“It is not monogamy when there is one legal wife, and mistresses out of sight.”

“Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.”

“The Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistress.”

“Just ask yourselves, historians, when was monogamy introduced on to the face of the earth? When those buccaneers, who settled on the peninsula where Rome now stands, could not steal women enough to have two or three apiece, they passed a law that a man should have but one woman. And this started monogamy and the downfall of the plurality system. In the days of Jesus, Rome, having dominion over Jerusalem, they carried out the doctrine more or less. This was the rise, start and foundation of the doctrine of monogamy; and never till then was there a law passed, that we have any knowledge of, that a man should have but one wife.”

“When a man takes a mistress, he doesn't turn around and divorce his wife.”

“Don't say 'wife.' I'm your mistress. Wife's such an ugly word. Your 'permanent mistress' is so much more tangible and desirable….”

“[He was] delighted to be called the mistress, the wife, the Queen of Hierocles.”

“The epithet should be the mistress of the substantive, never its lawful wife.”

“You’re far too prickly tempered to be a mistress. You’re far better suited as a wife.”

“A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress.”