Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem… — Honoré de Balzac
Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem is the first demand that they make of love.
Les femmes tiennent et doivent toutes tenir à être honorées, car sans l'estime elles n'existent plus. Aussi est-ce le premier sentiment qu'elles demandent à l'amour.
Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption.
But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.
A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.
And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations — trouble and storm in the love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young girl's love. At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can only make moan.
