Virginibus puerisque

by Robert Louis Stevenson

1881 · 256 pages

classic literature
love
interpersonal relations
marriage
conduct of life
english literature

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About this book

A collection of essays, the first of which begins: "WITH the single exception of Falstaff, all Shakespeare's characters are what we call marrying men.Mercutio, as he was own cousin to Benedick and Biron, would have come to the same end in the long run.Even Iago had a wife, and, what is far stranger, he was jealous.People like Jacques and the Fool in LEAR, although we can hardly imagine they would ever marry, kept single out of a cynical humour or for a broken heart, and not, as we do nowadays, from a spirit of incredulity and preference for the single state.For that matter, if you turn to George Sand's French version of AS YOU LIKE IT (and I think I can promise you will like it but little), you will find Jacques marries Celia just as Orlando marries Rosalind."

Quotes

From Wikiquote

You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with someone else.
Times are changed with him who marries; there are no more by-path meadows, where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave. Idleness, which is often becoming and even wise in the bachelor, begins to wear a different aspect when you have a wife to support.
Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords; and the little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys.
The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.