Monstre Incompréhensible

Henri-Frédéric Amiel, The Journal Intime, entry of December 26, 1868:

If men are always more or less deceived on the subject of women, it is because they forget that they and women do not speak altogether the same language, and that words have not the same weight or the same meaning for them, especially in questions of feeling. Whether from shyness or precaution or artifice, a woman never speaks out her whole thought, and moreover what she herself knows of it is but a part of what it really is. Complete frankness seems to be impossible to her, and complete self-knowledge seems to be forbidden her. If she is a sphinx to us, it is because she is a riddle of doubtful meaning even to herself. She has no need of perfidy, for she is mystery itself. A woman is something fugitive, irrational, indeterminable, illogical, and contradictory. A great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her, and a good deal of prudence exercised with regard to her, for she may bring about innumerable evils without knowing It. Capable of all kinds of devotion, and of all kinds of treason, “monstre incompréhensible,” raised to the second power, she is at once the delight and the terror of man.

That Women Are All Bitter-Sweet

Achilleus Tatios, The Loves of Clitopho and Leucippe, bk. I., found in: The Greek Romances (Scriptores Erotici Græci), tr. Rowland Smith, (London, 1901), pp. 358-9:

Woman is a 'bitter sweet;' (αὕτη κακῶν ηδονή) in her nature she is akin to the Sirens, for they too, slay their victims with a dulcet voice; the very "pomp and circumstance" of marriage shews the magnitude of the evil; there is the din of pipes, the knocking at the doors, the bearing about of torches. With all this noise and tumult, who will not exclaim, 'Unhappy is the man who has to wed!'—to me, he seems like a man ordered off to war. Were you unacquainted with classic lore, you might plead ignorance of women's doings, whereas you are so well read, as to be capable of teaching others. How many subjects for the stage have been furnished by womankind! Call to mind the necklace of Eriphyle, the banquet of Philomela, the calumny of Sthenobœa, the incest of Aerope, the murderous deed of Procne. Does Agamemnon sigh for the beauty of Chryseis?—he brings pestilence upon the Grecian host; does Achilles covet the charms of Briseis?—he prepares misery for himself; if Candaules has a fair wife, that wife becomes the murderess of her husband! The nuptial torches of Helen kindled the fire which consumed Troy! How many suitors were done to death through the chastity of Penelope? Phædra, through love, became the destroyer of Hippolytus; Clytemnestra, through hate, the murderess of Agamemnon! Ο! all-audacious race of women! they deal death whether they love or hate! The noble Agamemnon must needs die, he whose beauty is described to have been cast in a heavenly mould,

        'Jove o'er his eyes celestial glories spread,
        And dawning conquest play'd around his head. (Homer. Il. ii. 478.)

and yet this very head was cut off by—a woman!