W. L. George

"There are human tendencies, such as belief in a divine spirit, painting pictures, making war, composing songs. Are there any special female tendencies? Given that we glimpse what distinguishes man from the beast, is there anything that distinguishes woman from man? ... Questions addressed to women do not always yield the truth; nor do questions addressed to men; for a desire to please, vanity, modesty, interfere. But the same question addressed to a woman may, according to circumstances, be sincerely answered in four ways,—1. Truthfully, with a defensive touch, if she is alone with another woman.2. With intent to cause male rivalry if she is with two men.3. With false modesty and seductive evasiveness if she is with one man and one woman.4. With a clear intention to repel or attract if she is with a man alone.And there are variations of these four cases! A man investigating womans points of view often finds the response more emotional than intellectual. Owing to the system under which we live, where man is a valuable prey, woman has contracted the habit of trying to attract. Even aggressive insolence on her part may conceal the desire to attract by exasperating."

"It seemed to me that this desertion of the old saloon, child of the taverns where the clipper captains used to meet to drink, I suppose mulled claret and canary wine, is as significant of Finis Bostoniæ as the installation of the most modern repetition plant. For here is a revolution in the mind, which matters more than a revolution in the workshop. The old saloon meant as much to Boston as the learned ones who paced the greensward at Cambridge; it was part of the same adventurous individual life, where a man took a single chance and, when he succeeded, took his pleasure. Now, Boston is socialized industrially, and a new impulse toward efficiency has turned away the flow of its people from the taverns where it used to royster. It is not age which has killed Boston, for no cities die of age; it is the youth of other cities, of young America, who would not let Old Boston live unless it transformed itself as it is doing."

"The solar system is like a roulette gone mad, and the earth is the ball. Its been rolling for millions of years; whats going to happen if it stops? What hole will the ball plump into? Thirty-six — A pocketful of money for everybody — or zero? And the eternal banker sweeps up the stakes?"

"Men have been found to deny woman intellect; they have credited her with instinct, with intuition, with a capacity to correlate cause and effect much as a dog connects its collar with a walk."

"Foolish economy and reckless expenditure are indications of an elementary quality. In that sense woman is still something of a savage. She is still less civilized than man, largely because she has not been educated. This may be a very good thing, and it certainly is an agreeable one from the masculine point of view. Whether we consider womans attitude to the law, to social service, or to war, it is the same thing. In most cases she is lawless; she will obey the law because she is afraid of it, but she will not respect it. For her it is always sic volo, sic jubeo. I suspect that if she had had a share in making the law she would not have been like this, for she would have become aware of the relation between law and life. Roughly she tends to look upon the law as tyrannous if she does not like it, as protective if she does like it. Probably there is little relation between her own moral impulse, which is generous, and the law, which is only just."

"There is no peace in Chicago. In Chicago the past and the future give birth to an unruly being that angrily shakes the fetters of one tradition as it creates another which it thrown away as it goes, like a snake which wearies of its skin and sloughs it off for a new one. It is a city of terror and light, untamed and unwearied. It has harnessed a white-hot energy to beginnings; upon its roofs it erects cities; it has torn the vitals of its streets for railway cuttings, set up porticoes as promises of colonnades. Grim is the heart within, and hot as molten metal. The city writhes in its narrow communications, as the head of Medusa among its tangled hair. Its suburbs lie like disjointed members, deprived of easy transit to the body: the suburban stores forbid it; they fear for their custom, and the politicians tumble and crawl in, graft, threat, and proclamation, over the great body that heaves, angry and chafed, yet negligent of what is not its daily labor, like a dray horse with bent head that shakes the tenacious flies. Here is room for lust and its repression, none for listlessness; here is everlasting struggle, no mild aspiration to peace. There is no peace in Chicago."