WHAT do they know – about one another that makes every man who kisses a girl warn her so darkly and impressively not to trust any of the others?
POVERTY is only a relative affair, after all; it is X minus the things you want.
HEAVEN must be something like an afternoon tea, as far as the dearth of men is concerned.
FIGURES do lie; especially if they are the ones that express a woman's age – or the time a man gets home at night.
A MAN'S favorite way of answering a woman's accusations is to tell her how pretty she looks when she gets excited.
MATRIMONY is the price of love – divorce, the rebate.
WHEN a millionaire's heart is touched it makes a hollow sound.
THE woman who is wedded to an art and also to a man pays the full penalty for that kind of bigamy.
IN the love game nobody knows exactly what he wants; but a wise man tries to get what he thinks he wants and a wise woman tries to think she wants what she gets.
A MAN isn't as curious as a woman – because usually a woman tells him everything before he has a chance to become curious.
THE only original thing about some men is original sin.
HOLD on tight to your temper 'round the curves of matrimony.
COLD water never cured a fever and a woman's indifference never put out the divine fire of a man's love.
LOVE is a sort of club sandwich affair, composed of large slices of selfishness, seasoned with passion, spiced with jealousy and covered with thin layers of sentiment.
A MAN may admire a superior woman, but when it comes to marrying he prefers a goose who will cackle at his jokes to an owl who is likely to hoot at them.
A MAN always remembers a girl's first kiss the longest – because usually that's the only one he had any trouble in getting.
TO keep a man's interest at high pressure deal yourself out to him in homœopathic doses; one only wants more of anything that one cannot get enough of.
THOSE who have tried matrimony, like those who have finished with the morning paper, always say, "There's nothing in it;" but somehow that never keeps the rest of us from wanting to see for ourselves.
WONDER if it never occurs to the woman who marries a man to reform him that the sort of person who is headstrong enough to have made a "past" for himself isn't likely to sit quietly by and let somebody else carve out his future for him.
IT is so much easier for some men to go to the devil for a woman than to go to work for her.
ALAS that the fever of love should so often be followed by a chill!
IN THE modern love affair woman proposes, God disposes and man – just dozes.
A MAN doesn't need to swear at a woman in order to express his opinion of her; he can shut the front door behind him in the morning so that it sounds just like a "damn!"
BY a man's vows of devotion ye shall not know him; the lover who promises a girl a life of roses is usually the one who allows her to pick off all the thorns for herself.
MAN is such a paradox that a woman is forced to make him believe that she doesn't take him seriously – or she won't get a chance to take him at all.
A MAN cannot keep his grouch and his friends at the same time.
THE woman who marries a dandy soon discovers that a thing of beauty is not necessarily a joy forever.
A MAN never selects a wife with any judgment or reason, because by the time he has reached the marrying fever all judgment and reason have fled.
IT IS a wise fool who rushes in and a fool angel who fears to tread when it comes to love making; the woman who can't be coaxed can always be captured.
IT MAY not be immoral for a girl to say "damn," but it affects a man just as it would to hear a dove or a canary bird shrieking like a parrot.
A MAN in the act of putting his wife on the train for her summer vacation feels like the bad boy who has just heard the bell clang for recess; he doesn't know exactly what he is going to do, but he knows it will be something against the rules and hence very fascinating.
IT'S awfully hard for a girl, with her mind all made up and her thoughts at the altar, to sit silently by and wait for the love idea to penetrate the thick layers of resistance that cover the masculine brain.
AS long as Satan can make a woman believe that it is possible to reform a rake and make a roué over into a doting husband the ladies will keep his majesty's business running.
IF anything could make a woman willing to exchange her curves for a little muscle it would be that maddening, "There, there, now!" attitude with which the average man greets her righteous wrath.
MANY a man would be dumbfounded if he should discover that the ideal in his wife's heart didn't have a double chin, a bald spot and turned-in toes just like himself.
THE music of the spheres isn't loud enough to drown the din of some matrimonial squabbles.
A KNOWLEDGE of all the ologies and isms isn't worth half as much to a girl in the game of life as a knowledge of how to use her eyes and how to keep her pompadour in curl.
WHEN a man discovers that a woman knows more than he does it strikes him dumb – but not with admiration.
HEART-TO-HEART talks between platonic friends are as apt to lead to lip-to-lip silences that Plato never dreamed of.
MAN may be the noblest work of God – in the abstract; but in a bathing suit – well, it takes blind love to make a girl think he looks like that.
A MAN'S surprise at the calmness with which his wife receives the announcement that he has failed in business is only equaled by his astonishment at her hysteria when a dress comes home that doesn't fit.
A GIRL always keeps a tender spot in her heart for the man she has once loved; but to a man nothing is so cold as cooled affection.
YOU would fancy a girl were a species of ostrich from the amount of flattery a man feeds her before marriage and the two-edged cynicisms he expects her to swallow afterward.
THE average woman goes from the altar into total eclipse from which she never emerges until she becomes a widow – since husbands never look at their wives and other men don't dare.
THE man who is most in love is most apt to get over it, just as the man who drinks most champagne has the worst headache next morning.
ALL this talk about trial marriages seems so superfluous – considering that marriage has always been a trial.
A MAN'S sense of honor is so peculiar that it gets out of working condition the minute he comes near a pretty woman.
MAN – as far as his opinions and emotions go – is the noblest work of woman.
A KISS and its thrills are soon parted – after the honeymoon.
EVERY woman is born an actress; and actresses are twice as attractive to men as other women because they are twice women.
A DARK brown "past" is sometimes a good insurance against a black future; the man who has "seen life" is not quite so likely to be looking for it.
HAPPINESS in marriage doesn't depend half so much on whether or not a man keeps the Ten Commandments and goes to church as on whether or not he keeps a pretty stenographer and comes home to dinner.
WHEN a man declares that he knows his own mind, his wife may sometimes wonder why he seems so proud of the acquaintance.
MARRYING a widower is like inheriting an heirloom; marrying a grass widower is like getting second-hand goods that somebody else has been anxious to get rid of.
MATRIMONY is a life job with long hours, small pay, hard work, no holidays and no chance to "give notice" if you get tired of it.
AFTER all, a wife has her uses – even if its only as a protection against other ladies' breach of promise suits.
A PRETTY wife in a soiled kimono affects a man like a pâté de fois gras served on an old tin plate; it takes away his appetite – for love.
IT always surprises a woman when the son who has been tied to her apron strings suddenly gets tangled up in some chorus girl's shoe strings.
A MAN'S idea of a perfectly loyal, devoted woman is one who will deceive another man for his sake.
A GIRL'S idea of business is a place where she can meet some man who will take her out of it.
IN THE "relation of the sexes" a man is so likely to regard his wife as the "poor relation."
NO MAN refuses to give a good wife all the credit she deserves; but some of them are rather shy about giving her cash to the same amount.
A WOMAN on her summer vacation soon discovers that a husband is not "a man of letters," but a man of off-hand notes and telegrams.
A LOVER looks at women through rose-colored spectacles, an old bachelor through blue glasses, and a married man – through a microscope.
A MAN always feels deeply injured when his wife refuses to believe the story that he has worked at all the way up in the cab to make sound interesting and perfectly plausible.
IT inspires a man with real awe and admiration, after he has spent all day Sunday and broken half the family tools fussing over a fractious lock, to see his wife come along and pick it with one hand and a hairpin.
WHENEVER a man makes up his mind to give up anything, from a woman to a vice, it suddenly becomes so attractive to him that he begins to take a new and violent interest in it.
THE hard part of separating from a husband or wife for summer vacation is trying to look sorry about it when you say good-by at the station.
TRAIN up a son in the way he should go – and then watch him go some other woman's way.
MAKING hay while the sun shines is very tame sport beside making love while the moon shines.
THE dollar sign is the only sign in which the modern man appears to have any real faith.
IT IS a mistake to propose to a girl with whom you have been mooning all morning on the beach until you discover whether that pang you feel is really heart hunger or only the other kind of hunger; the two have such similar effects.
YOU can lead a husband to the restaurant, but you can't make him order champagne – unless it's another woman's husband.
LOVE seldom follows marriage, unless marriage follows love.
WHEN a man says that "circumstances" have forced him to break his engagement with you, it is pretty safe to conclude that "Circumstances" wears smarter frocks or has a more fascinating way of doing her hair.
SOME bright day women will learn that it is as impossible to revive a man's interest in a girl whom he has ceased to love as to make him want stale champagne with all the fizz gone out of it.
ALL the great tragedies are written about the woman who isn't married to some man, but ought to be; when as a matter of fact the most tragic figure on earth is the woman who is married to him and oughtn't to be.
THERE are two kinds of masculine hearts; the kind like a peach, soft and impressionable on the outside, but stony at the core; and the kind like a nut, seemingly impenetrable, but sweet and satisfying once you get through the shell.
A MAN doesn't object to a girl who smokes cigarettes, wears three-ply collars and calls him "old chap" because he considers her immoral, but because he considers her just a bad imitation of himself.
A WOMAN can do nothing wrong, as long as a man is in love with her, and nothing right after he ceases to be.
THE only way to be happy with a man is to have such blind faith that you can believe him when he vows he never kissed another woman, even though the scent of the last girl's sachet still clings to his coat lapel.
MARRYING a woman, after you have kept her ten years waiting, is like buying a doll that has stood too long in the showcase.
WHEN a man asks a girl for a kiss, she has to refuse him, but when he simply takes it, she has to take it, too.
NOBODY scorns a woman for marrying money or a title; what they scorn is the sort of thing she usually marries along with it.
THE woman whom a man idealizes is the one who keeps him guessing; who never lets him see how the wheels go round at her toilet table nor in her heart and head.
SOME men regard home as nothing but a "rest cure."
TAXING bachelors only encourages them; a man always values anything more, even freedom, when he has to pay for it.
THERE is a time of the year when a man will pay thirty dollars for a Panama hat that makes him look like thirty cents, and thirty cents for a drink that makes him feel like a millionaire.
THE knots in the marriage tie which rub a man the wrong way are the "shalt nots"; those which chafe a woman are the "ought nots."
THE social swim at present appears to be a whirlpool, wherein a man gets soaked with either weak tea or cocktails.
IN a man's opinion a kiss is an end that justifies any means.
WHEN a man makes a woman his wife it's the highest compliment he can pay her – and usually it's the last.
THE happiest wife is not always the one who marries the best man, but the one who makes the best of the man she marries.
"WHO findeth a wife findeth a good thing," saith the Scriptures. Well, that's what most men are looking for nowadays.
IT isn't the big vague vows he makes at the altar which a man finds it so difficult to keep or to get around, but the little foolish promises he made before he ever got there.
IT IS as foolish to try to reform a man after he has lost his front hair as to try to tame a lion after he has gotten his second teeth.
IT isn't the things a man says that proves he loves you, but the things he tries to say and can't – the things that choke right up in his throat and leave him sitting dumb and miserable on your parlor divan.
PHYSICIANS say the heart is an organ; but by the way some men manage to grind out the same old love songs over and over again it would seem to be more like a street piano.
ONE whiff of an onion will do more to kill love than the breaking of the ten commandments.
ALL a man demands of a woman is a knowledge of what she ought not to do, what she ought not to say and what she ought not to think. All a woman need know in order to wear a halo in her husband's eyes is how to keep it on straight.
MARRIED men should make the most successful fiction writers, because it takes a highly developed imagination to invent a different story for one's wife every night.
DON'T marry a man merely because he can write nice long, soul-satisfying letters; wait until you find out if he can write equally nice long satisfactory checks.