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c44c011 I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother. marriage men feminism hate relationships women love married-life mothers sons matrimony psychology Martha Gellhorn
d2d92df Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection. integrity marriage feelings self-determination romance joy love matrimony duty Jane Austen
06157b2 People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort. marriage nature force-of-nature matrimony self-deception pleasure Thomas Hardy
fdb1743 Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse. marriage humor love lack-of-feeling lovelessness married-life matrimony sarcasm P.G. Wodehouse
5af6e15 I disapprove of matrimony as a matter of principle.... Why should any independent, intelligent female choose to subject herself to the whims and tyrannies of a husband? I assure you, I have yet to meet a man as sensible as myself! (Amelia Peabody) marriage women humor intelligence intelligent matrimony husbands Elizabeth Peters
1642a05 There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose. unhappiness marriage mind suitability matches matrimony purpose Charles Dickens
d15079c To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job. marriage entrapment wives matrimony husbands Simone de Beauvoir
17d61bf "There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil -- improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that?" "Are you a young lady?" "I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be treated." integrity marriage influence self-determination independence women honesty love uprightness propriety matrimony respect gender self-respect expectations Charlotte Brontë
11f61e1 [Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out. marriage relationships freedom captivity married-life single matrimony Michel de Montaigne
c48514b [O]ur honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine. marriage death life edward-fairfax-rochester honeymoon jane-eyre matrimony Charlotte Brontë
d6b8f43 LEONATO Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband. BEATRICE Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren; and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred. marriage men equality self-determination independence freedom empowerment happiness matrimony husbands singles William Shakespeare
2b38ece Your god, sir, is the World. In my eyes, you, too, if not an infidel, are an idolater. I conceive that you ignorantly worship: in all things you appear to me too superstitious. Sir, your god, your great Bel, your fish-tailed Dagon, rises before me as a demon. You, and such as you, have raised him to a throne, put on him a crown, given him a sceptre. Behold how hideously he governs! See him busied at the work he likes best -- making marriages. He binds the young to the old, the strong to the imbecile. He stretches out the arm of Mezentius and fetters the dead to the living. In his realm there is hatred -- secret hatred: there is disgust -- unspoken disgust: there is treachery -- family treachery: there is vice -- deep, deadly, domestic vice. In his dominions, children grow unloving between parents who have never loved: infants are nursed on deception from their very birth: they are reared in an atmosphere corrupt with lies ... All that surrounds him hastens to decay: all declines and degenerates under his sceptre. god is a masked Death. family-relationships hatred unhappiness injustice marriage women death disparity domestic-life false-belief lovelessness scorn unfreedom disharmony families preconceptions discord married-life worldliness idolatry decay demons matrimony force social-norms society hypocrisy disgust contempt vice expectations Charlotte Brontë
c383efa LEONATO Well, then, go you into hell? BEATRICE No, but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids:' so deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long. marriage heaven self-determination independence freedom empowerment happiness matrimony husbands singles William Shakespeare
3b5cdcb I am anchored on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience shall dispose of my hand -- . Know this at last. integrity marriage feminism self-determination independence women empowerment love matrimony dignity social-norms conscience gender courtship wooing Charlotte Brontë
63f3d22 "It was all Mrs. Bumble. She do it," urged Mr. Bumble; first looking round, to ascertain that his partner had left the room. That is no excuse," returned Mr. Brownlow. "You were present on the occasion of the destruction of these trinkets, and, indeed, are the more guilty of the two, in the eye of the law; for the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction." If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass -- a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience -- by experience." -- marriage woman responsibility funny wives law matrimony husbands Charles Dickens
2428b8f "No: I shall not marry Samuel Fawthrop Wynne." "I ask why? I must have a reason. In all respects he is more than worthy of you." She stood on the hearth; she was pale as the white marble slab and cornice behind her; her eyes flashed large, dilated, unsmiling. "And ask in what sense that young man is worthy of ?" integrity marriage men equality feminism self-determination independence women self-awareness empowerment suitability worthiness marriage-proposal matrimony dignity social-norms inferiority gender courtship wooing Charlotte Brontë
50c98a3 Still it is true that many same-sex couples want nothing more than to join society as fully integrated socially responsible family-centered taxpaying Little League-coaching nation-serving respectably married citizens. So why not welcome them in Why not recruit them by the vanload to sweep in on heroic wings and save the flagging and battered old institution of matrimony from a bunch of apathetic ne'er-do-well heterosexual deadbeats like me marriage humor gay-marriage gay-rights same-sex-marriage homosexual matrimony Elizabeth Gilbert
dccf0d0 Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say 'Father, as it please me. marriage self-determination independence empowerment happiness love marriage-proposal matrimony dignity courtship husbands wooing pleasure William Shakespeare
c89acc1 What tale do you like best to hear?' 'Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme - courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe - marriage. irony marriage women empowerment love disharmony subjection discord matrimony storytelling inequality gender courtship sarcasm Charlotte Brontë
397adc4 --the ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted by temperament and instinct to fulfil the conditions of the matrimonial relation with Phillotson, possibly with scarce any man... sex men ethereal nerves prude sue-bridehead matrimony temperament sensitive Thomas Hardy
4dbd6dc If [God] send me no husband, for the which blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening ... marriage self-determination independence freedom empowerment happiness blessings matrimony husbands singles William Shakespeare
f2e0593 [In 16th century European society] Marriage was the triumphal arch through which women, almost without exception, had to pass in order to reach the public eye. And after marriage followed, in theory, the total self-abnegation of the woman. marriage men feminism women-s-rights history self-determination independence women empowerment wedlock subjugation self-abnegation married-life matrimony social-norms misogyny perception inequality gender Antonia Fraser
e43e3fd What do you mean, 'Angle of Repose?' she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother's life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down. I suppose it is; and yet ... I thought when I began, and still think, that there was another angle in all those years when she was growing old and older and very old, and Grandfather was matching her year for year, a separate line that did not intersect with hers. They were vertical people, they lived by pride, and it is only by the ocular illusion of perspective that they can be said to have met. But he had not been dead two months when she lay down and died too, and that may indicate that at that absolute vanishing point they did intersect. They had intersected for years, for more than he especially would ever admit. marriage love intersection life-lines resignation married-life parallels perspective matrimony separation pride Wallace Stegner
4fe71d8 There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance ... some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning-together from the vertical which produces the false arch. For lack of a keystone, the false arch may be as much as one can expect in this life. Only the very lucky discover the keystone. marriage happiness love keystones married-life togetherness support matrimony harmony Wallace Stegner
5cd2415 [I]t is dangerous for a bride to be apologetic about her husband. marriage wives matrimony inferiority perception inequality husbands Wallace Stegner
1b4451e I shall expect my husband to have no pleasures but what he shares with me; and if his greatest pleasure of all is not the enjoyment of my company - why - it will be the worse for him - that's all.' 'If such are your expectations of matrimony, Esther, you must, indeed, be careful whom you marry - or rather, you must avoid it altogether. love wife matrimony husband expectations Anne Brontë
69fcb91 It was a fact generally acknowledged by all but the most contumacious spirits at the beginning of the seventeenth century that woman was the weaker vessel; weaker than man, that is. ... That was the way God had arranged Creation, sanctified in the words of the Apostle. ... Under the common law of England at the accession of King James I, no female had any rights at all (if some were allowed by custom). As an unmarried woman her rights were swallowed up in her father's, and she was his to dispose of in marriage at will. Once she was married her property became absolutely that of her husband. What of those who did not marry? Common law met that problem blandly by not recognizing it. In the words of [the leading 17th century compendium on women's legal status]: 'All of them are understood either married or to be married.' In 1603 England, in short, still lived in a world governed by feudal law, where a wife passed from the guardianship of her father to her husband; her husband also stood in relation to her as a feudal lord. fathers marriage men feminism women-s-rights history self-determination independence women empowerment wedlock common-law guardianship feudalism subjugation married-life property matrimony social-norms misogyny inequality gender husbands Antonia Fraser
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