“London is full of women who trust their husbands. One can always recognize them. They look so thoroughly unhappy.”
“As a housewife, I feel that if the kids are still alive when my husband gets home from work, then hey, I've done my job.”
“The argument between wives and whores is an old one; each one thinking that whatever she is, at least she is not the other.”
“In that second it dawned on me that I had been living here for eight years with a strange man and had borne him three children.”
“In your power, all the same. Subject to your will and your demands. No longer free! No! That's a thought I'll never endure! Never.”
“If you are really Master of your Fate, it shouldn't make any difference to you whether Cleopatra or the Bearded Lady is your mate.”
“He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.”
“He's a fool that marries, but he's a greater that does not marry a fool; what is wit in a wife good for, but to make a man a cuckold?”
“Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived. It is a pity that this is still the only knowledge of their wives at which some men seem to arrive.”
“The fact is that my wife if she had common sense would have more power over me than any other whatsoever, for my heart always alights upon the nearest perch.”
“Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.”
“Many a promising career has been wrecked by marrying the wrong sort of woman. The right sort of woman can distinguish between Creative Lassitude and plain shiftlessness.”
“When I think of a merry, happy, free young girl -- and look at the ailing, aching state a young wife generally is doomed to -- which you can't deny is the penalty of marriage.”
“The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character.”
“I'm sorry to say my dear wife is a dreamer, and as she dreams she gets paler and leaner. Then be off to your Dream, with his fly-away hat, I stay with the girls who are happy and fat.”
“This comes of James teaching me to think for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what other people may think of me. It works beautifully as long as I think the same things as he does.”
“Those graceful acts, those thousand decencies, that daily flow from all her words and actions, mixed with love and sweet compliance, which declare unfeigned union of mind, or in us both one soul.”
“No girl who is going to marry need bother to win a college degree; she just naturally becomes a ''Master of Arts'' and a ''Doctor of Philosophy'' after catering to an ordinary man for a few years.”
“A woman asking ''Am I good? Am I satisfied?'' is extremely selfish. The less women fuss about themselves, the less they talk to other women, the more they try to please their husbands, the happier the marriage is going to be.”
“Such a wife as I want... must be young, handsome I lay most stress upon a good shape, sensible a little learning will do, well-bread, chaste, and tender. As to religion, a moderate stock will satisfy me. She must believe in God and hate a saint.”
“Such indeed is the superior longevity of the fair females of Surinam, compared to that of the males (owing chiefly, as I said, to their excesses of all sorts) that I have frequently known wives who have buried four husbands, but never met a man in this country who had survived two wives.”
“In America a woman loses her independence for ever in the bonds of matrimony. While there is less constraint on girls there than anywhere else, a wife submits to stricter obligations. For the former, her father's house is a home of freedom and pleasure; for the latter, her husband's is almost a cloister.”
“The majority of persons choose their wives with as little prudence as they eat. They see a troll with nothing else to recommend her but a pair of thighs and choice hunkers, and so smart to void their seed that they marry her at once. They imagine they can live in marvelous contentment with handsome feet and ambrosial buttocks. Most men are accredited fools shortly after they leave the womb.”