Max O'Rell - Rambles in Womanland

Love feeds on contrasts to such an extent that you see dark men prefer blondes, poets marry cooks and laundresses, clever men marry fools, and giants marry dwarfs.

God has created beautiful women in order to force upon men the belief in His existence.

Like all the other fruits placed on earth for the delectation of men, the most beautiful women are not always the best and the most delicious.

In the heroic times of chivalry men drew their swords for the sake of women; in these modern prosaic ones they draw their cheques.

Women entertain but little respect for men who have blind confidence in their love and devotion; they much prefer those who feel that they have to constantly keep alive the first and deserve the second.

A woman can take the measure of a man in half the time it takes a man to have the least notion of a woman.

There are three kinds of men: those who will come across temptations and resist them, those who will avoid them for fear of succumbing, and those who seek them. Among the first are to be found only men whose love for a woman is the first consideration of their lives.

Young girls should bear in mind that husbands are not creatures who are always making love, any more than soldiers are men who are always fighting.

A love affair will interest even a very old woman, just as the account of a race will always interest an old jockey. Habit, you see!

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.