Sarah Fielding Marriage Quotations

There is yet another kind of matrimonial dialect (which naturally succeeds this of talking at each other), which may very properlybe styled The Language Contradictory.... In the former, however plain the object of satire may be exhibited to the whole company, yet there always remains some little covering.... But in this last method, the defiance becomes more open and the impetuosity with which these contradictions are uttered (although the subjects of them are often of the most indifferent nature) evidently prove that they arise from passion.

I am none of those nonsensical fools that can whine and make romantic love--I leave that to younger brothers. Let my estate speakfor me.

I believe no gentleman would like to have his family affairs neglected because his wife was filling her head with crotchets and pothooks, and who, because she understood a few scraps of Latin, valued that more than minding her needle or providing her husband's dinner.

[F]or women, like tradesmen, draw in the injudicious to buy their goods by the high value they themselves set upon them.... They endeavor strongly to fix in the minds of their enamoratos their own high value, and then contrive as much as possible to make them believe that they have so many purchasers at hand that the goods--if they do not make haste--will all be gone.

I had some short struggle in my mind whether I should resign my lover or my liberty, but this lasted not long. I found myself as free as air and could not bear the thought of putting myself in any man's power for life only from a present capricious inclination.

I often used to think myself in the case of the fox-hunter, who, when he had toiled and sweated all day in the chase as if some unheard-of blessing was to crown his success, finds at last all he has got by his labor is a stinking nauseous animal. But my condition was yet worse than his; for he leaves the loathsome wretch to be torn by his hounds, whilst I was obliged to fondle mine, and meanly pretend him to be the object of my love.