Rambles in Womanland

The friendship of women for women is very often less based on love, or even sympathy, than on little indiscreet confidences which they may have made to one another.

In order that love may be lasting, it must be closely allied with tried friendship. One cannot replace the other, but so long as both march abreast, living together, a man and a woman can find life delicious.

It is not matrimony that kills love, but the way in which many people live in the state of matrimony. It may be affirmed, however, that only intelligent diplomatists (alas! the select few!) can make love last long in matrimonial life.

Women who suggest to the mind notes of interrogation are more interesting than those, too perfect, who only suggest notes of admiration.

Constant reproaches do not kill love so quickly and so surely as constant reminders of what one has done to deserve gratitude. Why? Simply because Cupid loves freedom, and lives on it. To ask for love as a debt of gratitude is like forcing it, and the failure is fatal.

Women are all actresses. What makes actresses so fascinating and attractive to men is that they are women twice over.

Woman is weak and man is strong – so we constantly hear, at any rate. Then why, in the name of common-sense, do we expect to find in women virtues that demand a strength of which we men are not capable?

There are women in the world who love with such ardour, such sincerity, and such devotion, that, after their death, they ought to be canonized.

Love is a divine law; duty is only a human – nay, only a social – one. That is why love will always triumph over duty; it is the greater of the two.

Lovers are very much like thieves; they proceed very much in the same way, and the same fate eventually awaits them. First, they take superfluous precautions; then by degrees they neglect them, until they forget to take the necessary ones, and they are caught.

A man who has been married enters the kingdom of heaven ex-officio, having served his purgatory on earth; but if he has been married twice he is invariably refused admittance, as the Sojourn of the Seraphs is no place for lunatics.

As long as there is one woman left on the face of the earth, and one man left to observe her, the world will be able to hear something new about women.

A man may be as perfect as you like, he will never be but a rough diamond until he has been cut and polished by the delicate hand of a woman.

Middle-aged and elderly men are often embellished by characteristic lines engraven on their faces, but women are not jealous of them.

A woman who marries a second time runs two risks: she may regret that she lost her first husband, or that she did not always have the second one. But, in the first case, her second husband may regret her first one even more than she does, and tell her so, too.

Many men say that they marry to make an end; but they forget that if marriage is for them an end, it is a beginning for the women, and then, look out!

It is a great misfortune not to be loved by the one you love; but it is a still greater one to be loved by the one whom you have ceased to love.

Love is like most contagious diseases: the more afraid you are of it, the more likely you are to catch it.

Men and women have in common five senses; but women possess a sixth one, by far the keenest of all – intuition. For that matter, women do not even think, argue, and judge as safely as they feel.

Cupid and Hymen are brothers, but, considering the difference in their temperaments, they cannot be sons by the same wife.

The motto of Cupid is, 'All or nothing'; that of Hymen, 'All and nothing.'

Love is more indulgent than Friendship for acts of infidelity.

If men were all deaf, and women all blind, matrimony would stand a much better chance of success.

CHAPTER IX

WOMEN AND THEIR WAYS

I sometimes wonder how some women dare go out when it is windy. Their hats are fixed to their hair by means of long pins; their hair is fixed to their heads by means of short ones, and sometimes it happens that their heads are fixed to their shoulders by the most delicate of contrivances. Yes, it is wonderful!

Fiction is full of Kings and Princes marrying shepherdesses and beggar-maids; but in reality it is only the Grand-Ducal House of Tuscany, which for nearly three hundred years has exhibited royal Princesses running away with dancing masters and French masters engaged at their husbands' courts.

A man in love is always interesting. What a pity it is that husbands cannot always be in love!

Men who always praise women do not know them well; men who always speak ill of them do not know them at all.

What particularly flatters the vanity of women is to know that some men love them and dare not tell them so. However, they do not always insist on those men remaining silent for ever.

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.

Two excellent kinds of wine mixed together may make a very bad drink. An excellent man and a very good woman married together may make an abominable match.

Jealousy, discreet and delicate, is a proof of modesty which should be appreciated by the very woman who should resent violent jealousy.

When you constantly hear the talent or the wit of a woman praised, you may take it for granted that she is not beautiful. If she were, you would hear her beauty praised first of all.

It is slow poison that kills love most surely. Love will survive even infidelity rather than boredom or satiety.

Men study women, and form opinions, generally wrong ones. Women look at men, guess their character, and seldom make mistakes.

All the efforts that an old woman makes to hide her age only help to advertise it louder.

Of a man and a woman, it is the one who is loved, but who does not love, that is the unhappier of the two.

Women often see without looking; men often look without seeing.

I know handsome men who are bald, and there are not a few, but many, who derive distinction from this baldness. There are men – severe, stern types of men – who are not disfigured, but improved, by spectacles. Just imagine, if you can, the possibility of a bald woman with spectacles inspiring a tender passion! So much for the infallibility of the proverb, 'What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,' so often quoted by women when they are told that men can afford to do this or that, but not they. Lady women-righters, please answer.

In the tender relations between men and women, novelty is a wonderful attraction, and habit a powerful bond; but between the two there is a bottomless precipice into which love often falls, never to be heard of afterward. Happy those who know how to bridge over the chasm!

A woman never forgets, however old she may be, that she was once very beautiful. Why should she? The pity is that she very often forgets that she is so no longer. My pet aversion in society is the woman of sixty who succeeds in making herself look fifty, thinks she is forty, acts as if she were thirty, and dresses as if she were twenty.

I am not prepared to say that celibacy is preferable to marriage; it has, however, this decided advantage over it: a bachelor can always cease to be one the moment he has discovered that he has made a mistake.

Women are extremists in everything. Poets, painters and sculptors know this so well that they have always taken women as models for War, Pestilence, Death, Famine and Justice, Virtue, Glory, Victory, Pity, Charity. On the other hand, virtues and vices, blessings and calamities of a lesser degree are represented by men. Such are Work, Perseverance, Laziness, Avarice, etc.

It is not given to any man or woman to fall in love more than once with the same person. And although men and women may love several times in succession, they can only once love to the fulness of their hearts.

Love does to women what the sun does to flowers: it colours them, embellishes them, makes them look radiant and beautiful; but when it is too ardent it consumes and withers them.

There are two terribly embarrassing moments in the life of a man. The first is when he has to say 'all' to the woman he loves, and the second when all is said.