“A successful marriage puts an end to feminine friendships; but if marriage is a failure, the young woman must have others to confide in.”

“Marriage is the cure of love, and friendship the cure of marriage.”

“Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.”

“Marriage: A friendship recognized by the police.”

“A man’s friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage—but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.”

“It's like going out and saying, "That tree is a car." Well, the tree's not a car. A tree's a tree. Marriage is marriage. You can say that tree is something other than it is. It can redefine it. But it doesn't change the essential nature of what marriage is. Marriage is a union between a man and a woman for the purposes of the benefit of both the man and the woman, a natural unitive according to nature, unitive, that is for the purposes of having and rearing children and for the benefit of both the man and the woman involved in that relationship. And for the benefit of society because we need to have stable families of men and woman bonded together to raise children. That's what marriage is.”

“Friendships, like marriages, are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable.”

“The couch was for sleep at the end of exhausting days. I confided in her less often. Perhaps that is the fate of all marriages.”

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

“Marriage is not at all what romantic lovers imagine it to be; it is an institution founded upon an instinct; to be successful, it requires not only physical attraction, but will-power, patience, and the always difficult acceptance of "the other"; finally, if these conditions are fulfilled, a beautiful and lasting affection can be established - a unique and, to those who have never known it, incomprehensible mingling of love, friendship, sensuality, and respect, without which there is no true marriage.”