94% of the women in America are beautiful and the rest hang out around here. % A bachelor is a man who never made the same mistake once. % A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman out of a divorce. -- Don Quinn % A bachelor is an unaltared male. % A bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy for ever. -- Helen Rowland % A bad marriage is like a horse with a broken leg, you can shoot the horse, but it don't fix the leg. % A beautiful man is paradise for the eyes, hell for the soul, and purgatory for the purse. % A beautiful woman is a blessing from Heaven, but a good cigar is a smoke. -- Kipling % A beautiful woman is a picture which drives all beholders nobly mad. -- Emerson % A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down. -- Robert Benchley % A boy gets to be a man when a man is needed. -- John Steinbeck % A Chicago salesman was about to check into a St. Louis hotel when he noticed a very charming woman staring admiringly at him. He walked over and spoke with her for a few minutes, then returned to the front desk, where they checked in as Mr. and Mrs. After a very pleasurable three-day stay, the man approached the front desk and told the clerk he was checking out. In a few minutes, he was handed a bill for $2500. "There must be some mistake," the salesman said. "I've been here for only three days." "Yes, sir," the clerk replied. "But your wife has been here a month and a half." % A Code of Honour: never approach a friend's girlfriend or wife with mischief as your goal. There are too many women in the world to justify that sort of dishonourable behaviour. Unless she's really attractive. -- Bruce J. Friedman, "Sex and the Lonely Guy" % A diplomat is man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never her age. -- Robert Frost % A diplomatic husband said to his wife, "How do you expect me to remember your birthday when you never look any older?" % A domineering man married a mere wisp of a girl. He came back from his honeymoon a chastened man. He'd become aware of the will of the wisp. % A figure with curves always offers a lot of interesting angles. % A flashy Mercedes-Benz roared up to the curb where a cute young miss stood waiting for a taxi. "Hi," said the gentleman at the wheel. "I'm going west." "How wonderful," came the cool reply. "Bring me back an orange." % A fool and his honey are soon parted. % A fox is a wolf who sends flowers. -- Ruth Weston % A gentleman is a man who wouldn't hit a lady with his hat on. -- Evan Esar [ And why not? For why does she have his hat on? Ed.] % A gentleman never strikes a lady with his hat on. -- Fred Allen % A girl and a boy bump into each other -- surely an accident. A girl and a boy bump and her handkerchief drops -- surely another accident. But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid -- *____that ___had __to ____mean _________something*. -- S. Morganstern, "The Silent Gondoliers" % A girl with a future avoids the man with a past. -- Evan Esar, "The Humor of Humor" % A girl's best friend is her mutter. -- Dorothy Parker % A girl's conscience doesn't really keep her from doing anything wrong-- it merely keeps her from enjoying it. % A good man always knows his limitations. -- Harry Callahan % A good marriage would be between a blind wife and deaf husband. -- Michel de Montaigne % A guy has to get fresh once in a while so a girl doesn't lose her confidence. % A hammer sometimes misses its mark - a bouquet never. % A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted. -- Helen Rowland % A lady is one who never shows her underwear unintentionally. -- Lillian Day % A man always needs to remember one thing about a beautiful woman. Somewhere, somebody's tired of her. % A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that begins to bunch them. -- Mencken % A man arrived home early to find his wife in the arms of his best friend, who swore how much they were in love. To quiet the enraged husband, the lover suggested, "Friends shouldn't fight, let's play gin rummy. If I win, you get a divorce so I can marry her. If you win, I promise never to see her again. Okay?" "Alright," agreed the husband. "But how about a quarter a point on the side to make it interesting?" % A man can have two, maybe three love affairs while he's married. After that it's cheating. -- Yves Montand % A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself. -- Du Bois % A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished. -- Zsa Zsa Gabor, "Newsweek" % A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him. -- Brendan Francis % A man is like a rusty wheel on a rusty cart, He sings his song as he rattles along and then he falls apart. -- Richard Thompson % A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything. -- Samuel Johnson % A man may sometimes be forgiven the kiss to which he is not entitled, but never the kiss he has not the initiative to claim. % A man sank into the psychiatrist's couch and said, "I have a terrible problem, Doctor. I have a son at Harvard and another son at Princeton; I've just gifted each of them with a new Ferrari; I've got homes in Beverly Hills, Palm Beach, and a co-op in New York; and I've got a thriving ranch in Venezuela. My wife is a gorgeous young actress who considers my two mistresses to be her best friends." The psychiatrist looked at the patient, confused. "Did I miss something? It sounds to me like you have no problems at all." "But, Doctor, I only make $175 a week." % A man took his wife deer hunting for the first time. After he'd given her some basic instructions, they agreed to separate and rendezvous later. Before he left, he warned her if she should fell a deer to be wary of hunters who might beat her to the carcass and claim the kill. If that happened, he told her, she should fire her gun three times into the air and he would come to her aid. Shortly after they separated, he heard a single shot, followed quickly by the agreed upon signal. Running to the scene, he found his wife standing in a small clearing with a very nervous man staring down her gun barrel. "He claims this is his," she said, obviously very upset. "She can keep it, she can keep it!" the wide-eyed man replied. "I just want to get my saddle back!" % A man usually falls in love with a woman who asks the kinds of questions he is able to answer. -- Ronald Colman % A man was griping to his friend about how he hated to go home after a late card games. "You wouldn't believe what I go through to avoid waking my wife," he said. "First, I kill the engine a block away from the house and coast into the garage. Then I open the door slowly, take off my shoes, and tiptoe to our room. But just as I'm about to slide into bed, she always wakes up and gives me hell." "I make a big racket when I go home," his friend replied. "You do?" "Sure. I honk the horn, slam the door, turn on all the lights, stomp up to the bedroom and give my wife a big kiss. `Hi, Alice,' I say. `How about a little smooch for your old man?'" "And what does she say?" his friend asked in disbelief. "She doesn't say anything," his buddy replied. "She always pretends she's asleep." % A man was kneeling by a grave in a cemetery, crying and praying very loudly, "Oh why..eeeee did you die...eeeeee, Oh Why..eeeeee, why did you Di......eeee" The caretaker walks up, pardons himself and asks politely, "Excuse me, sir, but I've been seeing you for hours now, carrying on at this grave. You must have been very close to the deceased." "No, I never met him. Oh why....eeeee did you dieeeeee, why....eeeee did you.." "Sir, you say you never met this person, yet you carry on so? Tell, me who is buried here?" "My wife's first husband." % A man was talking to his best friend about his married life. "You know," he says, "I really trust my wife, and I think she has always been faithful to me, but there's *always* that doubt. There's *always* that little doubt." "Yeah, I know what you mean," his friend replies. "Well, buddy, I've got to leave on a business trip this weekend, and I wonder... well... would you watch my house while I'm gone? I trust her, it's just that there's *always* that doubt." The friend agreed to help out and two weeks later gave his report. "I've got some bad news for you," says the friend. "The evening after you left I saw a strange car pull up in front of your house. A man got out of the car and went in the house and had dinner with your wife. After dinner they went upstairs and I saw your wife kissing him. Then, he took off his shirt and she took off her blouse. And then the light went out." "*Then* what happened?" said the husband, his eyes opening wide. "Well, I don't know," replied the friend, "it was too dark to see." "Damn!" roared the husband. "You see what I mean? There's *always* that doubt!" % A man without a woman is like a statue without pigeons. % A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package. % A man's gotta know his limitations. -- Clint Eastwood, "Dirty Harry" % A modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object in the whole creation. -- Goldsmith % A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes. -- Frost % A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space. -- Gloria Steinem % A pretty woman can do anything; an ugly woman must do everything. % A psychiatrist is a fellow who asks you a lot of expensive questions your wife asks you for nothing. -- Joey Adams % A pushy romeo asked a gorgeous elevator operator, "Don't all these stops and starts get you pretty worn out?" "It isn't the stops and starts that get on my nerves, it's the jerks." % A real gentleman never takes bases unless he really has to. -- Overheard in an algebra lecture. % A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who demanded, "Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful?" holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new and well made. Yet, added he, none of you can tell where it pinches me. -- Plutarch % A Scotsman was strolling across High Street one day wearing his kilt. As he neared the far curb, he noticed two young blondes in a red convertible eyeing him and giggling. One of them called out, "Hey, Scotty! What's worn under the kilt?" He strolled over to the side of the car and asked, "Ach, lass, are you SURE you want to know?" Somewhat nervously, the blonde replied yes, she did really want to know. The Scotsman leaned closer and confided, "Why, lass, nothing's worn under the kilt, everything's in perfect workin' order!" % A sharper perspective on this matter is particularly important to feminist thought today, because a major tendency in feminism has constructed the problem of domination as a drama of female vulnerability victimized by male aggression. Even the more sophisticated feminist thinkers frequently shy away from the analysis of submission, for fear that in admitting woman's participation in the relationship of domination, the onus of responsibility will appear to shift from men to women, and the moral victory from women to men. More generally, this has been a weakness of radical politics: to idealize the oppressed, as if their politics and culture were untouched by the system of domination, as if people did not participate in their own submission. To reduce domination to a simple relation of doer and done-to is to substitute moral outrage for analysis. -- Jessica Benjamin, "The Bonds of Love" % A sociologist, a psychologist, and a engineer were discussing the consequences and implications of a married man's having a mistress. The sociologist's opinion was that it is absolutely and categorically unforgivable for a married man to forfeit the bond of matrimony, and engage in such lowly and lustful pursuits. The psychologist's opinion was that although morally reprehensible, if a man MUST have a mistress to achieve his full potential as a human being, then -- well -- he may go ahead and choose to have a mistress, as long as he is considerate enough to keep this secret from his wife. The engineer then interjected: "I also believe that, if necessary, a married man is entitled to a mistress. However, I do not see why the affair should be concealed from the wife. On the contrary, if the affair is out in the open, then on Friday evenings he may tell his wife that he is going to see his mistress, tell his mistress that he is going to be with his wife, then go to his office and get some work done!" % A wife lasts only for the length of the marriage, but an ex-wife is there *for the rest of your life*. -- Jim Samuels % A woman can look both moral and exciting -- if she also looks as if it were quite a struggle. -- Edna Ferber % A woman can never be too rich or too thin. % A woman did what a woman had to, the best way she knew how. To do more was impossible, to do less, unthinkable. -- Dirisha, "The Man Who Never Missed" % A woman forgives the audacity of which her beauty has prompted us to be guilty. -- LeSage % A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life to be thankful for a good one. -- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings % A woman is like your shadow; follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows. -- Chamfort % A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy. -- Nietzsche % A woman of generous character will sacrifice her life a thousand times over for her lover, but will break with him for ever over a question of pride -- for the opening or the shutting of a door. -- Stendhal % A woman shouldn't have to buy her own perfume. -- Maurine Lewis % A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. -- Gloria Steinem % A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. Therefore, a man without a woman is like a bicycle without a fish. % A woman's best protection is a little money of her own. -- Clare Booth Luce, quoted in "The Wit of Women" % A woman's place is in the house... and in the Senate. % A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can. -- Jane Austen % A young husband with an inferiority complex insisted he was just a little pebble on the beach. The marriage counselor told him, "If you wish to save your marriage, you'd better be a little boulder." % A young man and his girlfriend were walking along Main Street when she spotted a beautiful diamond ring in a jewelry-store window. "Wow, I'd sure love to have that!" she gushed. "No problem," her companion replied, throwing a brick through the window and grabbing the ring. A few blocks later, the woman admired a full-length sable coat. "What I'd give to own that," she said, sighing. "No problem," he said, throwing a brick through the window and grabbing the coat. Finally, turning for home, they passed a car dealership. "Boy, I'd do anything for one of those Rolls-Royces," she said. "Jeez, baby," the guy moaned, "you think I'm made of bricks?" % A young man enters the New York branch of Tiffany's on a Friday evening and walks up to a display case full of pearl necklaces. He turns to a gorgeous woman, who is obviously windowshopping, looks her straight in the eye and says, "I can tell by your eyes that you really want that necklace. If you'll allow me, I'd like to buy it for you." The woman looks him up and down; he's wearing a nice suit and some pretty nice jewelry, but she has trouble believing this story. "Look, this is some kind of put on, right?" "No, really. You see, I've got quite a lot of money -- so much that I could never spend it all. I'd really like for you to have it." The guys whips out his checkbook, writes a check for five figures, calls over a clerk and hands it to him. The clerk peers at the check, looks at the young man, looks at the check again. "Very good, sir. I'm afraid I can't release the necklace immediately, would Monday be all right?" "That'll be fine, she'll pick it up." the man replies, and walks out of the store with the woman following him in a daze. The next Monday the man comes back in and walks up to the counter. The same clerk hurries over to him and says, "Sir, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but your check was returned for insufficient funds." "I know," the man replies. "I just wanted to thank you for a terrific weekend." % AAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkk!!!!!!!!! You brute! Knock before entering a ladies room! % Ain't nothin' an old man can do for me but bring me a message from a young man. -- Moms Mabley % Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of them continues to pay for it. -- Peggy Joyce % Alimony is like buying oats for a dead horse. -- Arthur Baer % Alimony is the curse of the writing classes. -- Norman Mailer % All heiresses are beautiful. -- John Dryden % All husbands are alike, but they have different faces so you can tell them apart. % All most men really want in life is a wife, a house, two kids and a car, a cat, no maybe a dog. Ummm, scratch one of the kids and add a dog. Definitely a dog. % All the men on my staff can type. -- Bella Abzug % All work and no pay makes a housewife. % American culture is based on the automobile, and any young man of promise is going to own one and want to travel great distances in it. Consequently, any young woman of aspiration should expect to spend most of her vacations in a car, probing into unfamiliar corners. She is not required to know how to drive but she will certainly be expected to read the road map while her husband drives, and if she can't, or if she's abnormally slow in giving him help, she's bound to cause trouble. Therefore, you'd think that colleges which train the bright young women who're going to marry the bright young men who are going to own the Cadillacs that roar back and forth across this continent would teach the girls to read maps. None do. They teach a hundred other useless things, but never a word about the one that will cause the greatest friction. -- James Michener, "Space" % An airplane pilot got engaged to two very pretty women at the same time. One was named Edith; the other named Kate. They met, discovered they had the same fiancee, and told him. "Get out of our lives you rascal. We'll teach you that you can't have your Kate and Edith, too." % An optimist is a man who looks forward to marriage. A pessimist is a married optimist. % "And what do you two think you are doing?!" roared the husband, as he came upon his wife in bed with another man. The wife turned and smiled at her companion. "See?" she said. "I told you he was stupid!" % And yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest license of a child, and yet been man enough to know its value. -- Charles Dickens % Another greeting card category consists of those persons who send out photographs of their families every year. In the same mail that brought the greetings from Marcia and Philip, my friend found such a conversation piece. "My God, Lida is enormous!" she exclaimed. I don't know why women want to record each year, for two or three hundred people to see, the ravages wrought upon them, their mates, and their progeny by the artillery of time, but between five and seven per cent of Christmas cards, at a rough estimate, are family groups, and even the most charitable recipient studies them for little signs of dissolution or derangement. Nothing cheers a woman more, I am afraid, than the proof that another woman is letting herself go, or has lost control of her figure, or is clearly driving her husband crazy, or is obviously drinking more than is good for her, or still doesn't know what to wear. Middle-aged husbands in such photographs are often described as looking "young enough to be her son," but they don't always escape so easily, and a couple opening envelopes in the season of mercy and good will sometimes handle a male friend or acquaintance rather sharply. "Good Lord!" the wife will say. "Frank looks like a sex-crazed shotgun slayer, doesn't he?" "Not to me," the husband may reply. "to me he looks more like a Wilkes-Barre dentist who is being sought by the police in connection with the disappearance of a choir singer." -- James Thurber, "Merry Christmas" % Any girl can be glamorous; all you have to do is stand still and look stupid. -- Hedy Lamarr % Any woman is a volume if one knows how to read her. % Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot. -- Groucho Marx % "Anything else, sir?" asked the attentive bellhop, trying his best to make the lady and gentleman comfortable in their penthouse suite in the posh hotel. "No. No, thank you," replied the gentleman. "Anything for your wife, sir?" the bellhop asked. "Why, yes, young man," said the gentleman. "Would you bring me a postcard?" % As fathers commonly go, it is seldom a misfortune to be fatherless; and considering the general run of sons, as seldom a misfortune to be childless. The only solid and lasting peace between a man and his wife is, doubtless, a separation. -- Lord Chesterfield, letter to his son, 1763 % Asked how she felt being the first woman to make a major-league team, she said, "Like a pig in mud," or words to that effect, and then turned and released a squirt of tobacco juice from the wad of rum soaked plug in her right cheek. She chewed a rare brand of plug called Stuff It, which she learned to chew when she was playing Nicaraguan summer ball. She told the writers, "They were so mean to me down there you couldn't write it in your newspaper. I took a gun everywhere I went, even to bed. *Especially* to bed. Guys were after me like you can't believe. That's when I started chewing tobacco -- because no matter how bad anybody treats you, it's not as bad as this. This is the worst chew in the world. After this, everything else is peaches and cream." The writers elected Gentleman Jim, the Sparrow's P.R. guy, to bite off a chunk and tell them how it tasted, and as he sat and chewed it tears ran down his old sunburnt cheeks and he couldn't talk for a while. Then he whispered, "You've been chewing this for two years? God, I had no idea it was so hard to be a woman." -- Garrison Keillor % At last I've found the girl of my dreams. Last night she said to me, "Once more, Strange, and this time *I'll* be Donnie and *you* be Marie. -- Strange de Jim % Bachelors' wives and old maids' children are always perfect. -- Nicolas Chamfort % Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in the bath and she'd come in and sink my boats. -- Woody Allen % Be circumspect in your liaisons with women. It is better to be seen at the opera with a man than at mass with a woman. -- De Maintenon % Be prepared to accept sacrifices. Vestal virgins aren't all that bad. % Beauty seldom recommends one woman to another. % Beauty, brains, availability, personality; pick any two. % Before marriage the three little words are "I love you," after marriage they are "Let's eat out." % Behind every successful man you'll find a woman with nothing to wear. % Being asked solicitously about the state of her health was becoming bothersome to the pregnant woman at the cocktail party. And yet another guest went over and inquired, "Well, how are you feeling these days?" "Not too well," said the expectant mother. "You know, I've missed seven or eight periods now and it's beginning to worry me." % Being owned by someone used to be called slavery -- now it's called commitment. % Benny Hill: Would you like a peanut? Girl: No, thank you, I don't want to be under obligation. Benny Hill: You won't be under obligation for a peanut. It's not as if it were a chocolate bar or something. % Bigamy is having one spouse too many. Monogamy is the same. % Birds and bees have as much to do with the facts of life as black nightgowns do with keeping warm. -- Hester Mundis, "Powermom" % Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years. -- James Thurber % Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men. -- Kin Hubbard % Brigands will demand your money or your life, but a woman will demand both. -- Samuel Butler % By all means marry: If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. -- Socrates % Changing husbands/wives is only changing troubles. -- Kathleen Norris % Choose in marriage only a woman whom you would choose as a friend if she were a man. -- Joubert % Courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play. -- William Congreve % Darling: the popular form of address used in speaking to a member of the opposite sex whose name you cannot at the moment remember. -- Oliver Herford % Dear Miss Manners: I carry a big black umbrella, even if there's just a thirty percent chance of rain. May I ask a young lady who is a stranger to me to share its protection? This morning, I was waiting for a bus in comparative comfort, my umbrella protecting me from the downpour, and noticed an attractive young woman getting soaked. I have often seen her at my bus stop, although we have never spoken, and I don't even know her name. Could I have asked her to get under my umbrella without seeming insulting? Gentle Reader: Certainly. Consideration for those less fortunate than you is always proper, although it would be more convincing if you stopped babbling about how attractive she is. In order not to give Good Samaritanism a bad name, Miss Manners asks you to allow her two or three rainy days of unmolested protection before making your attack. % Dear Miss Manners: Please list some tactful ways of removing a man's saliva from your face. Gentle Reader: Please list some decent ways of acquiring a man's saliva on your face. If the gentleman sprayed you inadvertently to accompany enthusiastic discourse, you may step back two paces, bring out your handkerchief, and go through the motions of wiping your nose, while trailing the cloth along your face to pick up whatever needs mopping along the route. If, however, the substance was acquired as a result of enthusiasm of a more intimate nature, you may delicately retrieve it with a flick of your pink tongue. % Do not permit a woman to ask forgiveness, for that is only the first step. The second is justification of herself by accusation of you. -- DeGourmont % Do you think your mother and I should have lived comfortably so long together if ever we had been married? % Don't assume that every sad-eyed woman has loved and lost -- she may have got him. % Don't know what time I'll be back, Mom. Probably soon after she throws me out. % Don't marry for money; you can borrow it cheaper. -- Scottish Proverb % Dull women have immaculate homes. % During a visit to America, Winston Churchill was invited to a buffet luncheon at which cold fried chicken was served. Returning for a second helping, he asked politely, "May I have some breast?" "Mr. Churchill," replied the hostess, "in this country we ask for white meat or dark meat." Churchill apologized profusely. The following morning, the lady received a magnificent orchid from her guest of honor. The accompanying card read: "I would be most obliged if you would pin this on your white meat." % Economists are still trying to figure out why the girls with the least principle draw the most interest. % Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe. -- Jackie Mason % ... eighty years later he could still recall with the young pang of his original joy his falling in love with Ada. -- Nabokov % Equality is not when a female Einstein gets promoted to assistant professor; equality is when a female schlemiel moves ahead as fast as a male schlemiel. -- Ewald Nyquist % Eugene d'Albert, a noted German composer, was married six times. At an evening reception which he attended with his fifth wife shortly after their wedding, he presented the lady to a friend who said politely, "Congratulations, Herr d'Albert; you have rarely introduced me to so charming a wife." % "Even nowadays a man can't step up and kill a woman without feeling just a bit unchivalrous ..." -- Robert Benchley % Every man who is high up likes to think that he has done it all himself, and the wife smiles and lets it go at that. -- Barrie % Everybody is given the same amount of hormones, at birth, and if you want to use yours for growing hair, that's fine with me. % Farmers in the Iowa State survey rated machinery breakdowns more stressful than divorce. -- Wall Street Journal % Feminists just want the human race to be a tie. % First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity, no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it. -- George Bernard Shaw, "John Bull's Other Island" % Flirting is the gentle art of making a man feel pleased with himself. -- Helen Rowland % For a young man, not yet: for an old man, never at all. -- Diogenes, asked when a man should marry When should a man marry? A young man, not yet; an elder man, not at all. -- Sir Francis Bacon, "Of Marriage and Single Life" % For a young man, not yet: for an old man, never at all. -- Diogenes, asked when a man should marry When should a man marry? A young man, not yet; an elder man, not at all. -- Sir Francis Bacon, "Of Marriage and Single Life" % For I swore I would stay a year away from her; out and alas! but with break of day I went to make supplication. -- Paulus Silentarius, c. 540 A.D. % For thirty years a certain man went to spend every evening with Mme. ___. When his wife died his friends believed he would marry her, and urged him to do so. "No, no," he said: "if I did, where should I have to spend my evenings?" -- Chamfort % Fortunate is he for whom the belle toils. % FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #14 Low Blows: Let's say a man and woman are watching a boxing match on TV. One of the boxers is felled by a low blow. The woman says "Oh, gee. That must hurt." The man doubles over and actually FEELS the pain. Dressing Up: A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the garbage, answer the phone, read a book, get the mail. A man will dress up for: weddings, funerals. Speaking of weddings, when reminiscing about weddings, women talk about "the ceremony". Men laugh about "the bachelor party". David Letterman: Men think David Letterman is the funniest man on the face of the Earth. Women think he is a mean, semi-dorky guy who always has a bad haircut. % FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #16 Relationships: First of all, a man does not call a relationship a relationship -- he refers to it as "that time when me and Suzie were doing it on a semi-regular basis". When a relationship ends, a woman will cry and pour her heart out to her girlfriends, and she will write a poem titled "All Men Are Idiots". Then she will get on with her life. A man has a little more trouble letting go. Six months after the breakup, at 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday night, he will call and say, "I just wanted to let you know you ruined my life, and I'll never forgive you, and I hate you, and you're a total floozy. But I want you to know that there's always a chance for us". This is known as the "I Hate You / I Love You" drunken phone call, that 99% if all men have made at least once. There are community colleges that offer courses to help men get over this need; alas, these classes rarely prove effective. % FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #17 Shoes: The average man has 4 pairs of footwear: running shoes, dress shoes, boots, and slippers. The average woman has shoes 4 layers thick on the floor of her closet. Most of them hurt her feet. Making friends: A woman will meet another woman with common interests, do a few things together, and say something like, "I hope we can be good friends." A man will meet another man with common interests, do a few things together, and say nothing. After years of interacting with this other man, sharing hopes and fears that he wouldn't confide in his priest or psychiatrist, he'll finally let down his guard in a fit of drunken sentimentality and say something like, "You know, for someone who's such a jerk, I guess you're OK." % FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #2 Desserts: A woman will generally admire an ornate dessert for the artistic work it is, praising its creator and waiting a suitable interval before she reluctantly takes a small sliver off one edge. A man will start by grabbing the cherry in the center. Car repair: The average man thinks his Y chromosome contains complete repair manuals for every car made since World War II. He will work on a problem himself until it either goes away or turns into something that "can't be fixed without special tools". The average woman thinks "that funny thump-thump noise" is an accurate description of an automotive problem. She will, however, have the car serviced at the proper intervals and thereby incur fewer problems than the average man. % FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #4 Clothes: Men don't discard clothes. The average man still has the gym shirt he wore in high school. He thinks a jacket is "just getting broken in" about the time it develops holes in the elbows. A man will let new shirts sit on the shelf in their original packaging for a couple of years before putting them to use, hoping they'll become more comfortable with age. Women think clothes are radioactive, with a half-life of one year. They exercise precautions to avoid contamination by last year's fashions. % FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #5 Trust: The average woman would really like to be told if her mate is fooling around behind her back. This same woman wouldn't tell her best friend if she knew the best friends' mate was having an affair. She'll tell all her OTHER friends, however. The average man won't say anything if he knows that one of his friend's mates is fooling around, and he'd rather not know if his mate is having an affair either, out of fear that it might be with one of his friends. He will tell all his friends about his own affairs, though, so they can be ready if he needs an alibi. Driving: A typical man thinks he's Mario Andretti as soon as he slips behind the wheel of his car. The fact that it's an 8-year-old Honda doesn't keep him from trying to out-accelerate the guy in the Porsche who's attempting to cut him off; freeway on-ramps are exciting challenges to see who has The Right Stuff on the morning commute. Does he or doesn't he? Only his body shop knows for sure. Insurance companies understand this behavior, and price their policies accordingly. A woman will slow down to let a car merge in front of her, and get rear-ended by another woman who was busy adding the finishing touches to her makeup. % FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #6 Bathrooms: A man has six items in his bathroom -- a toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a bar of Dial soap, and a towel from the Holiday Inn. The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 437. A man would not be able to identify most of these items. Groceries: A woman makes a list of things she needs and then goes to the store and buys these things. A man waits 'til the only items left in his fridge are half a lime and a Blue Ribbon. Then he goes grocery shopping. He buys everything that looks good. By the time a man reaches the checkout counter, his cart is packed tighter that the Clampett's car on Beverly Hillbillies. Of course, this will not stop him from entering the 10-items-or-less lane. % FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #8 Going Out: When a man says he is ready to go out, it means he is ready to go out. When a woman says she is ready to go out, it means she WILL be ready to go out, as soon as she finds her earring, finishes putting on her makeup, checks on the kids, makes a phone call to her best friend... Cats: Women love cats. Men say they love cats, but when women aren't looking, men kick cats. Offspring: Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and soccer games and romances and best friends and favorite foods and secret fears and hopes and dreams. Men are vaguely aware of some short people living in the house. % FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #9 Laundry: Women do laundry every couple of days. A man will wear every article of clothing he owns, including his surgical pants that were hip about eight years ago, before he will do his laundry. When he is finally out of clothes, he will wear a dirty sweatshirt inside out, rent a U-Haul and take his mountain of clothes to the laundromat. Men always expect to meet beautiful women at the laundromat. This is a myth. Nicknames: If Gloria, Suzanne, Deborah and Michelle get together for lunch, they will call each other Gloria, Suzanne, Deborah and Michelle. But if Mike, Dave, Rob and Jack go out for a brewsky, they will affectionately refer to each other as Bullet-Head, Godzilla, Peanut Brain and Useless. Socks: Men wear sensible socks. They wear standard white sweatsocks. Women wear strange socks. They are cut way below the ankles, have pictures of clouds on them, and have a big fuzzy ball on the back. % Fred noticed his roommate had a black eye upon returning from a dance. "What happened?" "I was struck by the beauty of the place." % Friends were surprised, indeed, when Frank and Jennifer broke their engagement, but Frank had a ready explanation: "Would you marry someone who was habitually unfaithful, who lied at every turn, who was selfish and lazy and sarcastic?" "Of course not," said a sympathetic friend. "Well," retorted Frank, "neither would Jennifer." % FROM THE DESK OF Rapunzel Dear Prince: Use ladder tonight -- you're splitting my ends. % Genuine happiness is when a wife sees a double chin on her husband's old girl friend. % -- Gifts for Men -- Men are amused by almost any idiot thing -- that is why professional ice hockey is so popular -- so buying gifts for them is easy. But you should never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all the clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only three of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error, that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh at him ("You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?"). So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several years without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you. If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires. More than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set of tires. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" % Girls are better looking in snowstorms. -- Archie Goodwin % Girls marry for love. Boys marry because of a chronic irritation that causes them to gravitate in the direction of objects with certain curvilinear properties. -- Ashley Montagu % Girls really do know just what they want -- you to figure it out for yourself! % Girls who throw themselves at men, are actually taking very careful aim. % Give a woman an inch and she'll park a car in it. % God created a few perfect heads. The rest he covered with hair. % God created woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment -- but many other things ceased as well. Woman was God's second mistake. -- Nietzsche % Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere. % Harold had never wanted a woman so much in his life, upon overhearing the 22-year-old beauty remark that he was too old and out of shape for her. The determined septuagenarian immediately embarked upon a rigorous self-improvement program. He had his face lifted, bought a toupee, ran five miles every day, lifted weights and adopted a strict vegetarian diet. Within months, the rejuvenated man won the young woman's heart, and she agreed to marry him. On the way out of the chapel, however, Harold was fatally struck by lightning. Furious, he confronted Saint Peter at the pearly gates. "How could you do this to me after all the pain I went through?" "To be honest, Harold," Saint Peter sheepishly replied, "I didn't recognize you." % Hat check girl: "Goodness! What lovely diamonds!" Mae West: "Goodness had nothin' to do with it, dearie." -- "Night After Night", 1932 % Having a baby isn't so bad. If you're a female Emperor penguin in the Antarctic. She lays the egg, rolls it over to the father, then takes off for warmer weather where she eats and eats and eats. For two months, the father stands stiff, without food, blind in the 24-hour dark, balancing the egg on his feet. After the little penguin is hatched, the mother sees fit to come home. -- L.M. Boyd, "Austin American-Statesman" % He gave her a look that you could have poured on a waffle. % He who enters his wife's dressing room is a philosopher or a fool. -- Balzac % He who is intoxicated with wine will be sober again in the course of the night, but he who is intoxicated by the cupbearer will not recover his senses until the day of judgement. -- Saadi % Hey, Jim, it's me, Susie Lillis from the laundromat. You said you were gonna call and it's been two weeks. What's wrong, you lose my number? % High heels are a device invented by a woman who was tired of being kissed on the forehead. % Him: "Your skin is so soft. Are you a model?" Her: "No," [blush] "I'm a cosmetologist." Him: "Really? That's incredible... It must be very tough to handle weightlessness." -- "The Jerk" % His designs were strictly honourable, as the phrase is: that is, to rob a lady of her fortune by way of marriage. -- Henry Fielding, "Tom Jones" % "Home, Sweet Home" must surely have been written by a bachelor. -- Samuel Butler % Horace's best ode would not please a young woman as much as the mediocre verses of the young man she is in love with. -- Moore % How much for your women? I want to buy your daughter... how much for the little girl? -- Jake Blues, "The Blues Brothers" % "How would I know if I believe in love at first sight?" the sexy social climber said to her roommate. "I mean, I've never seen a Porsche full of money before." % I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence. -- Samuel Johnson % I began many years ago, as so many young men do, in searching for the perfect woman. I believed that if I looked long enough, and hard enough, I would find her and then I would be secure for life. Well, the years and romances came and went, and I eventually ended up settling for someone a lot less than my idea of perfection. But one day, after many years together, I lay there on our bed recovering from a slight illness. My wife was sitting on a chair next to the bed, humming softly and watching the late afternoon sun filtering through the trees. The only sounds to be heard elsewhere were the clock ticking, the kettle downstairs starting to boil, and an occasional schoolchild passing beneath our window. And as I looked up into my wife's now wrinkled face, but still warm and twinkling eyes, I realized something about perfection... It comes only with time. -- James L. Collymore, "Perfect Woman" % I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life, particularly if he has income and she is pattable. -- Ogden Nash % I can feel for her because, although I have never been an Alaskan prostitute dancing on the bar in a spangled dress, I still get very bored with washing and ironing and dishwashing and cooking day after relentless day. -- Betty MacDonald % I can't mate in captivity. -- Gloria Steinem, on why she has never married. % I come from a small town whose population never changed. Each time a woman got pregnant, someone left town. -- Michael Prichard % I do enjoy a good long walk -- especially when my wife takes one. % "I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got hundreds of people waiting to abuse me." -- Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters" % I GUESS I'LL NEVER FORGET HER. And maybe I don't want to. Her spirit was wild, like a wild monkey. Her beauty was like a beautiful horse being ridden by a wild monkey. I forget her other qualities. -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988. % I have a hard time being attracted to anyone who can beat me up. -- John McGrath, Atlanta sportswriter, on women weightlifters. % I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love. -- Edward, Duke of Windsor, 1936, announcing his abdication of the British throne in order to marry the American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson. % I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason: I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me. -- Abraham Lincoln % I know the disposition of women: when you will, they won't; when you won't, they set their hearts upon you of their own inclination. -- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence) % I learned to play guitar just to get the girls, and anyone who says they didn't is just lyin'! -- Willie Nelson % I like being single. I'm always there when I need me. -- Art Leo % I like myself, but I won't say I'm as handsome as the bull that kidnapped Europa. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero % I like young girls. Their stories are shorter. -- Tom McGuane % I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life. -- Rita Rudner % I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I've ever known. -- Walt Disney % I managed to say, "Sorry," and no more. I knew that he disliked me to cry. This time he said, watching me, "On some occasions it is better to weep." I put my head down on the table and sobbed, "If only she could come back; I would be nice." Francis said, "You gave her great pleasure always." "Oh, not enough." "Nobody can give anybody enough." "Not ever?" "No, not ever. But one must go on trying." "And doesn't one ever value people until they are gone?" "Rarely," said Francis. I went on weeping; I saw how little I had valued him; how little I had valued anything that was mine. -- Pamela Frankau, "The Duchess and the Smugs" % I married beneath me. All women do. -- Lady Nancy Astor % I met a wonderful new man. He's fictional, but you can't have everything. -- Cecelia, "The Purple Rose of Cairo" % I never expected to see the day when girls would get sunburned in the places they do today. -- Will Rogers % I never met a woman I couldn't drink pretty. % I read Playboy for the same reason I read National Geographic. To see the sights I'm never going to visit. % I refuse to consign the whole male sex to the nursery. I insist on believing that some men are my equals. -- Brigid Brophy % I respect the institution of marriage. I have always thought that every woman should marry -- and no man. -- Benjamin Disraeli, "Lothair" % I sat down beside her, said hello, offered to buy her a drink... and then natural selection reared its ugly head. % I think she must have been very strictly brought up, she's so desperately anxious to do the wrong thing correctly. -- Saki, "Reginald on Worries" % I think the world is ready for the story of an ugly duckling, who grew up to remain an ugly duckling, and lived happily ever after. -- Chick % I want to buy a husband who, every week when I sit down to watch "St. Elsewhere", won't scream, "Forget it, Blanche... It's time for Hee-Haw!" -- Berke Breathed, "Bloom County" % I want to marry a girl just like the girl that married dear old dad. -- Freud % I was in a beauty contest one. I not only came in last, I was hit in the mouth by Miss Congeniality. -- Phyllis Diller % I wasn't kissing her, I was whispering in her mouth. -- Chico Marx % I will not say that women have no character; rather, they have a new one every day. -- Heine % I would gladly raise my voice in praise of women, only they won't let me raise my voice. -- Winkle % I wouldn't marry her with a ten foot pole. % I'd probably settle for a vampire if he were romantic enough. Couldn't be any worse than some of the relationships I've had. -- Brenda Starr % I'd rather have two girls at 21 each than one girl at 42. -- W.C. Fields % I'm defending her honor, which is more than she ever did. % I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men. -- George Eliot % I'm very old-fashioned. I believe that people should marry for life, like pigeons and Catholics. -- Woody Allen % I've been in more laps than a napkin. -- Mae West % I've spent almost all of my life with highly intelligent men. They're not like other men. Their spirit is great and stimulating. They hate strife; indeed they reject it. Their inventive gifts are boundless. They demand devotion and obedience. And a sense of humor. I happily gave all of this. I was lucky to be chosen and clever enough to understand them. -- Marlene Dietrich, on her friendship with Ernest Hemingway % If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner. -- Tallulah Bankhead % If I told you you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me? % If it were not for the presents, an elopement would be preferable. -- George Ade, "Forty Modern Fables" % If men acted after marriage as they do during courtship, there would be fewer divorces -- and more bankruptcies. -- Frances Rodman % If someone were to ask me for a short cut to sensuality, I would suggest he go shopping for a used 427 Shelby-Cobra. But it is only fair to warn you that of the 300 guys who switched to them in 1966, only two went back to women. -- Mort Sahl % If the girl you love moves in with another guy once, it's more than enough. Twice, it's much too much. Three times, it's the story of your life. % If there is any realistic deterrent to marriage, it's the fact that you can't afford divorce. -- Jack Nicholson % If we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time of it. -- Oscar Wilde % If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle, when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that in those few days women behave the most like the way men behave all month long? -- Gloria Steinham % If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning. -- Aristotle Onassis % If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry. -- Anton Chekhov % If you are looking for a kindly, well-to-do older gentleman who is no longer interested in sex, take out an ad in The Wall Street Journal. -- Abigail Van Buren % If you give a man enough rope, he'll claim he's tied up at the office. % If you marry a man who cheats on his wife, you'll be married to a man who cheats on his wife. -- Ann Landers % If you MUST get married, it is always advisable to marry beauty. Otherwise, you'll never find anybody to take her off your hands. % If you want me to be a good little bunny just dangle some carats in front of my nose. -- Lauren Bacall % If you want to be ruined, marry a rich woman. -- Michelet % If you want to read about love and marriage you've got to buy two separate books. -- Alan King % If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say, talk in your sleep. % If you wish women to love you, be original; I know a man who wore fur boots summer and winter, and women fell in love with him. -- Anton Chekhov % In buying horses and taking a wife shut your eyes tight and commend yourself to God. % In Christianity, a man may have only one wife. This is called Monotony. % In marriage, as in war, it is permitted to take every advantage of the enemy. % In olden times sacrifices were made at the altar -- a practice which is still continued. -- Helen Rowland % In the midst of one of the wildest parties he'd ever been to, the young man noticed a very prim and pretty girl sitting quietly apart from the rest of the revelers. Approaching her, he introduced himself and, after some quiet conversation, said, "I'm afraid you and I don't really fit in with this jaded group. Why don't I take you home?"" "Fine," said the girl, smiling up at him demurely. "Where do you live?" % Insanity is considered a ground for divorce, though by the very same token it is the shortest detour to marriage. -- Wilson Mizner % Is a wedding successful if it comes off without a hitch? % Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in? -- Ralph Emerson % Isn't it ironic that many men spend a great part of their lives avoiding marriage while single-mindedly pursuing those things that would make them better prospects? % It [marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out. -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne % It did not occur to me that my being with two men continuously would interest anyone or arouse anyone's misgivings. I asked for an invitation for Heinrich too, as often as it seemed possible, when Paulus and I were invited to a social gathering. I felt the set of rules others lived by was irrelevant. My childhood attitude -- every attempt to adjust is hopeless and you might just as well follow your own attitudes -- must have carried me. -- Hannah Tillich, "From Time to Time" % It doesn't much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find out next morning it was someone else. -- Will Rogers % It has been justly observed by sages of all lands that although a man may be most happily married and continue in that state with the utmost contentment, it does not necessarily follow that he has therefore been struck stone-blind. -- H. Warner Munn % It is always preferable to visit home with a friend. Your parents will not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all to themselves and because in the presence of your friend, they will have to act like mature human beings. The worst kind of friend to take home is a girl, because in that case, there is the potential that your parents will lose you not just for the duration of the visit but forever. The worst kind of girl to take home is one of a different religion: Not only will you be lost to your parents forever but you will be lost to a woman who is immune to their religious/moral arguments and whose example will irretrievably corrupt you. Let's say you've fallen in love with just such a girl and would like to take her home for the holidays. You are aware of your parents' xenophobic response to anyone of a different religion. How to prepare them for the shock? Simple. Call them up shortly before your visit and tell them that you have gotten quite serious about somebody who is of a different religion, a different race and the same sex. Tell them you have already invited this person to meet them. Give the information a moment to sink in and then remark that you were only kidding, that your lover is merely of a different religion. They will be so relieved they will welcome her with open arms. -- Playboy, January, 1983 % It is explained that all relationships require a little give and take. This is untrue. Any partnership demands that we give and give and give and at the last, as we flop into our graves exhausted, we are told that we didn't give enough. -- Quentin Crisp, "How to Become a Virgin" % It is idle to attempt to talk a young woman out of her passion: love does not lie in the ear. -- Walpole % It is most dangerous nowadays for a husband to pay any attention to his wife in public. It always makes people think that he beats her when they're alone. The world has grown so suspicious of anything that looks like a happy married life. -- Oscar Wilde % It is not necessary to inquire whether a woman would like something for dessert. The answer is yes, she would like something for dessert, but she would like you to order it so she can pick at it with your fork. She does not want you to call attention to this by saying, 'If you wanted a dessert, why didn't you order one?' You must understand, she has the dessert she wants. The dessert she wants is contained within yours. -- Merrill Markoe, "An Insider's Guide to the American Woman" % It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry. -- H.L. Mencken % It is possible that blondes also prefer gentlemen. -- Maimie Van Doren % It takes a smart husband to have the last word and not use it. % It was a fine, sweet night, the nicest since my divorce, maybe the nicest since the middle of my marriage. There was energy, softness, grace and laughter. I even took my socks off. In my circle, that means class. -- Andrew Bergman "The Big Kiss-off of 1944" % It was raining heavily, and the motorist had car trouble on a lonely country road. Anxious to find shelter for the night, he walked over to a farmhouse and knocked on the front door. No one responded. He could feel the water from the roof running down the back of his neck as he stood on the stoop. The next time he knocked louder, but still no answer. By now he was soaked to the skin. Desperately he pounded on the door. At last the head of a man appeared out of an upstairs window. "What do you want?" he asked gruffly. "My car broke down," said the traveler, "and I want to know if you would let me stay here for the night." "Sure," replied the man. "If you want to stay there all night, it's okay with me." % It wasn't exactly a divorce -- I was traded. -- Tim Conway % It's a funny thing that when a woman hasn't got anything on earth to worry about, she goes off and gets married. % "It's men like him that give the Y chromosome a bad name." % It's not the inital skirt length, it's the upcreep. % It's not the men in my life, but the life in my men that counts. -- Mae West % It's the good girls who keep the diaries, the bad girls never have the time. -- Tallulah Bankhead % It's the theory of Jess Birnbaum, of Time magazine, that women with bad legs should stick to long skirts because they cover a multitude of shins. % Joe sat as his dying wife's bedside. Her voice was little more than a whisper. "Joe, darling," she breathed, "I've got a confession to make before I go. I ... I'm the one who took the $10,000 from your safe... I spent it on a fling with your best friend, Charles. And it was I who forced your mistress to leave the city. And I am the one who reported your income-tax evasion to the I.R.S..." "That's all right, dearest, don't give it a second thought," whispered Joe. "I'm the one who poisoned you." % Just as I cannot remember any time when I could not read and write, I cannot remember any time when I did not exercise my imagination in daydreams about women. -- George Bernard Shaw % Kath: Can he be present at the birth of his child? Ed: It's all any reasonable child can expect if the dad is present at the conception. -- Joe Orton, "Entertaining Mr. Sloane" % Keep a diary and one day it'll keep you. -- Mae West % Keep women you cannot. Marry them and they come to hate the way you walk across the room; remain their lover, and they jilt you at the end of six months. -- Moore % Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards. -- Benjamin Franklin % Kissing your hand may make you feel very good, but a diamond and sapphire bracelet lasts for ever. -- Anita Loos, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" % Lady Nancy Astor: "Winston, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your coffee." Winston Churchill: "Nancy, if you were my wife, I'd drink it." % Lank: Here we go. We're about to set a new record. Earl: (to the crowd) How about a date? Lank: We've done it. Earl has set a new record. Turned down by 20,000 women. -- Lank and Earl % Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in race horses and women. -- Lord Kelvin % Let thy maid servant be faithful, strong, and homely. -- Benjamin Franklin % Let's just say that where a change was required, I adjusted. In every relationship that exists, people have to seek a way to survive. If you really care about the person, you do what's necessary, or that's the end. For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the qualities I most admired in myself I gave up. I stopped being loud and bossy ... Oh, all right. I was still loud and bossy, but only behind his back. -- Kate Hepburn, on Tracy and Hepburn % Life begins at the centerfold and expands outward. -- Miss November, 1966 % Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded responsible thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex. -- Valerie Solanas % Life Sucks. Cynical, misanthropic male, 34, looking for soul mate but certain not to find her. Drop me a note. I'll call you, we'll talk and I'll ask you out to dinner where I'll probably spend more than I can afford in a feeble attempt to impress you. Then we'll realize we have absolutely nothing in common and we'll go our separate ways, more embittered and depressed than before (if such a thing is possible). % Life's too short to dance with ugly women. % Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another. -- George Bernard Shaw, "Major Barbara" % Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem. -- Alan McKay % Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse. -- Lazarus Long % Lonely men seek companionship. Lonely women sit at home and wait. They never meet. % Lots of girls can be had for a song. Unfortunately, it often turns out to be the wedding march. % Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished. -- Goethe % Love is an obsessive delusion that is cured by marriage. -- Dr. Karl Bowman % Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another. -- H.L. Mencken % Love makes fools, marriage cuckolds, and patriotism malevolent imbeciles. -- Paul Leautaud, "Passe-temps" % Macho does not prove mucho. -- Zsa Zsa Gabor % Man and wife make one fool. % Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it. -- Maurice Chevalier % Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl. -- Stephen Leacock % Many a man who thinks he's going on a maiden voyage with a woman finds out later that it was just a shake-down cruise. % Many a wife thinks her husband is the world's greatest lover. But she can never catch him at it. % Many husbands go broke on the money their wives save on sales. % Marriage always demands the greatest understanding of the art of insincerity possible between two human beings. -- Vicki Baum % Marriage causes dating problems. % Marriage is a ghastly public confession of a strictly private intention. % Marriage is a great institution -- but I'm not ready for an institution yet. -- Mae West % Marriage is a lot like the army, everyone complains, but you'd be surprised at the large number that re-enlist. -- James Garner % Marriage is a romance in which the hero dies in the first chapter. % Marriage is a three ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering. -- Roger Price % Marriage is an institution in which two undertake to become one, and one undertakes to become nothing. % Marriage is based on the theory that when a man discovers a brand of beer exactly to his taste he should at once throw up his job and go to work in the brewery. -- George Jean Nathan % Marriage is learning about women the hard way. % Marriage is like twirling a baton, turning handsprings, or eating with chopsticks. It looks easy until you try it. % Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it. -- Baskins % Marriage is not merely sharing the fettucine, but sharing the burden of finding the fettucine restaurant in the first place. -- Calvin Trillin % Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly. -- Voltaire % Marriage is the process of finding out what kind of man your wife would have preferred. % Marriage is the waste-paper basket of the emotions. % Marriage, in life, is like a duel in the midst of a battle. -- Edmond About % Marriages are made in heaven and consummated on earth. -- John Lyly % Marry in haste and everyone starts counting the months. % Matrimony is the root of all evil. % Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence. % Men are always ready to respect anything that bores them. -- Marilyn Monroe % Men are those creatures with two legs and eight hands. -- Jayne Mansfield % Men aren't attracted to me by my mind. They're attracted by what I don't mind... -- Gypsy Rose Lee % Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing they marry later; for another thing they die earlier. -- H.L. Mencken % Men have as exaggerated an idea of their rights as women have of their wrongs. -- E.W. Howe % Men live for three things, fast cars, fast women and fast food. % Men never make passes at girls wearing glasses. -- Dorothy Parker % Men of quality are not afraid of women for equality. % Men say of women what pleases them; women do with men what pleases them. -- DeSegur % Men seldom show dimples to girls who have pimples. % Men still remember the first kiss after women have forgotten the last. % Men who cherish for women the highest respect are seldom popular with them. -- Joseph Addison % Men's magazines often feature pictures of naked ladies. Women's magazines also often feature pictures of naked ladies. This is because the female body is a beautiful work of art, while the male body is hairy and lumpy and should not be seen by the light of day. -- Richard Roeper, "Men and Women Are Different" % Miguel Cervantes wrote Donkey Hote. Milton wrote Paradise Lost, then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained. % Moe: Wanna play poker tonight? Joe: I can't. It's the kids' night out. Moe: So? Joe: I gotta stay home with the nurse. % Moe: What did you give your wife for Valentine's Day? Joe: The usual gift -- she ate my heart out. % Money and women are the most sought after and the least known of any two things we have. -- The Best of Will Rogers % Money is a powerful aphrodisiac. But flowers work almost as well. -- Lazarus Long % Monogamy is the Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistresses. -- H.H. Munro % ... most of us learned about love the hard way. Even warnings are probably useless, for somehow, despite the severest warnings of parents and friends, hundreds, thousands of women have forgotten themselves at the last minute and succumbed to the lies, promises, flatteries, or mere attentions of lusting, lovely men, landing themselves in complicated predicaments from which some of them never recovered during their entire lives. And I am not speaking only of your teenaged Midwesterners in 1958; I'm speaking of women of every age in every city in every year. The notorious sexual revolution has saved no one from the pain and confusion of love. -- Alix Kates Shulman % My notion of a husband at forty is that a woman should be able to change him, like a bank note, for two twenties. % Never accept an invitation from a stranger unless he gives you candy. -- Linda Festa % Never argue with a woman when she's tired -- or rested. % Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never play cards with a man named Doc. And never lie down with a woman who's got more troubles than you. -- Nelson Algren, "What Every Young Man Should Know" % Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight. -- Phyllis Diller, "Phyllis Diller's Housekeeping Hints" % Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own. -- Nelson Algren % Never tell. Not if you love your wife ... In fact, if your old lady walks in on you, deny it. Yeah. Just flat out and she'll believe it: "I'm tellin' ya. This chick came downstairs with a sign around her neck `Lay On Top Of Me Or I'll Die'. I didn't know what I was gonna do..." -- Lenny Bruce % New Year's Eve is the time of year when a man most feels his age, and his wife most often reminds him to act it. -- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary % No friendship is so cordial or so delicious as that of girl for girl; no hatred so intense or immovable as that of woman for woman. -- Landor % No man can have a reasonable opinion of women until he has long lost interest in hair restorers. -- Austin O'Malley % No modern woman with a grain of sense ever sends little notes to an unmarried man -- not until she is married, anyway. -- Arthur Binstead % No one knows like a woman how to say things that are at once gentle and deep. -- Hugo % No self-made man ever did such a good job that some woman didn't want to make some alterations. -- Kim Hubbard % No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother. -- Margaret H. Sanger % No woman can endure a gambling husband, unless he is a steady winner. -- Lord Thomas Dewar % No woman ever falls in love with a man unless she has a better opinion of him than he deserves. -- Edgar Watson Howe % Nobody really knows what happiness is, until they're married. And then it's too late. % Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production. -- Herbert Marcuse % Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable. -- Plato % Of course a platonic relationship is possible -- but only between husband and wife. % Once a woman has given you her heart you can never get rid of the rest of her. -- Vanbrugh % Once upon a time there was a beautiful young girl taking a stroll through the woods. All at once she saw an extremely ugly bull frog seated on a log and to her amazement the frog spoke to her. "Maiden," croaked the frog, "would you do me a favor? This will be hard for you to believe, but I was once a handsome, charming prince and then a mean, ugly old witch cast a spell over me and turned me into a frog." "Oh, what a pity!", exclaimed the girl. "I'll do anything I can to help you break such a spell." "Well," replied the frog, "the only way that this spell can be taken away is for some lovely young woman to take me home and let me spend the night under her pillow." The young girl took the ugly frog home and placed him beneath her pillow that night when she retired. When she awoke the next morning, sure enough, there beside her in bed was a very young, handsome man, clearly of royal blood. And so they lived happily ever after, except that to this day her father and mother still don't believe her story. % Once upon a time there were three brothers who were knights in a certain kingdom. And, there was a Princess in a neighboring kingdom who was of marriageable age. Well, one day, in full armour, their horses, and their page, the three brothers set off to see if one of them could win her hand. The road was long and there were many obstacles along the way, robbers to be overcome, hard terrain to cross. As they coped with each obstacle they became more and more disgusted with their page. He was not only inept, he was a coward, he could not handle the horses, he was, in short, a complete flop. When they arrived at the court of the kingdom, they found that they were expected to present the Princess with some treasure. The two older brothers were discouraged, since they had not thought of this and were unprepared. The youngest, however, had the answer: Promise her anything, but give her our page. % One evening he spoke. Sitting at her feet, his face raised to her, he allowed his soul to be heard. "My darling, anything you wish, anything I am, anything I can ever be... That's what I want to offer you -- not the things I'll get for you, but the thing in me that will make me able to get them. That thing -- a man can't renounce it -- but I want to renounce it -- so that it will be yours -- so that it will be in your service -- only for you." The girl smiled and asked: "Do you think I'm prettier than Maggie Kelly?" He got up. He said nothing and walked out of the house. He never saw that girl again. Gail Wynand, who prided himself on never needing a lesson twice, did not fall in love again in the years that followed. -- Ayn Rand, "The Fountainhead" % One girl can be pretty -- but a dozen are only a chorus. -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Last Tycoon" % One is not born a woman, one becomes one. -- Simone de Beauvoir % One man's folly is another man's wife. -- Helen Rowland % One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry. -- Oscar Wilde % Only two groups of people fall for flattery -- men and women. % People of all sorts of genders are reporting great difficulty, these days, in selecting the proper words to refer to those of the female persuasion. "Lady," "woman," and "girl" are all perfectly good words, but misapplying them can earn one anything from the charge of vulgarity to a good swift smack. We are messing here with matters of deference, condescension, respect, bigotry, and two vague concepts, age and rank. It is troubling enough to get straight who is really what. Those who deliberately misuse the terms in a misbegotten attempt at flattery are asking for it. A woman is any grown-up female person. A girl is the un-grown-up version. If you call a wee thing with chubby cheeks and pink hair ribbons a "woman," you will probably not get into trouble, and if you do, you will be able to handle it because she will be under three feet tall. However, if you call a grown-up by a child's name for the sake of implying that she has a youthful body, you are also implying that she has a brain to match. % Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock. -- George Bernard Shaw, "Getting Married" % Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others. -- Oscar Wilde % Sally: C'mon, Ted, all I'm asking you to do is share your feelings with me. Ted: ALL? Do you realize what you're asking? Men aren't trained to share. We're trained to protect ourselves by not letting anyone too close. Good grief, if I go around sharing everything with you, you could hang me out to dry. Sally: It's called "trust," Ted. Ted: "Sharing"? "Trust"? You're really asking me to sail into uncharted waters here. -- Sally Forth % Scientists still know less about what attracts men than they do about what attracts mosquitoes. -- Dr. Joyce Brothers, "What Every Woman Should Know About Men" % She always believed in the old adage -- leave them while you're looking good. -- Anita Loos, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" % She been married so many times she got rice marks all over her face. -- Tom Waits % She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to. -- Gypsy Rose Lee % She just came in, pounced around this thing with me for a few years, enjoyed herself, gave it a sort of beautiful quality and left. Excited a few men in the meantime. -- Patrick Macnee, reminiscing on Diana Rigg's involvement in "The Avengers". % She liked him; he was a man of many qualities, even if most of them were bad. % She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you could have poured on a waffle ... % She's learned to say things with her eyes that others waste time putting into words. % She's so tough she won't take 'yes' for an answer. % She's the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong. -- Mae West % So many beautiful women and so little time. -- John Barrymore % So many men; so little time. % So many women; so little nerve. % So many women; so little time! % "So you don't have to, Cindy, but I was wondering if you might want to go to someplace, you know, with me, sometime." "Well, I can think of a lot of worse things, David." "Friday, then?" "Why not, David, it might even be fun." -- Dating in Minnesota % Some husbands are living proof that a woman can take a joke. % Some marriages are made in heaven -- but so are thunder and lightning. % Some men are all right in their place -- if they only the knew the right places! -- Mae West % Some men are so interested in their wives' continued happiness that they hire detectives to find out the reason for it. % Some men are so macho they'll get you pregnant just to kill a rabbit. -- Maureen Murphy % Some men feel that the only thing they owe the woman who marries them is a grudge. -- Helen Rowland % Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry. -- Gloria Steinem % Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. -- Sigmund Freud % Sometimes, when I think of what that girl means to me, it's all I can do to keep from telling her. -- Andy Capp % Stanford women are responsible for the success of many Stanford men: they give them "just one more reason" to stay in and study every night. % Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool. -- Kipling % Tehee quod she, and clapte the wyndow to. -- Geoffrey Chaucer % That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them. -- Dorothy Parker % The advantage of being celibate is that when one sees a pretty girl one does not need to grieve over having an ugly one back home. -- Paul Leautaud, "Propos d'un jour" % The anger of a woman is the greatest evil with which you can threaten your enemies. -- Bonnard % The average girl would rather have beauty than brains because she knows that the average man can see much better than he can think. -- Ladies' Home Journal % The average woman must inevitably view her actual husband with a certain disdain; he is anything but her ideal. In consequence, she cannot help feeling that her children are cruelly handicapped by the fact that he is their father. -- H.L. Mencken % The best man for the job is often a woman. % The best thing about being bald is, that, when unexpected company arrives, all you have to do is straighten your tie. % The big question is why in the course of evolution the males permitted themselves to be so totally eclipsed by the females. Why do they tolerate this total subservience, this wretched existence as outcasts who are hungry all the time? % The chains of marriage are so heavy that it takes two to carry them, and sometimes three. -- Alexandre Dumas % The days just prior to marriage are like a snappy introduction to a tedious book. % The defense attorney was hammering away at the plaintiff: "You claim," he jeered, "that my client came at you with a broken bottle in his hand. But is it not true, that you had something in YOUR hand?" "Yes," the man admitted, "his wife. Very charming, of course, but not much good in a fight." % The difference between legal separation and divorce is that legal separation gives the man time to hide his money. % The duration of passion is proportionate with the original resistance of the woman. -- Honor'e DeBalzac % The eternal feminine draws us upward. -- Goethe % The first marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence, and the second the triumph of hope over experience. % The gentlemen looked one another over with microscopic carelessness. % The girl who remembers her first kiss now has a daughter who can't even remember her first husband. % The girl who stoops to conquer usually wears a low-cut dress. % The girl who swears no one has ever made love to her has a right to swear. -- Sophia Loren % The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him love and he invented marriage. % The happiest time of a person's life is after his first divorce. -- J.K. Galbraith % The heaviest object in the world is the body of the woman you have ceased to love. -- Marquis de Lac de Clapiers Vauvenargues % The honeymoon is not actually over until we cease to stifle our sighs and begin to stifle our yawns. -- Helen Rowland % The honeymoon is over when he phones to say he'll be late for supper and she's already left a note that it's in the refrigerator. -- Bill Lawrence % The husband who doesn't tell his wife everything probably reasons that what she doesn't know won't hurt him. -- Leo J. Burke % The little girl expects no declaration of tenderness from her doll. She loves it -- and that's all. It is thus that we should love. -- DeGourmont % The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutang trying to play the violin. -- Honor'e DeBalzac % The man who understands one woman is qualified to understand pretty well everything. -- Yeats % The mature bohemian is one whose woman works full time. % The most common form of marriage proposal: "YOU'RE WHAT!?" % The most dangerous food is wedding cake. -- American proverb % The most difficult years of marriage are those following the wedding. % The most happy marriage I can imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge % The most important thing in a relationship between a man and a woman is that one of them be good at taking orders. -- Linda Festa % The most popular labor-saving device today is still a husband with money. -- Joey Adams, "Cindy and I" % The mother of the year should be a sterilized woman with two adopted children. -- Paul Ehrlich % The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity. -- Oscar Wilde % The only real argument for marriage is that it remains the best method for getting acquainted. -- Heywood Broun % The only really masterful noise a man makes in a house is the noise of his key, when he is still on the landing, fumbling for the lock. -- Colette % The perfect man is the true partner. Not a bed partner nor a fun partner, but a man who will shoulder burdens equally with [you] and possess that quality of joy. -- Erica Jong % The person who marries for money usually earns every penny of it. % The prettiest women are almost always the most boring, and that is why some people feel there is no God. -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers" % The Ruffed Pandanga of Borneo and Rotherham spreads out his feathers in his courtship dance and imitates Winston Churchill and Tommy Cooper on one leg. The padanga is dying out because the female padanga doesn't take it too seriously. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" % The six great gifts of an Irish girl are beauty, soft voice, sweet speech, wisdom, needlework, and chastity. -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1907 % The surest sign that a man is in love is when he divorces his wife. % The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing -- and then marry him. -- Cher % The truth about a woman often lasts longer than the woman is true. % The two things that can get you into trouble quicker than anything else are fast women and slow horses. % The way to fight a woman is with your hat. Grab it and run. % The woman you buy -- and she is the least expensive -- takes a great deal of money. The woman who gives herself takes all your time. -- Balzac % There are a few things that never go out of style, and a feminine woman is one of them. -- Ralston % There are four stages to a marriage. First there's the affair, then there's the marriage, then children and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce. -- Norman Mailer % There are three things I have always loved and never understood -- art, music, and women. % There are three things men can do with women: love them, suffer for them, or turn them into literature. -- Stephen Stills % There are two times when a man doesn't understand a woman -- before marriage and after marriage. % There goes the good time that was had by all. -- Bette Davis, remarking on a passing starlet % There is a vast difference between the savage and civilized man, but it is never apparent to their wives until after breakfast. -- Helen Rowland % There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, fashion the tools to attain, nor any power so secure that the naked ape will not abuse it. So it is written in the genetic cards -- only physics and war hold him in check. And also the wife who wants him home by five, of course. -- Encyclopadia Apocryphia, 1990 ed. % There is no such thing as an ugly woman -- there are only the ones who do not know how to make themselves attractive. -- Christian Dior % There is not much to choose between a woman who deceives us for another, and a woman who deceives another for ourselves. -- Augier % There is only one way to console a widow. But remember the risk. -- Robert Heinlein % There's nothing like a girl with a plunging neckline to keep a man on his toes. % There's nothing like a good dose of another woman to make a man appreciate his wife. -- Clare Booth Luce % There's nothing like good food, good wine, and a bad girl. % There's one consolation about matrimony. When you look around you can always see somebody who did worse. -- Warren H. Goldsmith % There's one fool at least in every married couple. % There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I'll get married again. -- Clint Eastwood % There's too much beauty upon this earth for lonely men to bear. -- Richard Le Gallienne % This guy runs into his house and yells to his wife, "Kathy, pack up your bags! I just won the California lottery!" "Honey!", Kathy exclaims, "Shall I pack for warm weather or cold?" "I don't care," responds the husband. "just so long as you're out of the house by dinner!" % 'Tis more blessed to give than receive; for example, wedding presents. -- H.L. Mencken % To be beautiful is enough! if a woman can do that well who should demand more from her? You don't want a rose to sing. -- Thackeray % To be considered successful, a woman must be much better at her job than a man would have to be. Fortunately, this isn't difficult. % To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man. -- Golda Meir % To err is human -- but it feels divine. -- Mae West % To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends. -- Benjamin Franklin % To many, total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation. -- St. Augustine % To our sweethearts and wives. May they never meet. -- 19th century toast % Today when a man gets married he gets a home, a housekeeper, a cook, a cheering squad and another paycheck. When a woman marries, she gets a boarder. % Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL. -- Mae West % Trust your husband, adore your husband, and get as much as you can in your own name. -- Joan Rivers % Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building. -- Oscar Wilde % Two sure ways to tell a REALLY sexy man; the first is, he has a bad memory. I forget the second. % Until Eve arrived, this was a man's world. -- Richard Armour % Valerie: Aww, Tom, you're going maudlin on me ... Tom: I reserve the right to wax maudlin as I wane eloquent ... -- Tom Chapin % Very few modern women either like or desire marriage, especially after the ceremony has been performed. Primarily women wish attention and affection. Matrimony is something they accept when there is no alternative. Really, it is a waste of time, and hazardous, to marry them. It leaves one open to a rival. Husbands, good or bad, always have rivals. Lovers, never. -- Helen Lawrenson, "Esquire" % We were happily married for eight months. Unfortunately, we were married for four and a half years. -- Nick Faldo % We're all looking for a woman who can sit in a mini-skirt and talk philosophy, executing both with confidence and style. % Wedding is destiny, and hanging likewise. -- John Heywood % Wedding rings are the world's smallest handcuffs. % Well, it's hard for a mere man to believe that woman doesn't have equal rights. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower % What a misfortune to be a woman! And yet, the worst misfortune is not to understand what a misfortune it is. -- Kierkegaard, 1813-1855. % What do you give a man who has everything? Penicillin. -- Jerry Lester % "What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty teenager asked her mother. "Encouragement, dear," she replied. % What nonsense people talk about happy marriages! A man can be happy with any woman so long as he doesn't love her. -- Oscar Wilde % What passes for woman's intuition is often nothing more than man's transparency. -- George Nathan % What publishers are looking for these days isn't radical feminism. It's corporate feminism -- a brand of feminism designed to sell books and magazines, three-piece suits, airline tickets, Scotch, cigarettes and, most important, corporate America's message, which runs: Yes, women were discriminated against in the past, but that unfortunate mistake has been remedied; now every woman can attain wealth, prestige and power by dint of individual rather than collective effort. -- Susan Gordon % Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult. -- Charlotte Whitton % When a girl can read the handwriting on the wall, she may be in the wrong rest room. % When a girl marries she exchanges the attentions of many men for the inattentions of one. -- Helen Rowland % When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her. -- Sacha Guitry % When a woman gives me a present I have always two surprises: first is the present, and afterward, having to pay for it. -- Donnay % When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. -- Oscar Wilde % When choosing between two evils, I always like to take the one I've never tried before. -- Mae West, "Klondike Annie" % When God created two sexes, he may have been overdoing it. -- Charles Merrill Smith % When God saw how faulty was man He tried again and made woman. As to why he then stopped there are two opinions. One of them is woman's. -- DeGourmont % When I was a young man, I vowed never to marry until I found the ideal woman. Well, I found her -- but alas, she was waiting for the ideal man. -- Robert Schuman % When I'm good, I'm great; but when I'm bad, I'm better. -- Mae West % When it comes to broken marriages most husbands will split the blame -- half his wife's fault, and half her mother's. % When Marriage is Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Inlaws. % When my freshman roommate at Cornell found out I was Jewish, she was, at her request, moved to a different room. She told me she didn't think she had ever seen a Jew before. My only response was to begin wearing a small Star of David on a chain around my neck. I had not become a more observing Jew; rather, discovering that the label of Jew was offensive to others made me want to let people know who I was and what I believed in. Similarly, after talking to these young women -- one of whom told me that she didn't think she had ever met a feminist -- I've taken to identifying myself as a feminist in the most unlikely of situations. -- Susan Bolotin, "Voices From the Post-Feminist Generation" % When one knows women one pities men, but when one studies men, one excuses women. -- Horne Tooke % When the candles are out all women are fair. -- Plutarch % When the saleman's car broke down, he walked to the nearest farmhouse to ask if he could stay the night. The farmer agreed to put him up. "I live alone," he continued, "you can have the bedroom at the top of the stairs, to the right." "Oh, never mind," the disappointed salesman said. "I think I'm in the wrong joke." % When there is an old maid in the house, a watch dog is unnecessary. -- Balzac % When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part. -- George Bernard Shaw % When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands. -- H.L. Mencken, "Sententiae" % When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues. -- Honor'e de Balzac % When you're bored with yourself, marry, and be bored with someone else. -- David Pryce-Jones % When you're married to someone, they take you for granted ... when you're living with someone it's fantastic ... they're so frightened of losing you they've got to keep you satisfied all the time. -- Nell Dunn, "Poor Cow" % Whenever I date a guy, I think, is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with? -- Rita Rudner % Where's the man could ease a heart like a satin gown? -- Dorothy Parker, "The Satin Dress" % Why a man would want a wife is a big mystery to some people. Why a man would want *___two* wives is a bigamystery. % Why isn't there some cheap and easy way to prove how much she means to me? % Why won't you let me kiss you goodnight? Is it something I said? -- Tom Ryan % With the end of the football season, a star player for the college team celebrated the relaxation of team curfew by attending a late-night campus party. Soon after arriving, he became captivated by a beautiful coed and eased into a conversation with her by asking if she met many dates at parties. "Oh, I have a three point eight, so I'm much more attracted to the strong academic types than to the dumb party animals," she said. "What's your G.P.A.?" Grinning ear to ear, the jock boasted, "I get about twenty-five in the city and forty on the highway." % Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them. -- Dumas % Woman was God's second mistake. -- Nietzsche % Woman was taken out of man -- not out of his head, to rule over him; nor out of his feet, to be trampled under by him; but out of his side, to be equal to him -- under his arm, that he might protect her, and near his heart that he might love her. -- Henry % Woman's advice has little value, but he who won't take it is a fool. -- Cervantes % Women are all alike. When they're maids they're mild as milk: once make 'em wives, and they lean their backs against their marriage certificates, and defy you. -- Jerrold % Women are always anxious to urge bachelors to matrimony; is it from charity, or revenge? -- Gustave Vapereau % Women are just like men, only different. % Women are like elephants to me: I like to look at them, but I wouldn't want to own one. -- W.C. Fields % Women are not much, but they are the best other sex we have. -- Herold % Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more. -- Stephens % Women aren't as mere as they used to be. -- Pogo % Women can keep a secret just as well as men, but it takes more of them to do it. % Women complain about sex more than men. Their gripes fall into two categories: (1) Not enough and (2) Too much. -- Ann Landers % Women give themselves to God when the Devil wants nothing more to do with them. -- Arnould % Women give to men the very gold of their lives. Possibly; but they invariably want it back in such very small change. -- Oscar Wilde % Women in love consist of a little sighing, a little crying, a little dying -- and a good deal of lying. -- Ansey % Women reason with the heart and are much less often wrong than men who reason with the head. -- DeLescure % Women sometimes forgive a man who forces the opportunity, but never a man who misses one. -- Charles De Talleyrand-Perigord % Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us and are always bothering us to do something for them. -- Oscar Wilde % Women want their men to be cops. They want you to punish them and tell them what the limits are. The only thing that women hate worse from a man than being slapped is when you get on your knees and say you're sorry. -- Mort Sahl % Women waste men's lives and think they have indemnified them by a few gracious words. -- Honor'e de Balzac % Women who want to be equal to men lack imagination. % Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves. -- Amiel % Women's virtue is man's greatest invention. -- Cornelia Otis Skinner % Women, deceived by men, want to marry them; it is a kind of revenge as good as any other. -- Philippe De Remi % Women, when they are not in love, have all the cold blood of an experienced attorney. -- Honor'e de Balzac % Women, when they have made a sheep of a man, always tell him that he is a lion with a will of iron. -- Honor'e de Balzac % "You are *so* lovely." "Yes." "Yes! And you take a compliment, too! I like that in a goddess." % You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute. You are avenged fourteen hundred and forty times a day. -- Ambrose Bierce % You ask what a nice girl will do? She won't give an inch, but she won't say no. -- Marcus Valerius Martialis % You can have a dog as a friend. You can have whiskey as a friend. But if you have a woman as a friend, you're going to wind up drunk and kissing your dog. -- foolin' around % You can never trust a woman; she may be true to you. % You can't kiss a girl unexpectedly -- only sooner than she thought you would. % You have only to mumble a few words in church to get married and few words in your sleep to get divorced. % You just know when a relationship is about to end. My girlfriend called me at work and asked me how you change a lightbulb in the bathroom. "It's very simple," I said. "You start by filling up the bathtub with water..." % You know what we can be like: See a guy and think he's cute one minute, the next minute our brains have us married with kids, the following minute we see him having an extramarital affair. By the time someone says "I'd like you to meet Cecil," we shout, "You're late again with the child support!" -- Cynthia Heimel, "A Girl's Guide to Chaos" % You know you're getting old when you're Dad, and you're measuring your daughter for camp clothes, and there are certain measurements only her mother is allowed to take. % You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct. -- M. Somerset Maugham % You lived with a man who wore white belts? Laura, I'm disappointed in you. -- Remington Steele % You think Oedipus had a problem -- Adam was Eve's mother. % "You're just the sort of person I imagined marrying, when I was little... except, y'know, not green... and without all the patches of fungus." -- Swamp Thing % Young men and young women may work systematically six days in the week and rise fresh in the morning, but let them attend modern dances for only a few hours each evening and see what happens. The Waltz, Polka, Gallop and other dances of the same kind will be disastrous in their effects to both sexes. Health and vigor will vanish like the dew before the sun. It is not the extraordinary exercise which harms the dancer, but rather the coming into close contact with the opposite sex. It is the fury of lust craving incessantly for more pleasure that undermines the soul, the body, the sinews and nerves. Experience and statistics show beyond doubt that passionate excessive dancing girls can hardly reach twenty-five years of age and men thirty-one. Even if they reached that age they will in most instances be broken in health physically and morally. This is the claim of prominent physicians in this country. -- Quote from a 1910 periodical % Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and cannot. -- Oscar Wilde % Youth had been a habit of hers so long that she could not part with it. %