The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, read more

The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, which looks to the European like serial polygamy, is the moral solution to the problem of the itch. Love comes into it too, of course, but in Europe we tend to see marital love as an eternity which encompasses hate and also indifference: when we promise to love we really mean that we promise to honor a contract. Americans, seeming to take marriage with not enough seriousness, are really taking love and sex with too much.

Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.

Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.

The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may read more

The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.

For he who loves must live.

For he who loves must live.

The uncommitted life isn't worth living.

The uncommitted life isn't worth living.

A meeting between two people who complete each other, who are made for each other, borders already, in my opinion, read more

A meeting between two people who complete each other, who are made for each other, borders already, in my opinion, on a miracle.

Where there is great love, there are always wishes.

Where there is great love, there are always wishes.

Marriage is like a bank account. You put it in, you take it out, you lose interest.

Marriage is like a bank account. You put it in, you take it out, you lose interest.

We all suffer from the preoccupation that there exists ... in the loved one, perfection.

We all suffer from the preoccupation that there exists ... in the loved one, perfection.