C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Courtship
The pleasantest part of a man’s life.
She most attracts who longest can refuse.
See how the skilful lover spreads his toils.
She half consents who silently denies.
Men dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake!
A feast is more fatal to love than a fast.
Ah, fool! faint heart fair lady ne’er could win.
What a woman says to her lover should be written on air or swift water.
The acceptance of favors from the other sex is a woman’s first step towards self-committal.
That man that has a tongue, I say, is no man if with his tongue he cannot win a woman.
A woman that wishes to retain her suitor must keep him in the trenches.
Men are April when they woo, December when they wed.
I knelt, and with the fervor of a lip unused to the cool breath of reason, told my love.
Who listens once will listen twice; her heart be sure is not of ice, and one refusal no rebuff.
A fellow who lives in a windmill has not a more whimsical dwelling than the heart of a man that is lodged in a woman.
Every man in the time of courtship and in the first entrance of marriage, puts on a behavior like my correspondent’s holiday suit.
Courtship consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood.
If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself; all that runs over will be yours.
A man is in no danger so long as he talks his love; but to write it is to impale himself on his own pothooks.
I profess not to know how women’s hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration.
God has put into the heart of man love and the boldness to sue, and into the heart of woman fear and the courage to refuse.
When a woman is deliberating with herself whom she shall choose of many near each other in other pretensions, certainly he of the best understanding is to be preferred.
Rejected lovers need never despair! There are four-and-twenty hours in a day, and not a moment in the twenty-four in which a woman may not change her mind.
The Greek epigram intimates that the force of love is not shown by the courting of beauty, but where the like desire is inflamed for one who is ill-favored.
If fathers are sometimes sulky at the appearance of the destined son-in-law, is it not a fact that mothers become sentimental and, as it were, love their own loves over again.
Tom hinted at his dislike at some trifle his mistress had said; she asked him how he would talk to her after marriage if he talked at this rate before.
How would that excellent mystery, wedded life, irradiate the world with its blessed influences, were the generous impulses and sentiments of courtship but perpetuated in all their exuberant fullness during the sequel of marriage!
The pleasantest part of a man’s life is generally that which passes in courtship, provided his passion be sincere, and the party beloved kind with discretion. Love, desire, hope, all the pleasing emotions of the soul, rise in the pursuit.
He that can keep handsomely within rules, and support the carriage of a companion to his mistress, is much more likely to prevail than he who lets her see the whole relish of his life depends upon her. If possible, therefore, divert your mistress rather than sigh for her.
Let a woman once give you a task, and you are hers, heart and soul; all your care and trouble lend new charms to her for whose sake they are taken. To rescue, to revenge, to instruct, or protect a woman is all the same as to love her.
Every man ought to be in love a few times in his life, and to have a smart attack of the fever. You are better for it when it is over: the better for your misfortune, if you endure it with a manly heart; how much the better for success, if you win it and a good wife into the bargain!
Courtship is a fine bowling-green turf, all galloping round and sweet-hearting, a sunshine holiday in summer time; but when once through matrimony’s turnpike, the weather becomes wintry, and some husbands are seized with a cold, aguish fit, to which the faculty give the name of indifference.
Maggie and Stephen were in that stage of courtship which makes the most exquisite moment of youth, the freshest blossom-time of passion,—when each is sure of the other’s love, but no formal declaration has been made, and all is mutual divination, exalting the most trivial words, the lightest gestures, into thrills delicate and delicious as wafted jasmine scent.
A town, before it can be plundered and deserted, must first be taken; and in this particular Venus has borrowed a law from her consort Mars. A woman that wishes to retain her suitor must keep him in the trenches; for this is a siege which the besieger never raises for want of supplies, since a feast is more fatal to love than a fast, and a surfeit than a starvation. Inanition may cause it to die a slow death, but repletion always destroys it by a sudden one.