One can not start by saying that our earthly destiny has or has not importance, for it depends upon us to give it importance.

The nearer I come to the end of my days, the more I am enabled to see that strange thing, a life, and to see it whole.

To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.

Let women be provided with living strength of their own. Let them have the means to attack the world and wrest from it their own subsistence, and their dependence will be abolished -- that of man also.

A man attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.

The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and its ominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him...In any case, the more traits and proportions of a woman seem contrived, the more she delighted the heart of man because she seemed to escape the metamorphosis of natural things. The result is this strange paradox that by desiring to grasp nature, but transfigured, in woman, man destines her to artifice.

Marriage is traditionally the destiny offered to women by society. Most women are married or have been, or plan to be or suffer from not being.