Quotes about divorce
page 3

“There is a saying that bad traders divorce their spouse sooner than abandon their positions. Loyalty to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists - or anyone.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Fooled by Randomness

Source: Five: Survival of the Least Fit—Can Evolution be Fool by Randomness | A Review of Market Fools of Randomness Constants | The Traits They Shared
Fooled by Randomness (2001)

Idea, Loyalty

“The philosophy of the foundations of probability must be divorced from mathematics and statistics, exactly as the discussion of our intuitive space concept is now divorced from geometry.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Introduction, The Nature of Probability Theory, p. 3.
An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition)

Mathematics

“Monks mass like a pack of wolves
from disputing with the masters who instruct them -
They know not when deep dark and dawn divorce
nor who sends the wind, nor who moves it,
where it disappears to, what land it strikes.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Spoils of Annwn

“The atheists aren't the problem here. For example, atheists would not take sequestered school children and force them to recite the daily mantra that there is no god, because atheists aren't the ones imposing religious views onto other people's children, and thus denying their rights. It's not the atheists who impede medical research either; we're usually not the ones against free or affordable healthcare, and we're not the ones minimizing or criminalizing women healthcare either. We're not the ones proudly perpetuating prejudice, be it racism, sexism or homophobia (among others). We're not the ones prohibiting or punishing partnerships between consenting adults, and we were not the ones who argued that persecution against gays (for example) should be somehow excusable or not considered a hate crime if it's done in the spirit or inspired by religion. Atheists don't want religion to have exemptions under the law, and why should we? It's not our demographic that has the most divorces, that has the most chemical dependencies, domestic violence, criminal convictions or even abortions. The only thing we might have more of are diplomas.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Don't Blame the Atheists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Ca88xNw_w (October 21, 2012)

Women, God, Hate, Children

“Why should we do it? We have done so many songs, during such a long time. The fact that we had two divorces, and there was no meaning, I think, with getting together, again.”

Agnetha Fältskog (1950) Swedish recording artist and entertainer

On reuniting ABBA
BBC interview (May 2013)

Thinking, Time

“Remember, [in the Bible] it's adultery only if the woman is already married. It doesn't matter if the man is married. If he is, she may just become another one of his wives, and a man can have sex with other women who aren't his wives, and that's not cheating either, as long as they live with him, because a man is also allowed to have concubines, and a concubine is a sort of sexual servant who serves no other purpose and has no claim to your estate. Your wife may not have a claim to your estate either, because when you die your wife may become your brother's sexual property. That's how the Bible defines marriage! The Bible does not prohibit multiple wives or incest either. In fact, both are promoted. However, when your father dies, your mother does not become your wife, and you can't inherit any of his other wives either, and the reason that the Bible gives for that is because that would be like looking up your father's skirt… So, a man can have multiple wives and a collection of personal harlots, but he can also have sex with his slaves, and that's not cheating either. You've heard of friends with benefits? You can call this your property rights. That's the only way that makes sense, because according to the Bible all women are property, and property doesn't have rights. Now, some people equate having sex with slaves to rape, because the slave doesn't have any choice. But, according to the Bible, women don't have any choice anyway, and rape can be a prelude to matrimony; if you're a Bronze Age Israelite and you see some young cutie walking unescorted, if you like her, you want her, you can have her, even if she doesn't want you. Now, if you rape a married woman, that's a death sentence for both of you (because the Bible is stupid like that). But if she's not promised to someone else, and you rape her and you get caught, you have to pay her father fifty shekels of silver and she's yours. He may not want her back after that, even his own child, because an unmarried woman who wasn't a virgin was considered damaged goods back then, so they had this rule that "if you pop it, you buy it." So your victim becomes your bride and you're stuck together forever, and can never get divorced (so be careful who you rape). There's actually a cheaper [and] easier way to get a bride; if a man takes a wife and decides he doesn't like her, if he can prove she wasn't a virgin (or if he can convince other people that was probably not a virgin), she she will be murdered on her father's doorstep because, according to the god of infinite mercy, that's the moral thing to do. But if she can prove that she was a virgin, then she must remain married forever to the man who hates her, because that's divine wisdom too. That unpleasant arrangement for both of you will also cost you a hundred shekels, whereas you can marry your rape victim for half the price. So, if you're a complete loser, and you can't get any woman who appeals to you by the normal way, just rape whoever you like and she's yours forever.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Biblical Family Values https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bldw8X5apnY (July 11, 2015)

Death, Wisdom, Women, God

“"Will you be wanting to contest the divorce?" I asked Mrs. Davis.
"I should think not," she said calmly, "although I suppose on of us should, for the fun of the thing. An uncontested divorce always seems to me contrary to the spirit of divorce."”

Donald Barthelme book Sixty Stories

"At The End Of The Mechanical Age".
Sixty Stories (1981)

Thinking

“Did Iraq invade Kuwait because of a lack of information? If a hideous war should ensue between Iraq and the U. S., will it happen because of a lack of information? If children die of starvation in Ethiopia, does it occur because of a lack of information? …If you and your spouse are unhappy together, and end your marriage in divorce, will it happen because of a lack of information? If your children misbehave and bring shame to your family, does it happen because of a lack of information? If someone in your family has a mental breakdown, will it happen because of a lack of information?”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)

Marriage, War, Children, Family

“Divorce laws have given women economic support after divorce; no laws have given men emotional support after divorce. Men are required to continue their obligations to their exes in the form of alimony or child support; women are not required to continue their obligation to their exes in the form of homemaking or nurturing.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Women, Men, Law, Support

“In actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“Goethe; or, the Writer,” pp. 271-272
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

Lie, Appearance

“Divorce is very expensive, both economically and psychologically as well, but it probably isn't any more so than living with someone who isn't really on your side.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

“People are still encouraged to marry as if they could count on marriage being for life, and at the same time they are absorbing a knowledge of the great frequency of divorce.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Male and Female (1949), p. 335

Life, Marriage, People, Knowledge

“What discordant vespers do the tinker's goods chime through the long twilight and over the brindled forest road, him stooped and hounded through the windy recrements of the day like those old exiles who divorced of corporeality and enjoined ingress of heaven or hell wander forever the middle warrens spoorless increate and anathema.”

Cormac McCarthy book Outer Dark

Outer Dark (1968)

Hell

“The Industrial Revolution, then, took men’s occasional absence from home -- previously needed only in wartime and for hunting -- and made it the norm. This increasing division of labor magnified the division of men’s and women’s interests. It magnified the belief in the maternal instinct and the reality of the distant father. Prior to industrialization, divorces usually led to children living with dads. Not after.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 88.

Women, Men, Children, Home

“The fine arts once divorcing themselves from truth are quite certain to fall mad, if they do not die.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Latter Day Pamphlet, No. 8. (1850).
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

Truth, Art, Madness

“Correlations are not explanations and besides, they can be as spurious as the high correlation in Finland between foxes killed and divorces.”

Gunnar Myrdal (1898–1987) Swedish economist

Beyond the Welfare State (1958)

“The part of my life I think I'm most disappointed in is that I have not had the great marriage. And I would have thought that would have happened, because I came from a home—you know, it's not like some of my friends, they get divorced, but their parents were divorced twice or three times. I came from a home where marriage was just incredible. I mean, my parents truly loved each other.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Good Morning America (2 December 1999), as quoted in The World According to Trump (2005) by Ken Lawrence, p. 46
1990s

Love, Life, Marriage, Disappointment

“I lost 28 pounds in my divorce…because that's what a soul weighs.”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

Love is Evol (2009)

Soul

“My mother saw herself as a victim. Once upon a time she had shaped her future and made decisions -- she had left Somalia for Aden, divorced her first husband and chosen my father--but at some point, it seemed, she lost hope. Many Somali women in her position would have worked, would have taken control of their lives, but my mother, having absorbed the Arab attitude that pious women should not work outside the home, felt that this would not be proper. It never occurred to her to go out and create a new life for herself, although she can't have been older than thirty-five or forty when my father left. Instead, she remained completely dependent. She nursed grievances; she was resentful; she was often violent; and she was always depressed.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 5

Life, Women, Hope, Home

“The last thing we want is a nasty divorce between humans and superintelligent machines, for that would certainly spell the end of the human race.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

“In more than thirty years of conducting workshops, no one has ever said to me, “Warren, I want a divorce – my partner understands me.””

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 15.

Understanding

“Chemists think in the highly visual nanoscopic world of atoms and molecules, but they work in the tangible world of macroscopic laboratory apparatus. These two approaches to the chemical sciences cannot be divorced.”

David W. Oxtoby (1951) President of Pomona college

Principles of Modern Chemistry (7th ed., 2012), Ch. 1 : The Atom in Modern Chemistry

World, Thinking, Science

“We begin again to structure the primordial feelings…from which 3000 years of literacy divorced us. We begin again to live a myth.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, Counterblast (1969), p. 17

Feeling

“Teaching children to debate without teaching children to listen is divorce training.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 36.

Children, Training

“She divorced her husband, y' know. I never knew him, it was before I met Jane. Apparently she came back from work one mornin' an' found her husband in bed with the milkman. With the milkman, honest to God. Well, apparently, from that day forward Jane was a feminist. An' I've noticed, she never takes milk in her tea.”

Willy Russell Shirley Valentine

Shirley, page 13.
Shirley Valentine (1986)

God, Tea

“Homosexuality and lesbianism, like divorce, breed a society of single parents which gives rise to a generation of bastards. And in the context of much poverty and lack of education, this further produces an ill-bred generation of hooligans, portending much terror to the peace and stability of the society.”

Peter Akinola (1944) Anglican Primate of the Church of Nigeria

Education, Peace, Parent

“After a conflict, women are not only more likely to turn to other womenfriends for support, but are nine times more likely to be with their children should conflict become divorce.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Women, Children, Support, Time

“The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal — every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open — this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.”

Washington Irving book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

"Rural Funerals".
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)

Solitude, Affliction, Dead, Forgetting

“International Jews.
In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia) Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxemborg (Germany) and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
Graves: This was written by Winston Churchill, a highly regarded M. P. in England…so, I need hardly remind you that it will take strong evidence to prove the “Protocols” ‘’’a fake!’’’
Raslovlev: At an old bookshop I got a copy of “The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu,” by Maurice Joly, 1864.
I examined what I had. It was obvious that the “Protocols of Zion” was copied from it.
Graves: How did you get this?
Raslovlev: I bought this book from a friend, formerly of the Okhrana, our secret agents in France. They ordered the plagiarism!
When the Bolsheviks came in, we left with what we could take out with us.
How much is it worth to you, or your paper, Mr. Graves?
Graves: Hmm…can’t say yet! …Is Geneva really the place of publication??
Raslovlev: I do know that the “Protocols of Zion: was intended to prove to the Tsar that the Revolt in Russia was a Jewish Plot…it was written by an Okhrana agent…a plagiarist, Mathieu Golovinski!
When it was first published in Russia round 1902, its publisher, Dr. Nilus, claimed it to be notes stolen from an 1897 Zionist congress by French agents!
Graves: But that congress was convened by Theodore Herzl to promote a Jewish state. It was not a secret meeting…Dr. Nilus’s claim is a lie!
Raslovlev: Yes, it is indeed! Let me show you…we will compare the “Protocols” with Joly’s Book.
Raslovlev: Set them side by side Graves, and you will see obvious plagiarism of Joly’s “dialogue!”
Graves: I see…be patient while I go through it…yes! Yes! Yes!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 70-73

Men, People, Lie, Secret

“The problem, if anything, was precisely the opposite. I had too much to write: too many fine and miserable buildings to construct and streets to name and clock towers to set chiming, too many characters to raise up from the dirt like flowers whose petals I peeled down to the intricate frail organs within, too many terrible genetic and fiduciary secrets to dig up and bury and dig up again, too many divorces to grant, heirs to disinherit, trysts to arrange, letters to misdirect into evil hands, innocent children to slay with rheumatic fever, women to leave unfulfilled and hopeless, men to drive to adultery and theft, fires to ignite at the hearts of ancient houses.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Women, Men, Children, Secret

“Our point of departure is to serve the people whole-heartedly and never for a moment divorce ourselves from the masses, to proceed inall cases from the interests of the people and not from one's self-interest or from the interests of a small group, and to identify our responsibility to the people with out responsibility to the leading organs of the Party.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Coalition Government (1945)

People, Departure

“Of course, there have been myriad conceptions of God since the dawn of civilization. There are the Abrahamic conceptions of God, including the monotheistic God of Judaism and the trinitarian God of Christians. In Buddhism, God is almost non-theist. In fact, conceptions of God vary so widely there’s no clear consensus on the definition of God. In short, believers believe God has an incorporeal (immaterial) existence, and that there’s an afterlife…According to biocentrism, a new “theory of everything,” the material and immaterial worlds are co-relative. Life and consciousness represents one side of the equation, matter and energy the other. They can’t be divorced; split them and the reality is gone. Although the current scientific paradigm is based on the belief that the world has an objective observer-independent existence, a long list of experiments shows the opposite.”

Robert Lanza (1956) American medical doctor

Biocentrism and the Existence of God http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-god-exist-or-not-new_b_802103.html, Huffington Post, January 3, 2011.

Life, God, World, Reality

“When my dad divorced my mom it was kind of like him leaving me also. I just really didn't understand why he wasn't returning my phone calls, or why I couldn't see him whenever I wanted to. That was the most hurtful thing to me.”

Nicole Richie (1981) American television personality, musician, actress, and author

Source: Lionel Richie and Daughter Nicole on Fame, Drugs and Divorce http://www.oprah.com/tows/slide/200405/20040521/tows_slide_20040521_01.jhtml Interview with Oprah Winfrey, May 21, 2004 (March 6, 2008)

Moms, Understanding, Hurt

“On the third floor of Manning's Coffee Shop in the Farmer's Market in Seattle confronting the Sound, the windows are opaque with fog. Sitting here in the long deserted room, I feel suspended enveloped by a white silence. Two floors below, the farmers are bending over their long rows of fruit and vegetables; washing and arranging their produce under intense lights shaded by circular green shades. Above, where I sit, the world seems obliterated from all save memory; abstracted without the feeling of being divorced from one’s roots. My eye keeps focusing upon the opaque windows [an equivalent of the picture plane]. Suddenly the vision is disturbed by the shape of a gull floating silently across the width of the window, a line of movement drawn across the picture surface. Then space again. In opposing lines to the gull's flight, the Sound moves northward through the Inland Passage... It is true that trains run daily out of Seattle to points East and South, but my mind takes but little cognizance of this fact. To me Seattle seems pocketed. There is only one way out: Alaska, toward the North! Swerving to the South, there is the Orient, although in San Francisco I feel the Orient rolling in with its tides. My imagination, it would seem, has its own geography.”

Mark Tobey (1890–1976) American abstract expressionist painter

Source: 1950's, In: Reminiscence and Reverie, 1951, pp. 45, 46

World, Way, Feeling, Imagination

“First of all we forget that one of the most common forms of divorce in the Bible and in all of history has been divorce by death, by execution. We are not used to thinking of divorce in such terms, but consider this. In the Old Testament, if a man were guilty of adultery, or a woman, they were executed. And we saw last week as we studied the New Testament teaching that adultery is in terms of New Testament law still a crime that calls for death. Now it does not exist, and therefore special provisions were made for those social orders wherein no such offense incurred the death penalty. As a matter of fact this is how the penitential system developed.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, The Law of Divorce (n.d.)

Death, Law, Penalty, History

“A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

"The Other Two," ch. 1, from The Descent of Man and Other Stories http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/tdmos10.txt (1904)

“I feel some guilt about my lack of enthusiasm for acting, like it’s a bit ungrateful. Like I’ve let my teenage self down. Mind you, he let himself down a fair bit, the dirty little pervert. The dreams of my adolescent self were entangled with silvery screens and limousines, and I still feel that I need to offer up superficial sacrifices to his misguided altar. The fact is, though, I find filmmaking a boring process and its ends dubious. This could, of course, be due to the quality of the stuff I’ve done so far, as opposed to an essential rejection of an art form. Maybe if I’d been “R. P. McMurphy” or “The Elephant Man” or “Brian,” I’d feel different. It just wasn’t what I thought it would be. It’s not just the entertainment industry that has seemed like a mirage on arrival. What about clubs and parties? When I’m there I think, “Is this it? Is this all there is? Is this what all the fuss is about?” This feeling of disillusionment perhaps climaxed around the time of my divorce and the making of this subsequent film.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)
Context: Diablo and I fashioned my beard together in my trailer, together, as cautiously as you’d sculpt a peace treaty between two nations that prefer war to peace. The reality was that my identity outside of filmmaking had become more important to me. I was doing hours of yoga and meditation each day, I was going through a divorce, and the result was a kind of hirsute intransigence. I looked like the cliché of a terrorist and I behaved like one. Except the beard wasn’t the symbol, it was the cause. I feel some guilt about my lack of enthusiasm for acting, like it’s a bit ungrateful. Like I’ve let my teenage self down. Mind you, he let himself down a fair bit, the dirty little pervert. The dreams of my adolescent self were entangled with silvery screens and limousines, and I still feel that I need to offer up superficial sacrifices to his misguided altar. The fact is, though, I find filmmaking a boring process and its ends dubious. This could, of course, be due to the quality of the stuff I’ve done so far, as opposed to an essential rejection of an art form. Maybe if I’d been “R. P. McMurphy” or “The Elephant Man” or “Brian,” I’d feel different. It just wasn’t what I thought it would be. It’s not just the entertainment industry that has seemed like a mirage on arrival. What about clubs and parties? When I’m there I think, “Is this it? Is this all there is? Is this what all the fuss is about?” This feeling of disillusionment perhaps climaxed around the time of my divorce and the making of this subsequent film.

Dreams, Art, Feeling, Thinking

“Thus the world of science — the real world — became estranged and utterly divorced from the world of life, which science has been unable to explain — not even to explain away by calling it "subjective".”

Alexandre Koyré (1892–1964) French philosopher

Newtonian Studies (1965).
Context: There is something for which Newton — or better to say not Newton alone, but modern science in general — can still be made responsible: it is splitting of our world in two. I have been saying that modern science broke down the barriers that separated the heavens and the earth, and that it united and unified the universe. And that is true. But, as I have said, too, it did this by substituting for our world of quality and sense perception, the world in which we live, and love, and die, another world — the world of quantity, or reified geometry, a world in which, though there is place for everything, there is no place for man. Thus the world of science — the real world — became estranged and utterly divorced from the world of life, which science has been unable to explain — not even to explain away by calling it "subjective".
True, these worlds are everyday — and even more and more — connected by praxis. Yet for theory they are divided by an abyss.
Two worlds: this means two truths. Or no truth at all.
This is the tragedy of the modern mind which "solved the riddle of the universe," but only to replace it by another riddle: the riddle of itself.

Life, World, Science

“On divorce laws …”

Jessie Ackermann (1857–1951) Second Woman's Christian Temperance Union round-the-world missionary, suffragist, writer and traveller.

Australia from a Woman's Point of View

Law

“If you write another book, I’ll divorce you.”

Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) American journalist, actress

Afterword to The Dud Avocado (2006)
Context: My success took another road. I complained to Rod Steiger, "The book’s hardly been out and everyone wants to know what I’m going to write next. I mean, don’t I get to rest on my laurels?" In fact I had no idea of writing a second novel. "No," said Rod, answering my question. "Succeeding only means you get another chance to try to do it again."
I thought about it, and then Ken said to me, "If you write another book, I’ll divorce you." I sat down and started my second novel and wondered that I knew its beginning and its end. I put it aside to write a play which went on in London.… I went back to my novel and finished it. It was published to good reviews but now there were a couple of stinkers. I tore them up and flushed them down the toilet. I’d become a writer.
In 1964 Ken and I got divorced. Well, we did bad things to each other. Now, some three decades later, I look back in gratitude at him: I look back in wonder.

Books

“This divorce this is a fatal thing, and a very unfortunate thing, and a totally unnecessary thing.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Lecture 1A, 13:45
Mythology and the Individual (1997)
Context: The image of the cosmos must change with the development of the mind and knowledge; otherwise, the mythic statement is lost, and man becomes dissociated from the very basis of his own religious experience. Doubt comes in, and so forth. You must remember: all of the great traditions, and little traditions, in their own time were scientifically correct. That is to say, they were correct in terms of the scientific image of that age. So there must be a scientifically validated image. Now you know what has happened: our scientific field has separated itself from the religious field, or vice-versa. … This divorce this is a fatal thing, and a very unfortunate thing, and a totally unnecessary thing.

“To love one person productively means to be related to his human core, to him as representing mankind. Love for one individual, in so far as it is divorced from love for man, can refer only to the superficial and to the accidental; of necessity it remains shallow.”

Erich Fromm book The Art of Loving

Source: The Art of Loving (1956), Ch. 2
Context: In spite of the universalistic spirit of the monotheistic Western religions and of the progressive political concepts that are expressed in the idea "that all men are created equal," love for mankind has not become a common experience. Love for mankind is looked upon as an achievement which, at best, follows love for an individual or as an abstract concept to be realized only in the future. But love for man cannot be separated from love for one individual. To love one person productively means to be related to his human core, to him as representing mankind. Love for one individual, in so far as it is divorced from love for man, can refer only to the superficial and to the accidental; of necessity it remains shallow.

Love, Personality

“Just as divorce according to the Saviour's word was not permitted from the beginning, but on account of the hardness of our heart was a concession of Moses to the human race, so too the eating of flesh was unknown until the deluge. But after the deluge, like the quails given in the desert to the murmuring people, the poison of flesh-meat was offered to our teeth. … At the beginning of the human race we neither ate flesh, nor gave bills of divorce, nor suffered circumcision for a sign. Thus we reached the deluge. But after the deluge, together with the giving of the law which no one could fulfil, flesh was given for food, and divorce was allowed to hard-hearted men, and the knife of circumcision was applied, as though the hand of God had fashioned us with something superfluous. But once Christ has come in the end of time, and Omega passed into Alpha and turned the end into the beginning, we are no longer allowed divorce, nor are we circumcised, nor do we eat flesh.”

Jerome (345–420) Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church

Book I, 18
Adversus Jovinianum

Men, God, People, Law

“Dream that the lips once breathless
Might quicken if they would;
Say that the soul is deathless;
Dream that the gods are good;
Say March may wed September,
And time divorce regret;
But not that you remember,
And not that I forget.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne book Poems and Ballads

"Rococo", lines 25-32.
Poems and Ballads (1866-89)

God, Dreams, Soul, Wedding

“This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning
Context: What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. <!-- 153

Life, Feeling

“I was dead. I was a woman who had divorced her soul.”

Khalil Gibran book Jesus, The Son of Man

Mary Magdalen: On Meeting Jesus For The First Time
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
Context: I was dead. I was a woman who had divorced her soul. I was living apart from this self which you now see. I belonged to all men, and to none. They called me harlot, and a woman possessed of seven devils. I was cursed, and I was envied.
But when His dawn-eyes looked into my eyes all the stars of my night faded away, and I became Miriam, only Miriam, a woman lost to the earth she had known, and finding herself in new places.

Soul, Dead

“I guess the only way to stop divorce Is to stop marriage. ”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Marriage, Way

“If you made a list of reasons why any couple got married, and another list of the reasons for their divorce, you'd have a hell of a lot of overlapping. ”

Миньон МакЛафлин (1913–1983)

Hell

“Divorce is just the most awful thing in the world. ”

John Denver (1943–1997) American singer, songwriter, activist, and humanitarian

World

“We never thought, sitting in my office on those afternoons, discussing Voltaire and Ingersoll, that we would ever be brought to this, did we?You, the atheist whom the mere sight of a church spire on the sky could enrage; and I who have never been able to divorce myself from reason enough even to accept your pleasant and labor-saving theory of nihilism.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Judge to Mothershed, a suicide
"Beyond" (1933)

“This was reckless, for if the political choice for the preservation of the mosque were based on the historical non-existence of the medieval temple at the site, then the eventual discovery of such a temple would justify a contrario the replacement of the mosque with a restored temple. At least in theory, but the Marxists were confident that their opponents would never get the chance to press this point. Under the prevailing power equation, they expected to get away with a plain denial of history rather than a mere insistence on divorcing history from politics.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Found and Lost: The Ayodhya Evidence (2003) https://web.archive.org/web/20071009120710/http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.org/articles/ayodhya/foundnlost.html <br class="br">2000s

Confidence, History, Chance, Self-confidence

“Our congress should call upon the whole party to be vigilant and to see that no comrade at any post is divorced from the asses. It should teach every comrade to love the people and listen attentively to the voice of the masses; to identify himself with the masses wherever he goes and, instead of standing above them, to immerse himself among them; and, according to their present level, to awaken them or raise their political consciousness and help them gradually to organize themselves voluntarily and to set going all essential struggles permitted by the internal and external circumstances of the given time and place.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Coalition Government (1945)

Love, People, Making love, Time

“The draft is inequitable because irrelevant considerations play so large a role in determining who serves. It is wasteful because deferment of students, fathers, and married men jams colleges, raises the birth rate, and fuels divorce court. It is inconsistent with a free society because it exacts compulsory service from some and limits the freedom of others to travel abroad, emigrate, or even to talk and act freely. So long as compulsion is retained, these defects are inevitable.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy (1966), p. 189 (1975 edition)

Men, Travel, Birth, Freedom

“Liberalism, as a set of ideals, is still viable, and even compelling to Western men. That is one reason why it has become a common denominator of American political rhetoric; but there is another reason. The ideals of liberalism have been divorced from any realities of modern social structure that might serve as the means of their realization. Everybody can easily agree on general ends; it is more difficult to agree on means and the relevance of various means to the ends articulated. The detachment of liberalism from the facts of a going society make it an excellent mask for those who do not, cannot, or will not do what would have to be done to realize its ideals.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

"Liberal Values in the Modern World"
Power, Politics, and People (1963)

Men, Making love, Reality

“This universe is not an ideal universe. It is impossible, without more fundamental revision of its character than human beings can ever hope to effect, to make of it an ideal place, or anything like an ideal place, for the satisfaction of desires. The cosmic processes which have evolved conscious beings on the earth—and these processes are but the hard-headed tendencies of matter—have so hopelessly nuptialed pleasure and pain that it is impossible to believe that fumbling philosophy will ever be able to divorce them. But we are here, useless and mysterious as it may seem, a set of incompatible vagrants, orphaned here on a dervish-like lump of something, in the midst of immensities so hard and arrogant that no wail from our worm-like larynxes can aught avail. And, so far as we can make out, it is the program of things that we are to remain here. We can not lie down peacefully and perish, for we are possessed by an instinct lashing us to live.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Ideal, pp. 158–159

Pain, Pleasure, Lie, Making love

“If Reg Prentice is cut down it is not just the local party that is undermining its own foundations by ignoring the beliefs and feelings of ordinary people, the whole legitimate Labour Party, left as well as right, is crippled if extremists have their way. … If tolerance is shattered formidable consequences will follow. Labour MPs will either have to become creatures of cowardice, concealing their views, trimming their sails, accepting orders, stilling their consciences, or they will all have to be men far far to the left of those whose votes they seek. Either would make a mockery of parliamentary democracy. The first would reduce still further, and rightly reduce, respect for the House of Commons. It would become an assembly of men with craven spirits and crooked tongues. The second would, quite simply, divorce the Labour Party from the people.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech in Newham, London (11 September 1975), quoted in The Times (12 September 1975), p. 1
1970s

Men, People, Making love, Way

“What makes karma a major problem for people is their inability to deal with it, to recognize their own responsibility for it, and to do something about it. Most people blame their problems on other people or on circumstances: it was their upbringing, the fact that their parents did not love them, or got divorced, or left them wanting, or that their husband left them, or did not leave them. All these experiences are shed onto someone else, but of course it is all to do with karma, our own responsibility.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Art of Co-operation (2002)

Love, People, Making love, Problem

“We are living although the majority of the people do not realize it, in the midst of an immense revolution. What is radically wrong with our condition lies in the harsh contrast between rich and poor. This cannot go on forever, as we are human beings with human differences. No use is being made of religion, the only way towards alleviation and compensation; on the contrary, attempts are being deliberately made to excite the masses into asserting their equality with the middle and upper classes. The State contents itself with attempts to improve the material circumstances of the workers, with the only result that their covetousness has been intensified. The possibility of acquiring great sums of money by speculation has developed a fondness for luxury and enjoyment which has taken hold of wide circles. German family life is going to the dogs. Unfortunate marriages, divorces, youthful corruption, pleasure-seeking, the anxiety to seem richer than one is–all this is increasing terribly. In the lower classes of the great cities the demoralization has already reached a high degree … The unequal distribution of wealth with all its consequences must lead in the end to a catastrophe.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee in his diary, 9 November 1890

Life, Money, Marriage, People

“There never, gentlemen, was a period in which the steadfastness of some men has been nut to so sore a trial. It is not very difficult for well-formed minds to abandon their interest; but the separation of fame and virtue is an harsh divorce. Liberty is in danger of being made unpopular to Englishmen. Contending for an imaginary power, we begin to acquire the spirit of domination, and to lose the relish of honest equality.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

Men

“Will you be wanting to contest the divorce?”

Donald Barthelme book Sixty Stories

I asked Mrs. Davis.
"I should think not," she said calmly, "although I suppose on of us should, for the fun of the thing. An uncontested divorce always seems to me contrary to the spirit of divorce."
"At The End Of The Mechanical Age".
Sixty Stories (1981)

“Can she be divorced? I asked. And famous for her commercials and ideas?”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Dreamland (2000)

Idea

“My dad also survived five divorces, and the women he married cleaned his ass out every time.”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

I used to think my dad got divorced because he wanted new furniture. At one point in my life, all we had left was a wooden box, a 12" black-and-white TV, and a four-man rubber raft for a couch. And yet, I was the coolest kid in third grade. (imitating a kid): "Mom, can we have a sleepover in Christopher Titus' house? They have a raft in the living room! We can row to breakfast in the morning. I can actually be Captain Crunch!"
Norman Rockwell is Bleeding (2004)

Women, Time

“People named John and Mary never divorce. For better or for worse, in madness and in saneness, they seem bound together for eternity by their rudimentary nomenclature. They may loathe and despise one another, quarrel, weep, and commit mayhem, but they are not free to divorce. Tom, Dick, and Harry can go to Reno on a whim, but nothing short of death can separate John and Mary.”

John Cheever (1912–1982) American novelist and short story writer

The Sixties, 1966 entry.
The Journals of John Cheever (1991)

Death, People, Madness

“Doubt is never simply an intellectual problem. There is always a spiritual dimension to doubt, as well. There is an enemy of your souls, Satan, who hates you intensely and is bent on your destruction and who will do everything in his power to see that your faith is destroyed. And therefore when we have these intellectual doubts and problems we should never look at them as something that is spiritually neutral or divorce them from the spiritual conflict that we are involved in. Rather we need to take these doubts to God in prayer, to admit them honestly, to talk to our Christian friends about them, to not stuff them or hide them, we need to deal with them openly and honestly and talk to people about them and seek God's help in dealing with them.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

Dealing with Doubt

18 November 2007

YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-fDyPU3wlQ (2:11 into video)

God, Hate, People, Faith

“Clowns divorce. Custardy battle.”

Simon Munnery (1967) British comedian

Attention Scum! (2001), ... and nothing but (2015)

“I decided that I might adopt that as my new position on gay marriage, that I'm not against gay marriage. I'm just against gay divorce. We should have a constitutional amendment prohibiting them from getting divorced. Because I think we need to protect the sanctity of divorce.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Responding to a question about first gay divorce (July 28, 2006) - https://www.c-span.org/video/?193638-1/godless-church-liberalism <br class="br">2006

Marriage, Thinking

“What really interests me are the local gun laws. Can I carry a concealed weapon and, if so, under what circumstances? What's the waiting period for a tommy gun? Could I buy a Glock 17 if I were recently divorced or fired from my job?”

David Sedaris book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Essay, "Six to eight black men" - p.157-158
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004)

Law, Waiting

“The divorce laws are unequal, practically encouraging immorality on the part of the husband, as it is not a ground for securing a divorce from him unless coupled with cruelty or desertion.”

Mary Winsor (1869–1956) American suffragist

Source: The Militant suffrage movement (1914)

Law, Parting

“As is often the case a failed marriage led to a successful divorce. We split the house; I got the outside...... It was at that point where I made a promise to myself, I said I'm not going to get married again, I'm just gonna find a woman I don't like and give her everything.”

John Cooper Clarke (1951) English performance poet

Series 1 - Twisted Romance (2 Nov 2016)
BBC Radio 4 - Dr John Cooper Clarke at the BBC (Nov 2016)

Marriage, Success, Housing

“In business, it's about terminating a contract and in marriage it's called divorce. Just the same, but different wording.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Marriage, Business

“When the give-and-take loop is interrupted for so long, one cannot expect that link to stay attached. This will result in separation or even divorce in the marriage.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Marriage

“I think I always try to go in with a very objective perspective at first. Inevitably, when playing someone like her, after a while you tend to really sympathize with her. It was very hard for me to divorce myself from that opinion.”

Tania Raymonde (1988) American actress

Source: Tania Raymonde: The Jodi Arias Trial ‘Unfolding In Real Time’ While FilmingLifetime Movie Was A ‘Trip’ https://hollywoodlife.com/2020/08/08/jodi-arias-lifetime-movie-tania-raymonde-interview/ (August 8, 2020)

Thinking

“Years and years of marriage prepared me for years and years of divorce.”

Brother Theodore (1906–2001) German-American monologuist and comedian

Marriage

“We believe in marriage for life, and deprecate all this loose, pestiferous talk in favor of easy divorce... Be not deceived — free love means free lust.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

In an 1870 writing making it clear that those wishing for "free divorce" were not associated with Stone's organization, American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA)

Love, Life, Marriage

“By being so far educated beyond his capacity is he unable to learn within himself from nature? Divorced as he is from her, who and what can now be his? Does the so-called free man of democracy merely exploit his sovereignity?”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

A Testament (1957)

Education, Democracy, Nature, Learning

Quotes about divorce page 3

Quotes about divorce
page 3