A SSORTED Q UOTES ON W OMAN

- It takes a man a lifetime to find out about one particular woman; but if he puts in, say ten years, industrious and curious, he can acquire the general rudiments of the sex.

- For a man to pretend to understand women is bad manners; for him really to understand them is bad morals.

- Men dislike women who don't understand them, and women dislike men who do.

- Even when a man understands a woman, he can't believe it.

- Woman wishes to wish away the differences between the sexes. - but then, that is the nature of woman.

- Men commit actions; women commit gestures. - Phyllis Chesler

- Men and women are two different species, descended from different animals.

- Mankind, woman unkind.

- Women are adorable and men are admirable.

- Men work; women shop.

- A man has only one aim in life. A woman has three, all contradictory.

- Some men are different. All women are alike.

- In Men, we various Ruling Passions find;

In Women, two almost divide the kind;

Those, only fixed, they first or last obey,

The Love of Pleasure, and the Love of Sway.

- Men are not troubled to hear a man dispraised, because they know, though he be naught, there's worth in others; but women are mightily troubled to hear any of them spoken against, as if the sex itself were guilty of some unworthiness.

- For story and experience tell us,

That man grows old and women jealous;

Both would their little ends secure:

He sighs for freedom, she for power.

His wishes tend abroad to roam.

And hers, to domineer at home.

- There are two kinds of women: those who want power in the world, and those who want power in bed. - Jacqueline Onassis

- A woman who will not feign submission can never make a man happy.

- Women are neither equal nor different to men - they are inferior. Women rarely if ever organize themselves effectively because they are unable to think logically.

- The greatest problem with women is how to contrive that they should seem our equals.

- Woman's equality to man is not a claim . . . rather a concession.

- But, perhaps, someone will ask, whether women are under men's authority by nature or institution? For if it has been by mere institution, then we had no reason compelling us to exclude women from government. But if we consult experience itself, we shall find that the origin of it is in their weakness. For there has never been a case of men and women reigning together, but wherever on the earth men are found, there we see that men rule, and women are ruled, and that on this plan, both sexes live in harmony. But on the other hand, the Amazons, who are reported to have held rule of old, did not suffer men to stop in their country, but reared only their female children, killing the males to whom they gave birth. But if by nature women were equal to men, and were equally distinguished by force of character and ability, in which human power and therefore human right chiefly consist; surely among nations so many and different some would be found, where both sexes rule alike, and others, where men are ruled by women, and so brought up, that they can make less use of their abilities. And since this is nowhere the case, one may assert with perfect propriety, that women have not by nature equal right with men: but that they necessarily give way to men, and that thus it cannot happen, that both sexes should rule alike, much less that men should be ruled by women.

- from Tractatus Politicus by Baruch Spinoza

- Men, some to business, some to pleasure take;

But every woman is at heart a rake.

- Women never have young minds. They are born three thousand years old.

- Girls we love for what they are: Young men for what they promise to be.

- It is only rarely that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.

- She is like a stone on the hilltop, difficult to be moved. Yet when she is once started she goeth fast and far; no man knoweth her end. She believeth that ALL men are vain and easy to be flattered. Her heart is older than her head; yea, her emotion is the mother of her reason. She desireth many things, and she is happy till she getteth them. TWO things she holdeth dear, mystery and mastery.

- A man gets what he wants by acting smart; a woman, by playing dumb.

- Why is it we never hear of a self-made woman?

- Woman submits to her fate; man makes his.

- Fathers compete with their sons, but mothers devour their daughters.

- Because she is conscious of her weakness she destroys what is weak. After coition she enchains man and treats him like a child; after procreation she enslaves her children and maintains them in a condition of absolute dependence.

- The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.

- God made woman beautiful and foolish; beautiful, that man might love her; and foolish, that she might love him.

- There are two kinds of women: those who wish to marry, and those who haven't the slightest intention not to.

- To a single woman men are either dates, potential dates, or date substitutes.

- It is still the case that women believe a caress to be better than a career.

- The best couturiers, hairdressers, home designers and cooks are men. I suspect that were it biologically possible men would make better mothers.

- Ida Alexa Ross Wylie

- What they love to yield they would often rather have stolen. Rough seduction delights them; the boldness of near rape is a compliment.

- She whom a sudden assault has taken by storm is pleased, and counts the audacity as a compliment. But she who, when she might have been compelled, departs untouched, though her looks feign joy, will yet be sad.

- Some girls are like horses, very independent. They have never been controlled by anybody. But if you can break them in, they are very grateful, as all women are.

- Woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will, she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other, she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.

- In truth, women of today, like the Valkyries of old, want anything but to win their fight for independence: the harder they fight, the more desperately they yearn for a man to be strong enough - for their man to be strong enough to limit them and to keep them from venting their destructiveness.

- Love is the victim's response to the rapist.

- An American Feminist.

- Any woman will marry any man that bothers her enough.

- A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.

- The difference between rape and seduction is salesmanship.

- Women sometimes forgive a man who presses an opportunity, but never a man who misses one.

- Sexual shyness in a man excites the desire of dissolute women, but arouses contempt in decent ones.

- There are women who offer their bodies as though they were bestowing some inestimable gift upon you.

- A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.

- If men knew all that women think, they'd be twenty times more daring.

- The soul of a woman lives in love.

- Where love is absent there can be no woman.

- Love makes intelligent beings depressed and flat. Only women, ostriches and monkeys are made happy by love.

- Eeva-Lisa Manner

- Love makes the wisest man a fool, and the most foolish woman, a sage.

- By "woman" is meant sensuality itself, which is well signified by woman, since in woman this naturally prevails.

- I like them fluffy - I know it's bad taste -

With fluffy soft looks and a flower at the waist,

With golden hair flying, like mist round the moon

And lips that seem sighing, "You must kiss me soon,"

Not huffy, or stuffy, not tiny or tall,

But fluffy, just fluffy, with no brains at all.

- I've got a girlfriend with ribbons in her hair.

Now what could be better than that?

- From "Stop making sense" by Talking Heads

- I for one venerate a petticoat. Lord Byron

- If God had not created woman, he would not have created flowers.

- What most men desire is a virgin who is a whore.

- O woman, you are not merely the handiwork of God, but also of men; these are ever endowing you with beauty from their own hearts. . . . You are one-half woman and one-half dream.

- A man at his desk in a room with a closed door is a man at work. A woman at a desk in any room is available. - Betty Rollin

- There's only one way to get on for a woman, and that's to please men. That is what women think men are for.

- She gets her living by getting a husband. He gets his wife by getting a living.

- Women believe that all the money in the world would have no meaning without women.

- No woman ever found a rich man ugly.

- Little girls are won with dolls; big girls with dollars.

- Every man's lament: so many women . . . so little cash.

- Americans worship two gods - dollars and dames - and the dollars are for the dames. The statue of Liberty is a woman.

- Sexually, woman is nature's contrivance for perpetuating its highest achievement. Sexually, man is woman's contrivance for fulfilling nature's behest in the most economical way.

- Nature intended women to be our slaves; . . . they are our property, we are not theirs. They belong to us, just as a tree that bears fruit belongs to the gardener. What a mad idea to demand equality for women! . . . Women are nothing but machines for producing children. - Napoleon Bonaparte

- Biologically and temperamentally, I believe women were made to be concerned first and foremost with child care, husband care and home care. - Benjamin Spock

- A woman's place is in the mall.

- The only time a woman has a true orgasm is when she's shopping. Every other time she's faking it. It's common courtesy.

- Women: an infinity of cosmetics.

- Men say knowledge is power; women think dress is power.

- It takes two to make a woman into a sex object.

- Women who are not vain about their clothes are often vain about not being vain about their clothes.

- Women are the decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.

- Woman's first duty is to her dressmaker. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered.

- There are few women whose worth lasts longer than their beauty.

- One of the fathers, if I am rightly informed, has defined a woman to be an animal that delights in finery. I have . . . observed, that in all ages they have been more careful than men to adorn that part of the head which we generally call the outside.

- Woman strives for loveliness, man for dignity.

- Beauty is the wisdom of women.

Wisdom is the beauty of men.

- Men want to be the kind of persons that people look up to.

Girls want to be the kind that people look around at.

- Many women would swap brains for beauty and think they were getting the best of the bargain.

- The average girl would rather have beauty than brains because she knows that the average man can see much better than he can think.

- "After men, monkeys have the most intelligence," says an author. Others will argue that women do.

- Smart men are smarter than they look; smart women look smarter than they are.

- The heart is the whole of women, who are guided by nothing else: and it has so much to say, even with men . . . that it triumphs in every struggle with the understanding.

- A young lady who thinks is like a young man who rouges.

- To find fault with a woman's intellect you must first find her intellect.

- Women have simple tastes. They can get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

- A man, conceivably, could adjust to the knowledge that he was at a higher level than those around him, although no rational man could possibly enjoy that perspective; but to a woman it would be unbearable.

- Essentially feminine, she was able to chatter but say nothing, ask questions and require no reply.

- Women can write more interestingly than men on the really important topics of civilization: dress, food and furniture.

- She wavers, she hesitates; in a word, she is a woman.

- Woman's one notable invention: Perpetual emotion.

- Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion.

- Women: picturesque protests against the mere existence of common sense.

- A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.

- No wonder women live longer than men - look how long they remain girls.

- You bring up your girls to be ornaments and then complain of their frivolity.

- She affected to establish the character of a woman, thoughtless through wit, indiscreet through simplicity, but religious on principle.

- People who give their letters large bodies but little else live for the present. They enjoy gossip and like being socially involved. They are not over interested in making money. Women tend to write like this.

- Jane Paterson "Know Yourself Through Your Handwriting"

- The great and almost only comfort about being a woman is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is, and no one is surprised.

- Of what use is independence to a woman, if she is - all alone?

- If the parasite woman on the couch, the plaything and amusement of men, be the permanent and final manifestation of female human life on the planet, then that couch is also the death-bed of human evolution.

- I shrug my shoulders in despair at women who moan at the lack of opportunities and then take two weeks off as a result of falling out with their boyfriends.

- Democracy is woman's greatest invention. Indeed, it even reflects her character: purposeless, irrational, subject to public opinion and passing fashions, rambling, confused, underhanded, scheming, in love with its own purity.

- To be a woman is something so strange, so confusing and so complicated that only a woman could put up with it and, what is worse, feel happy about it.

- Woman: a biped with two hands, two feet, two breasts, two eyes and two faces.

- A woman has three reasons for everything she does: the reason she says she has, the reason she thinks she has, and the reason she really has.

- Every woman is a committee.

- A cat has nine lives and a woman has nine cat's lives.

- I will not say that women have no character, rather, they have a new one every day.

- I've never met a man of good character who has had anything to do with a woman.

- A man of straw is worth a woman of gold.

- As with their beauty, so with their spirit; it seems that they allow themselves to be perceived only to be imagined instead. Characters are like colors. There are primary colors, ones that change, an infinitude of shades as you pass from one to another. Women have none other than mixed colors, intermediate or variable, whether upbringing alters their natural shade more than ours or the delicateness of their constitution makes their soul a mirror that accepts everything, reproduces it vividly, but retains nothing.

- Between a woman's "yes" and "no" there is no room for the point of a needle.

- Even a fickle woman is loyal to one man - until she prefers another.

- Her husband's funeral

Is often where a widow looks for the next man.

- When widows exclaim loudly against second marriages, I would always lay a wager that the man, if not the wedding day, is absolutely fixed on.

- There are few virtuous women who do not tire of their role.

- Virtue in women is often merely love of their reputation and their peace of mind.

- Are there still virgins? One is tempted to answer no. There are only girls who have not yet crossed the line, because they want to preserve their market value . . . Call them virgins if you wish, these travellers in transit.

- She is chaste whom nobody has asked.

- In the absence of men all women are chaste.

- "Remember, men, we're fighting for this woman's honour; which is probably more than she ever did."

- The sad lesson of life is that you treat a girl with respect, and the next guy comes along and he's banging the hell out of her.

- A woman without a man is like a garden without a fence.

- Woman's virtue is man's greatest invention.

- Lady: one who never shows her underwear unintentionally.

- Women! There isn't anything so bad that they don't soon start to enjoy it. Even if they lived in a barrel of shit they'd start making a home out of it, with everything nice and cozy.

- I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where the immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not pure; her whiteness is illusory.

- John Milton

- Women think it is unfair to judge them lacking in virtues they are not even interested in.

- Indiscretion: the guilt of woman.

- A woman sometimes feels pity for the sorrows that she causes without remorse.

- Woman's dearest delight is to wound man's self-conceit, though man's dearest delight is to gratify hers. There is at least one creature lower than man.

- There are some meannesses which are too mean even for man - woman, lovely woman alone, can venture to commit them.

- No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her.

- A woman rarely discards one lover until she is sure of another.

- Love is the emotion that a woman feels always for a poodle dog and sometimes for a man.

- Women have no sympathy . . . And my experience of women is almost as large as Europe. And it is so intimate too. Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving any in return for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so. - Florence Nightingdale

- Love of flattery, in most men, proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women from the contrary.

- Women never love; rather they pity a man, mother him, delight in making him love them. Their tenderness is deepened by their remorse for being unable to love him.

- Women for the most part do not love us. They do not choose a man because they love him, but because it pleases them to be loved by him.

- Where neither love nor hatred is in the game a woman is a mediocre player.

- If all men told the truth the tears of women would create another flood.

- It is sometimes argued that women have a hard enough time in this world, without telling them the truth.

- Talk to me tenderly, tell me lies;

I am a woman and time flies.

- A man who won't lie to a woman has very little consideration for her feelings.

- The formation of a young lady's mind and character usually consists in telling her lies.

- All sensible men are of the same opinion about women and no sensible man ever says what his opinion is.

- What is conscience to a wife? . . . To marry is to domesticate the Recording Angel.

- With a man, a lie is a last resort; with women, it's First Aid.

- Women are not half as sensitive about their sins as about their follies.

- Women always speak the truth, but not the whole truth.

- Women think truth to be an irrelevant triviality whose only role in life is as a stumbling block for men.

- If it is true that weakness gives rise to timidity, timidity to finesse, finesse to falseness, one must conclude that truthfulness is a virtue to be well admired in women.

- Whatever men may think about the study of man, women do really believe the noblest study of womankind to be women.

- Womanhood is the great fact in her life; wifehood and motherhood are but incidental relations.

- It always puzzles me to hear of professional women - are there any amateurs?

- I told her that women were so foolish they thought giving birth to children was a form of creativity. But she thought it was an act of genius.

- I have found one good man in a thousand, But not one good woman among them. - Ecclesiastes 7:28

- Better the badness of men than the goodness of women.

- Ecclesiasticus 42:14

- All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman.

- Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus

- Woman is a sick sheass, a hideous tapeworm, the advance post of hell.

- John Damascene, 7th Century monk & Saint

- For a woman to study the scriptures indicates confusion in the realm.

- The Mahabarata, Hindu Scripture

- A child also cannot be made a witness in a court of law, nor a woman . . . nor a cheat. . . . These persons might give false evidence. A child would speak falsely from ignorance, a woman from want of veracity, an imposter from habitual depravity. - Hindu Scripture

- The sacred books should be burned rather than made available to women.

- Talmud, Sotah 3:4, Jewish Scripture

- Infatuation, aversion, fear, disgust and various kinds of deceit are ineradicable from the minds of women; for women, therefore, there is no nirvana. ... A woman may be pure in faith and even preoccupied with the study of the sutras or the practice of a terrific asceticism: yet in her case there will still be no falling away of karmic matter.

- Mahavira, Tatparya-vriti (Jain Scripture)

- The god of death, the wind, the underworld, the ever-burning entrance to hell, the knife-edge, poison, serpent, and fire - women are all of these in one.

- The Ramayana

- It is nature's law that rivers wind, trees grow wood, and, given the opportunity, women work iniquity. - Buddha, Sutta-Pitaka

Ananda: How are we to conduct ourselves, Lord, with regard to womankind?

Buddha: Don't see them Ananda.

Ananda: But if we should see them, what are we to do?

Buddha: Abstain from speech, Ananda.

Ananda: But if they should speak to us, Lord, what are we to do?

Buddha: Keep wide awake, Ananda.

- Just, Ananda, as houses in which there are many women and but few men are easily violated by robber burglars; just so, Ananda, under whatever doctrine and discipline women are allowed to live the religious life, that religion will not last long. And just, Ananda, as when the disease called mildew falls upon a field of rice in fine condition, that field of rice does not continue long; just so, Ananda, under whatsoever doctrine and discipline women are allowed to live the religious life, that religion will not last long.

- Buddha, Vinaya-Pitaka

- Countless are woman's defects.

My elephantine mind has fallen

Into the poisonous swamp of guile.

So I must renounce the world.

- Naropa, Tibetan mystic poet

- Some say that learning seems not to be the business of women. I say that . . . control of the mind is of the utmost importance to women, and it would be a great mistake to say that it is not their business. The outward manner and temper of women is rooted in the negative (yin) power, and so temperamentally women are apt to be sensitive, petty, narrow, and jaundiced. Confinement results in limited vision. Consequently, among women compassion and honesty are rare indeed. That is why Buddhism says that women are particularly sinful and have the greatest difficulty in attaining Buddhahood. Thus women are in special need of mental discipline.

- Toju, Zen Master

A woman is a valley, a man is a peak; a man enters the woman, the woman simply allows; a man is an aggression, a woman is a receptivity; a man tries to do, a woman simply waits for things to happen ... Look at a woman. She is balanced. Her needs are small: somebody to love, somebody to be loved by, food, shelter, a little warmth around, a home - finished. And she is not worried about anything: no woman has created any science; no woman has founded any religion.

- A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost forever.

- The one thing that man never gives to a woman is spiritual help.

- The souls of women are so small, that some believe they've none at all.

- Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a lustful woman?

- God created woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment - but many other things ceased as well. Woman was God's second mistake.

- Woman has never created anything as beautiful as she has destroyed.

- It has often been claimed that God is a woman, but to my knowledge no-one has ever claimed that the Devil is a woman and really meant it. So I will.

- Women believe that the concept of evil is evil.

- The overwhelming pain of loneliness; a mother smiles at her baby - watch out for the Devil!

- Wouldst thou define or know what a woman is? She is glittering mud, a stinking rose, sweet poison, ever leaning toward that which is forbidden her.

Woman is adamant, pitch, buckthorn, a rough thistle, a clinging burr, a stinging wasp, a burning nettle.

Lo, woman is the head of sin, a weapon of the devil, expulsion from paradise, mother of guilt, corruption of the ancient law.

- Salimbene, 13th C.

- What else is a woman but a foe to friendship, a cosmic punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a delectable detriment, a deadly fascination, a painted ill! Therefore, if it be a sin to divorce her when she ought to be kept, it is indeed a necessary torture; for either we commit adultery by divorcing her, or we must endure daily strife.

- But wait, you say that it is not her body, but her "finer qualities" that enchant you. I see. By this you mean no doubt, her cunning, conniving character, her relentless treachery, her ceaselessly wagging, nagging tongue, her inane vanity, her meows and purrs and hissings, her whorishness and prudery (for Woman spends her entire life vacillating between these two extremes). Or perhaps you have in mind her spitefulness, her obstinacy, her mindless illogic, her caviling, cawing stupidity. Yes, doubtless these are the "finer qualities" you find to revere in the object of your affections. . .

- The man who enters his wife's dressing-room is either a philosopher or a fool.

- Woman is at once apple and serpent.

- Woman is a temple built upon a sewer.

- Woman: a promise that cannot be kept.

- Women are sweetly smiling angels with pensive looks, innocent faces, and cash-boxes for hearts.

- A woman has the form of an angel, the heart of a serpent, and the mind of an ass.

- The ingenuity of a guileless woman will undermine nine mountains.

- Her dove-like eyes turn'd to coals of fire,

Her beautiful nose to a terrible snout,

Her hands to paws, with nasty great claws,

And her bosom went in and her tail came out.

- O the unsounded sea of women's bloods,

That when 'tis calmest, is most dangerous! . . .

Not Cerberus ever saw the damned nooks

Hid with the veils of woman's virtuous looks.

- The so-called "lovely woman" is beautified with the face of a noble lion, yet is blemished with the belly of a reeking kid and is beweaponed with the virulent tail of a viper.

- A woman is like a glowworm which is bright in the hedge and black in the hand.

- Women are glow wormes bright, that soil our soules, and dampe our reasons light.

- Women are like Gods. They have a face for their worshippers, and one for their rivals.

- Men are women's playthings; woman is the Devil's.

- Women give themselves to God when the Devil wants nothing more to do with them.

- Women are not necessarily evil - but evil is necessarily feminine.

- God made many women smart, a few clever; and some good.

- Woman is generally so bad that the difference between a good and a bad woman scarcely exists.

- Where the Devil cannot go himself he sends an old woman.

- Woman - last at the cross, earliest at the grave.

- Better the devil's

than a woman's slave.

- Man is evil because he is conscious of the thought that he is lying; but women are worse because they cannot be conscious of that thought.

- Women are accustomed to creep into dark places, and when dragged out into the light they will exert their utmost powers of resistance, and be far too much for the legislator. And therefore, as I said before, in most places they will not endure to have the truth spoken without raising a tremendous outcry.

- Plato, LAWS VI

- Women have no moral sense; they rely for their behaviour upon the men they love.

- Women are all bought in the market - from the whore to the Princess. The price alone is different, and the highest price, in money or rank, obtains the woman.

- Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,

And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair.

- Mothers, wives, and maids,

These are the tools wherewith priests manage men.

- No mischief but a woman or a priest is at the bottom of it.

- Women should not take to religion; they are religion.

- Woman: the hand that rules the cradle rocks the world.

- Mom is everywhere and everything and damned near everybody. . . . Disguised as good old mom, dear old mom, sweet old mom, your loving mom, and so on, she is the bride at every funeral and the corpse at every wedding.

- He seldom errs

Who thinks the worst he can of womankind.

- Nothing is worse than a woman, even a good one.

- So-called decent women differ from whores mainly in that whores are less dishonest.

- When a woman is openly bad, then at least she is honest.

- There is no such thing as a dangerous woman; there are only susceptible men.

- Everything comes from God except women.

- Women learn how to hate in the degree that they forget how to charm.

- The perfect friendship of two men is the deepest and highest sentiment of which the finite mind is capable; women miss the best of life.

- Friendship among women is but a suspension of hostilities.

- Misogynist: a man who hates women as much as women hate one another.

- No man is as anti-feminist as the really feminine woman.

- Women and people of low birth are very hard to deal with. If you are friendly with them, they get out of hand, and if you keep your distance, they resent it. Confucius

- Water, fire and women will never say, "Enough!"

- Woman is a domesticated animal; the feminist has returned to the wild. The goddess has gone wandering, collecting a few bruises, developing a few survival traits. She is lost; the bed beckons her. She will soon return.

- When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.

- Man's conclusions are reached by toil. Woman arrives at the same by sympathy.

- A woman's thoughts are afterthoughts.

- The intellect of the generality of women serves more to fortify their folly than their reason.

- A woman can believe anything in the world if there's no good reason for it.

- Can you recall a woman who ever showed you with pride her library?

- Whether Women are equal to Men in their intellectual Capacity, or not: If the Business of the Mind were nothing more than to contrive a Dress; to invent a new Fashion; to set off a bad Face; to heighten the Charms of a good one; to understand the Economy of a Tea-Table; to manage an Intrigue; to conduct a Game at Quadrille, and to lay out new Plans of Pleasure, Pride and Luxury; then Women must be own'd to have a Capacity not only equal but even superior to us. But as the Understanding of Man has infinitely higher Objects to employ its Speculations on, Objects beyond the very Aim of the ablest Women; their intellectual Faculties are so evidently inferior to his, that I should think it an Impertinence in me to take up any Time to prove it. Need we look any farther than their soft, simpering, silly Faces to fathom the perceptible Depth of their Understandings? View the whole Sex round:

Eternal Smiles their Emptiness betray

As shallow Streams run dimpling all the way. (Pope)

A thoughtless Stare, a wild Vivacity, a sleepy Pertness, giddy Gravity, or some such other Sense-defying Look betrays, in all, the narrow Space between the Surface and Centre of their mimic Wit . . . In Fact, what is all their Discourse but Froth? What inspires it but Venom? In what does their Sprightliness appear, but in empty Puns, Conundrums, Rebukes, trifling Politics or mischievous Lies? They who shine most among them, are such as have nothing to entertain you with but Scandal, Indecency, Hypocrisy, or Impiety. What is their Wit but a mere See-Saw from one Inconsistency to another? Their Conversation is ever screw'd up to Bombast, when it should be familiar; or sunk into Meanness, when the Subject they presume to meddle with is sublime. Where they should be silent, they are as forward to prate, as they are remiss in speaking on proper Occasions. How ill-bestow'd then on these fantastic Things is the Beauty we admire in them! And if it was bestow'd on them by Nature to decoy us into a Commerce with them, for the Benefit of Propogation; must it not still shock our Reason when we consider it accompanied only with Parts which we can reap no Benefit from, nor place any Confidence in? And what Assistance can we hope from their false Wit, as groveling as the Pride it inspires them with?

- Anon, "Man Superior to Woman", 1739

You women employ more thought, memory, and application to be Fools, than would serve to make you wise and useful. When I reflect on this, I cannot conceive you to be Human Creatures, but a sort of Species hardly a degree above a Monkey.

- Jonathan Swift, "A letter to a young lady on her marriage"

- The undoubted superiority of the male sex in intellectual and creative achievement is related to their greater endowment of aggression. . . . Even when women have been given the opportunity to cultivate the arts and sciences, remarkably few have produced original works of outstanding quality.

- Women never reason, and therefore are (comparatively) seldom wrong.

- But there's wisdom in women

of more than they have known,

And thoughts go blowing through

them, are wiser than their own.

- The sagacity of women, like the sagacity of saints, or that of donkeys, is something outside all questions of ordinary cleverness and ambition.

- What do you mean by a woman's better nature? I did not know that a woman had more than one nature, and that is . . . nature.

- Woman is considered wise when she apes the behaviour of man.

- Women are only children of a larger growth; they have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit, but for solid, reasoning good sense, I never in my life knew one that had it.

- Women get dumber as they grow smarter.

- It is generally admitted that with woman the powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than man; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilization. - Charles Darwin

- Revenge is always the delight of a little weak and petty mind; of which you may straightway draw proof from this, that no one so rejoices in revenge as a woman.

- In general, it can be said that feminine mentality manifests an undeveloped, childlike, or primitive character; instead of the thirst for knowledge, curiosity; instead of judgement, prejudice; instead of thinking, imagination or dreaming; instead of will, wishing.

- Emma Jung, "On the Nature of the Animus"

- Intellectually, a certain inferiority of the female sex can hardly be denied. . . . Women are intellectually more desultory and volatile than men; they are more occupied with particular instances than with general principles; they judge rather by intuitive perceptions than by deliberate reasoning.

- Women will avoid the wicked not because it is unright, but only because it is ugly . . . Nothing of duty, nothing of compulsion, nothing of obligation! . . . They do something only because it pleases them . . . I hardly believe that the fair sex is capable of principles. - Immanuel Kant

- There are only three things in the world that women do not understand; and they are Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

- Don't you think that robbing a corpse is indicative of a mean, petty and womanish spirit? - Socrates

- Offend her, and she knows not to forgive

Oblige her, and she'll hate you while you live.

- Women are certainly capable of learning, but they are not made for the higher forms of science, such as philosophy and certain types of artistic creativity; these require a universal ingredient. Women may hit on good ideas and they may, of course, have taste and elegance, but they lack the talent for the ideal. Men and women differ much as animals and plants do. Men with animals correspond, as do women and plants, for women develop more placidly and always retain the formless indeterminate unity of feeling and sentiment. When women have control over the government, the state is plunged into peril, for they do not act according to the standards of universality, but are influenced by random inclinations and opinions.

- Hegel

- Surface is woman's nature, foam tossed to and fro on shallow water. But deep is man's nature; his current flows in sub- terranean caverns: woman senses his power, but understands it not.

- No lady was ever a gentleman.

- For even to vice

They are not constant, but are changing still

One vice, but of a minute old, for one

Not half so old as that.

- Man is constant in his infidelity and woman puts him to shame because she is, by nature, fickle.

- Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match'd with mine are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.

- Whoever called women the fair sex didn't know anything about justice.

- Man is the will, and woman the sentiment. In this ship of humanity, will is the rudder, and sentiment the sail; when woman affects to steer, the rudder is only a masked sail.

- Where woman reigns war rages.

- This record will forever stand, "Woman, thy vows are traced in sand."

- Woman's love is writ in water,

Woman's faith is traced in sand.

- Woman, the creature of an hour.

- Men's vows are women's traitors.

- I change, and so do women too;

But I reflect, which women never do.

- Do not trust the winter sun or a woman's heart.

- Women have one man in their heart, another in their words, and still another in their arms.

- The girl who thinks she has broken her heart has only sprained her imagination.

- There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion.

- Women see through each other, but never look into themselves.

- The bosom is the central organ of all female ideas, wishes, and moods.

- Womens' intuition is the result of millions of years of not thinking.

- Woman's intuition

- Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.

- If women said what they thought they'd be speechless.

- No woman, plain or pretty, has any common sense at all. Common sense is the privilege of our sex and we men are so self-sacrificing that we never use it.

- Consult women, and do the opposite of what they advise.

- It took a million years to develop man's ability to reason, but it takes only a few minutes of feminine logic to destroy it.

- There is a tide in the affairs of women, which, taken at the flood, leads - God knows where.

- The great question which I have not been able to answer, despite my 30 years of research into the feminine soul, is "what does a woman want?"

- Sigmund Freud

- If women got a slap round the face more often, they'd be a bit more reasonable. - Charlotte Rampling

- She had man sense. It was the sixth sense that most women spent all their lives without ever finding.

- Women represent the triumph of matter over mind - just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.

- Women would rather be right than reasonable.

- There is no sincerity like a woman telling a lie.

- Now what I love in woman is, they won't

Or can't do otherwise than lie, but do it

So well, the very truth seems false.

- Women are far too clever to understand anything they do not like.

- The best happiness a woman can boast of is that of being most carefully deceived.

- Forgetting is woman's first and greatest art.

- She had a complete ignorance of everything a woman does not need to know.

- Taste: the feminine of genius.

- Society is the book of women.

- If God considered woman a fit helpmate for man, he must have had a very poor opinion of man.

- God created man, and finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more fully.

- Consistency: the only jewel found among more men than women.

- Women's words are as light as doomed autumn leaves.

- Woman is as false as a feather in the wind.

- The easiest way to change a woman's mind is by agreeing, disagreeing, or saying nothing.

- Never contradict a woman - if you listen a short while, she will contradict herself.

- There is nothing a woman so dislikes as to have her old opinions quoted to her, especially when they confute new ones.

- . . . She's but a woman,

As full of frailty as of faith, a poor slight woman,

And her best thoughts but weak fortifications.

- You sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanishness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly.

- Where did you get those big brown eyes and tiny mind.

- The reason women usually win arguments with men is that only dumb men are foolish enough to argue with women.

- A woman asks you a question, then answers it for you, and then says you're wrong!

- Like women's anger, impotent and loud.

- A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humours and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly and forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters.

- On women writers: "As artists they're rot, but as providers they're oil wells: they gush. Norris said she never wrote a story unless it was fun to do. I understand Ferber whistles at her typewriter. And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word." - Dorothy Parker

- Women take up ideas, like clothes, to suit their mood and whim, whereas men only permit themselves one quasi-original idea, (or "ism"), like a neck-tie.

- I see the woman with a scarf twisted round her hair and a cigarette in her mouth. She has put the tea tray down upon the file on which my future depends.

- Women are just like Communists - if you do exactly what they want all the time you are being realistic and constructive and promoting the cause of peace, and if you ever stand up to them you are resorting to cold-war tactics and pursuing imperialistic designs and interfering in their internal affairs.

- Women rule the world . . . no man has ever done anything that a woman either hasn't allowed him to do or encouraged him to do. - Bob Dylan

- Men and women no longer have the faintest idea what to do with one another. Each sex looks at the other with suspicion. The slightest gesture (scratching an ear), the most casual remark ("How are your tomatoes?") are seen as hostile acts. Now that women are equal, they feel awful about it and wonder if they should have pushed so hard. Men would like to reach out and help but are afraid they will be smashed in the head.

- Society is now influenced, shaped, and even to a large extent controlled by women. This is a far cry from the world of our childhood, when society was controlled by . . . Well, as the author recalls, society was controlled by Mom. Christmas dinner for all the relatives, square dancing, the PTA, split-level houses with two and half baths - surely no man thought these up. Feminism seems to be a case of women having won a leg-wrestling match with their own other leg. There is only one thing for men to do in response to this confusing situation, which is the same thing men have always done, which is anything women want.

- Cunning: life is a battle of wits, and women have to fight it unarmed.

- The wiles of most women are stronger than the wills of most men.

- Some women are so clever that you can't talk to them for ten minutes without beginning to realize how brilliant you are.

- The phrase "weaker sex" was probably coined by some woman to disarm some man she was preparing to overwhelm.

- One hair of a woman draws more than a team of oxen.

- Men are run ragged by female sexuality all their lives. From the beginning of his life to the end, no man ever fully commands any woman. It's an illusion. Men are pussy-whipped. And they know it.

- Camille Paglia

- There is something about cats and women that is viewed with distrust by mice and men.

- On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.

- When they are going to be flagrantly brutally selfish, women love to talk of being fair.

- The history of woman is the history of the worst form of tyranny the world has ever known. The tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.

- The weaker sex is the stronger sex because of the weakness of the stronger sex for the weaker sex.

- Women now insist on having all the prerogatives of the oak and all the perquisites of the clinging vine.

- A woman weeps with one eye and laughs with the other.

- A clever man will build a city, a clever woman will lay it low.

- A woman of talents, if she be not absolutely ugly, will always obtain great power - raised by the weakness of her sex.

- Women want a mediocre man, and men are working hard to be as mediocre as possible.

- Woman reduces us to the lowest common denominator.

- The world is perfectly packed with good women. To know them is a middle-class education.

- We women adore failures. They lean on us.

- Women love us for our defects; if we have enough of them they will forgive us everything, even our superior intellects.

- There's a great woman behind every idiot.

- With women one should never venture to joke.

- Q: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: That's not funny!

- Modern feminist humour:

- Q: Why is a Swiss Army Knife like a man?

A: Because it's cheap, it's everywhere and it's a complete tool.

- Q: Why did God invent men?

A: Because dogs can't put out the garbage.

- To women, men are like big dogs that talk.

- Women like the simpler things in life - like men.

- Insult three men a day; it may not change things but it will make you feel better. - Australian feminist Ms. Dale Spender

- The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things.

- Jilly Cooper, Cosmopolitan

- I require only three things of a man;

He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.

- Dorothy Parker

- Men are stereotyped by feminists into the types of suppressed rapist or the gentle soul conditioned by society to a toughness that hides a natural disposition to weep and wash up.

- Feminists do not like real women nor, of course, real men either.

- Nature made us (women) equal to them, and gave us the power to render ourselves superior. - Susanna Haswell Rowsen.

- Man says what he knows, woman what she pleases.

- To be slow in words is a woman's only virtue.

- When a man dies, the last thing that moves is his heart, in a woman her tongue.

- Mouth: in man, the gateway to the soul, in woman, the outlet of the heart.

- He knows little who will tell his wife all he knows.

- Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman.

- Woman is a species of which every woman is a variety.

- A woman's a woman until the day she dies but a man's only a man as long as he can.

- I expect that woman will be the last thing civilized by man.

- It's a great advantage to women to be regarded as a race apart, an advantage which, as usual, they abuse unscrupulously.

- There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future is invariably her husband.

- A boy expands into a man; a girl contracts into a woman.

- Women chat and men converse,

Women gossip, men freely curse.

Women question but men have doubt,

Women are masonry, but men are the grout.

- Men are worried about how many years they have left, women how many they have had.

- Love of flattery, in most men, proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women from the contrary.

- A man likes you for what he thinks you are; a woman for what you think she is.

- Time and circumstance, which enlarge the views of most men, narrow the views of women almost invariably.

- A woman's chief asset is man's imagination.

- Women's styles may change but their designs remain the same.

- If woman's actions are sometimes baffling, her motives are always obvious.

- The mystery of women is the product of the romantic imagination of men.

- Women: sphinxes without secrets.

- A woman is no more mysterious than a race horse.

- Men really do understand women - they just make believe they don't because it's cheaper that way.

- As a woman's womb fills, her head empties.

- There will continue to be a vast gulf between the sexes for as long as men and women are attracted to opposite things - namely each other.

- The worst mistake a man can ever make is to presume that a woman thinks like a man.

- To prove that women are inferior treat them as equals and see what happens.

- The reason I think women are inferior is that I judge them by the same criteria as I judge men.

- Women speak of equality

(Problems)

Men speak of difference

(Superiority and inferiority)

Difference is dynamic

(Equality goes nowhere)

- A woman will only trust a man who lies to her.

- Man hates with his mind and body, woman with her heart and soul.

- Sadly, a woman's virtue and depth of character disappears during the third hour spent getting to know her.

- When psychologists are asked to list the qualities of a healthy human mind they describe the qualities of the healthy male mind. Then, when asked to list the qualities of the healthy female mind, their list is not the same as that for the healthy human mind.

- Women are good at trivial things because women think trivial things are important. Women are bad at important things because women do not realize how much harm they can do to the larger world outside of the small world of their immediate surrounds.

- Woman: infinite to see, finite to hear.

- Women: from goddesses to grannies.

- It is not enough to educate women, they must not be loved.

- The best thing a woman can do for a man is to marry somebody else. The best thing a man can do for a woman is to make a man of her, which usually necessitates just leaving her alone.

- At the age of six, boys and girls are essentially the same. The difference is that boys tend to remain at the mental age of six throughout life, while girls seem to regress.

- Women need to feel compassion for others because weakness in others justifies their own weakness.

- Women always have some mental reservations. This is because most of their brains are out of bounds to them.

- Women lust to be misunderstood.

- A woman's strength is the unresistible might of weakness.

- Women are most adorable when they are afraid; that's why they frighten so easily.

- A woman wears her tears like jewelry.

- She was on the verge of tears, her favourite perch.

- You know women - there's always something bothering them.

- Self-pity is one of the last things that any woman surrenders.

- When he has a thorn in his side, she has to have a sword through her heart.

- A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. It is her favourite form of self-indulgence.

- Regret is a woman's natural food - she thrives upon it.

- My advice to the women's clubs of America is to raise more hell and fewer dahlias. - William Allen White

- Feminists would make great advances if they were not so bothered about sexist men; that is, if they were not so womanish.

- The superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences.

- Women use children as excuses not to do anything.

- Alas for all the women who marry dull men, go into the suburbs, and never come out again.

- Homes are invariably built on foundations of crushed women.

- To be popular with women, be sure never mention the fact that women as a class are less rational and hence inferior to men.

- A man should aim to think as much as a woman feels.

- Woman believes man's lies because she cares only about feelings, not future. She cannot realistically appreciate an honest man because honesty is superfluous to feelings.

- Many women are convinced that the reason Jesus never got married was that he never met the right girl.

- Women hate the man who speaks profoundly and obscurely; for it means that he does not need the company of women, never needs to explain himself, which means that he has not been tamed and therefore probably has a low opinion of women. Women far prefer the man who mistreats them to the one who gets away scot-free. It is for the same reason that we prefer people to do useless work badly than enjoy themselves constructively doing nothing.

- Anyone who criticizes women is a misogynist.

- Women are mysterious creatures; they sometimes appear superficially deep and at other times deeply superficial.

- The horrifying thing about the mystery of woman is that there isn't one.

- A woman thinks a man is unethical if he tries to measure her by ethical standards, for the reason that a woman cannot comprehend ethics.

- A woman, like a child, has only the shallowest and most insubstantial of thoughts. If you were to try to paddle your feet in her oceans, you wouldn't even get your feet wet.

- A man may become wise,

If he really tries.

But all women are born wise,

In their own eyes.

- Even when women serve men, they don't respect them.

- Someone asked me for an aphorism about artificial intelligence, so I gave them one about women: "The way technology is going, we will soon be able to give women artificial intelligence."

- Women are more in touch with their two feelings (smugness and terror) than men are with their ten thousand.

- Women are undoubtedly superior to men, if only men would give them a chance!

- It's a brave man who can overestimate a woman's age, or find a pretty girl to be in error.

- No woman can understand this aphorism.

- Any generalization is too big for a woman's mind, including this one.

- Men never speak the truth in the company of women - no woman can ever know this, not even if it is explained to them.

- Man is intelligence longing for sex, and woman is sex longing for financial security.

- A woman submits to a man while she has not received all that she wants to get.

- Women have virtue in the moment, but over the space of two moments . . . femininity.

- Women do have a will, insofar as they will to be passengers.

- Good times, or bad times, may I never house

With womankind! The courage of a woman

Is insubmissive, rash, not counsellable,

And, when she's timid, she's an added plague

To home and fatherland! So is it now!

Thanks to this hither, thither, to and fro

Coursing of scared feet, the faint-hearted fear,

Like to a chill tide, sounding as it goes,

Runs through all orders of the Commonweal!

And - while the foe without are mightily

Advantaged - we ourselves within the gates

Work for our own destruction! Whoso shares

With womankind his fortunes, let him look

For the like issue! Whatso'er he be,

Man, woman - or some despicable thing

Halfway betwixt them both - that from henceforth

Fails in most strict obedience to my will,

The damning pebble shall his lot decide,

And he shall publicly be stoned to death!

It longeth to a man - let womankind

Keep their own counsel and not mell with ours -

To manage matters in the world outside.

- From "Seven Against Thebes" by Aeschylus

- Women try their luck; men risk theirs.

- Men grin and bear it; women grin and wear it.

- A man cannot call a woman his own until he has controlled her shopping habits.

- The most difficult intelligence test is the understanding that women have no consciousness.

- The consciousness of woman is part of the imagination of man.

- You haven't conquered a woman till she's had a thought.

- We have emancipated women, but they remain slaves looking for their masters all the same.

- Men create the spaces for women to flow.

- A woman can be defined as someone who cannot understand what a generalization is.

- Women: the maintenance class.

- Some women like the title "Ms." because they think it means "Mistress".

- Where there is no love or lying there can be no woman.

- Women never do anything wrong because they never do anything.

- Women have a low opinion of men because they only meet those who approach them, and these are the lowest kind of men.

- Women: masters at doing things they don't want to do.

- A woman needs to find excuses to do the things she wants to do. This is why she will believe absolutely anything at all.

- The only decision a woman makes is to let the world make her decisions for her.

- Women don't have careers, they have crafts.

- If a woman did something she would cease to be a woman.

- A woman's individuality is defined by her ability to conform faster than the rest.

- Women renounce their sexuality when they enter the cloister, and men renounce their minds.

- If you want to know what it feels like to be a woman, take drugs.

- I challenged her to name me one book that had depth . . . but she said that she couldn't think of a book that wasn't deep.

- Women do not burn books, they marry the men who would have written them.

- I have never met a woman who was a man of her word.

- If a woman develops a taste for the ideal then even a mediocre man seems like a genius to her.

- To be unpopular with women, respect their minds.

- Women: cows with lipstick.

- Nuns: cows without lipstick.

- Nun: a refinement of fashion.

- Seducer: a cowherd.

- Women are blameless because they are sacred cows.

- I'll never understand the notion of "equality of the sexes" - it is obvious that men are superior to cows.

- The fact that women are cows is probably the most difficult truth to understand.

- What every man should be forced to say at his wedding ceremony to lend it some respectability: "My Kingdom for a Cow".

- Cows and women have been shaped by the same evolutionary forces - mens' desires.

- The reason men never blame women for their stupidity is that men have bred women to be stupid.

- For a man to have the stillness of a woman he must be a god. Consequently one mistakes women for gods.

- A woman looked down at her baby's hand . . . and knew there was a God. I looked at the woman and knew there was a Devil.

- When I meet a girl, the last thing I want to talk about is reality, but after five minutes I'm talking about the inferiority of women.

- Women feel shame because they cannot see things in perspective. Men feel guilt because they can.

- The price a man pays for sex is very often having to keep the company of women.

- It is good to condemn the feminine, but beware that in so doing you do not immortalize it in yourself.

- If men put from them in fear all that is "womanish" in them, then long, of course, for that missing part in their natures, so seek to possess it by possessing us; and because they have feared it in their own souls seek, too, to dominate it in us - seek even to slay it - well, we're where we are now, aren't we? - Barbara Deming

- There is not one man, in the million, shall I say? no, not in the hundred million, can rise above the belief that Woman was made for Man.

- The man who can't understand why women can't be more like men is the same man who will complain if women change their behavior.

- Men, indeed, appear to me to act in a very unphilosophical manner, when they try to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a state of childhood.

- I have learned valuable information. I have learned that the discussion of the cultural value of history and kindred topics will not get one very far, no matter how clever and apparently serious-minded the gentleman may be. I have learned that one must talk vivaciously, and on such subjects as football. One must laugh and talk about trivial and foolish things.

- Marion Taylor, age 17.

- A woman who strives to be like a man lacks ambition.

- The really original woman is the one who first imitates a man.

- Not only is it harder to be a man, it is also harder to become one. - Arianna Stassinopoulos

- Nature gave me the form of a woman; my actions have raised me to the level of the most valiant of men. - Semiramis, Assyrian Queen

- ". . . she was human, as well as being a woman . . ."

- The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain - whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands.

- Charles Darwin

- We are programmed (by biology or conditioning - who cares which?) to respond to social signals and pressures, and so find it almost impossible to be as single-mindedly ruthless as men.

- In those rare individual cases where women approach genius they also approach masculinity.

- Everyone has talent. What is rare is courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

- Behind every great man there is a woman laughing at him.

- Behind every great woman is a man who tried to stop her.

- When one knows women one pities men, but when one studies men, one excuses women.





B UDDHIST W RITINGS

From the Buddha's little known "Ultimate Extinction of the Dharma Sutra":

"When the Dharma is about to disappear, women will become vigorous and will at all times do deeds of virtue. Men will grow lax and will no longer speak the Dharma."

"When my Dharma disappears it will be just like an oil lamp which flares brightly for an instant just before it goes out. After this time it is difficult to speak with certainty of what will follow."

"Good persons will be hard to find; at most there will be one or two. Men will die younger, and women will live longer."

From "The sutra of the past vows of earth store bodhisattva"

(Commentary by Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua - in America)

Sutra:

Buddha: "If there are women who detest the body of a woman, and who full-heartedly make offerings to Earth Store Bodhisattva's image, whether the image be a painting or made of earth, stone, lacquerware, brass, iron, or some other material, and if they do so day after day without fail, using flowers, incense, food, drink, clothing, colored silks, banners, money, jewels, and other items as offerings, when the female retribution body of those good women is exhausted, for hundreds of thousands of aeons they will never again be born in the worlds where there are women, much less be one, unless it be through the strength of their compassionate vows to liberate living beings. From the power of the meritorious virtues resulting from these offerings to Earth Store Bodhisattva, they will not receive the bodies of women throughout hundreds of thousands of tens of thousands of aeons.

Commentary:

Do not think that being a woman is a good thing, for being a woman involves a great deal of trouble. There are women who do not like it and always wonder why they have to be women; they want to learn what they can do about it. Through worship of Earth Store Bodhisattva these questions can be resolved.

What is the trouble involved in being a woman? Because there are people who might like to investigate this further, I will go into a bit more detail. You should not think of this as an attempt to cause women to dislike their state and leave home. If that occurred then there might be even more problems for me to deal with.

There are Five Obstructions and Ten Evils encountered by women. First we will discuss the Five Obstructions. The first is that women are not able to become the Great Brahma Lord because that position is accomplished through purity, and the body of a woman has a great many impurities. Second, women cannot become Sakra. An astute student may object that earlier we discussed the thirty-three women who became lords of the heavens. This objection is a valid one, but it should be realized that upon reaching the heavens their bodies became male, because only males can be lords of the heavens. Although Sakra has some desire remaining, that desire is quite light; women, on the other hand, are extremely libidinous and consequently cannot become Sakra.

Third, women cannot become demon kings. This is not too bad. They cannot attain this position because demons are extremely hard, solid, and firm, while women are extremely soft and weak. As soon as anything unusual comes up they are at a loss and have to seek help. Fourth, beings cannot be wise wheel-turning kings - the gold, silver, copper, and iron wheel-turning kings - as long as they have female bodies. Wise kings have hearts of great compassion and kindness; they teach people to maintain the Five Precepts and the Ten Good Deeds. Whenever women see something good occur to others, they become jealous, and this keeps them from having great compassion. Because of this basic problem, they cannot become Buddhas. Buddhas have ten thousand virtues; women have many evils. They are jealous and obstructive, and their hearts are about the size of a sesame seed.

If, however, women are able to rid themselves of jealousy, desire, weakness, defilement, and of all evils, they may become men, and so theirs is not a hopeless plight. There is, for example, the case of the dragon king's daughter. When Sariputra said that she could not become a Buddha, she took a precious gem, her most valuable and cherished possession, and offered it to the Buddha, who accepted it. She then asked Sariputra if the Buddha's acceptance of her offering was fast, and he replied that, indeed, it had been quick. "I shall become a Buddha that quickly," she said and then she became a Buddha. This is proof that women's lot is not hopeless. All they must do is resolve to cultivate courageously and they too can become Buddhas.

There are also Ten Evils that pertain to women. First, at their birth their parents are displeased. Although it is not always the case that parents are displeased at the birth of a daughter, in most societies this is the case, and a daughter starts out life by making a bad impression on her parents.

The second evil is that raising daughters is not a very interesting task. The third is that women are always afraid of people. Boys are not usually afraid, but girls almost always are. The fourth evil connected with women is that their parents undergo a great deal of worry about their daughters' marriage. In America this is not a major matter, but in most other countries parents have to give a great deal of consideration to finding good husbands for their daughters.

Once girls grow up, the fifth of the Ten Evils occurs, when they have to leave their parents alone. The sixth comes after they have been married and are in constant fear of their husbands. When a husband likes something, they are pleased, and when he is angry, they cower in terror. The seventh evil of women is the difficulty and fear of giving birth.

The eighth difficulty is that no matter what they do or say, the report gets back to their parents that they are not good. Although the good remains, it is a goodness that does not influence their parents. The ninth is that they are always controlled by their husbands and are subject to many restrictions, which, if broken, can lead to divorce.

The above nine evils apply to women in their youth. They are old when the tenth arrives and their own children and grandchildren slight them. As the proverb says, "To be old and not yet dead is to be a thief." These are only a few of the many problems involved with being a woman. To explain all of them in detail would be an unending task.

From "Selected writings of Nichiren"

- Women are messengers from hell. They cut off the seeds of Buddhahood. They have the faces of bodhisattvas, but their hearts are like demons. Women can no more attain Buddhahood than can a dried up seed sprout.

- The course of a river and a woman's mind both wander. Water is malleable, it turns here and there when rocks and mountains block its path. Women are like this. They are inconstant as water. Although they know what is right, when they run into the strong will of a man, they are checked and turn in bad directions. The right fades like a line drawn on the water. Women's nature is unsteady: though they see what they should be, they soon become what they should not be. Buddhahood is founded on integrity. Therefore, women, who are easily swayed, cannot become Buddhas. Women have the "five obstacles" (inability to become anything great) and the "three followings" (follows first the father, then the husband, then the son). Thus in one sutra it is written: "Even should the eyes of all the buddhas of the three worlds fall to the earth, women cannot become Buddha." Another text says: "Even if you can capture the clear wind, you can never capture the mind of a woman."

- The passions of all the men of the three thousand worlds and the hindrances to the salvation of one woman are comparably immeasurable.

- Among the three pleasures of Yung Ch'i-ch'i (in "Tales of Chuang Tzu") was the pleasure of not being born as a woman. He also named the pleasure of not being reborn in heaven as a woman.





From



N EW I NTRODUCTORY L ECTURES

ON P SYCHO-ANALYSIS



by Sigmund Freud

One might make an attempt to characterize femininity psychologically by saying that it involves a preference for passive aims. That is naturally not the same as passivity; it may require a good deal of activity to achieve a passive end. It may be that the part played by women in the sexual function leads them to incline towards passive behaviour and passive aims, and that this inclination extends into their ordinary life to a greater or less degree, according to whether the influence of her sexual life as a model is limited or far-reaching. But we must take care not to underestimate the influence of social conventions, which also force women into passive situations. The whole thing is still very obscure. We must not overlook one particularly constant relation between femininity and instinctual life. The repression of their aggressiveness, which is imposed upon women by their constitutions and by society, favours the development of strong masochistic impulses, which have the effect of binding erotically the destructive tendencies which have been turned inwards. Masochism is, then, as they say, truly feminine. But when, as so often happens, you meet with masochism in men, what else can you do but say that these men display obvious feminine traits?

- The only thing that brings a mother undiluted satisfaction is her relation to a son; it is quite the most complete relationship between human beings, and the one that is the most free from ambivalence. The mother can transfer to her son all the ambition which she has had to suppress in herself, and she can hope to get from him the satisfaction of all that has remained to her of her masculinity complex. Even a marriage is not firmly assured until the woman has succeeded in making her husband into her child and in acting the part of a mother towards him.

- It must be admitted that women have but little sense of justice, and this is no doubt connected with the preponderance of envy in their mental life; for the demands of justice are a modification of envy; they lay down the conditions under which one is willing to part with it. We say also of women that their social interests are weaker than those of men, and that their capacity for the sublimation of their instincts is less. The former is no doubt derived from the unsocial character which undoubtedly attaches to all sexual relationships. Lovers find complete satisfaction in each other, and even the family resists absorption into wider organization. The capacity for sublimation is subject to the greatest individual variations.

In spite of this I cannot refrain from mentioning an impression which one receives over and over again in analytic work. A man of about thirty seems a youthful, and, in a sense, an incompletely developed individual, of whom we expect that he will be able to make good use of the possibilities of development, which analysis lays open to him. But a woman of about the same age frequently staggers us by her psychological rigidity and unchangeability. Her libido has taken up its final positions and seems powerless to leave them for others. There are no paths open to her for further development; it is as though the whole process had been gone through and remained inaccessible to influence for the future; as though, in fact, the difficult development which leads to femininity had exhausted all the possibilities of the individual. As therapeutists, we deplore this state of affairs, even when we are successful in removing her sufferings by solving her neurotic conflict.

Sigmund Freud





From



" P RINCIPLES OF P SYCHOLOGY"



by William James

- We observe an identical difference between men as a whole and women as a whole. A young woman of twenty reacts with intuitive promptitude and security in all the usual circumstances in which she may be placed. Her likes and dislikes are formed; her opinions, to a great extent, the same that they will be through life. Her character is, in fact, finished in its essentials. How inferior to her is a boy of twenty in all these respects! His character is still gelatinous, uncertain what shape to assume, "trying it on" in every direction. Feeling his power, yet ignorant of the manner in which he shall express it, he is, when compared with his sister, a being of no definite contour. But this absence of prompt tendency in his brain to set into particular modes is the very condition which insures that it shall ultimately become so much more efficient than the woman's. The very lack of preappointed trains of thought is the ground on which general principles and heads of classification grow up; and the masculine brain deals with new and complex matter indirectly by means of these, in a manner which the feminine method of direct intuition, admirably and rapidly as it performs within its limits, can vainly hope to cope with.

- Women take offense and get angry, if anything, more easily than men, but their anger is inhibited by fear and other principles of their nature from expressing itself in blows.

- The consciousness of how one stands with other people occupies a relatively larger and larger part of the mind, the lower one goes on the scale of culture. Woman's intuition, so fine in the sphere of personal relations, is seldom first-rate in the way of mechanics. Hence Dr. Whately's jest, "Woman is the unreasoning animal, and pokes the fire from the top."

William James





From

" T HE G OSPEL OF T HOMAS"

Simon Peter said to them, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven."





From

" M EN, W OMEN, AND G OD"



by Carl Jung

(from "Jung speaking" 1977)

- A woman is at her best only when she loves a man. Personal relationship is her basic need, and when that falters she grows dissatisfied and argumentative in a way that often leads to divorce. But this certainly doesn't mean that men and women should remain placid. On the contrary, some tension must prevail in their daily lives, for otherwise there cannot be the ideal relationship in sex - and this is a "must" between husband and wife.

Mentally, morally, physically - in all these ways Nature has created an extreme difference between man and woman, so that he finds his opposite in her and she in him. That creates tension.





I N V INO V ERITAS

(or T HE B ANQUET)

by Soren Kierkegaard

from his book "Stages on Life's Way"

It was on one of the last days in July, at ten o'clock in the evening, when the participants in that banquet assembled together. Date and year I have forgotten; indeed, this would be interesting only to one's memory of details, and not to one's recollection of the contents of that experience. The "spirit of the occasion," and whatever impressions are recorded in one's mind under that heading, concerns only one's recollections; and just as generous wine gains in flavor by passing the Equator, because of the evaporation of its watery particles, likewise does recollection gain by getting rid of the watery particles of memory; and yet recollection becomes as little a mere figment of the imagination by this process as does the generous wine.

The participants were five in number: John, called the Seducer, Victor Eremita, Constantine Constantius, and yet two others whose names I have not exactly forgotten - which would be a matter of small importance - but whose names I did not learn. It was as if these two had no proper names, for they were constantly addressed by some epithet. The one was called the Young Person. Nor was he more than twenty and some years, of slender and delicate build, and of a very dark complexion. His face was thoughtful; but more pleasing even was its lovable and engaging expression which betokened a purity of soul harmonizing perfectly with the soft charm, almost feminine, and the transparency of his whole presence. This external beauty of appearance was lost sight of, however, in one's next impression of him; or, one kept it only in mind whilst regarding a youth nurtured or - to use a still tenderer expression - petted into being, by thought, and nourished by the contents of his own soul - a youth who as yet had had nothing to do with the world, had been neither aroused and fired, nor disquieted and disturbed. Like a sleepwalker he bore the law of his actions within himself, and the amiable, kindly expression of his countenance concerned no one, but only mirrored the disposition of his soul.

The other person they called the Dressmaker, and that was his occupation. . . .

. . . They were seated. In the same moment the little company were launched into the very middle of the infinite sea of enjoyment - as if with a single bound. Each one had addressed all his thoughts and all his desires to the banquet, had prepared his soul for the enjoyment which was offered to overflowing and in which their souls overflowed. . . .

. . . Thus they banqueted. Soon, conversation had woven its beautiful wreaths about the banqueters, so that they sat garlanded. Now, it was enamored of the food, now of the wine, and now again of itself; now, it seemed to develop into significance, and then again it was altogether slight. . . .

. . . After a couple of courses had been served Constantine proposed that the banquet should conclude with each one's making a speech, but that precautions should be taken against the speakers' divagating too much. He was for making two conditions, viz., there were to be no speeches until after the meal; and no one was to speak before having drunk sufficiently to feel the power of the wine - or else he was to be in that condition in which one says much which under other circumstances one would leave unsaid - without necessarily having the connection of speech and thought constantly interrupted by hiccoughs. Before speaking, then, each one was to declare solemnly that he was in that condition. No definite quantity of wine was specified, capacities differed so widely. Against this proposal, John entered protest. He could never become intoxicated, he averred, and when he had come to a certain point he grew the soberer the more he drank. . . .

. . . As to the contents of the speeches, Constantine proposed that they should deal with love, that is, the relation between man and woman. No love stories were to be told though they might furnish the text of one's remarks.

The conditions were accepted. All reasonable and just demands a host may make on his guests were fulfilled: they ate and drank, and "drank and were filled with drink," as the Bible has it; that is, they drank stoutly.

The desert was served. Even if Victor had not, as yet, had his desire gratified to hear the splashing of a fountain - which, for that matter, he had luckily forgotten since that former conversation - now champagne flowed profusely. The clock struck twelve. Thereupon Constantine commanded silence, saluted the Young Person with a goblet and the words "May it be fortunate and favorable," and bade him to speak first.

The Young Person's Speech

The Young Person arose and declared that he felt the power of the wine, which was indeed apparent to some degree; for the blood pulsed strongly in his temples, and his appearance was not as beautiful as before the meal. He spoke as follows: . . .

(Editors note: The Young Person began his speech by speaking about the comical and contradictory nature of love. I have chosen to exclude the early part of his speech insofar as it does not relate immediately to the subject of woman. - KS)

. . . No, love anyone I will not, before I have fathomed what love is; but this I cannot, but have, rather, come to the conclusion that it is comical. Hence I will not love - but alas! I have not thereby avoided the danger, for, since I do not know what the lovable is and how it seizes me, or how it seizes a woman with reference to me, I cannot make sure whether I have avoided the danger. . . .

. . . Look you, for this reason have I forsworn all love, for my thought is to me the most essential consideration. So even if love be the most exquisite joy, I renounce it, without wishing to either offend or to envy anyone; and even if love be the condition for conferring the greatest benefit imaginable I deny myself the opportunity therefor - but my thought I have not prostituted. By no means do I lack an eye for what is beautiful, by no means does my heart remain unmoved when I read the songs of the poets, by no means is my soul without sadness when it yields to the beautiful conceptions of love; but I do not wish to become unfaithful to my thought. And of what avail were it to be, for there is no happiness possible for me except my thought have free sway, for it is my immortal part and, hence, of more importance than a wife. Well do I comprehend that if anything is sacred it is love; that if faithlessness in any relation is base, it is doubly so in love; that if any deceit is detestable, it is tenfold more detestable in love. But my soul is innocent of blame. I have never looked at any woman to desire her; neither have I fluttered about aimlessly before blindly plunging, or lapsing, into the most decisive of all relations. If I knew what the lovable were I would know with certainty whether I had offended by tempting anyone; but since I do not know, I am certain only of never having had the conscious desire to do so.

Supposing I should yield to love and be made to laugh; or supposing I should be cast down by terror, since I cannot find the narrow path which lovers travel as easily as if it were a broad highway, undisturbed by any doubts, which they surely have bestowed thought on (seeing our times have, indeed, reflected about everything and consequently will comprehend me when I assert that to act unreflectingly is nonsense, as one ought to have gone through all possible reflections before acting) - supposing, I say, I should yield to love! Would I not insult past redress my beloved one if I laughed, or irrevocably plunge her into despair if I were overwhelmed by terror? For I understand well enough that a woman cannot be expected to have thought as profoundly about these matters; and a woman who found love comical (as but gods and men can, for which reason woman is a temptation luring them to become ridiculous) would both betray a suspicious amount of previous experience and understand me least. But a woman who comprehended the terror of love would have lost her loveliness and still fail to understand me - she would be annihilated, which is in nowise my case, so long as my thought saves me.

. . . If there be no one who laughs at my speech - well, then laugh a little at me, dear fellow banqueters, and I shall not wonder; for I do not understand what I have occasionally heard you say about love. Very probably, though, you are among the initiated as I am not.

. . . Thereupon the Young Person seated himself. He had become more beautiful, almost, than before the meal. Now he sat quietly, looking down before him, unconcerned about the others. John the Seducer desired at once to urge some objections against the Young Person's speech but was interrupted by Constantine who warned against discussions and ruled that on this occasion only speeches were in order. John said if that was the case, he would stipulate that he should be allowed to be the last speaker. This again gave rise to a discussion as to the order in which they were to speak, which Constantine closed by offering to speak forthwith, against their recognizing his authority to appoint the speakers in their turn.

Constantine's Speech

Constantine spoke as follows:

There is a time to keep silence, and a time to speak, and now it seems to be the time to speak briefly, for our young friend has spoken much and very strangely. His comical power has made us struggle in uncertain battle because his speech was full of doubts, as he himself is, sitting there now - a perplexed man who knows not whether to laugh, or weep, or fall in love. In fact, had I had foreknowledge of his speech, such as he demands one should have of love, I should have forbidden him to speak; but now it is too late. I shall bid you then, dear fellow banqueters, "gladsome and merry be," and even if I cannot enforce this I shall ask you to forget each speech so soon as it is made and to wash it down with a single draught.

And now as to woman, about whom I shall speak. I too have pondered about her, and I have finally discovered the category to which she belongs. I too have sought, but I have found, too, and I have made a matchless discovery which I shall now communicate to you. Woman is understood correctly only when placed in the category of "the joke."

It is a man's function to be absolute, act in an absolute fashion, or to give expression to the absolute. Woman's sphere lies in her relativity. Between beings so radically different, no true reciprocal relation can exist. Precisely in this incommensurability lies the joke. And with woman the joke was born into the world. It is to be understood, however, that man must know how to stick to his role of being absolute; for else nothing is seen - that is to say, something exceedingly common is seen, viz., that man and woman fit each other, he as half man and she as half man.

The joke is not an aesthetic, but an abortive ethical, category. Its effect on thought is about the same as the impression we receive if a man were solemnly to be making a speech, recite a comma or two with his pronouncement, then say "hm!" - "dash" - and then stop. Thus with woman. One tries to cover her with the ethical category, one thinks of human nature, one opens one's eyes, on fastens one's glances on the most excellent maiden in question; an effort is made to redeem the claims of the ethical demand; and then one grows ill at ease and says to one's self: ah, this is undoubtedly a joke! The joke lies, indeed, in applying that category to her and measuring her by it, because it would be idle to expect serious results from her; but just that is the joke. Because if one could demand it of her it would not be a joke at all. A mighty poor joke indeed it would be to place her under the air pump and draw the air out of her - indeed it were a shame; but to blow her up to supernatural size and let her imagine herself to have attained all the ideality which a little maiden of sixteen imagines she has, that is the beginning of the game and, indeed, the beginning of a highly entertaining performance. No youth has half so much imaginary ideality as a young girl, but: "We shall soon be even" as says the tailor in the proverb; for her ideality is but an illusion.

If one fails to consider woman from this point of view, she may cause irreparable harm; but through my conception of her she becomes harmless and amusing. For a man there is nothing more shocking than to catch himself twaddling. It destroys all true ideality; for one may repent of having been a rascal and one may feel sorry for not having meant a word of what one said; but to have talked nonsense, sheer nonsense, to have meant all one said and behold! it was all nonsense - that is too disgusting for repentance incarnate to put up with. But this is not the case with woman. She has a prescriptive right to transfigure herself - in less than twenty-four hours - into the most innocent and pardonable nonsense; for far is it from her ingenuous soul to wish to deceive one! Indeed, she meant all she said, and now she says the precise opposite, but with the same amiable frankness, for now she is willing to stake everything on what she said last. Now in case a man in all seriousness surrenders to love he may be called fortunate indeed if he succeeds in obtaining an insurance - if, indeed, he is able to obtain it anywhere; for so inflammable a material as woman is most likely to arouse the suspicions of an insurance agent. Just consider for a moment what he has done in thus identifying himself with her! If, some fine New Year's night she goes off like some fireworks he will promptly follow suit; and even if this should not happen he will have many a close call. And what may he not lose! He may lose his all; for there is but one absolute antithesis to the absolute, and that is nonsense. Therefore, let him not seek refuge in some society for morally tainted individuals, for he is not morally tainted - far from it; only, he has been reduced in absurdum and beatified in nonsense; that is, has been made a fool of.

This will never happen among men. If a man should sputter off in this fashion I would scorn him. If he should fool me by his cleverness I need but apply the ethical category to him, and the danger is trifling. If things go too far I shall put a bullet through his brain; but to challenge a woman - what is that, if you please? Who does not see that it is a joke, just as when Xerxes had the sea whipped? When Othello murders Desdemona, granting she really had been guilty, he has gained nothing, for he has been duped, and a dupe he remains; for even by his murdering her he only makes a concession with regard to a consequence which originally made him ridiculous; whereas Elvira (in Mozart's "Don Giovanni") may be an altogether pathetic figure when she arms herself with a dagger to obtain revenge. The fact that Shakespeare has conceived Othello as a tragic figure (even disregarding the calamity that Desdemona is innocent) is to be explained and, indeed, to perfect satisfaction, by the hero being a colored person. For a colored person, dear fellow banqueters, who cannot be assumed to represent spiritual qualities - a colored person, I say, who therefore becomes green in the face when his ire is aroused (which is a physiological fact), a colored man may, indeed, become tragic if he is deceived by a woman; just as a woman has all the pathos of tragedy on her side when she is betrayed by a man. A man who flies into a rage may perhaps become tragic; but a man of whom one may expect a developed mentality, he will either not become jealous or he will become ridiculous if he does, and most of all when he comes running with a dagger in his hand.

A pity that Shakespeare has not presented us with a comedy of this description in which the claim raised by a woman's infidelity is turned down by irony; for not everyone who is able to see the comical element in this situation and is capable also of developing the thought can give it dramatic embodiment. Let one but imagine Socrates surprising Xanthippe in the act - for it would be un-Socratic even to think of Socrates being particularly concerned about his wife's fidelity, or still worse, spying on her - imagine it, and I believe that the fine smile which transformed the ugliest man in Athens into the handsomest would for the first time have turned into a roar of laughter. It is incomprehensible why it never occurred to Aristophanes, who so frequently made Socrates the butt of his ridicule, to have him come running on the stage, shouting: "Where is she, where is she, so that I may kill her, ie., my unfaithful Xanthippe." For really it does not matter greatly whether or not Socrates was made a cuckold, and all that Xanthippe may do in this regard is wasted labor, like snapping one's fingers in one's pocket; for Socrates remains the same intellectual hero, even if he is cuckolded. But if he had in fact become jealous and had wanted to kill Xanthippe - alas! then would Xanthippe have exerted a power over him such as the entire Greek nation and his sentence of death could not - to make him ridiculous.

A cuckold is comical, then, with respect to his wife; but he may be regarded as becoming tragical with respect to other men. In this fact we may find an explanation of the Spanish conception of honor. But the tragic element resides chiefly in his not being able to obtain redress, and the anguish of his suffering consists really in its being devoid of meaning - which is terrible enough. To shoot the woman, to challenge her, to despise her, all this would only serve to render the poor man still more ridiculous; for woman is the weaker sex. This consideration enters in everywhere and confuses all. If she performs a great deed she is admired more than man, because it is more than was expected of her. If she is betrayed, all the pathos is on her side; but if a man is deceived one has scant sympathy and little patience while he is present - and laughs at him when his back is turned.

Look you, therefore is it advisable betimes to consider woman as a joke. The entertainment she affords is simply incomparable. Let one consider her a fixed quantity and one's self a relative one; let one by no means contradict her, for that would simply be helping her; let one never doubt what she says but, rather, believe her every word; let one gallivant about her, with eyes rendered unsteady by unspeakable admiration and blissful intoxication and with the mincing steps of a worshiper; let one languishingly fall on one's knees, then lift one's eyes up to her languishingly and heave a breath again; let one do all she bids one, like an obedient slave. And now comes the cream of the joke. We need no proof that woman can speak, ie., use words. Unfortunately, however, she does not possess sufficient reflection for making sure against her in the long run - which is, at most, eight days - contradicting herself, unless, indeed, man, by contradicting her, exerts a regulative influence. So the consequence is that within a short time confusion will reign supreme. If one had not done what she told one to, the confusion would pass unnoticed; for she forgets again as quickly as she talks. But since her admirer has done all and has been at her beck and call in every instance, the confusion is only too glaring.

The more gifted the woman, the more amusing the situation. For the more gifted she is, the more imagination she will possess. Now, the more imagination she possesses, the greater airs she will give herself and the greater the confusion which is bound to become evident in the next instant. In life, such entertainment is rarely had, because this blind obedience to a woman's whims occurs but seldom. And if it does, in some languishing swain, most likely he is not qualified to see the fun. The fact is, the ideality a little maiden assumes in moments when her imagination is at work is encountered nowhere else, whether in gods or man; but it is all the more entertaining to believe her and to add fuel to the fire.

As I remarked, the fun is simply incomparable - indeed, I know it for a fact because I have at times not been able to sleep at night with the mere thought of what new confusions I should live to see, through the agency of my sweetheart and my humble zeal to please her. Indeed, no one who gambles in a lottery will meet with more remarkable combinations than he who has a passion for this game. For this is sure, that every woman without exception possesses the same qualifications for being resolved and transfigured in nonsense with a gracefulness, a nonchalance, an assurance such as befits the weaker sex.

Being a right-minded lover one naturally discovers every possible charm in one's beloved. Now, when discovering genius in the above sense, one ought not to let it remain a mere possibility but ought, rather, to develop it into virtuosity. I do not need to be more specific, and more cannot be said in a general way, yet everyone will understand me. Just as one may find entertainment in balancing a cane on one's nose, in swinging a tumbler in a circle without spilling a drop, in dancing between eggs, and in other games as amusing and profitable, likewise, and not otherwise, in living with his beloved the lover will have a source of incomparable entertainment and food for the most interesting study. In matters pertaining to love, let one have absolute belief, not only in her protestations of fidelity - one soon tires of that game - but in all those explosions of inviolable Romanticism by which she would probably perish if one did not contrive a safety valve through which the sighs and the smoke, and "the aria of Romanticism" may escape and make her worshiper happy. Let one compare her admiringly to Juliet, the difference being only that no person ever as much as thought of touching a hair on her Romeo's head. With regard to intellectual matters, let one hold her capable of all and, if one has been lucky enough to find the right woman, in a trice one will have a cantankerous authoress, whilst wonderingly shading one's eyes with one's hand and duly admiring what the little black hen may yield besides. It is altogether incomprehensible why Socrates did not choose this course of action instead of bickering with Xanthippe - oh, well! to be sure he wished to acquire practice, like the riding master who, even though he has the best trained horse, yet knows how to tease him in such fashion that there is good reason for breaking him in again.

Let me be a little more concrete in order to illustrate a particular and highly interesting phenomenon. A great deal has been said about feminine fidelity, but rarely with any discretion. From a purely aesthetic point of view this fidelity is to be regarded as a piece of poetic fiction which steps on the stage to find her lover - a fiction which sits by the spinning wheel and waits for her lover to come; but when she has found him, or he has come, why, then aesthetics is at a loss. Her infidelity, on the other hand, as contrasted with her previous fidelity, is to be judged chiefly with regard to its ethical import, when jealousy will appear as a tragic passion. There are three possibilities, then, and so the situation is favorable for woman; for there are two cases of fidelity, as against one of infidelity. Inconceivably great is her fidelity when she is not altogether sure of her cavalier; and ever so inconceivably great is it when he repels her fidelity. The third case would be her infidelity. Now granted one has sufficient intellect and objectivity to make reflections, one will find sufficient justification, in w