The gentle hawk half mans herself. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Underneath large blue-bells tented
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not. [ Keats ]

Virtue is to herself the best reward. [ Henry Moore ]

Envy shoots at others, and wounds herself. [ Proverb ]

Madame de Stael talks herself into a beauty. [ Curran ]

But the rose leaves herself upon the brier
For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed. [ Keats ]

When fiction rises pleasing to the eye,
Men will believe, because they love the lie;
But truth herself, if clouded with a frown,
Must have some solemn proof to pass her down. [ Churchill ]

With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroyed by thought. [ Churchill ]

For whom does the blind man's wife paint herself? [ Proverb ]

Nature, through all her kingdoms, insures herself. [ Emerson ]

And when once the young heart of a maiden is stolen,
The maiden herself will steal after it soon. [ Moore ]

Venus herself, if she were bold, would not be Venus. [ Apuleius ]

Necessity imposes law, but does not herself receive it. [ Publius Syrus ]

The pine wishes herself a shrub, when the axe is at her root. [ Proverb ]

Memory is a Muse in herself; or rather the mother of the Muses. [ ? ]

Error, though blind herself, yet sometimes brings forth seeing children. [ Proverb ]

Not for herself was woman first created, nor yet to be man's idol, but his mate. [ Mrs. Norton ]

A woman who throws herself at a man's head will soon find her place at his feet. [ Louis Desnoyers ]

Gay mellow silks her mellow charms infold, and nought of Lyce but herself is old. [ Young ]

A woman of honor should never suspect another of things she would not do herself. [ Marguerite de Valois ]

An affectionate mother wishes that her offspring may be wiser and better than herself. [ Horace ]

A bluestocking despises her duties as a woman, and always begins by making herself a man. [ Rousseau ]

Nature, like a kind and smiling mother, lends herself to our dreams and cherishes our fancies. [ Victor Hugo ]

Dress deceives us: jewels and gold hide everything: the girl herself is the least part of herself. [ Ovid ]

The old woman would never have looked for her daughter in the oven, had she not been there herself. [ Proverb ]

Women are a fascinatingly wilful set. Every woman is a rebel and usually in wild revolt against herself. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]

In the indications of female poverty there can be no disguise. No woman dresses below herself from caprice. [ Lamb ]

It is a madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because in herself she is nothing, but is ruled by prudence. [ Dryden ]

Greece, conquered herself, in turn conquered her uncivilised conqueror, and imported her arts into rusticated Latium. [ Horace ]

If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself: all that runs over will be yours. [ Colton ]

He who cannot feel friendship is alike incapable of love. Let a woman beware of the man who owns that he loves no one but herself. [ Talleyrand ]

Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exert herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes, that she may have another by a defeat. [ Colton ]

The bride, lovely herself, and lovely by her side a bevy of bright nymphs, with sober grace came glittering like a star, and took her place. [ Dryden ]

The soul moralises the past in order not to be demoralised by it, and finds in the crucible of experience only the gold that she herself has poured into it. [ Amiel ]

We see but the outside of a rich man's happiness; few consider him to be like the silkworm, that, when she seems to play, is at the very same time consuming herself. [ Izaak Walton ]

When a woman is deliberating with herself whom she shall choose of many near each other in other pretensions, certainly he of the best understanding is to be preferred. [ Steele ]

We should make the same use of a book that the bee does of a flower; she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it; and those sweets she herself improves and concocts into honey. [ C. C. Cotton ]

It is hard to personate and act a part long, for where truth is not at the bottom, Nature will always be endeavoring to return, and will peep out and betray herself one time or another. [ Tillotson ]

It may be laid down as a general rule that no woman who hath any great pretensions to admiration is ever well pleased in a company where she perceives herself to fill only a second place. [ Fielding ]

If a woman be herself pure and noble-hearted, she will come into every circle as a person does into a heated room, who carries with him the freshness of the woods where he has been walking. [ Frances Power Cobbe ]

Trust to me, judicious mother: do not make of your daughter an honest man, as if to give the lie to Nature; make her an honest woman, and be assured that she will be of more worth both to herself and to us. [ Rousseau ]

Nature builds upon a false bottom, seeks herself what she values in others, and is oftentimes deceived and disappointed. Grace reposes her whole hope and love in God, and is never mistaken, never deluded by false expectations. [ Thomas à Kempis ]

The intelligence of affection is carried on by the eye only; good-breeding has made the tongue falsify the heart, and act a part of continued restraint, while nature has preserved the eyes to herself, that she may not be disguised or misrepresented. [ Addison ]

To a man who is uncorrupt and properly constituted, woman always remains something of a mystery and a romance. He never interprets her quite literally. She, on her part, is always striving to remain a poem, and is never weary of bringing out new editions of herself in novel bindings. [ James Parton ]

Nature, when she amused herself by giving stiff manners to old maids, put virtue in a very bad light. A woman must have been a mother to preserve under the chilling influences of time that grace of manner and sweetness of temper, which prompt us to say, One sees that love has dwelt there. [ Lemontey ]

Nature understands no jesting; she is always true, always serious, always severe; she is always right, and the errors and faults are always those of man. Him who is incapable of appreciating her she despises, and only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Let every mother consider herself as an instrument in the hands of Providence - let her reflect on the immense importance the proper education of one single family may eventually prove; and that, while the fruit of her labors may descend to generations yet unborn, she will herself reap a glorious reward. [ Miss Hamilton ]

This, therefore, is a law not found in books, but written on the fleshly tablets of the heart, which we have not learned from man, received or read, but which we have caught up from Nature herself, sucked in and imbibed; the knowledge of which we were not taught, but for which we were made; we received it not by education, but by intuition. [ Cicero ]

If the man be really the weaker vessel, and the rule is necessarily in the Wife's hands, how is it then to be? To tell the truth, I believe that the really loving, good wife never finds it out. She keeps the glamor of love and loyalty between herself and her husband, and so infuses herself into him that the weakness never becomes apparent either to her or to him or to most lookers-on. [ Charlotte M. Yonge ]