C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Woman
Woman is the masterpiece.
Woman is a miracle of divine contradictions.
Her step is music, and her voice is song.
Earth’s noblest thing, a woman perfected.
Nature intended that woman should be her masterpiece.
Women have the genius of charity.
Delicacy in woman is strength.
A woman’s fitness comes by fits.
One tongue is sufficient for a woman.
The enigma of the nineteenth century.
Women, like princes, find few real friends.
Woman is the lesser man.
Who is it can read a woman?
When women sue, they sue to be denied.
The society of woman is the element of good manners.
There is a woman at the beginning of all great things.
If women were humbler, men would be honester.
There are few women whose charm, survives their beauty.
She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen.
Fine by defect, and delicately weak.
Women see through Claude Lorraines.
Men are misers, and women prodigal, in affection.
Her stature tall—I hate a dumpy woman.
A woman is easily governed, if a man takes her in hand.
Sensibility is the power of woman.
A shameless woman is the worst of men.
What woman can resist the force of praise?
Divination seems heightened and raised to its higher power in woman.
The crown of creation.
The woman that deliberates is lost.
A cunning woman is a knavish fool.
A woman in love is a very poor judge of character.
’T is modesty that makes them seem divine.
Woman is at best a contradiction still.
The eternal feminine doth draw us on.
Women forgive injuries, but never forget slights.
Who does know the bent of woman’s fantasy.
A woman’s noblest station is retreat.
The beauty of a lovely woman is like music.
Great women belong to history and to self-sacrifice.
Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman.
A woman’s lot is made for her by the love she accepts.
Would you hurt a woman worst, aim at her affections.
Not for herself was woman first created, nor yet to be man’s idol, but his mate.
By her we first were taught the wheedling arts.
To a gentleman every woman is a lady in right of her sex.
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
A woman’s hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.
If thou wouldest please the ladies, thou must endeavor to make them pleased with themselves.
Woman is the Sunday of man: not his repose only, but his joy; the salt of his life.
Woman’s grief is like a summer storm, short as it is violent.
The brain women never interest us like the heart women; white roses please less than red.
Women can less easily surmount their coquetry than their passions.
A handsome woman is a jewel; a good woman is a treasure.
Woman has this in common with angels, that suffering beings belong especially to her.
But what is woman? Only one of nature’s agreeable blunders.
Honor women! They strew celestial roses on the pathway of our terrestrial life.
To speak but little becomes a woman; and she is best adorned who is in plain attire.
Women are a new race, recreated since the world received Christianity.
It is against womanhood to be forward in their own wishes.
Women have more heart and more imagination than men.
There are in woman’s eyes two sorts of tears,—the one of grief, the other of deceit.
Men who flatter women do not know them; men who abuse them know them still less.
Women have a genius for love; men can only learn the art indifferently.
The pearl is the image of purity, but woman is purer than the pearl.
Woman, last at the cross, and earliest at the grave.
Where would the power of women be, were it not for the vanity of men?
Women are extreme in all points. They are better or worse than men.
The test of civilization is the estimate of woman.
A woman needs a stronger head than her own for counsel—she should marry.
Pretty women without religion are like flowers without perfume.
The desire to please everything having eyes seems inborn in maidens.
Honor women! they entwine and weave heavenly roses in our earthly life.
A noble man is led by woman’s gentle words.
A woman is always changeable and capricious.
A woman, and by so much nearer heaven as that makes one.
A woman either loves or hates; she knows no medium.
Women that are the least bashful are often the most modest.
Where women are, the better things are implied if not spoken.
Women especially as to be talked to as below men, and above children.
The woman in us still prosecutes a deceit like that begun in the garden.
A clever woman has millions of born foes,—all stupid men.
A woman is seldom roused to great and courageous exertion but when something most dear to hear is in immediate danger.
Wretched, un-idea’d girls.
There are female women, and there are male women.
Men at most differ as heaven and earth: but women, worst and best, as heaven and hell.
Very few men understand the true significance of contentment; women alone illustrate it.
She is not made to be the admiration of everybody, but the happiness of one.
Women are never stronger than when they arm themselves with their weakness.
When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.
’Tis the greatest misfortune in nature for a woman to want a confidant.
If there be any one whose power is in beauty, in purity, in goodness, it is a woman.
Woman, once made, equal to man, becometh his superior.
A little, tiny, pretty, witty, charming darling she.
The heart of true womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it!
Women are like pictures: of no value in the hands of a fool till he hears men of sense bid high for the purchase.
The foundation of domestic happiness is faith in the virtue of woman.
Most women indulge in idle gossip, which is the henchman of rumor and scandal.
A woman set on anything will walk right through the moral crockery without wincing.
The taste forever refines in the study of women.
A wretched woman is more unfortunate than a wretched man.
Oh, pearl of all things, woman! Adored be the artist who created thee!
Man forms and educates the world; but woman educates man.
A good woman is a hidden treasure; who discovers her will do well not to boast about it.
Woman is the salvation or destruction of the family. She carries its destinies in the folds of her mantle.
All the women in the world would not make me lose an hour.
There is no jewel in the world so valuable as a chaste and virtuous woman.
The purer the golden vessel, the more readily is it bent; the higher worth of women is sooner lost than that of men.
If we require more perfection from women than from ourselves, it is doing them honor.
It is valueless to a woman to be young unless pretty, or to be pretty unless young.
Woman’s honor is nice as ermine, will not bear a soil.
And whispering, “I will ne’er consent”—consented.
For the nature of women is closely allied to art.
In matters of business, no woman stops at integrity.
Woman is a flower that breathes its perfume in the shade only.
Most women will forgive an insult rather than a slight.
Woman is like the reed which bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.
There is no gown or garment that worse becomes a woman than when she will be wise.
Most men like in women what is most opposite their own characters.
A child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman.
Women are the poetry of the world, in the same sense as the stars are the poetry of heaven.
Fear and niceness, the handmaids of all women, or more truly, woman its pretty self.
They are the books, the arts, the academies, that show, contain, and nourish all the world.
Kindness in woman, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love.
It is loss difficult for a woman to obtain celebrity by her genius than to be forgiven for it.
There are three things I have always loved and never understood,—paintings, music, and woman.
A beautiful woman without principles may be likened to those fair but rootless flowers which float in streams, driven by every breeze.
They govern the world, these sweet-lipped women, because beauty is the index of a larger fact than wisdom.
Woman is mistress of the art of completely imbittering the life of the person on whom she depends.
Women have, in general, but one object, which is their beauty; upon which scarce any flattery is too gross for them.
Just corporeal enough to attest humanity, yet sufficiently transparent to let the celestial origin shine through.
When a woman hath ceased to be quite the same to us, it matters little how different she becomes.
As soon as she begins to be ashamed of what she ought not, she will not be ashamed of what she ought.
She is like ivy, which grows beautifully so long as it twines round a tree, but is of no use when separated.
Where woman is held in honor, there the gods are well pleased; where she receives no honor, all holy acts are void and fruitless.
A woman’s faults, be they never so small, cast a shadow which all her virtues cannot dispel.
Woman is superlative; the best leader in life, the best guide in happy days, the best consoler in sorrow.
There is on earth no greater treasure or more desirable possession for man, than a woman who truly loves him.
All women are, in some degree, poets in imagination, angels in heart, and diplomatists in mind.
Endurance is the prerogative of woman, enabling the gentlest to suffer what would cause terror to manhood.
The honor of woman is badly guarded when it is guarded by keys and spies. No woman is honest who does not wish to be.
If you would know the political and moral condition of a people, ask as to the position of its women.
A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies; but a handsome fool is irresistible.
Never expect women to be sincere, so long as they are educated to think that their first aim in life is to please.
There are three things a wise man will not trust,—the wind, the sunshine of an April day, and woman’s plighted faith.
Women equitable, logical, and utterly just! Mercy upon us! If they were, population would cease, the world would be a howling wilderness.
A woman possessing nothing but outward advantages is like a flower without fragrance, a tree without fruit.
All a woman has to do in this world is contained within the duties of a daughter, a sister, a wife and a mother.
He ploughs the waves, sows the sands, and hopes to gather the wind in a net, who places his hopes on the heart of woman.
A clever woman often compromises her husband; a stupid woman only compromises herself.
Women do not transgress the bounds of decorum so often as men; but when they do, they go greater lengths.
Woman’s power is over the affections. A beautiful dominion is hers, but she risks its forfeiture when she seeks to extend it.
A woman’s heart is just like a lithographer’s stone,—what is once written upon it cannot be rubbed out.
As for the women, though we scorn and flout them, we may live with, but cannot live without them.
A young man rarely gets a better vision of himself than that which is reflected from a true woman’s eyes; for God Himself sits behind them.
Happiness lends poetic charms to woman, and dress adorns her like a delicate tinge of rouge.
Most of their faults women owe to us, whilst we are indebted to them for most of our better qualities.
A tact which surpassed the tact of her sex as much as the tact of her sex surpasses the tact of ours.
The empire of woman is an empire of softness, of address, of complacency. Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears.
The world is the book of women. Whatever knowledge they may possess is more commonly acquired by observation than by reading.
A woman may be ugly, ill-shaped, wicked, ignorant, silly, and stupid, but hardly ever ridiculous.
Women are engaged to men by the favors they grant them; men are disengaged by the same favors.
The errors of women spring almost always from her faith in the good or her confidence in the true.
O woman! in ordinary cases so mere a mortal, how, in the great and rare events of life, dost thou swell into the angel!
Women have more strength in their looks than we have in our laws, and more power by their tears, than we have by our arguments.
Women see through and through each other; and often we most admire her whom they most scorn.
There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which beams and blazes in the dark hours of adversity.
Our sex bears the disgrace not only of a great deal of genuine poltroonery, but also of much which is mere affectation.
Women should be doubly careful of their conduct, since appearances often injure them as much as faults.
What we call in men wisdom is in women prudence. It is a partiality to call one greater than the other.
The world is so unjust that a female heart which has been once touched is thought forever blemished.
God has placed the genius of women in their hearts, because the works of this genius are always works of love.
The woman who is resolved to be respected can make herself so even amidst an army of soldiers.
It makes sweet human music,—oh! the spells that haunt the trembling tale a bright-eyed maiden tells!
And when a woman says she loves a man, the man must hear her, though he love her not.
It goes far to reconciling me to being a woman when I reflect that I am thus in no danger of ever marrying one.
The wisest woman you talk with is ignorant of something that you know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance.
Every blue-stocking will remain a spinster as long as there are sensible men on the earth.
A bluestocking is the scourge of her husband, children, friends, servants, and every one.
Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.
I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.
For silence and a chaste reserve is woman’s genuine praise, and to remain quiet within the house.
A woman too often reasons from her heart; hence two-thirds of her mistakes and her troubles.
Next to God, we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth having.
Women are like thermometers, which on a sudden application of heat sink at first a few degrees, as a preliminary to rising a good many.
A woman’s best qualities do not reside in her intellect, but in her affections. She gives refreshment by her sympathies, rather than by her knowledge.
I know the nature of women. When you will, they will not; when you will not, they come of their own accord.
She hath a natural wise sincerity, a simple truthfulness, and these have lent her a dignity as moveless as the centre.
I have often thought that the nature of women was inferior to that of men in general, but superior in particular.
A woman is the most inconsistent compound of obstinacy and self-sacrifice that I am acquainted with.
One woman is fair; yet I am well: another is wise; yet I am well: another virtuous; yet I am well. But till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace.
Men’s hearts and faces are always wide asunder; women’s are not only in close connection, but are mirror-like in the instant power of reflection.
Pleasure is to women what the sun is to the flower; if moderately enjoyed, it beautifies, it refreshes, and it improves; if immoderately, it withers, deteriorates and destroys.
Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics.
A virtuous mind in a fair body is indeed a fine picture in a good light, and therefore it is no wonder that it makes the beautiful sex all aver charms.
The majority of women have no principles of their own; they are guided by the heart, and depend for their own conduct, upon that of the men they love.
I am resolved to grow fat and look young till forty, and then slip out of the world with the first wrinkle and the reputation of five and twenty.
What furniture can give such finish to a room as a tender woman’s face? and is there any harmony of tints that has such stirrings of delight as the sweet modulations of her voice?
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.
To describe women, the pen should be dipped in the humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with the dust gathered from the wings of a butterfly.
To think of the part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline.
Let men say what they will; according to the experience I have learned, I require in married women the economical virtue above all other virtues.
If thou wouldst hear what seemly is and fit, inquire of noble woman; they can tell, who in life’s common usage hold their place by graceful deed and aptly chosen word.
At present the most valuable gift which can be bestowed on women is something to do, which they can do well and worthily, and thereby maintain themselves.
Women of forty always fancy they have found the Fountain of Youth, and that they remain young in the midst of the ruins of their day.
Teach him to live unto God and unto thee; and he will discover that women, like the plants in woods, derive their softness and tenderness from the shade.
I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship to a woman, whether civilized or savage, without receiving a decent and friendly answer.
There is nothing by which I have, through life, more profited by than the just observations, the good opinion, and the sincere and gentle encouragement of amiable and sensible women.
O, if the loving, closed heart of a good woman should open before a man, how much controlled tenderness, how many veiled sacrifices and dumb virtues, would he see reposing therein?
Women have many faults, but of the many this is the greatest, that they please themselves too much, and give too little attention to pleasing the men.
To the disgrace of men it is seen that there are women both more wise to judge what evil is expected, and more constant to bear it when it is happened.
The prevailing manners of an age depend, more than we are aware of, or are willing to allow, on the conduct of the women; this is one of the principal things on which the great machine of human society turns.
However we do praise ourselves, our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, more longing, wavering, sooner lost and won, than women’s are.
I thank God I am not a woman, to be touched with so many giddy offences as He hath generally taxed their whole sex withal.
Make the doors upon a woman’s wit, and it will out at the casement; shut that, and it will out at the key-hole; that, it will fly with the smoke out at the chimney.
They never reason, or, if they do, they either draw correct inferences from wrong premises or wrong inferences from correct premises; and they always poke the fire from the top.
No amount of preaching, exhortation, sympathy, benevolence, will render the condition of our working-women what it should be so long as the kitchen and the needle are substantially their only resources.
O woman! woman! thou shouldest have few sins of thine own to answer for! Thou art the author of such a book of follies in a man that it would need the tears of all the angels to blot the record out.
Nature has given women two painful but heavenly gifts, which distinguish them, and often raise them above human nature,—compassion and enthusiasm. By compassion, they devote themselves; by enthusiasm they exalt themselves.
Nature sent women into the world with this bridal dower of love, for this reason, that they might be, what their destination is, mothers, and love children, to whom sacrifices must ever be offered, and from whom none are to be obtained.
The woman must not belong to herself; she is bound to alien destinies. But she performs her part best who can take freely of her own choice, the alien to her heart, can bear and foster it with sincerity and love.
Woman is the highest, holiest, most precious gift to man. Her mission and throne is the family, and if anything is withheld that would make her more efficient, useful, or happy in that sphere, she is wronged, and has not her rights.
I have often reflected within myself on this unaccountable humor in womankind, of being smitten with everything that is showy and superficial; and on the numberless evils that befall the sex from this light fantastical disposition.
An inconstant woman is one who is no longer in love; a false woman is one who is already in love with another person; a fickle woman is she who neither knows whom she loves nor whether she loves or not; and the indifferent woman, one who does not love at all.
Man has subdued the world, but woman has subdued man. Mind and muscle have won his victories; love and loveliness have gained hers. No monarch has been so great, no peasant so lowly, that he has not been glad to lay his best at the feet of a woman.
Man pays deference to woman instinctively, involuntarily, not because she is beautiful or truthful or wise or foolish or proper, but because she is a woman, and he cannot help it. If she descends, he will lower to her level; if she rises, he will rise to her height.
Some are so uncharitable as to think all women bad, and others are so credulous as to believe they are all good. All will grant her corporeal frame more wonderful and more beautiful than man’s. And can we think God would put a worse soul into a better body?
A woman’s whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world: it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection; and, if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless—for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.
Whatever littleness and vanity is to be observed in the minds of women, it is, like the cruelty of butchers, a temper that is wrought into them by that life which they are taught and accustomed to lead.
For if a young lady has that discretion and modesty, without which all knowledge is little worth, she will never make an ostentatious parade of it, because she will rather be intent on acquiring more, than on displaying what she has.
A female heart is often like marble: the cunning stone cutter strikes a thousand blows without the Parian block showing the line of a crack; but all at once it breaks asunder into the very form which the cunning stone cutter has so long been hammering after.
She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims the one from vice, and trains up the other to virtue, is a greater character than ladies described in romance, whose whole occupation is to murder mankind with their eyes.
Women govern us; let us render them perfect: the more they are enlightened, so much the more shall we be. On the cultivation of the mind of women depends the wisdom of men. It is by women that nature writes on the hearts of men.
With soft, persuasive prayers woman wields the sceptre of the life which she charmeth; she lulls the discord which roars and glows,—teaches the fierce powers which hate each other like fiends to embrace in the bonds of love, and draws together what are forever flying asunder.
The Christian religion alone contemplates the conjugal union in the order of nature; it is the only religion which presents woman to man as a companion; every other abandons her to him as a slave. To religion alone do European women owe their liberty.
Her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters, sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report. This cannot be cunning in her. If it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as Jove.
Christmas lifted woman to a new place in the world. And just in proportion as Christianity has sway, will she rise to a higher dignity in human life. What she has now, and what she shall have, of privilege and true honor, she owes to that gospel which took those qualities peculiarly and which had been counted weak and unworthy, and gave them a divine glory in Christ.
Without religion, man is an atheist, woman is a monster. As daughter, sister, wife and mother, she holds in her hands, under God, the destinies of humanity. In the hours of gloom and sorrow we look to her for sympathy and comfort. Where shall she find strength for trial, comfort for sorrow, save in that gospel which has given a new meaning to the name of “mother,” since it rested on the lips of the child Jesus?
Women in health are the hope of the nation. Men who exercise a controlling influence—the master spirits—with a few exceptions, have had country-born mothers. They transmit to their sons those traits of character which give stability to institutions, and promote order, security and justice.
I have often had occasion to remark the fortitude with which women sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortune. Those disasters which break down the spirit of a man and prostrate him in the dust seem to call forth all the energies of the softer sex, and give such intrepidity and elevation to their character that at times it approaches to sublimity.
A woman is sometimes fugitive, irrational, indeterminable, illogical and contradictory. A great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her, and a good deal of prudence exercised with regard to her, for she may bring about innumerable evils without knowing it. Capable of all kinds of devotion, and of all kinds of treason, “monster incomprehensible,” raised to the second power, she is at once the delight and the terror of man.
The most beautiful object in the world, it will be allowed, is a beautiful woman. But who that can analyze his feelings is not sensible that she owes her fascination less to grace of outline and delicacy of color than to a thousand associations which, often unperceived by ourselves, connect these qualities with the source of our existence, with the nourishment of our infancy, with the passions of our youth, with the hopes of our age,—with elegance, with vivacity, with tenderness, with the strongest natural instincts, with the dearest of social ties?
A good woman is the loveliest flower that blooms under heaven; and we look with love and wonder upon its silent grace, its pure fragrance, its delicate bloom of beauty. Sweet and beautiful! the fairest and the most spotless! is it not pity to see them bowed down or devoured by grief or death inexorable, wasting in disease, pining with long pain, or cut off by sudden fate in their prime? We may deserve grief, but why should these be unhappy?—except that we know that heaven chastens those whom it loves best; being pleased, by repeated trials, to make these pure spirits more pure.
As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils, and bind up its shattered boughs; so it is beautifully ordered by Providence, that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity; winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.