Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
At the beginning of a marriage ask yourself whether this woman will be interesting to talk to from now until old age. Everything else in marriage is transitory: most of the time is spent in conversation.
Marriage and deathless friendship, both should be inviolable and sacred: two great creative passions, separate, apart, but complementary: the one pivotal, the other adventurous: the one, marriage, the centre of human life; and the other, the leap ahead.
I never was attached to that great sect, Whose doctrine is, that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion, though it is in the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world, and so With one chained friend perhaps a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go.
Husband, when you tell your wife to go for counseling alone (because you think going to see a counselor is a sign you have failed) is like having a car you love overheat and deciding it's not manly to take it to the mechanic. You can keep on driving it but eventually you will ruin the engine.
If love exists between two persons, it is blessed. If love does not exist between two persons, then all your laws put together cannot bridge them. Then they exist separate, then they exist apart, then they exist in conflict, then they exist always in war. And they create all kinds of trouble for each other. They are nasty to each other, nagging to each other, possessive of each other, violent, oppressive, dominating, dictatorial.
love one another, but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
In countries where there is no marriage, there is no duty between husband and wife; when marriage comes, husband and wife live together on account of attachment; and that kind of living together becomes settled after generations; and when it becomes so settled, it becomes a duty.