I think marriage is the hottest furnace of the spirit today. Much more difficult than solitude, much more challenging for people who want to work on themselves. It’s a situation in which there are no alibis, excruciating most of the time… but it’s only in this situation that any kind of work can be done.
I promise you to be a splendid husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, won’t appear in my sky every day.[Я обещаю быть великолепным мужем, но дайте мне такую жену, которая, как луна, являлась бы на моем небе не каждый день.]
I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all.
I began as a passion and have ended as a habit, like all husbands.
I am about to be married – and am of course in all the misery of a man in pursuit of happiness.
Husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives.
Both marriage and death ought to be welcome: the one promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it.
An unmarried man, in my opinion, enjoys only half a life.
A fiance is neither this nor that: he’s left one shore, but not yet reached the other.[Жених — это ни то ни сё: от одного берега ушел, к другому не дошел.]
