C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Attractiveness
The poetic element lying hidden in most women is the source of their magnetic attraction.
The first duty of a woman is to be pretty.
A poor beauty finds more lovers than husbands.
That hook of wiving, fairness which strikes the eye.
Her very frowns are fairer far than smiles of other maidens are.
Nothing under heaven so strongly doth allure the sense of man, and all his mind possess, as beauty’s love-bait.
Those who are formed to win general admiration are seldom calculated to bestow individual happiness.
No woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more than she can be witty only by the help of speech.
I hold it to be the moral duty of women to make themselves beautiful in all lawful ways.
The more sensible a woman is, supposing her not to be masculine, the more attractive she is in her proportionate power to entertain.
Women and flowers are made to be loved for their beauty and sweetness, rather than themselves to love.
On the attraction between man and woman society is based; but its refined is greater than its gross force, and its weight is like the gravitation of the globe.
A woman’s natural quality is to attract, and having attracted to enchain; and how influential she may be for good or evil, the history of every age makes clear.
There are other things besides beauty with which to captivate the hearts of men. The Italians have a saying: “Fair is not fair, but that which pleaseth.”
To make the cunning artless, tame the rude, subdue the haughty, shake the undaunted soul; yea, put a bridle in the lion’s mouth, and lead him forth as a domestic cur,—these are the triumphs of all-powerful beauty.
Rarity gives a charm: thus early fruits are most esteemed; thus winter roses obtain a higher price; thus coyness sets off an extravagant mistress: a door ever open attracts no young suitor.
A pretty, silly, self-conceited woman will very often be far more courted, and seemingly far more liked and admired, than a woman of infinitely higher charms. All the while the men do not like her a tenth part as well.
She carried about her an indefinable air of having been used to love, or admiration probably, of men as well as women, which the most exquisitely modest women will sometimes wear, and which is unmistakable as it is alluring to the eye.
Our poor eyes were so enriched as to behold, and our low hearts so exalted as to love, a maid who is such, that as the greatest thing the world can show is her beauty, so the least thing that may be praised in her is her beauty.