Dating

“ More, the careful comparison of dates alone—that of birth with marriage, of marriage with death, of one marriage, birth, or death with a kindred marriage, birth, or death—will often effect the same transformation, and anybody practised in raising images from such genealogies finds himself unconsciously filling into the framework the motives, passions, and personal qualities which would appear to be the single explanation possible of some extraordinary conjunction in times, events, and personages that occasionally marks these reticent family records. ”

“ If the marriage of our lovers conform to the majority of marriages, the first year of their wedded life will determine whether they are able to share bed and board through the lengthening years. For this first year—often the first months of it—marks the transition from love to conjugal affection, or witnesses a rupture which nothing less than omnipotence can ever mend. ”

“ The old couple sit side by side, and the old time seems like yesterday indeed. Looking back upon the path they have travelled, its dust and ashes disappear; the flowers that withered long ago, show brightly again upon its borders, and they grow young once more in the youth of those about them. ”

“ I speak of a Disparity of Years, which, in the Moral, takes in all Other Disproportions. The One’s too Young, T’other too Old; to shew us that Marriage is out of Season if it does not Hit the very Critical Point betwixt them. ”

“ And so they came together, as thousands and thousands of others have done, driven by love, in the face of all reason. The history of their marriage was the history of many another that reaches from youth to old age. ”

“ On all these occasions the young lady and gentleman, under the auspices of their elders, entered very freely into the fashionable amusements of the season, with the understanding, however, that they were not to fall in love, or even to flirt with any one but each other. ”

“ MARRIAGE.—A Bachelor, an Officer of the Queen's, of considerable personal attractions, and in the flower of his age, is desirous of meeting a young lady of beauty, accomplishments, and good family, who, feeling as he does the want of a kindred heart and sympathetic soul, will accord him the favor either of a letter or an interview, as a preliminary to the greatest step in life. ”

“ I have an awful fear that when we are getting married instead of answering 'I will,' he will go into the pulpit and deliver an address on Marriage Ceremonies of All Ages. The world to him is a vast lecture-platform. He looks on life as one long after-dinner, with himself as the principal speaker of the evening. ”

“ It is a tendency of modern life that marriage be deferred more and more to a later period of maturity. Accordingly the period of spinsterhood is an important one for consideration. It is a question of individual mental attitude whether the period be viewed by the single woman as a preparation for possible marriage, or as the determining of a permanent condition of life. ”

“ The Best Time.—All things considered, we advise the male reader to keep his desires in check till he is at least twenty-five, and the female not to enter the pale of wedlock until she has attained the age of twenty. After those periods, marriage is the proper sphere of action, and one in which nearly every individual is called by nature to play his proper part. ”

“ In the garden, on the road or the hillside, or tête-à-tête and apart from interruptions, occasions arise when we may learn much from any single woman; and nowhere more often than in married life. Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes. ”

“ If you happen to be looking for anybody, you'll realize that there's some people scattered around in your vicinity. I had a date with a girl, down here one Sunday during the season, and we hunted each other from ten in the morning till ten at night and never got sight of each other. ”

“ A young lady will hear some one strongly advocate early marriages to-day, and to-morrow hear an opposite opinion advanced and vigorously maintained. It is but rarely the case that those who enter into these discussions really understand the subject of marriage, and therefore cannot declare what is absolutely true on this disputed question. And, besides, what one means by early marriage is a different thing from what another means. ”

“ Suddenly the idea of marriage presented itself to my mind. If we never got out of the shaft, of course an engagement need not be announced. No one had ever plighted his or her troth at the bottom of a prospect shaft before. ”

“ Even in this age of more fastidious manners, it is probable that the tender interchanges of affection between a young couple rejoining each other after deep calamities, and standing on the brink of fresh, perhaps endless separations, would meet with something of the same indulgence from the least interested witnesses. ”

“ I heard the other day of a very ordinary colonial girl who had eleven men all wanting to marry her at once. Eleven men! And yet there are scores of charming English girls who grow old and soured without having had a single offer of marriage. ”

“ Should couples study each other's characters during a long period of engagement? Alas! how could they be hopeful of success when, after ten years of married life, they often discover they were not made for each other? I have known English couples who had been engaged ten years trying to find out if they were fit for each other. Poor couples! they might have been engaged fifty years without any more chance of success. Life during an engagement means the daily repetition of an old story: sentimental walks. The sky is serene, the sea is smooth. ”

“ When we ask you if you are old enough to marry, we mean mature enough. And maturity, as it bears on your readiness for marriage, can be measured in at least five ways: physiological, mental, vocational, sexual and emotional maturity. ”

“ Valentine Day.—Let a single woman go out of her own door very early in the morning, and if the first person she meets be a woman, she will not be married that year: if she meet a man, she will be married within three months. ”

“ He would be invited to meet a girl at a dinner got up for his benefit, that he might meet her, and would spend the evening hanging over a little unheard-of country cousin with a low voice and soft eyes, entertaining her with stories of his country days or of his wanderings; or he would be put by some belle, and after five minutes’ homage spend the time talking to some old lady about her grandchildren. “You must marry,” they said to him. “When one rises from the dead,” he replied. ”

“ Courtship and married life usually, mind I say usually, resolve themselves into three phases, or, as you will understand the expression better, three periods.
“The first is the young lover, who once having gained the affections of a girl, thinks that there can be no other like her in all the world. He sees not the imperfections in her that others do ”

“ Courtship, love, presents, jointures, settlements, have no place in their thoughts; or terms whereby to express them in their language. The young couple meet, and are joined, merely because it is the determination of their parents and friends; it is what they see done every day, and they look upon it as one of the necessary actions of a reasonable being. ”

“ The age that is most suited for marriage is also a matter which will depend largely on individual circumstances. The ancients, as is well known, placed it, in the case of the man, far back, and they desired a great difference of age between the man and the woman. ”

“ Albeit there are many such days in summer, the middle-aged couple felt in their middle-aged bones that all signs were auspicious, and that this tin- wedding trip, from the fleecy cloud arrangement of the heavens to the bounding of their middle-aged hearts, would be a repetition of their first bashful attempt at journeying together. ”

“ Assembled again on Saturday morning, we begin by preparing our "rolling agenda," as one of the trainee couples called it, in order to keep a record of what the group members want to talk about. The aspects of marriage they want to include for discussion before the [16] weekend is over gives us clues to the issues that are important to them. The list with which one of our trainee couples started their retreat was:
What is the state of our marriage now? ”

“ It was a strange talk for the first one—so subtly intimate, with its flashes of personality and freedom from conventions, that it seemed like a meeting of old friends, rather than of strangers. Some intimacies are like the oak, long and steady of growth; others spring to full maturity in an hour's time. ”

“ Accordingly matches were managed to a large extent by old women, who were allowed to go from house to house, and who explained to the young woman the qualities of the young man and to the young man the qualities of the young woman. A marriage concluded in such a way might or might not be happy, but there could be little ideal love about it. ”

“ There remains behind not only a large harvest, but labourers capable of gathering it in; more than one writer has of late displayed talents of this description, and if the present author, himself a phantom, may be permitted to distinguish a brother, or perhaps a sister, shadow, he would mention in particular the author of the very lively work entitled Marriage. ”

“ The ancient marriage, and indeed the medieval one, and the marriage of our own grandmother's time began with submission and usually ended with subjection. But the modern marriage at its best is a spiritual and material partnership. It is the modern marriage at its best and otherwise with which we have to do. ”

“ When a bachelor decides on marriage, by running over a few pages of our work, he will, in half an hour, be able to select a desirable match; by applying at our office, and giving testimonials of his respectability, he will receive the lady's name and address ”

“ The time between engagement and marriage should be neither too short nor too long. A period not shorter than three months and no longer than a year should elapse between the engagement and the marriage. ”

“ After a quarter of an hour or so an old woman comes in, makes an examination, and informs the assembled guests that the marriage has been consummated, and cries of joy are uttered and the newly married couple separate. ”

“ Men have, since the world began, been angled for deliberately by girls, and times out of count have been caught.
Girls will continue to fish for husbands, and will continue to catch them as long as marriage [173] is a fashion—a state likely to coincide with the length of time the world lasts. ”

“ One can imagine that a young nobleman, who, though athletic and fond of the open air, was at the same time of a bookish and dreamy disposition, might, in such a pleasant retreat, have lingered on, a bachelor, until the discretion of the thirties would have befriended him in selecting a suitable mate. ”

“ When the females come in season this social intercourse yields to a more lively sentiment; the herd separate in pairs, having each chosen their mates; they then seek for solitary places, and in their march love seems to precede and modesty to follow them; for they observe the greatest mystery in their amours, and they have never been seen to couple. ”

“ I suppose that the reason why in novels the story ends with a marriage is partly that the excitement of the tale ceases then, and partly also because of a theory that marriage is an epoch, determining the career of life after it. ”

“ The dearer the marriages become, the better for the country. What a hurry-scurry of passing examinations and marrying right off! It seems as if no one was to be left a bachelor, but it is just the same thing again, next year! ”

“ To the ardent youths and maidens—restless seekers after the elusive joy of life—who will have none of this prosaic and 67 inglorious counsel, and who are prepared to stake their all on the belief that the first sweet sting of love is going to last for ever, I say: Get your roses-and-raptures over some other way; don’t look for romance in marriage or, unless your case prove the exception to the rule, you will inevitably make a terrible mistake! ”

“ The young couple discover these things in each other during the first two or three months of married life. All their future happiness depends on how they both act, under the influence of these discoveries. ”

“ I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight—that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin. ”

“ In the life history of every couple there is a period of adaptation, which is sooner or later passed through at the expense of one or the other, or both, resigning themselves to an acceptance of the stronger, or positive, elements in the other's disposition. ”

“ Nothing like what our remote ancestors called marriage is recognised at all. The maidens who come of age each year sell themselves by a sort of auction, those who purchase them arranging with the girls themselves the terms on which the latter will enter their family. ”

“ The essence of a marriage ceremony, the same writer continues, "is the 'joining together' of a man and a woman; in the words of our English service, 'for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife ”

“ The most interesting object is the wife. And the proper time for a bridal tour is the time—say ten or a dozen years later—when you are beginning (not to get tired of each other, that’s out of the question) but to get a little too well used to each other. ”