Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilised society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.

. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.

Men like me because I dont wear a brassiere. Women like me because I dont look like a girl who would steal a husband. At least not for long.

At first a woman doesn't want anything but a husband, but as soon as gets one, she wants everything else in the world.

If someone were to ask whether communications skills or meekness is most important to a marriage, I'd answer meekness, hands down. You can be a superb communicator but still never have the humility to ask, 'Is it I?' Communication skills are no substitute for Christlike attributes. As Dr. Douglas Brinley has observed, 'Without theological perspectives, secular exercises designed to improve our relationship and our communication skills (the common tools of counselors and marriage books) will never work any permanent change in one's heart: they simply develop more clever and skilled fighters!

We invented marriage. Couples invented marriage. We also invented divorce,mind you. And we invented infidelity,too, as well as romantic misery. In fact we invented the whole sloppy mess of love and intimacy and aversion and euphoria and failure. But most importantly of all, most subversively of all, most stubbornly of all, we invented privacy.

She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.

Squeeze marriage as much as you like, you will never extract anything from it but fun for bachelors and boredom for husbands.

I am not against marriage - without marriage, ninety-nine percent jokes will disappear from the world. How I can be against marriage? I am all for it.

Hollywood is the same as any other place when it comes to love, marriage, and divorce ... some people have trouble staying married and some people have trouble staying single.

Marriage simplifies life and complicates the day.

Most wives think of their husbands as bumbling braggarts with whom they happen to be in love.

It is not marriage that fails; it is people that fail. All that marriage does is to show people up.

Marriage can be complicated.

Every persisting marriage is based on fear', said Peregrine. 'Fear is fundamental, you dig down in human nature and what's at the bottom? Mean spiteful cruel self-regarding fear, whether it makes you to put the foot in it or whether it makes you to cower.

Among even the happiest married couples there are always moments of regret.

Husbands should revolt from time to time. Even the best circus-number becomes boring if the beast is too tame.

People say, 'Why is he bored with her?' Because he's a human being, that's why; same way his wife is bored with him. That is marriage - anything that's supposed to be forever, your going to get bored with it. And there is nothing wrong with it, so don't take it personal; if you are with somebody for ten years and they are not bored with you? Then something is wrong with them.

Around the world there are certain marital systems, certain physical systems, political systems, social systems, and all those things are kind of turned on their head but represented in various ways within "The Lobster."

Other people's marriages are a perpetual source of amazement.

You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride.

Marriage is going to disappear, should disappear. And now the point is coming in the history of humanity where it becomes possible that marriage can disappear. It is already an outmoded phenomenon, it has lived too long and it has created nothing but misery. Marriage should disappear and love should flower again. One should live with insecurity and freedom. That I call intelligence.

The American girl makes a servant of her husband and then finds him contemptible for being a servant