"La beauté du visage est un frêle ornement,
Une fleur passagère, un éclat d'un moment."—Molière.
[232:B] "But admitting your body's finer, all that beauty is but skin-deep."—"The Female Rebellion," 1682. "All the beauty of the world, 'tis but skin-deep, a sunne-blast defaceth it."—"Orthodoxe Paradoxes," 1650.
"Daughter, in this I can thinke none other
But that it is true thys prouerbe old,
Hastye loue is soone hot and soone cold."
—"Play of Wyt and Science," c. 1540.
[233:B] "Whosoever lives unmarried lives without joy, without comfort, without blessing. Love your wife like yourself, honour her more than yourself. It is woman alone through whom God's blessings are vouchsafed to a house. She teaches the children, speeds the husband, and welcomes him when he returns, keeps the house godly and pure, and God's blessings rest upon these things."—Talmud.
[234:A] "You see marriage is destinie, made in heaven, though consummated on earth."—Lely, Mother Bombie, 1594. Shakespeare, too, in the "Merchant of Venice," declares that "hanging and wiving go by destiny." In "The Cheats," written by Wilson in 1662, Scruple remarks, "Good sir, marriages are made in heaven." Many similar passages to these might be cited.
"He is a fool who thinks by force or skill
To turn the current of a woman's will."
Tuke, Adventures of Five Hours, 1673.