Marriage - Good, Bad and Indifferent

Jon Carroll.....

My obstinacy with regard to remodeling or, indeed, any change anywhere in the house is the despair of my wife. It's gotten so she starts proposals with, "OK, don't say no right away, think about it" or "I know you're going to say no, but ..." So I say "yes" once and I'm a hero, which is a kind of creepy conditioned behavior, but marriage is just creepy conditioned behavior with kissing, in my view.

From a New English Review article.....

“Woman inspires us to great things," remarked Alexandre Dumas, "and prevents us from achieving them.”

“Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men,” wrote Sir Francis Bacon (not a bachelor, but perhaps wishing he were).

H.L. Mencken....
“Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too.”

“If you are afraid of loneliness,” warned Chekhov, “don't marry."

On the other hand.....

Sir Francis Bacon maintained that, “wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity; and single men…are more cruel and hardhearted (good to make severe inquisitors), because their tenderness is not so oft called upon.”

George Gilder likewise notes that "Men need durable ties to women to discipline them for civilized life, or they become a menace to society and themselves… and tend to live short and destructive lives." Men, he argues, need marriage for psychological stability. Marriage/monogamy increases your chances of surviving and reproducing, which is what our genes demand of us. And he commonly lives a happier and longer life. Without women men revert to packs, and spend summer nights chawing tobacco, swilling moonshine, and baying at the moon.