I know handsome men who are bald, and there are not a few, but many, who derive distinction from this baldness. There are men—severe, stern types of men—who are not disfigured, but improved, by spectacles. Just imagine, if you can, the possibility of a bald woman with spectacles inspiring a tender passion! So much for the infallibility of the proverb, 'What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,' so often quoted by women when they are told that men can afford to do this or that, but not they. Lady women-righters, please answer.
In the tender relations between men and women, novelty is a wonderful attraction, and habit a powerful bond; but between the two there is a bottomless precipice into which love often falls, never to be heard of afterward. Happy those who know how to bridge over the chasm!
A woman never forgets, however old she may be, that she was once very beautiful. Why should she? The pity is that she very often forgets that she is so no longer. My pet aversion in society is the woman of sixty who succeeds in making herself look fifty, thinks she is forty, acts as if she were thirty, and dresses as if she were twenty.
I am not prepared to say that celibacy is preferable to marriage; it has, however, this decided advantage over it: a bachelor can always cease to be one the moment he has discovered that he has made a mistake.
Women are extremists in everything. Poets, painters and sculptors know this so well that they have always taken women as models for War, Pestilence, Death, Famine and Justice, Virtue, Glory, Victory, Pity, Charity. On the other hand, virtues and vices, blessings and calamities of a lesser degree are represented by men. Such are Work, Perseverance, Laziness, Avarice, etc.