I would like the morning to announce itself on her fair forehead before the sky dyes itself in pink, and as the day gradually wanes, for the shadow of evening to become denser between her eyelashes before it does so on the leaves, on the stones, and on the clouds.

She would have a feral innocence, and the human side of her nature, that which is always human even in the noblest woman, would have the significance of an accident, of chance, it would be purely fortuitous.

– Curzio Malaparte

By dint of studying the girl, I observed in her, as in every woman whom we make our ruling thought, a variety of good qualities; she was clean and neat; she was handsome, I need not say; she soon was possessed of every charm that desire can lend to a woman in whatever rank of life.

– Honore de Balzac

Without lace, satin, or powder, she might indeed have seemed one of those beautiful, proud nymphs fabled to appear to appear to mortals in the depths of the forest or upon the solitary mountainsides only to drive them mad with passion and regret.

– George Sand

I was young then, and the Syrian women stirred all my senses to response. Their ruddy lips, their liquid eyes that shone in the shade, their sleepy gaze pierced me to the very marrow. Painted and stained, smelling of nard and myrrh, steeped in odors, their physical attractions are both rare and delightful.

With what languorous grace they dance, those Syrian women! I knew a Jewess at Jerusalem who used to dance in a poky little room, on a threadbare carpet, by the light of one smokey little lamp, waving her arms as she clanged her cymbals. Her loins arched, her head thrown back, and, as it were, dragged down by the weight of her heavy red hair, her eyes swimming with voluptuousness, eager, languishing, compliant, she would have made Cleopatra herself grow pale with envy. I was in love with her barbaric dances, her voice – a little raucous and yet so sweet – her atmosphere of incense, the semi-somnambulant state in which she seemed to live. I followed her everywhere. I mixed with the vile rabble of soldiers, conjurers, and extortioners with which she was surrounded.

– Anatole France

Then he suddenly felt, felt by a kind of intuition, that this grand creature was not merely a being destined to perpetuate his race, but the strange and mysterious product of all the complicated desires which had been accumulating in us for centuries but which have been turned aside from their primitive and divine object, and which have wandered after a mystic, imperfectly seen and intangible beauty. There are some women like that, women who blossom only for our dreams, adorned with every poetical attribute of civilization, with that ideal luxury, coquetry, and aesthetic charm which should surround the living statue who brightens our life.

– Guy de Maupassant