What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage.
(Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), U.S. author. Originally published with the vocal score as the libretto for the opera by Virgil Thomson, Music Press (1947). The Mother of Us All, Last Operas and Plays, Rinehart (1949).)
It is obvious that rationality has been utterly lost in modern marriage: which is no objection to marriage, however, but rather to modernity.
(Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher, classical scholar, critic of culture. Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 6, p. 140, eds. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Berlin, de Gruyter (1980). Twilight of the Idols, "Skirmishes of an Untimely Man," section 39 (prepared for publication 1888, published 1889).)
Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.
(Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), British philosopher, mathematician. "Prostitution," Marriage and Morals (1929).)
Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.
(Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694-1778), French philosopher, author. "Divorce," Philosophical Dictionary (1764).
Full name: François Marie Arouet Voltaire.)
