“A woman is of greater service to our life if she is in it, instead of being an element of happiness, an instrument of sorrow, and there is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer.”
Une femme est d'une plus grande utilité pour notre vie si elle y est, au lieu d'un élément de bonheur, un instrument de chagrin, et il n'y en a pas une seule dont la possession soit aussi précieuse que celle des vérités qu'elle nous découvre en nous faisant souffrir.
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. VI: The Sweet Cheat Gone (1925), Ch. I: "Grief and Oblivion"
Original
Une femme est d'une plus grande utilité pour notre vie si elle y est, au lieu d'un élément de bonheur, un instrument de chagrin, et il n'y en a pas une seule dont la possession soit aussi précieuse que celle des vérités qu'elle nous découvre en nous faisant souffrir.
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. VI: The Sweet Cheat Gone (1925)
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Marcel Proust 41
French novelist, critic, and essayist 1871–1922Related quotes

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

Vol. I, ch. 4. Compare: "I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of", Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Professor at the Breakfast Table; "The whole world is strewn with snares, traps, gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by women", Bernard Shaw, Epistle Dedicatory to Man and Superman.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

Scientology : The Fundamentals of Thought (1973).
Scientology Bulletins

“If a woman isn't being hazed, she's not being tested; therefore, she is not being trusted.”
Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 295.

I Wonder What Would Happen to this World
Song lyrics, Living Room Suite (1978)
Variant: Oh, if a man tried
To take his time on earth
And prove before he died
What one man's life could be worth,
I wonder what would happen to this world.

Mrs. Coates on her Aunt (ca. September 1916), Mrs. Caroline Earle White—President and founder of The Women's Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the American Anti-Vivisection Society. Caroline Earle White biography on the American Anti-Vivisection Society website http://www.aavs.org/cew.html
Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Volume 33 (1922) http://books.google.com/books?id=c1o8AAAAIAAJ&dq=%22florence%20earle%20coates%22%20%22pure%20in%20heart%20see%20god%22&pg=PA52#v=onepage&q=%22she%20was%20a%20great%20woman%22&f=false