What Great Men Have Said About Women | Page 9

her, she answered with attention: nay, what if there were a slight tremour in that silver voice; what if the red glow of evening were hiding a transient blush!--Sartor Resartus.
The whims of women must be humoured.--French Revolution.
A woman of many household virtues; to a warm affection for her children and husband she joined a degree of taste and intelligence which is of much rarer occurrence.--Life of Schiller.
She is meek and soft and maiden-like....?A young woman fair to look upon.
Life of Schiller.
My dear mother, with the trustfulness of a mother's heart, ministered to all my woes, outward and inward, and even against hope kept prophesying good.--Reminiscences.
Women are born worshippers; in their good little hearts lies the most craving relish for greatness; it is even said, each chooses her husband on the hypothesis of his being a great man--in his way. The good creatures, yet the foolish!--Essay on Goethe's Works.
She is of that light unreflecting class, of that light unreflecting sex: varium semper et mutabile. And then her Fine-ladyism, though a purseless one: capricious, coquettish, and with all the finer sensibilities of the heart; now in the rackets, now in the sullens; vivid in contradictory resolves; laughing, weeping, without reason,--though these acts are said to be signs of season. Consider, too, how she has had to work her way, all along, by flattery and cajolery; wheedling, eaves-dropping, namby-pambying; how she needs wages, and knows no other productive trades.--_The Diamond Necklace._
Thought can hardly be said to exist in her; only Perception and Device. With an understanding lynx-eyed for the surface of things, but which pierces beyond the surface of nothing, every individual thing (for she has never seized the heart of it) turns up a new face to her every new day, and seems a thing changed, a different thing.--The Diamond Necklace.
Reader! thou for thy sins must have met with such fair Irrationals; fascinating, with their lively eyes, with their quick snappish fancies; distinguished in the higher circles, in Fashion, even in Literature; they hum and buzz there, on graceful?film-wings:--searching, nevertheless, with the wonderfullest skill for honey; un_tamable as flies!--_The Diamond Necklace.
Nature is very kind to all children, and to all mothers that are true to her.--Frederick the Great.
She is of stately figure;--of beautiful still countenance.--A completeness, a decision is in this fair female figure; by energy she means the spirit that will prompt one to sacrifice himself for his country.--French Revolution.
A clever, high-mannered, massive-minded old lady; admirable as a finished piece of social art, but hardly otherwise?much.--Reminiscences.
Who can account for the taste of females?--The Diamond Necklace.
A Beauty, but over light-headed: a Booby who had fine legs. How these first courted, billed, and cooed, according to nature; then pouted, fretted, grew utterly enraged and blew one another up.--Boswell's Life of Johnson.
With delicate female tact, with fine female stoicism too, keeping all things within limits.--Frederick the Great.
A true-hearted, sharp-witted sister.--Essay of Diderot.
A graceful, brave, and amiable woman;--her choicest gift an open eye and heart.--Oliver Cromwell.
Every graceful and generous quality of womanhood harmoniously blended in her nature.--Life of Schiller.
She is a fair vision, the _beau id��al_ of a poet's first mistress.--Life of Schiller.
Heaven, though severe, is not unkind; Heaven is kind, as a noble mother; as that Spartan mother, saying while she gave her son his shield, "With it, my son, or upon it!"--Complain not; the very Spartans did not complain.--Past and Present.
VICTOR HUGO.
All her face, all her person, breathed an ineffable love and kindness. She had always been predestined to gentleness, but Faith, Hope, and Charity, those three virtues that softly warm the soul, had gradually elevated that gentleness to sanctity. Nature had only made her a lamb, and religion had made her an angel.--_Les Mis��rables._
She was the very embodiment of joy as she went to and fro in the house; she brought with her a perpetual spring.--_Toilers of the Sea_.
Her entire person was simplicity, ingenuousness, whiteness, candor, and radiance, and it might have been said of her that she was transparent. She produced a sensation of April and daybreak, and she had dew in her eyes. She was the condensation of the light of dawn in a woman's form.--_Les Mis��rables._
The woman was weak, but the mother found strength.--Ninety-Three.
Woman feels and speaks with the infallibility which is the tender instinct of the heart.--_Les Mis��rables._
What is a husband but the pilot in the voyage of matrimony? Wife, let your fine weather be your husband's smiles.--_Toilers of the Sea._
No one knows like a woman how to say things which are at once gentle and deep. Gentleness and depth,--in these things the whole of woman is contained, and it is heaven.--_Les Mis��rables._
Beauty heightened by simplicity is ineffable, and nothing is so adorable as a beauteous, innocent maiden, who walks along unconsciously, holding in her hand the key of Paradise.--_Les Mis��rables._
She had the prettiest little hands in the