§ 1.

Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later. For another thing, they die earlier.

§ 2.

The man who marries for love alone is at least honest. But so was Czolgosz.

§ 3.

When a husband’s story is believed, he begins to suspect his wife.

§ 4.

In the year 1830 the average American had six children and one wife. How time transvalues all values!

§ 5.

Love begins like a triolet and ends like a college yell.

§ 6.

A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.

§ 7.

Man’s objection to love is that it dies hard; woman’s is that when it is dead it stays dead.

§ 8.

Definition of a good mother: one who loves her child almost as much as a little girl loves her doll.

§ 9.

The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little bit jealous. The way to lose him is to keep him a little bit more jealous.

§ 10.

It used to be thought in America that a woman ceased to be a lady the moment her name appeared in a newspaper. It is no longer thought so, but it is still true.

§ 11.

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

§ 12.

Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner’s inquest.

§ 13.

How little it takes to make life unbearable!... A pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman’s laugh!

§ 14.

The bride at the altar: “At last! At last!” The bridegroom: “Too late! Too late!”

§ 15.

The best friend a woman can have is the man who has got over loving her. He would rather die than compromise her.

§ 16.

The one breathless passion of every woman is to get some one married. If she’s single, it’s herself. If she’s married, it’s the woman her husband would probably marry if she died tomorrow.

§ 17.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon. Woman, that she was born so long ago.

§ 18.

Woman is at once the serpent, the apple—and the belly-ache.

§ 19.

Cold mutton-stew; a soiled collar; breakfast in dress clothes; a wet house-dog, over-affectionate; the other fellow’s tooth-brush; an echo of “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay”; the damp, musty smell of an empty house; stale beer; a mangy fur coat; Katzenjammer; false teeth; the criticism of Hamilton Wright Mabie; boiled cabbage; a cocktail after dinner; an old cigar butt; ... the kiss of Evelyn after the inauguration of Eleanor.

§ 20.

Whenever a woman begins to talk of anything, she is talking to, of, or at a man.

§ 21.

The worst man hesitates when choosing a mother for his children. And hesitating, he is lost.

§ 22.

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

§ 23.

No man is ever too old to look at a woman, and no woman is ever too fat to hope that he will look.

§ 24.

Bachelors have consciences. Married men have wives.

§ 25.

Bachelors know more about women than married men. If they did’t they’d be married, too.

§ 26.

Man is a natural polygamist. He always has one woman leading him by the nose and another hanging on to his coat-tails.

§ 27.

All women, soon or late, are jealous of their daughters; all men, soon or late, are envious of their sons.

§ 28.

History seems to bear very harshly upon women. One cannot recall more than three famous women who were virtuous. But on turning to famous men the seeming injustice disappears. One would have difficulty finding even two of them who were virtuous.

§ 29.

Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.

§ 30.

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him in a very handy form.

§ 31.

The worst of marriage is that it makes a woman believe that all men are just as easy to fool.

§ 32.

The great secret of happiness in love is to be glad that the other fellow married her.

§ 33.

A man may be a fool and not know it—but not if he is married.

§ 34.

All men are proud of their own children. Some men carry egoism so far that they are even proud of their own wives.

§ 35.

When you sympathize with a married woman you either make two enemies or gain one wife and one friend.

§ 36.

Women do not like timid men. Cats do not like prudent rats.

§ 37.

He marries best who puts it off until it is too late.

§ 38.

A bachelor is one who wants a wife, but is glad he hasn’t got her.

§ 40.

Women usually enjoy annoying their husbands, but not when they annoy them by growing fat.