“I am afraid that woman appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts. We have emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters, all the same. They love being dominated.”

“I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.”

“There is one thing infinitely more pathetic than to have lost the woman one is in love with, and that is to have won her and found out how shallow she is!”

“In war," answered the weaver, "the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces of those we love become hard and evil. We tread out the grapes, another drinks the wine. We sow the corn, and our own board is empty. We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free.”

“You silly Arthur! If you knew anything about...anything, which you don't, you would know that I adore you. Everyone in London knows it except you. It is a public scandal the way I adore you. I have been going about for the last six months telling the whole of society that I adore you. I wonder you consent to have anything to say to me. I have no character left at all. At least, I feel so happy that I am quite sure I have no character left at all.”

“The error all women commit. Why can’t you women love us, faultsand all? Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals? We have all feet ofclay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love themknowing their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them allthe more, it may be, for that reason. It is not the perfect, but the imperfect,who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands,or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us – else what useis love at all? All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. Alllives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon. A man’s love is like that.It is wider, larger, more human than a woman’s. Women think that theyare making ideals of men. What they are making of us are false idolsmerely. You made your false idol of me, and I had not the courage tocome down, show you my wounds, tell you my weaknesses. I was afraidthat I might lose your love, as I have lost it now.”

“Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.”