Thomas Hardy Quotes

It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.

So I took an interest in politics, but I don't know whether I enjoyed it! It was a wife's duty to be interested in whatever interested her husband, whether it was politics, books, or a particular dish for dinner.

It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible, and a man's to keep unmarried as long as he can.

Somehow we've even developed the notion that a woman who seeks to meet her husband's needs is subservient (but a husband who fails to meet his wife's needs is a pig.)

Thanks to feminism, women can now acquire status in two ways: through marriage or their own achievements. Cure cancer or marry the man who does, either way society will applaud. Unless he marries into the British royal family, it doesn't work that way for men. Wives shed no glory on their husbands. Having tea with Nancy Reagan is an honor; having tea with Denis Thatcher is a joke.

When women hold off from marrying men, we call it independence. When men hold off from marrying women, we call it fear of commitment.

The reason I keep talking about a wife and saying the word 'wife' on stage is because it seems a funny word to me. The more you say it, the more it seems to detach from that person and become this sort of abstract thing: that you would set out to find a wife, that it would be an objective like buying a new car.

Girls and boys also face the societal pressure to get married which I find wrong.

I know not which lives more unnatural lives, obeying husbands, or commanding wives.

Women all live a double standard.

What is any respectable girl brought up to do but to catch some rich man's fancy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him?--as if a marriage ceremony could make any difference in the right or wrong of the thing!

She only maintains that it is possible, under some circumstances, for a lady to murder her husband; but that a woman who wears ankle-strap shoes and smokes on the street corner, though she may be a joy to all who know her and have devoted her life to charity, could never qualify as a lady.

Marriage is the only chance (and it is but a chance) offered to women for escape from this death and how eagerly and how ignorantly it is embraced.

The stunning part was that one time Neil McElroy the Secretary of Defense who was the father of one of our classmates spoke and basically at commencement, he told us all that our job after graduation was to get married and have interesting sons...and we all found that hard to believe.

[I]t is dangerous for a bride to be apologetic about her husband.

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.

Eventually women will learn there's no such thing as freedom. Their husbands are just as fastened to the deck as they are. Men get onto a treadmill and never got off.

Hogamus, higamous Man is polygamous Higamus, hogamous Woman monogamous.

The Iron Rule of prudence for an Istanbulite Woman: If you are as fragile as a tea glass, either find a way to never encounter burning water and hope to marry an ideal husband or get yourself laid and broken as soon as possible. Alternatively, stop being a tea-glass woman!

There's a lot more historical baggage to deal with as a wife than as a partner.

I'm not very good at being a wife because I break all the rules.

I don't know any women who don't think about what they look like, and I don't know any men who don't think about what women look like.

It is a fact that all women contribute more to marriage than men; for the most part they have to change their place of living, their method of work, a great many women today changing their occupation entirely on marriage; and they must even change their name.

Some people look gender non-conforming because they want to look that way - they don't want to conform to society's expectations.

There is something revolting about the way girls' minds often jump to marriage long before they jump to love. And most of those minds are shut to what marriage really means.