The untruthfulness of women communicates itself to the man whose chief society they form, and the perpetual necessities of intrigue end in corrupting the temper whose chief pursuit is passion.
Women who environ a man's fidelity by ceaseless suspicion and exaction, create the evil that they dread.
Society, after all, asks very little. Society only asks you to wash the outside of your cup and platter: inside you may keep any kind of nastiness that you like: only wash the outside. Do wash the outside, says Society; and it would be a churl or an ass indeed who would refuse so small a request.
A woman who is ice to his fire, is less pain to a man than the woman who is fire to his ice. There is hope for him in the one, but only a dreary despair in the other. The ardours that intoxicate him in the first summer of his passion serve but to dull and chill him in the later time.
A frog that dwelt in a ditch spat at a worm that bore a lamp.
"Why do you do that?" said the glow-worm.
"Why do you shine?" said the frog.