1

When beautiful woman is being courted by an intelligent man, less beautiful women are always astonished. "What does he see in that little fool?" they ask one another.

Rarely do intellectual women realize what a man is seeking. By addressing themselves to his mind, they may interest him, but they do not charm him. It is not his intelligence that is to be conquered.

A man does not wish to traffic in abstract ideas with a woman. What he hopes to find in her is a fresh and vibrant sensibility, and the naturalness he himself has lost by dealing solely with mental concepts. The more his intellectual powers are developed—the more his tastes are cultured, refined, and bookish—the more he will enjoy the deep, unique, incomparable charm of the instinct, and the resources of a sensibility as rich as his own, but different.

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He is repelled by intellectual pretensions of every sort; he dislikes the so-called culture that is paraded by so many pedantic women; and he will not let himself be fooled by a thin, glossy varnish of ideas which covers, in nine cases out of ten, the most absolute disorder and ignorance.

Doubtless some women are beautiful and stupid. We know of a few, alas! who are silly beyond all comparison. But are intellectual women prepared to admit that they are necessarily ugly because they have brains?

The intelligence, moreover, reveals only one aspect of the world. It introduces us to a spectacle which, though logically arranged and artfully composed, is still a mere spectacle. It affords us the joy of finding an explanation, of imposing a clear and coherent meaning on something that perhaps, in the last analysis, is only an obscure chaos.

2

One feels a delightful sensation on suddenly perceiving that one is about to fall in love. Even men of the widest experience are not exempt from this feeling. Recognizing the agitation with which they are seized, they do nothing to overcome it. They taste the unaccustomed joy of being embarrassed in the presence of the woman they admire; they either fall silent or talk too much, and they feel the same excitement as when setting out on a long journey. Regarding this agitation as a first sign of their new passion, they wait for it with impatience and salute its coming with joy.

3

If you stopped, before taking a woman into your life, to picture all the troubles she might bring about, you would never take her. You would realize how many latent calamities are inherent in love, and you would be filled with terror.

Indeed, if we wished to act reasonably, we should never act at all. From the standpoint of our reason, nothing is possible. Neither society nor the universe as a whole can be explained to its satisfaction, and each man's life is a crime against logic, since there is no man whose existence does not imply essential contradictions. And yet we live Life has more resources than our reason, and sometimes, in addition, it has a smile.

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4

Are you in love? Be warned in advance that your affection has one chance in ten thousand of enduring till death, and yet act as if it were fated to be eternal—for everything is possible in the realm of love, and those who set out for a month's voyage will sometimes discover that they have embarked for a lifetime.

When you take a mistress, it is useless to worry about how you will finally separate. Life, which has more than one trick up its sleeve, will take charge of the matter.

5

A smile, a look, or a moving inflection of the voice is sometimes enough to win our hearts.

At other times, the most regular features, the highest beauty, will leave us quite indifferent.

6

Many young men talk slightingly of love, but this is a mistake they make. Have no fear of speaking gravely and with conviction. Even the most frivolous women are grateful for being taken seriously.

7

Your typical Lovelace soon perceives, if he has any powers of observation, that his easiest conquests are made in his own little circle of acquaintances.

As soon as he has conquered one woman, the future of his amorous career is assured.

8

As a preliminary to love, a woman demands positive assurances of eternal affection. She cannot forgive the frank and far-sighted man who insists on being guarded in his statements. She prefers to be deceived.—May she have her way!

9

"To steal another man's wife." This expression would lead us to suppose that a woman does not belong to herself. At heart we are still Orientals.

10

The women who have had more than two men belong in a class by themselves. After the second lover, it is difficult and perhaps useless to keep a list of the others. The passage from the first to the second often involves a struggle; that from the second to the third is impossible for many women. But after three, why not four? Those who have freed themselves, who lead their own lives, can do as they choose, and they choose to follow their passions.

11

A great number of women prolong their reign by terror. They do not hesitate to employ the most violent methods; they practise moral blackmail, and threaten either to kill their lover or to commit suicide. ... It would be interesting to know how many love affairs are continued at the point of a revolver.

12

There is, in our days, a charming society composed of women who have ceased to be wives. Divorce has given them leisure. They have loved already; they have tasted the bitterness and sweetness of the changing days; and although they were disappointed once, they are ready to love again. There is something bold about them; they are unsubdued; they have not yielded to the ancient bondage.

13

There is a point where pride in one's person ceases to be a virtue. Many women make fools of themselves by setting an absurd valuation on something that nobody wants.

14

The beginnings of love, before the first caress, are tender and delightful. The hours as they pass bring a bright, airy exaltation, and one's thoughts of the happiness to come are not yet mingled with the fear of being rejected. A supreme hedonist might, at such moments, decide to have very few meetings with the one he was beginning to love, for this initial degree of passion is exquisite and ought really to be prolonged. But can you persuade the rosebud to remain a bud?

15

Let us admire the rich men who have kept their delicacy of feeling, and let us pity them, too. Somewhere in their minds is the furtive thought—derived from all too many experiences—that they are not being loved for themselves alone.

16

A woman sets her own price. Her wisest course is to set it as high as possible, if only to flatter men's vanity—"See what I am giving you, and realize what a tremendous victory you have won."

17

A man is well protected from jealousy when he knows that if he were deceived, he could immediately find two or three women ready to love him, and when he feels that, perhaps he might love them in return.

Don Juan was never jealous.

18

A Don Juan leaves his heart at home when he sets out for conquests. He does not win his battles with his heart.

19

Love is like General Motors stock: when it goes up, the whole market rises.

Love has its strikes and lockouts, like any industry. It has its panics, ils bear markets, and very often its years of depression.

20

If you wish to marry, it is best to look for a woman whose tastes resemble your own. In choosing a mistress, have no fear of utter contrasts.

21

"I give you my heart, my soul, my body, everything ineffable and secret that is in me, but don't touch my bankaccount or I'll send for the police!"

22

Is it ever possible for a lover to feel perfectly at ease? Even when he is confident of the present, has he not the past to consider, and the future?

23

People at a distance are harder to deceive than people involved in the daily course of our lives. It requires no very great skill to create such a state of mind in those about us that unconsciously they give the innocent meaning suggested by ourselves to the most dangerous advances, actions, gestures, and words. But strangers, who believe only their eyes, are apt to see the truth.

24

Society says, "Men may love where they choose, but it is better for women to love within the limits of their own caste."

Men and women love where they are able.

25

Society is justified in treating love as an enemy. It freely oversteps the barriers which have been so carefully erected between the different social orders, and it does not even respect the thing that society holds most sacred—money.

26

Liberty of action is an illusion, but one which contributes vastly to our enjoyment of the game of love.

27

Melancholy dreamers have declared that love, even when recompensed, brings only disillusion. These philosophers have led dreary lives and have never learned to, look at the world about them.

They would have seen, it is true, that love may go blindly astray or be disregarded. But they would also have seen that when two beings love and possess each other, neither of them can bear the thought of separation. Lovers know that nothing can replace the joy they find in each other.

In most cases the crimes and the dramas of passion occur after possession. Do our melancholy philosophers believe that men wager their existence, that they sacrifice honour and life itself, for a negligible thing, an emptiness, a disillusion?

And let it not be said that lovers risk themselves for a mirage, a phantom of the imagination. No, it is rather for something real, for something they have known, for something that calls to their oldest and deepest instincts.

28

In choosing her lover, a woman lets herself lie guided solely by the profound and mysterious instinct of the race. She will yield only to the imperious voice of love.

29

A woman's principal duty is to please a man, to win him first, and then to keep him. She feels that this is her appointed task, that her life should be shaped by love, and that her happiness depends on her success. Here it is that she must conquer or die.

The rest? ... The rest is unessential.

30

Jealousy, in many cases, is the attitude of a weak, defenceless creature holding desperately to what he has. He feels that should it be lost, he would be left with a terrible void which he could never fill.

31

A woman once told me:

"Your analysis of jealousy is full of loathsome details."

"Quite true, but you must also remember that the real reason why jealousy is a horrible thing is that it evokes ugly images. How could I discuss it—how could I convey the horror of jealousy—without displaying these images? You can rest assured that I spared you the worst of them."

" . . . Thanks."

32

In literature as in life, the uniting of the sexes is the supreme finality. Once they are joined together, their Creator demands nothing more; and the man of letters, like the Creator, looks at his work, finds it good, and rests.

33

We are victims of the warfare between society and nature. For centuries society has been strengthening its position, till at present it holds us enslaved by laws, by prejudices, by customs, and by the unwritten laws that bear more heavily on our shoulders than those of the penal code. Enwrapped in their innumerable fetters, modern man is slowly suffocating.

How shall we regain our liberty? Where shall we rediscover nature?

34

There are women who are created to have children. There are women who are created to have none—even in the hypothetical and contradictory interest of the children themselves. At some future day, both types will be publicly recognized. And no moral coefficient will be attached either to motherhood or sterility, since both are necessary functions.

35

Passionate love is infinitely rare. It requires a certain quality of soul; it can never develop in persons full of vanity and self-seeking. Still, every one boasts of feeling this emotion. An animal, if it could speak, would say to its mate, "I love you madly."

36

What chain is more difficult to break than that forged slowly, ardently, between two people by sensuality?

37

There is a moment in her life when the ugly girl becomes almost beautiful. For a few hours she has a sort of vague perfume, an aura that is delightful. And she pleases men, during this brief period; she can even make them hers. . . . But let her hasten to profit by the generosity of nature, for, once this little time is ended, she is fated to resume her original and final ugliness.

38

There are men whom women do not betray, and yet these men are often jealous. Perhaps the one they loved has belonged to others before she became theirs—a terrible thought for a lover!

39

One does not choose a sweetheart. She falls from the sky—"Like a brick," some men would comment.

40

To love is difficult. To be loved is fatiguing.

41

The dreamers often claim that they alone can love, and that love exists only in the midst of tears. But women are not of their opinion.

42

Jealousy is the most effective antidote for love, and kills it infallibly ... in the other.

43

This man lacks money and influence, but he loves, he is loved in return, and the gods themselves envy him.

44

Some people are jealous and remain silent. Others are jealous and burst forth. We unhesitatingly prefer the first. If your life has been poisoned, it is useless to poison that of your mate.

45

"But I have an immortal soul," Mme. Dubois sighs plaintively.

"Is it your soul, dear madame, that conceives your children?"