Arnold Haultain "Hints for lovers"

What a paltry thing, after all, is man, man uncomplemented by woman! Left to himself, he stagnates; linked with a woman, he rises—-or sinks. A gentle touch stimulates him, a confiding heart makes of him a new creature. Under the rays of feminine sympathy, he expands who else would remain inert. Fame may allure him, friends encourage him, fortune cause him a momentary smile, but only woman makes him; and fame, friends, fortune, all are naught if there be not at his side a sharer of his weal. A man will strive for fortune, strip himself for friends, scour the earth for fame; but were there no woman in the world to be won, not one of these things would he do.

A woman asks a woman questions in order to discover something. She asks a man questions in order to discover the man.

Man has two sides to his nature, woman but one:

Man wears one aspect when facing the world; he wears quite another aspect when facing women;

A woman generally controls love: a man is controlled by it.

The last refuge of an unrequited love is the belief that love will create love. Nothing can be more futile than such a faith. Yet

Love without hope, has its mitigations; but

How alleviate the pain of a love that mistook a simulated love for a true one?

A simulated love is a contradiction in terms.

Either one loves or one does not, that is the conclusion of the whole matter.

Love creates a world of its own, a world populated by two—and these make their own laws—or make none.

To each other, lovers are the most interesting personages alive; but onlookers regard them partly with amusement, partly with pity, partly with compassion—in the etymological sense of that word.

Little as people seem to be aware of it, love requires constant replenishing: no flame can burn without a feeding oil, no pool overflow with out a purling brook. Yet

The first ecstasies of love often blind both lover and lass to the care necessary for the nurture of love. Indeed,

To many treat love as if it were a passing whim; whereas in sober reality it is (or should be) a lasting emotion.

The intenser the love, the more flawless does its object appear. For

The surest test of the sincerity of love is that it thinketh no evil.

The surest test of a waning love is that it begins not to content itself when it sees its object suffer.

The surest test of a dead love is that it forgets how to be jealous.

In love, a woman is generally cool enough to calculate pros and cons; a man, in similar plight, is incapable of anything but folly.

Wouldst thou ask ought of a woman? Question her eyes: they are vastly more voluble than her tongue. Indeed,

There is no question too subtle, too delicate, too recondite, or too rash, for human eyes to ask or answer. And

He who has not learned the language of the eyes, has yet to learn the alphabet of love. Besides,

Love speaks two languages: one with the lips; the other with the eyes.

The eye tells more than the tongue. And

If the eye and the tongue contradict each other, believe the eye.

The austerer a woman, the sweeter her surrender. And, again,
A woman is never sweeter than in surrender. 

Often enough it is the admiration, not the admirer, that a woman covets.
Indeed,

Many a woman is in love with love (3), but not her lover. 

Friendship and courtship are two totally distinct things:

In courtship, men and women meet on the flowery-thorny common of love;

In friendship, men and women invite each other over to their respective plots. So,

A friend will show a friend all over his domain;

A lover can but point out to the lover the flowers (and thorns) which grow in the soil to which they are both strangers.

A man can never know too much. Perhaps a woman can. And

It is a question how far a man admires a woman who knows too much. 

here is no stronger argument against the equality of the sexes than a woman's hand. It was made to toil? No; to place in her lover's. In truth,

Is there anything more fragile in nature than a woman's hand? But put it in her lover's. and what a force it has!

Anomaly of anomalies, with women, fragility, delicacy, dependence, beauty, grace,—it is by these weak weapons that she wins. 

Confidences are evoked rather by friendship than by love:

A woman will tell a man friend what she will not tell a lover.

Few lovers will understand this, fewer still will believe it. Yet it is true, and the explication of its truth would be long and complex. This much may be said:

Love idealizes; friendship does not. At the same time,

Love probes the innermost recesses of the womanly nature; and, until the woman is wholly won,

The woman resents the inspection of love. She knows that,

To stimulate love, the woman must conceal, not reveal;

To stimulate love, the woman must conceal, not reveal. Furthermore,

Never was there a man who could be at once friend and lover.

Which is only one more proof that

Never will the sexes understand each other.

The majority of men are so blind, so abominably blind, that they cannot distinguish the women who are really in love with them, from the women who pretend to be in love with them, but are not. For because,

So completely do women know men, that it is easy for any woman to delude any man. This is one of the reasons why

Every woman is the rival of every other woman:

Many are the women who, soon after marriage, silently turn over in their minds this little problem: whether it were better to marry the man they loved but who did not love them; or to marry the man who loved them but to whom they were indifferent. 

To get, the human heart must give.

The heart eats out itself; causes its own emptiness; creates its own void.

The selfish and egoistical life breeds always the vapid and vacuous heart.

Would you appease your own hunger? Feed the hungry hearts around you.

Do you crave fullness of joy? Give joy to the joyless.

Would you fill your own cavity, satisfy your craving, attain your desire, find what you seek? Give—give—give. The more the better, for

The greater the donation, the greater the repletion.

Nature gives, gives lavishly, wantonly, unquestioningly.