Getting Married quotes

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.

If the mischief stopped at talking and thinking it would be bad enough; but it goes further, into disastrous anarchical action.

But they are neither dignified nor safe and comfortable, which at once rules them out for normal decent people.

Marriage remains practically inevitable; and the sooner we acknowledge this, the sooner we shall set to work to make it decent and reasonable.

However much we may all suffer through marriage, most of us think so little about it that we regard it as a fixed part of the order of nature, like gravitation.

But they are neither dignified nor safe and comfortable, which at once rules them out for normal decent people. Marriage remains practically inevitable; and the sooner we acknowledge this, the sooner we shall set to work to make it decent and reasonable.

However much we may all suffer through marriage, most of us think so little about it that we regard it as a fixed part of the order of nature, like gravitation.

Except for this error, which may be regarded as constant, we use the word with reckless looseness, meaning a dozen different things by it, and yet always assuming that to a respectable man it can have only one meaning.

Not only may the respectable British champion of marriage mean any of these widely different institutions; sometimes he does not mean marriage at all. He means monogamy, chastity, temperance, respectability, morality, Christianity, anti-socialism, and a dozen other things that have no necessary connection with marriage.

He often means something that he dare not avow: ownership of the person of another human being, for instance.

And he never tells the truth about his own marriage either to himself or anyone else.

But nobody worth counting believes directly, frankly, and instinctively that when a person commits a murder and is put into prison for twenty years for it, the free and innocent husband or wife of that murderer should remain bound by the marriage.

To put it briefly, a contract for better for worse is a contract that should not be tolerated.

As a matter of fact it is not tolerated fully even by the Roman Catholic Church; for Roman Catholic marriages can be dissolved, if not by the temporal Courts, by the Pope.

As a matter of fact it is not tolerated fully even by the Roman Catholic Church; for Roman Catholic marriages can be dissolved, if not by the temporal Courts, by the Pope.

Indissoluble marriage is an academic figment, advocated only by celibates and by comfortably married people who imagine that if other couples are uncomfortable it must be their own fault, just as rich people are apt to imagine that if other people are poor it serves them right.

There is always some means of dissolution.

… and apparently invincible prejudices, accept social changes today as tamely as their forefathers accepted the Reformation under Henry and Edward, the Restoration under Mary, and, after Mary’s death, the shandygaff which Elizabeth compounded from both doctrines and called the Articles of the Church of England.

If matters were left to these simple folk, there would never be any changes at all; and society would perish like a snake that could not cast its skins.

Nevertheless the snake does change its skin in spite of them; and there are signs that our marriage-law skin is causing discomfort to thoughtful people and will presently be cast whether the others are satisfied with it or not. The question therefore arises:

As usual, this change of front has not yet been noticed by our newspaper controversialists and by the suburban season-ticket holders whose minds the newspapers make.

They still defend the citadel on the side on which nobody is attacking it, and leave its weakest front undefended.

The religious revolt against marriage is a very old one. Christianity began with a fierce attack on marriage; and to this day the celibacy of the Roman Catholic priesthood is a standing protest against its compatibility with the higher life. St.

but it had its value as giving the young sociologists present, of whom I was one, an authentic notion of what a picked audience of respectable men understood by married life. It was certainly a staggering revelation.

Peter the Great would have been shocked; Byron would have been horrified; Don Juan would have fled from the conference into a monastery.

The respectable men all regarded the marriage ceremony as a rite which absolved them from the laws of health and temperance; inaugurated a lifelong honeymoon; and placed their pleasures on exactly the same footing as their prayers.

They were incapable of comprehending the industries they were engaged in, the laws under which they lived, or the relation of their country to other countries. They lived the lives of old men contentedly.

They were timidly conservative at the age at which every healthy human being ought to be obstreperously revolutionary.

And their wives went through the routine of the kitchen, nursery, and drawing-room just as they went through the routine of the office. They had all, as they called it, settled down, like balloons that had lost their lifting margin of gas;

and of keeping pianos in their houses, not for musical purposes, but to torment their daughters with a senseless stupidity that would have revolted an inquisitor.

In short, dear reader, they were very like you and me.

I could fill a hundred pages with the tale of our imbecilities and still leave much untold; but what I have set down here haphazard is enough to condemn the system that produced us.

As all this is corrigible by reducing home life and domestic sentiment to something like reasonable proportions in the life of the individual, the danger of it does not lie in human nature.

Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

Its grave danger to the nation lies in its narrow views, its unnaturally sustained and spitefully jealous concupiscences, its petty tyrannies, its false social pretences, its endless grudges and squabbles, its sacrifice of the boy’s future by setting him to earn money to help the …

… appalling, that one month of any serious attempt to carry out such counsels would probably bring about more stringent legislation against actions going beyond the strict letter of the law in the way of kindness than we have now against excess in the opposite direction.

There is no more dangerous mistake than the mistake of supposing that we cannot have too much of a good thing.

The truth is, an immoderately good man is very much more dangerous than an immoderately bad man:

but, as a matter of fact, no more frightful misfortune could threaten us than a general spread of fanaticism.

What people call goodness has to be kept in check just as carefully as what they call badness; for the human constitution will not stand very much of either without serious psychological mischief, ending in insanity or crime.

The fact that the insanity may be privileged, as Savonarola’s was up to the point of wrecking the social life of Florence, does not alter the case.

… it is a perfectly sound instinct that leads us to mistrust the good man as much as the bad man, and to object to the clergyman who is pious extra-professionally as much as to the professional pugilist who is quarrelsome and violent in private life.

We do not want good men and bad men any more than we want giants and dwarfs.

What we do want is a high quality for our normal: that is, people who can be much better than what we now call respectable without self-sacrifice. Conscious goodness, like conscious muscular effort, may be of use in emergencies;

A man as intimate with his own wife as a magistrate is with his clerk, or a Prime Minister with the leader of the Opposition, is a man in ten thousand.

The majority of married couples never get to know one another at all: they only get accustomed to having the same house, the same children, and the same income, which is quite a different matter.

The comparatively few men who work at home—writers, artists, and to some extent clergymen—have to effect some sort of segregation within the house or else run a heavy risk of overstraining their domestic relations.

Now if England had been governed in the past by statesmen willing to be ruled by such public opinion as that, she would have been wiped off the political map long ago.

The modern notion that democracy means governing a country according to the ignorance of its majorities is never more disastrous than when there is some question of sexual morals to be dealt with.

The business of a democratic statesman is not, as some of us seem to think, to convince the voters that he knows no better than they as to the methods of attaining their common ends, but on the contrary to convince them that he knows …

And the usual penalty of taking advantage of this power to reform our institutions is defeat by a vehement “swing of the pendulum” at the next election. Therein lies the peril and the glory of democratic statesmanship.

A statesman who confines himself to popular legislation⁠—or, for the matter of that, a playwright who confines himself to popular plays⁠—is like a blind man’s dog who goes wherever the blind man pulls him, on the ground that both of them want to go to the same place.

The reform of marriage, then, will be a very splendid and very hazardous adventure for the Prime Minister who takes it in hand.

But what our sentimentalists have not yet been told is that exactly the same thing applies to maternity as to government.

The best mothers are not those who are so enslaved by their primitive instincts that they will bear children no matter how hard the conditions are, but precisely those who place a very high price on their services, and are quite prepared to become old maids if the price is refused, and even to feel relieved at their escape.

Our democratic and matrimonial institutions may have their merits: at all events they are mostly reforms of something worse; but they put a premium on want of self-respect in certain very important matters;

There is some sense in a contract to perform or abstain from actions that are reasonably within voluntary control; but such contracts are only needed to provide against the possibility of either party being no longer desirous of the specified performance or abstention.

A person proposing or accepting a contract not only to do something but to like doing it would be certified as mad.

Yet popular superstition credits the wedding rite with the power of fixing our fancies or affections for life even under the most unnatural conditions.

We often do not fall in love at all; and when we do we fall in love with one person and remain indifferent to thousands of others who pass before our eyes every day.

Selection, carried even to such fastidiousness as to induce people to say quite commonly that there is only one man or woman in the world for them, is the rule in nature.

If anyone doubts this, let him open a shop for the sale of picture postcards, and, when an enamoured lady customer demands a portrait of her favorite actor or a gentleman of his favorite actress, try to substitute some other portrait on the ground that …

Our relief at the morality of the reassurance that man is not promiscuous in his fancies must not blind us to the fact that he is (to use the word coined by certain American writers to describe themselves) something of a Varietist.

Even those who say there is only one man or woman in the world for them, find that it is not always the same man or woman.

It happens that our law permits us to study this phenomenon among entirely law-abiding people. I know one lady who has been married five times. She is, as might be expected, a wise, attractive, and interesting woman.

disposes not only of the patriots who are so patriotic that they never leave their own country to look at another, but of the citizens who are so domestic that they have never married again and never loved anyone except their own husbands and wives.

The domestic doctrinaires are also the dull people.

The impersonal relation of sex may be judicially reserved for one person; but any such reservation of friendship, affection, admiration, sympathy and so forth is only possible to a wretchedly narrow and jealous nature;

These terrors conceive marriage as a dispensation from all the common civilities and delicacies which they have to observe among strangers, or, as they put it, “before company.” And here the effects of indissoluble marriage-for-better-for-worse are very plainly and disagreeably seen.

If such people took their domestic manners into general society, they would very soon find themselves without a friend or even an acquaintance in the world.

There are women who, through total disuse, have lost the power of kindly human speech and can only scold and complain: there are men who grumble and nag from inveterate habit even when they are comfortable.

In short, whichever way you take it, the convention that marriage and family relationship produces special feelings which alter the nature of human intercourse is a mischievous one.

The whole difficulty of bringing up a family well is the difficulty of making its members behave as considerately at home as on a visit in a strange house, and as frankly, kindly, and easily in a strange house as at home.

In the middle classes, where the segregation of the artificially limited family in its little brick box is horribly complete, bad manners, ugly dresses, awkwardness, cowardice, peevishness, and all the petty vices of unsociability flourish like mushrooms in a cellar.

Also, affectionate husbands like Samuel Pepys, and affectionate wives of the corresponding temperaments may, it appears, engage in transient casual adventures out of doors without breaking up their home life. But within doors that home life may be regarded as naturally monogamous.

It does not need to be protected against polygamy: it protects itself.

All this has an important bearing on the question of divorce.

… incorrigibly unfaithful husband, and yet be much better off than if she had an ill-tempered, peevish, maliciously sarcastic one, or was chained for life to a criminal, a drunkard, a lunatic, an idle vagrant, or a person whose religious faith was contrary to her own.

Imagine being married to a liar, a borrower, a mischief maker, a teaser or tormentor of children and animals, or even simply to a bore!

Conceive yourself tied for life to one of the perfectly “faithful” husbands who are sentenced to a month’s imprisonment occasionally for idly leaving their wives in childbirth without food, fire, or attendance! What woman would not rather marry ten Pepyses?

… another, even if it carries us to the length of openly admitting what we are now compelled to assume silently, that every human being has a right to sexual experience, and that the law is concerned only with parentage, which is now a separate matter.

The one question that should never be put to a petitioner for divorce is “Why?”

When a man appeals to a magistrate for protection from someone who threatens to kill him, on the simple ground that he desires to live, the magistrate might quite reasonably ask him why he desires to live, and why the person who wishes to kill …

It will be said that the parties may not agree on that; that one may desire to maintain the marriage the other wishes to dissolve. But the same hardship arises whenever a man in love proposes marriage to a woman and is refused.

The refusal is so painful to him that he often threatens to kill himself and sometimes even does it. Yet we expect him to face his ill luck, and never dream of forcing the woman to accept him.

His case is the same as that of the husband whose wife tells him she no longer cares for him, and desires the marriage to be dissolved. You will say, perhaps, if you are superstitious, that it is not the same—that marriage makes a difference.

His case is the same as that of the husband whose wife tells him she no longer cares for him, and desires the marriage to be dissolved. You will say, perhaps, if you are superstitious, that it is not the same—that marriage makes a difference.

You are wrong: there is no magic in marriage.

If there were, married couples would never desire to separate. But they do. And when they do, it is simple slavery to compel them to remain together.

… set women free from their economic slavery, and you will find that unless divorce is made as easy as the dissolution of a business partnership, the practice of dispensing with marriage will presently become so common that conventional couples will be ashamed to get married.

Divorce, in fact, is not the destruction of marriage, but the first condition of its maintenance.

A thousand indissoluble marriages mean a thousand marriages and no more. A thousand divorces may mean two thousand marriages; for the couples may marry again. Divorce only re-assorts the couples: a very desirable thing when they are ill-assorted.

All he means is that he is not used to it and therefore fears that it may injure him.

Every advance in civilization frightens these honest folk.

This is a pity; but if we were to spare their feelings we should never improve the world at all. To let them frighten us, and then pretend that their stupid timidity is virtue and purity and so forth, is simply moral cowardice.

… experience in such matters, you may search Europe in vain for a woman in this trade who has the table manners of a lady shows that prostitution is not a vocation but a slavery to which women are driven by the miseries of honest poverty.

When every young woman has an honorable and comfortable livelihood open to her on reasonable terms, the streets will make no more recruits.

When every young man can afford to marry, and marriage reform makes it easy in dissolve unions contracted by young and inexperienced people in the event of their turning out badly, or of one of the pair achieving a position neither comfortable nor suitable for …

This is shown by the fact that the proportion of childless divorces is much larger than the proportion of divorces from all causes. But it must not be forgotten that the interest of the children forms one of the most powerful arguments for divorce.

An unhappy household is a bad nursery.

There is something to be said for the polygynous or polyandrous household as a school for children: children really do suffer from having too few parents: this is why uncles and aunts and tutors and governesses are often so good for children.

Let me, then, recommend as follows:

Make divorce as easy, as cheap, and as private as marriage.

Grant divorce at the request of either party, whether the other consents or not; and admit no other ground than the request, which should be made without stating any reasons.

And take and deal with all the consequences of these acts of justice instead of letting yourself be frightened out of reason and good sense by fear of consequences.

We must finally adapt our institutions to human nature.

In the long run our present plan of trying to force human nature into a mould of existing abuses, superstitions, and corrupt interests, produces the explosive forces that wreck civilization.

We must finally adapt our institutions to human nature. In the long run our present plan of trying to force human nature into a mould of existing abuses, superstitions, and corrupt interests, produces the explosive forces that wreck civilization.

Never forget that if you leave your law to judges and your religion to bishops, you will presently find yourself without either law or religion.

If you doubt this, ask any decent judge or bishop. Do not ask somebody who does not know what a judge is, or what a bishop is, or what the law is, or what religion is. In other words, do not ask your newspaper.

… the paint, the partitions, the exquisitely planed and moulded casings with which the Victorian cabinetmakers enclosed and hid the huge black beams of hewn oak, and of all other expedients of his predecessors to make themselves feel at home and respectable in a Norman fortress.

It is a house built to last forever.

The walls and beams are big enough to carry the tower of Babel, as if the builders, anticipating our modern ideas and instinctively defying them, had resolved to show how much material they could lavish on a house built for the glory of God, instead …

Send for the greengrocer, ma’am: that’s the secret of easy housekeeping. Bless you, it’s his business. It pays him and you, let alone the pleasure in a house like this. Mrs. Bridgenorth bows in acknowledgment of the compliment.

They joke about the greengrocer, just as they joke about the mother-in-law. But they can’t get on without both.

What a bond between us, Collins!

Dukes you would take them for. You see the relatives shaking hands with them and asking them about the family—actually ladies saying “Where have we met before?” and all sorts of confusion. That’s my secret in business, ma’am.

You can always spot me as the greengrocer. It’s a fortune to me in these days, when you can’t hardly tell who anyone is or isn’t.

He goes out through the tower, and immediately returns for a moment to announce, The General, ma’am.

Wouldn’t go to bed unless she knew they was all safe at home and the door locked, and the lights out. Always wants her luggage in the carriage with her. Always goes and makes the engine driver promise her to be careful.

She’s a born wife and mother, ma’am. That’s why my children all ran away from home.

Did you ever feel inclined to run away, Collins?

I daresay it was good for me to be took such care of; but it cut me off from all my old friends something dreadful, ma’am: especially the women, ma’am. She never gave them a chance: she didn’t indeed.

She never understood that married people should take holidays from one another if they are to keep at all fresh.

Not that I ever got tired of her, ma’am; but my! how I used to get tired of home life sometimes. I used to catch myself envying my brother George: I positively did, ma’am.

I hope you don’t tell your wife that you go elsewhere for advice.

Lord bless you, ma’am, I’m that fond of my old Matilda that I never tell her anything at all for fear of hurting her feelings.

You see, she’s such an out-and-out wife and mother that she’s hardly a responsible human being out of her house, except when she’s marketing.

You look very fine, Boxer.

What a frightful lot of bravery all these medals must represent!

No, Lesbia. They represent despair and cowardice. I won all the early ones by trying to get killed. You know why.

You look very fine, Boxer. What a frightful lot of bravery all these medals must represent!

No, Lesbia. They represent despair and cowardice.

I won all the early ones by trying to get killed. You know why.

Yes, I know. It’s no use, Boxer.

When will you be old enough to take no for an answer?

Never, Lesbia, never. You have never given me a real reason for refusing me yet. I once thought it was somebody else. There were lots of fellows after you; but now they’ve all given it up and married. Bending still nearer to her. Lesbia:

Oh, love! Have you no imagination?

Do you think I have never been in love with wonderful men? heroes! archangels! princes! sages! even fascinating rascals! and had the strangest adventures with them?

Do you know what it is to look at a mere real man after that? a man with his boots in every corner, and the smell of his tobacco in every curtain?

But the country tells me that I can’t have a child in my house without a man in it too; so I tell the country that it will have to do without my children.

If I am to be a mother, I really cannot have a man bothering me to be a wife at the same time.

My dear Lesbia: you know I don’t wish to be impertinent; but these are not the correct views for an English lady to express.

Turning on him.

Then why on earth do you want to marry a woman you don’t understand?

I don’t know. I suppose I love you.

Well, you know our family rule.

When at a loss consult the greengrocer.

Opportunely Collins comes in through the tower. Here he is.

A bargain’s a bargain, General. Mrs. Bridgenorth sent for the greengrocer, not for the alderman.

It’s just as unpleasant to get more than you bargain for as to get less.

I’m sure she will agree with me. I attach importance to this as an affirmation of solidarity in the service of the community. The Bishop’s apron, my uniform, your robes: the Church, the Army, and the Municipality.

Stung. Ha! The old complaint. You all want geniuses to marry.

This demand for clever men is ridiculous. Somebody must marry the plain, honest, stupid fellows.

Have you thought of that?

But there are such lots of stupid women to marry. Why do they want to marry us? Besides, Rejjy knows that I’m quite fond of him.

I like him because he wants me; and I like Sinjon because I want him.

I feel that I have a duty to Rejjy.

And, of course, Sinjon has the same duty to me.

Oh, how silly the law is! Why can’t I marry them both?

Well, I love them both. I should like to marry a lot of men.

… Rejjy for every day, and Sinjon for concerts and theatres and going out in the evenings, and some great austere saint for about once a year at the end of the season, and some perfectly blithering idiot of a boy to be quite wicked with.

I so seldom feel wicked; and, when I do, it’s such a pity to waste it merely because it’s too silly to confess to a real grown up man.

This is the kind of thing, you know. Helplessly. Well, there it is!

Oh, very well: go on. I’m not clever. Only a silly soldier man. Ha! Go on. He throws himself into the railed chair, as one prepared for the worst.

If we are going to discuss ethical questions we must begin by giving the devil fair play.

Boxer never does. England never does. We always assume that the devil is guilty; and we won’t allow him to prove his innocence, because it would be against public morals if he succeeded. We used to do the same with prisoners accused of high treason.

It was that awful little curate that afterwards drank, and travelled first class with a third-class ticket, and then tried to go on the stage. But they wouldn’t have him. He called himself Egerton Fotheringay.

Well, whom Egerton Fotheringay hath joined, let Sir Gorell Barnes put asunder by all means.

I may be a silly soldier man; but I call this blasphemy.

Mildly.

This is not quarrelling, Lesbia: it’s only English family life.

Good morning.

So you shall, my dear, if you are lucky. But you know you needn’t marry them all. Think of all the buttons you would have to sew on.

Besides, nothing is more dreadful than a husband who keeps telling you everything he thinks, and always wants to know what you think.

Struck by this. Well, that’s very true of Rejjy: In fact, that’s why I had to divorce him.

You see, my dear, you’ll exhaust Sinjon’s conversation too in a week or so.

A man is like a phonograph with half-a-dozen records.

You soon get tired of them all; and yet you have to sit at table whilst he reels them off to every new visitor. In the end you have to be content with his common humanity;

Then it’s a mistake to get married.

It is, my dear; but it’s a much bigger mistake not to get married.

Rising. Ha! You hear that, Lesbia? He joins her at the garden door.

Oh yes: she began the correspondence by making a very curious but very natural assignation.

She wants me to meet her in heaven. I hope I shall.

Well, I must say I hope not, Alfred. I hope not.

But, you know, I’ve seen one of our daughters after another—Ethel, Jane, Fanny, and Christina and Florence—go out at that door in their veils and orange blossoms; and

I’ve always wondered whether they’d have gone quietly if they’d known what they were doing.

I’ve a horrible misgiving about that pamphlet. All progress means war with Society. Heaven forbid that Edith should be one of the combatants!

But you see how it affects my view of the situation. To me there is only one marriage that is holy: the Church’s sacrament of marriage. Outside that, I can recognize no distinction between one civil contract and another.

There was a time when all marriages were made in Heaven.

But because the Church was unwise and would not make its ordinances reasonable, its power over men and women was taken away from it; and marriages gave place to contracts at a registry office.

I hope so. Surely you’re not going to be vindictive, Rejjy. Besides, you’ll have all the advantages I formerly enjoyed.

You’ll be the visitor, the relief, the new face, the fresh news, the hopeless attachment: I shall only be the husband.

Savagely. Will you tell me this, any of you? how is it that we always get talking about Hotchkiss when our business is about Edith? He fumes up the kitchen to the tower and back to his chair.

Snatching at this, the first intelligible proposition he has heard.

Oh, the world will go on, ma’am don’t you be afraid of that. It ain’t so easy to stop it as the earnest kind of people think.

I knew you would agree with me, Collins. Thank you.

You pick it up as they go on talking. He goes to the corner of the table and speaks across it to the company. Well, my Lord and Miss Edith and Madam and Gentlemen, it’s like this.

Marriage is tolerable enough in its way if you’re easygoing and don’t expect too much from it. But it doesn’t bear thinking about.

The great thing is to get the young people tied up before they know what they’re letting themselves in for. There’s Miss Lesbia now. She waited till she started thinking about it; and then it was all over.

Well, my Lord and Miss Edith and Madam and Gentlemen, it’s like this. Marriage is tolerable enough in its way if you’re easygoing and don’t expect too much from it. But it doesn’t bear thinking about.

The great thing is to get the young people tied up before they know what they’re letting themselves in for.

There’s Miss Lesbia now. She waited till she started thinking about it; and then it was all over. If you once start arguing, Miss Edith and Mr. Sykes, you’ll never get married. Go and get married first:

Soames became secretly converted to Anglicanism at the age of fifteen. He longed to take holy orders, but didn’t dare to, because his father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to drop dead if anybody hurt his feelings.

You may have noticed that people with weak hearts are the tyrants of English family life.

So poor Soames had to become a solicitor. When his father died—by a curious stroke of poetic justice he died of scarlet fever, and was found to have had a perfectly sound heart—I ordained Soames and made him my chaplain. He is now quite happy.

Taking his seat. I was christened Oliver Cromwell Soames. My father had no right to do it. I have taken the name of Anthony.

When you become parents, young gentlemen, be very careful not to label a helpless child with views which it may come to hold in abhorrence.

Has Alice explained to you the nature of the document we are drafting?

Do your duty and see.

Doing your duty is your business: keeping the world going is in higher hands.

Taking up his pen. You won’t take my advice. I didn’t expect you would. Well, I await your instructions.

Come, I say, Anthony! You’re worse than any of us. A day!

Off the path is off the path. An inch or a mile: what does it matter?

If the marriage is not to be forever, I’ll have nothing to do with it. I call it immoral to have a marriage for a term of years. If the people don’t like it they can get divorced.

To Soames. You take my tip, Anthony. Put a clause into that agreement that the doctor is to have no say in the job.

It’s bad enough for the two people to be married to one another without their both being married to the doctor as well.

That reminds me of something very important. Boxer believes in vaccination: I do not. There must be a clause that I am to decide on such questions as I think best.

I’m sorry, Cecil.

A Bishop’s daughter is a poor man’s daughter.

But surely you don’t imagine that I’m going to let Edith work when we’re married. I’m not a rich man; but I’ve enough to spare her that; and when my mother dies—

There’s a third party, my lord. There’s the child itself. My wife is so fond of her children that they can’t call their lives their own. They all run away from home to escape from her.

A child hasn’t a grown up person’s appetite for affection. A little of it goes a long way with them; and they like a good imitation of it better than the real thing, as every nurse knows.

Are you sure that any of us, young or old, like the real thing as well as we like an artistic imitation of it? Is not the real thing accursed? Are not the best beloved always the good actors rather than the true sufferers?

Are you sure that any of us, young or old, like the real thing as well as we like an artistic imitation of it? Is not the real thing accursed? Are not the best beloved always the good actors rather than the true sufferers?

Is not love always falsified in novels and plays to make it endurable?

I have noticed in myself a great delight in pictures of the Saints and of Our Lady;

Turning fiercely on him. What right have you to say so?

You know that the sins that are wasting and maddening this unhappy nation are those committed in wedlock.

Well, the single ones can’t afford to indulge their affections the same as married people.

Upon what compulsion must I? I’ll take divine nature as it is. I’ll not hold a candle to the devil.

That’s a very unchristian way of treating the devil.

Well, we don’t seem to be getting any further, do we?

Her eyes are alive, arresting and haunting; and there is still a turn of delicate beauty and pride in her indomitable chin; but her cheeks are wasted and lined, her mouth writhen and piteous.

The whole face is a battlefield of the passions, quite deplorable until she speaks, when an alert sense of fun rejuvenates her in a moment, and makes her company irresistible.

All rise except Soames, who sits down. Leo joins Reginald at the garden door. Mrs. Bridgenorth hurries to the tower to receive her guest, and gets as far as Soames’s chair when Mrs. George appears.

George and I are good friends. George belongs to me. Other men may come and go; but George goes on forever.

Yes: a husband soon becomes nothing but a habit.

Listen: I suppose this detestable fascination you have for me is love.

Yes: a husband soon becomes nothing but a habit. Listen: I suppose this detestable fascination you have for me is love.

Any sort of feeling for a woman is called love nowadays.

Promptly. My love is not quite so cheap an article as that, my lad. I wouldn’t cross the street to have another look at you—not yet. I’m not starving for love like the robins in winter, as the good ladies you’re accustomed to are.

Promptly. My love is not quite so cheap an article as that, my lad. I wouldn’t cross the street to have another look at you—not yet.

I’m not starving for love like the robins in winter, as the good ladies you’re accustomed to are.

You’ll have to be very clever, and very good, and very real, if you are to interest me. If George takes a fancy to you, and you amuse him enough, I’ll just tolerate you coming in and out occasionally for—well, say a month.

Why should they be, pray?

Women are all different: it’s the men who are all the same.

Besides, what does Miss Grantham know about either men or women? She’s got too much self control.

Oh, sentimental your grandmother!

You don’t learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself.

I’m not a prizefighter, Mrs. Collins. If I can’t get a thing without the indignity of fighting for it, I do without it.

I’m not a prizefighter, Mrs. Collins.

If I can’t get a thing without the indignity of fighting for it, I do without it.

Do you? Does it strike you that if we were all as clever as you at doing without, there wouldn’t be much to live for, would there?

Looking after him triumphantly. Just caught the dear old warrior on the bounce, eh?

I’m not your property, young man: don’t you think it.

She goes over to him and faces him. You understand that? He suddenly snatches her into his arms and kisses her. Oh! You dare do that again, you young blackguard; and I’ll jab one of these chairs in your face.

You are in it already.

Marriage is a trap. You are married.

Any man who has the power to spoil your marriage has the power to spoil your life. I have that power over you.

You are in it already. Marriage is a trap. You are married.

Any man who has the power to spoil your marriage has the power to spoil your life.

I have that power over you.

I don’t rebuke you. Who am I that I should rebuke you?

Besides, I know there are discussions in which the poker is the only possible argument.

My lord: be earnest with me. I’m a very funny woman, I daresay; but I come from the same workshop as you. I heard you say that yourself years ago.

It was from you that I learnt first to respect myself. It was through you that I came to be able to walk safely through many wild and wilful paths. Don’t go back on your own teaching.

I’m not a teacher: only a fellow traveller of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead⁠—ahead of myself as well as of you.

Rising and standing over him almost threateningly. As I’m a living woman this day, if I find you out to be a fraud, I’ll kill myself.

Oh, very much.

When you meet a man who is very particular about his salvation, look out for a woman who is very particular about her character; and marry them to one another: they’ll make a perfect pair.

I advise you to fall in love; Anthony.

You prophesy falsely, Anthony: never in all my life have I done anything that was not ordained for me. More quietly.

I’ve been myself. I’ve not been afraid of myself.

And at last I have escaped from myself, and am become a voice for them that are afraid to speak, and a cry for the hearts that break in silence.

and you ask me for a little lifetime more. We possessed all the universe together; and you ask me to give you my scanty wages as well. I have given you the greatest of all things; and you ask me to give you little things.

I gave you your own soul: you ask me for my body as a plaything.

Was it not enough? Was it not enough?

Must I mend your clothes and sweep your floors as well? Was it not enough? I paid the price without bargaining: I bore the children without flinching: was that a reason for heaping fresh burdens on me?

I carried the child in my arms: must I carry the father too?

When I opened the gates of paradise, were you blind? was it nothing to you? When all the stars sang in your ears and all the winds swept you into the heart of heaven, were you deaf? were you dull?

When all the stars sang in your ears and all the winds swept you into the heart of heaven, were you deaf? were you dull? was I no more to you than a bone to a dog? Was it not enough?

We spent eternity together; and you ask me for a little lifetime more. We possessed all the universe together; and you ask me to give you my scanty wages as well.

I have given you the greatest of all things; and you ask me to give you little things. I gave you your own soul: you ask me for my body as a plaything. Was it not enough? Was it not enough?

With intensely sad reproach. When you loved me I gave you the whole sun and stars to play with.

I gave you eternity in a single moment, strength of the mountains in one clasp of your arms, and the volume of all the seas in one impulse of your souls.

A moment only; but was it not enough? Were you not paid then for all the rest of your struggle on earth? Must I mend your clothes and sweep your floors as well? Was it not enough? I paid the price without bargaining:

No.

Take us as we are capable of becoming.

Take me as I am: I ask no more. She turns her head to the study door and cries, Yes: come in, come in.

Troubled. You are paining and tiring me with idle questions. You are dragging me back to myself. You are tormenting me with your evil dreams of saints and devils and—what was it?—striving to fathom it the pythoness—the pythoness—giving it up I don’t understand.

I am a woman: a human creature like yourselves. Will you not take me as I am?

Yes; but shall we take you and burn you?

I daresay I should, in a frowsty sort of way. But I prefer my dignity and my independence.

I’m afraid I think this rage for happiness rather vulgar.

Oh, very well, Lesbia. I shall not ask you again. He sits down huffily.