"How incomprehensible is woman's love ! —it is not kindness that wins it, nor return that insures it; we daily see the most devoted attachment lavished on those who seem to us singularly unworthy. The Spectator shewed his usual knowledge of human nature, when, in speaking on this subject, he relates, that in a town besieged by the enemy, on the women being allowed to depart with whatever they held most precious, only one among them carried off her husband,—a man notorious for his tyrannical temper, and who had, moreover, a bad—or, as it turned out, a good—habit of beating his wife every morning. Well, all governments are maintained by fear—fear being our great principle of action ; and fear, we are tempted to believe, heightens and strengthens the love of woman."
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"Self-knowledge — the bitterest knowledge of all and also the kind we cultivate least: what is the use of catching ourselves out, morning to night, in the act of illusion, pitilessly tracing each act b…"
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