Your Personality Is the Secret of Your Success

If you are an ordinary woman, you may envy the beautiful ones — but rest assured that it is personality that attracts a man, not outward beauty!

This attraction between man and woman is the idea of survival; yet Samir used to flee from the beautiful Salwa as a scalded cat flees from hot water. And so the proverb fits him: "He who has been stung fears the pull of the rope." He had sworn to himself never to marry again after divorcing his wife. He tried acting at the start of his career and did not succeed; then he went into commerce, but he soon wearied of it and thought of withdrawing from the world, retiring to a hut on the shore of a lake where he could write. He was fully prepared to carry out the idea when this enchantress leapt into his life. Speaking of her, he said: "She has a beautiful figure and captivating glances; she is lively and capable." With these qualities, joined to cunning, she managed to draw him to her: she showed him her weakness and made him feel his superiority, and they married — but it lasted no more than six months, after which they parted, and he went back to seeking his lost lake.

Layla is one of the attractive girls, with her slender figure, but she never finished her secondary studies, for she married early; then she left her husband, since she could not get on with him, and was engaged to another — but here too no accord was reached. At last she met a doctor and tried to make him her long-sought prize; and this last one, too, deserted her. When I asked him the reason, he answered: "I cannot describe her silliness; there is nothing in common between us to talk about; and then, I could not teach her anything new, and I came to feel ashamed to introduce her to my friends — she does not utter a single word that shows intelligence." And so we see that a man tires of outward appearances, since they do not fill his ambition; rather he yearns to find in his life's partner a deep well of awareness and strength of personality. Here is a lady who discloses the secret of her feminine strength: "I am a tender mother to my husband; I show him the utmost gentleness and guard him like the pupil of my eye." But this alone is not enough. No doubt the ordinary woman relies on outward attraction more than on thought, out of an instinctive feeling for a man's requirements; but this does not deny the existence of another road, that of the deeper love of the soul, which is a help to a woman — nor does it mean that a woman should neglect her adornment and her charm.

Here is In'am, who is no beauty, but her charm is hidden, and more important than mere beauty: she still keeps her husband's love, though twenty years have passed since their marriage, for she is a woman of rich soul.

She knows that the secret of happiness does not hang on a woman's beauty. She lacks the advantage of beauty of form, but she takes care to surround herself with everything beautiful. When you enter her home you feel liveliness and refreshment, side by side with calm and overflowing happiness — and this makes her husband proud of her.

A woman's intelligence draws two kinds of men to her: geniuses and the witless; for nature seeks to balance the scales. And the love of the mind is stronger than the love of the body, and lives longer; this a woman prefers above all else, and she may live on its memory her whole life, should the two of them be fated to part.

Rejoice that yours is a sound mind, if you are not beautiful; do not insist too much on independence and logic; let feeling and tenderness into your soul; and then do not stand apart from the stream of life, but join its procession. Not all women are beautiful; excess of beauty and of intelligence turns a woman aside from natural life and sometimes carries her to extremes, for abnormality occurs among those who excel in intelligence and beauty. The natural woman makes a competent wife, a friend to her man all his life. Beauty is rare, but charm is rarer; and no genius is needed for you to become attractive — add to it grace, poise, confidence, and inner freedom, and these are not attained unless you first master yourself.

Authors have learned that surprises work a potent effect on life, and so they have grown skilled at creating them within the frame of their stories; and these are the product of the mind, not of the body.

The best means of winning lasting love is a strong personality, a calm temper, and a soul capable of renewal and variety.

Beauty and intelligence are two gifts inborn in a person; but personality is acquired, and grows, and lives on through failure and triumph, through being crushed and through pride — and this is the wisdom of the heart, the surest way of joining two hearts!