Don't get the idea that you can burst into tears anytime, and get a husband as a consolation prize. We simply mean that you needn't be afraid to turn to a man for sympathy, when you're feeling sunk. One last warning along that line: Never infer that you want to get married because you're so sick of supporting yourself.

-- from How About a Man (1938)

Sex isn't like warm milk. You can't just gulp it down to make you sleepy.

-- from The Form Divine (1951)

Regrettably, there are moments when a woman doesn't want to know what's what or even where she's going, preferring the unexplored road that looks as if it would end in a perfect little spot for a picnic, although it may well wind up at a garbage dump. The atmospheric winds had already wafted to Lucilla a sniff of something not quite pleasant, but Derek as scenery was still so delightful and novel to look at that she couldn't bear not to continue around the next curve.

-- from The Form Divine (1951)

In describing the Bump-Wump and rope-jumping sessions to Derek, the second time they met in the cocktail lunge, Lucilla managed to make herself appear as an amused bystander to the antics of Paris and her other classmates. She had already sensed that the way to make Derek happy was to tear apart people he knew, and now she fed him pieces of her friends as a mother robin feeds bits of worm to her young.

--from The Form Divine(1951)

Stop right now and digest the fact that men generally have the upper hand because they have more to do than women. You wouldn't have any respect for a man who thought about you every minute, who neglected his work and friends and hobbies entirely, for your sake. Then see to it that you don't get in that state, either. Get it through your head that no man can fill up your life completely, and start finding more things to think about.

---from How About a Man(1938)

Drinking with a man isn't important in itself. It's the way you do or don't drink that matters. If you have no head for the stuff, never down it because you think he'll like you better. Plenty of girls who go out five nights a week either drink very little or not at all. Naturally, you shouldn't go in for pursed lips or a conspicuous display of virtue. A casual "No, thanks" or "I;m on the wagon" is enough. The men who keep insisting on your drinking generally aren't worth the bother. If your escort gets very tight, get home as soon as possible, and don't lecture him on the way. If he behaves stupidly, there's no point in telling him about it while he's drunk. Discipline him subtly, not shrewishly, when he's more able to take in what you're saying. And whatever you do, don't ever try to trap a man while he's in that vague condition. It's a shoddy and all too temporary trick. There's always a sober tomorrow when he'll resent it savagely

--- from How About a Man (1938)

CHAPTER ONE
Wanted: A Man

And you can't just advertise in the Personal Column. That would be the simplest, but not very subtle. It's much better to quietly organize your own man-hunting expedition, without benefit of gun, camera, or unpleasant publicity. Without benefit of clergy, too, if you prefer it that way. You don't have to be matrimonially inclined to flick these pages. You may not want a man as a permanent acquisition. Our own amiable premise is that every woman needs a man in her life, and she might as well have him, and keep him as long as she wants him. What she wants him for is her own business (and his, we might generously add).

--from How About a Man (1938)