Nothing, say you? Perhaps so; nothing but a charming woman, who, strange as it may appear, made him the happiest of men!
No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies.
No one but a woman knows how to say things which are at once gentle and deep.
No one but a woman can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart.
No man is offended by another man’s admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.
Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman.
Man today represents the positive and the neuter—that is, the male and the human being—while woman represents the negative, the female. Every time she behaves like a human being, she is declared to be identifying with the male.
Man says what he knows; woman says what pleases. He needs knowledge to speak; she needs taste.[L’homme dit ce qu’il sait, la femme dit ce qui plaît; l’un pour parler a besoin de connoissances, et l’autre de goût.]
Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child.
Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.
Love, the poet has said, is woman’s whole existence.
It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire.
