Washington Irving on Women in the United States

“A woman is more considerate in affairs of love than man; because love is more the study and business of her life.”

“I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration.”

“No man knows what the wife of his bosom is—no man knows what a ministering angel she is—until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world.”

“There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.”

“As the dove will clasp its wings to its side, and cover and conceal the arrow that is preying on its vitals, so it is in the nature of women to hide from the world the pangs of wounded affection.”

“I wave often had occasion to remark the fortitude with which women sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortune. Those disasters which break down the spirit of a man, and prostrate him in the dust, seem to call forth all the energies of the softer sex, and give such intrepidity and elevation to their character, that at times it approaches to sublimity.”

“A woman’s whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul in the traffick of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless — for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.”

“Nothing can be more touching than to behold a soft and tender female, who had been all weakness and dependence, and alive to every trivial roughness while treading the prosperous paths of life, suddenly rising in mental force, to be the comforter and supporter of her husband, under misfortune, and abiding, with unshrinking firmness, the bitterest blasts of adversity.”

“How little do lovely women know what awful beings they are, in the eyes of inexperienced youth! Young men brought up in the fashionable circles of our cities will smile at all this. Accustomed to mingle incessantly in female society, and to have the romance of the heart deadened by a thousand frivolous flirtations, women are nothing but women in their eyes; but to a susceptible youth like myself, brought up in the country, they are perfect divinities.”