“Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.”

“Not "Forgive us for our sins" but "Smite us for our iniquities" should be the prayer of man to a most just God.”

“There was purification in punishment. Not 'Forgive us our sins,' but 'Smite us for our iniquities' should be the prayer of a man to a most just God.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving.”

“Women treat us [men] like humanity treats gods—they worship us and keep bothering us to do something for them.”