God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. But because I happen to be a parent of almost fiercely maternal nature, I praise casualness. It seems to me the rarest of virtues. It is useful enough when children are small. It is useful to the point of necessity when they are adolescents.

In a successful marriage, there is no such thing as one's way. There is only the way of both, only the bumpy, dusty, difficult, but always mutual path.

Marriage was all a woman's idea and for man's acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to be grateful.

Relations are errors that Nature makes. / Your spouse you can put on the shelf. / But your friends, dear friends, are the quaint mistakes / You always commit yourself.

Getting along with men isn't what's truly important. The vital knowledge is how to get along with one man.

Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy

In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.