Marriage is a fight to the death. Before contracting it, the two parties concerned implore the benediction of Heaven because to promise to love each other forever is the rashest of enterprises.
Honore de BalzacSelf-love is as protective as the Deity; Disenchantment is as perspicacious as a surgeon; Experience is as provident as a mother. Such are the theologic virtues of marriage.
Honore de BalzacA penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life of another that we revere within us; then and so begins for us the cruelest trouble of all.
Honore de Balzac