"Because they are commonly given over to practicalities, mixed hopelessly with rivalries and ambitions. Even in their highest pursuits, they propose to themselves some definite point to be gained, some object to be achieved; but women are left to the world of their own minds—there they can expatiate at will."
"That is a dangerous privilege."
"They have leisure to muse on the joys and troubles of life, and explore depths which we bridge over."
"Either your mind has very much changed, or I have very much mistaken it. Pardon me, but I fancied that you were like Iago, 'nothing if not critical;' or at least that you sympathized with his slanderous opinions of womankind."
"Heaven forbid! What treasonable thought did you suppose me to harbor against the better part of humanity?"
"At all events, I never supposed you to believe that the better part of humanity passed their leisure time in metaphysical reveries and abstruse meditations."
"You were speaking, just now, of ideals. May not I have mine?"
"So your ideal woman is a transcendental philosopher, seated in the midst of your undiscovered cloudland."
"Deliver me from such a one! My ideal is full of thought and of feeling; but no one yet ever dreamed of branding her as a philosopher. But why did you think me so very critical? I am hardly old enough yet to make an Iago or a Rochefoucault."
"And yet you used always to have some saying of Rochefoucault at your tongue's end."