweetness, skilfulness and attractiveness; her orders are caresses, her evils are tears.
Rousseau.
Women need not be beautiful every day of their lives; it is sufficient that they have moments which one does not forget, and the return of which one expects.
Cherbuliez.
There are some lips from which even the proudest women love to hear the censure which appears to disprove indifference.
Lytton.
It is in the nature of the feminine sex to seek here below to corrupt men, and therefore wise men never abandon themselves to the seductions of women. ”

“ A man must be a fool who does not succeed in making a woman believe that which flatters her.
Balzac.
I have seen faces of women that were fair to look upon, yet one could see that the icicles were forming round these women’s hearts.
Holmes.
The highest mark of esteem a woman can give a man is to ask his friendship, and the most signal proof of her indifference is to offer him hers.
Anonymous.
The fire of woman’s passion, consuming the wilderness of her limitation, rises to the pure flame that has blazed on every altar of Eros between the Nile and the Columbia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We look at one little woman’s face we love, as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our yearnings.
George Eliot.
There are some women who seem cold and beautiful stones, their hearts icicles, their tears frozen gems pressed out by injured pride.
Alger.
Position, Wren said, is essential to the perfecting of beauty—a fine building is lost in a dark lane; a statue should be in the air; much more true is it of woman.
Emerson.
A woman should never accept a lover without the consent of her heart, nor a husband without the consent of her judgment. ”

“ Man forsakes Christianity in his labours; woman cherishes it in her solitudes and trials. Man lives by repelling, woman by enduring—and here Christianity meets her.
Channing.
It is not easy to be a widow; one must resume all the modesty of girlhood, without being allowed even to feign ignorance. ”

“ Beloved darlings, who cover over and shadow many malicious purposes with a counterfeit passion of dissimulate sorrow and unquietness.
Sir Walter Raleigh.
A mother’s tenderness and caresses are the milk of the heart.
Eugenie de Guérin.
Lovers have in their language an infinite number of words in which each syllable is a caress.
Rochepedre.
To love is the least of the faults of a loving woman.
La Rochefoucauld.
What is it that renders friendship between women so lukewarm and of so short a duration? It is the interests of love and the jealousy of conquest. ”

“ The heart of a coquette is like a rose, of which the lovers pluck the leaves, leaving only the thorns for the husband.
Anonymous.
In our age women commonly preserve the publication of their good offices and their vehement affection toward their husbands until they have lost them.
Montaigne.
When women cannot be revenged, they do as children do—they then cry.
Cardan.
At twenty, man is less a lover of woman than of women; he is more in love with the sex than with the individual, however charming she may be. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No friendship is so cordial or so delicious as that of girl for girl; no hatred so intense or immovable as that of woman for woman.
Landor.
Women are priestesses of the unknown.
Anonymous.
To give you nothing and to make you expect everything, to dawdle on the threshold of love while the doors are closed, this is all the science of a coquette.
De Bernard.
Men always say more evil of a woman than there really is; and there is always more than is known. ”

“ Love, that sometimes corrupts pure bodies, often purifies corrupt hearts.
Laténa.
Coquetry is a continual lie, which renders a woman more contemptible and more dangerous than a courtesan who never lies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With cleverness, thirty years, and a little beauty, a woman makes fewer conquests but more durable ones.
Dupuy.
Women who marry seldom act but once; their lot is, ere they wed, obedience unto a father, thenceforth to a husband.
Marston.
It is woman’s way. They always love colour better than form, rhetoric better than logic, priestcraft better than philosophy, and flourishes better than figures.
Anonymous.
A prude exhibits her virtue in word and manner; a virtuous woman shows hers in her conduct. ”

“ Woman is more the companion of her own thoughts and feelings, and if they are turned to ministers of sorrow, where shall she look for consolation?
Washington Irving.
Vanity, shame and, above all, temperament often makes the valour of men and the virtue of women. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The beauty of some women has days and seasons, and depends upon accidents which diminish or increase it.
Cervantes.
We meet in society many attractive women whom we would fear to make our wives.
D’Harleville.
The woman who plays with the love of a loyal man is a curse; she may close his heart for ever against all confidence in her sex.
Anonymous.
It is the male that gives charm to womankind, that produces an air in their faces, a grace in their motions, a softness in their voices, and a delicacy in their complexions. ”

“ 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 with ennui.
Mme. de Genlis.
Men say more evil of a woman than they think; it is the contrary with women toward men. ”

“ Woman alone knows true loyalty of affection.
Schiller.
Women are never stronger than when they arm themselves with their weakness.
Mme. du Deffand.
Women are apt to see chiefly the defects of a man of talent and the merits of a fool.
Anonymous.
Women have a perpetual envy of our vices; they are less vicious than we, not from choice, but because we restrict them; they are the slaves of order and fashion.
Johnson.
It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the “dear deceit” of beauty. ”

“ The woman who does not choose to love should cut the matter short at once by holding out no hope to her suitor.
Marguerite de Valois.
One single honest man may yet be seen; but wander all the world round to find one honest woman, he will search in vain.
Wieland.
A woman forgives the audacity which her beauty has prompted us to be guilty of.
Lesage.
To marry a wife, if we regard the truth, is an evil, but it is a necessary evil.
Menander.
Nothing is more difficult to choose than a good husband—unless it be to choose a good wife. ”

“ Woman conceals only what she does not know.
Proverb.
Love, pleasure, and inconstancy are but the consequences of a desire to know the truth.
Duclos.
A coquette is one that is never to be persuaded out of the passion she has to please, nor out of a good opinion of her own beauty. ”

“ 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.
[Pg 140] To a woman of delicate feeling, the most persuasive declaration of love is the embarrassment of an intellectual man. ”

“ Man without woman is head without body; woman without man is body without head.
German Proverb.
Wrinkles disfigure a woman less than ill-nature.
Dupuy.
I am sure I do not mean it an injury to women when I say there is a sort of sex in souls.
Steele.
A woman, when she has passed forty becomes an illegible scrawl; only an old woman is capable of divining old women.
Balzac.
[Pg 51] A beautiful woman is never silly; she has the best wit that a man may ask of a woman, she is pretty.
Stahl.
All the reasons of men are not worth one sentiment of woman. ”

“ A man can keep another person’s secret better than his own; a woman, on the contrary, keeps her secret though she tells all others.
La Bruyère.
Men speak of what they know; women, of what pleases them. ”

“ With what hope can we endeavour to persuade the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost in vanity.
Johnson.
A mother’s prayers, silent and gentle, can never miss the road to the throne of all bounty.
Beecher.
Venus always saves the lover whom she leads.
Delatouche.
A good-tempered woman, of the order yclept buxom, not only warrants a pair of expansive shoulders, but bespeaks our approbation of them.
Leigh Hunt.
[Pg 25] Men love at first and most warmly; women love last and longest. This is natural enough; for nature makes women to be won and men to win. ”

“ The word itself is as difficult to define as its own essences—wit, humour, style, etc. We recognise the epigram when uttered or printed just as swiftly as we recognise beauty in a woman, yet rarely can we describe either. ”

“ Marriage is often but ennui for two.
Commerson.
Love that seldom gives us happiness, at least makes us dream of it.
Sénancourt.
Woman is the most precious jewel taken from Nature’s casket for the ornamentation and happiness of man.
Guyard.
[Pg 171] Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.
Lacon.
Love is like medical science—the art of assisting Nature.
Lallemand.
To continue love in marriage is a science.
Mme. Reyband.
The mistake of many women is to return sentiment for gallantry.
Jouy.
It is not love that ruins us; it is the way we make it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.
[Pg 123] 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. ”

“ The only way to get the upper hand of a woman, is to be more woman than she is herself.
Anonymous.
The devastating egotism of man is properly foreign to woman; though there are many women as haughty, hard and imperious as any man. ”

“ Tenderness has no deeper source than the heart of a woman, devotion no purer shrine, sacrifice no more saint-like abnegation.
Saint-Foix.
[Pg 59] It is difficult for a woman to keep a secret; and I know more than one man who is a woman.
Lafontaine.
All the evil that women have done to us comes from us, and all the good they have done to us comes from them. ”

“ There are plenty of women who believe women to be incapable of anything but to cook, incapable of interest in affairs.
Emerson.
A woman is happy and attains all that she desires when she captivates a man; hence the great object of her life is to master the art of captivating men. ”

“ Women must have their wills while they live, because they make none when they die.
Proverb.
Women never truly command till they have given their promise to obey; and they are never in more danger of being made slaves than when the men are at their feet. ”

“ Partake of love as a temperate man partakes of wine; do not become intoxicated.
De Musset.
A woman never commands a man, unless he be a fool, but by her obedience.
Turkish Spy.
[Pg 3] Many benefit by the caresses they have not inspired; many a vulgar reality serves as a pedestal to an ideal idol.
Gautier.
In the highest society, as well as in the lowest, woman is merely an instrument of pleasure.
Tolstoi.
Women know at first sight the character of those with whom they converse. There is much to give them a religious height to which men do not attain. ”